THE THOUSAND DOLLAR BREAKOUT: Colt Ryder Uncovers A Deadly Fight Club At San Quentin State Prison . . . Will He Escape With His Life?

by J. T. Brannan

  Holy shit, the crazy son of a bitch was trying to bite my throat out – like he’d done to Patrick Murphy? – and the pain was so severe that I almost passed out. But I knew that would be the end of me, this guy would kill me for sure, and all the guards in the world wouldn’t be able to stop him in time. If they even wanted to in the first place.

  What are you going to do? I asked myself.

  What if this is Jasper?

  What if you end up beating him, what if they kill Delaney? What if Trent Michaels tells everyone who you really are?

  What if, nothing; if I didn’t fight back, I’d be dead. I was beyond conscious thought now, my body merely a survival mechanism.

  I had the will to live, to survive, and it was impossible to override it.

  My hands went to his eyes of their own accord, the pain of his teeth deep in the soft tissue of my neck and the crushing pressure of his hold making me unable to think clearly, and I drove the thumbs right into the sockets, digging deep to the inside. I wound my fingers into his hair, pulling tight, and then used it for leverage as my thumbs finally plopped into the gooey mass of his colorless eyeballs, held firm to the hair as I ripped hard to the outside; and while one of them just collapsed into a horrible, liquified jelly, I managed to tear the other ruined, bloody eyeball out of its socket completely.

  The pain was too much even for a man like that, and he mercifully opened his mouth to scream in agony, releasing his teeth from my neck. I felt hot, viscous fluid running fast down my neck onto my chest, but knew I couldn’t worry about the damage now.

  His grip was weakened, and my feet finally went back to the floor; but he still held me, and I knew he was still dangerous. Even with one eyeball collapsed and the other dangling, half-crushed, onto his bearded cheek, he could still be dangerous. At this range, with a hold on me, the lack of vision wouldn’t be much of a problem. If he could deal with the pain, he could still do damage.

  I drove a knee up into his balls, but it seemed to have no effect and I could already feel his grip starting to tighten once more; and I knew that if he got that grip back, the teeth would be sinking into me again, despite the loss of his eyes.

  My hands slapped his ears again, and the effect was better this time, but still not enough; and so, with blood leaking ferociously out of my neck, my hands slipped further down, my fingers finding that damaged eyeball, hanging loose on his cheek; and then I gripped it hard and pulled down, watched in horror as the optic nerve squirmed like a worm out of that bleeding, blackened socket; heard the agonized screams as the cord snapped and the eyeball trickled horribly down his massive body before landing on the tiled floor beneath us.

  His grip gave up then, and he dropped me as his hands went to his eye socket, fingers touching the bloody cord that lay there, searching helplessly for the eye that were no longer there.

  I moved quickly to one side, smashing a side kick down into his knee as I went, before creating some distance between us. Now he couldn’t see, distance was my friend.

  The big man was on his knees, screaming while he searched for his missing eyeball; there were screams coming thick and fast from the other side of the glass too, as the audience struggled to come to terms with what they were witnessing.

  Well, I reminded myself, Bush had told me to work out the rules for myself.

  I was just about to rush in and deliver a scything round kick to the same knee that I’d targeted only moments before, but then the guy did something that surprised even me; he found the eyeball, picked it up, and threw it straight at me. How he knew where I was, I’d never know; but I gasped involuntarily as I tried to dodge the incoming organ, and his ears honed-in on my position like a damned bat. And despite the trauma he’d suffered, he came racing blindly toward, meaty fists swinging with a vengeance.

  There were screams and wild applause from the viewing rooms, but I ignored it as I jumped out the way of this rampaging monster, getting in my round kick to his knee as I went. It wasn’t as hard as I would have liked, but it was better than nothing.

  Now Mountain was in the center of the room, hands up, trying desperately to find me by touch and sound alone. Aware of the sound my sneakers made on the tiled floor, I bent down and pulled them off, before stalking the big man around the room.

  Twice I tried to attack, but somehow he sensed me and turned, and I backed away, fearful of being grabbed again.

  With his vision now at zero percent, I knew my best bet was to hit and run, to launch short attacks before pulling away to safety.

  I worked my way around the huge man, quiet now, using the same skills I’d relied upon in the jungles, in the desert, my movement completely silent. Despite the adrenaline surging through my body, I even got my breathing back under control, careful to give no indication as to where I was.

  And then – when I was right behind him – I darted in fast and took another shot at that same knee, the powerful scything kick I’d wanted to land last time; and this one had the desired effect, buckling his leg, making him half collapse to the floor. And when his head was down I took another chance and fired a thrusting side kick into the side of his skull, aiming my heel at his temple.

  He moved at the last moment – perhaps by instinct – and the blow connected with his jaw instead. It sent him sideways though, and his heavy body crashed into the floor.

  I ran around, hoping to land a stomping kick to his prone head, but he recovered more quickly than I would have thought possible, and was already pulling himself up to his knees. I changed strategy at the last moment and – as he staggered up into a low crouch, disoriented and confused, I leaped up in the air, swinging first one leg up before retracting it sharply and letting my other knee fire upwards, using the shifting weight of my hips to generate enormous power. At the apex of my jump, my knee made contact right underneath his jaw.

  The result was immediate, and spectacular. His head whipped back, and I saw teeth flying loose from his mouth; he clawed at the air, but without his eyes he had no real idea of what was up and what was down. He tried to turn but couldn’t, and he toppled backward as if he’d been pole-axed. Unable to control his head, or to save his fall, the big man’s skull hit the floor first, and I heard a sickening crack as it made contact with the tiles.

  I backed away instinctively, not sure if he was still awake or unconscious, alive or dead.

  But as I looked on, there was no movement at all, not even a twitch.

  Mountain was down.

  I’d won.

  Cries of disbelief went up from the audience as they saw their money disappear in the blink of an eye; some of the women were still screaming and crying at the grim spectacle they had just witnessed, and – as my fingers went to the painful, jagged wound in the side of my neck – I wondered if they’d known what they were letting themselves in for. Let me take you somewhere exciting tonight, a new boyfriend might have told one of them. Underground fights, it’ll be great. Like the UFC, but more real.

  Well, it didn’t get any more real than this, that was for damn sure. I looked down at the bloodstained floor, careful not to tread on the guy’s eyeball with my bare feet, and then at the crowd.

  They were looking at me in somewhat stunned disbelief, and I felt they were waiting for something, perhaps a gesture of some sort to break the spell, to dissipate the horror of what they’d just seen.

  And so, as the door opened and the guards came in to drag the blind, unconscious – dead? – body away, I opened my bloody mouth and smiled at the people on the other side of the windows.

  And then I raised one hand and gave those voyeuristic, sick sons of bitches the finger.

  Fuck you, guys.

  Fuck you.

  Chapter Six

  I didn’t know about Trent Michaels, but Officer Bush was deliriously happy with me. He came to see me in my infirmary bed, back in the AC. Nothing was broken, but there was a lot of concern among the medics about the bite marks in my neck. The big man hadn’t managed to bite all the way throug
h the tissue, but it was close; and then there was all the worry about communicable diseases and so they’d pumped me full of antibiotics, as well as painkillers.

  Turned out that big man was Deke Jasper; and the force of his head hitting the floor hadn’t just knocked him out, it had actually killed the bastard, probably because he weighed so damn much.

  It didn’t bother me too much, but I was a little concerned about the ramifications from the AB crew.

  I wondered what would happen to Delaney, hoped that Michaels had just been bluffing. Jasper was dead, I’d beaten him, what was the use of killing Delaney now?

  Bush was so pleased, he’d even brought a six-pack of beer in for me, told the doctors to turn a blind eye to it. I was the “prison champ” now, and he had big plans for me.

  I considered telling him about Michaels, about Delaney, but decided against it. Why complicate matters even more?

  Out of the eight of us who’d fought in the prison tournament, according to Bush, four were dead. I’d killed two out of my three opponents, and Johnny Tsang had a cracked skull. It wasn’t a sport for the faint-hearted, that was for sure. All four survivors were here in the AC medical center, although – due to our security situation – we all had separate rooms. And despite being in the good graces of Officer Bush, I was still handcuffed to the hospital bed.

  Bush had left – probably to go and count his money – and, with my wrists cuffed to the bed rails, I was trying to figure out how to drink the cans of beer he’d given me when the door opened again.

  Aw, shit.

  I knew it was only a matter of time, but I’d have preferred to have drunk my beers first.

  I looked up and saw Trent Michaels stood in the doorway, a powerlifting-type thug on either side.

  And he did not look happy.

  “Beer?” I asked him, raising a can in his direction, but the offer didn’t improve his mood.

  “You killed him,” Michaels said, as if he still couldn’t believe it.

  “Yeah,” I said, a little high on pain medication, “sorry about that.”

  “Not as sorry as Mitchel Delaney,” Michaels said. “Watch this.”

  The cellphone came out, and he turned it to me. On the screen was the same trailer I’d seen before, Mitch Delaney still sitting in the same high-backed chair, although he looked bloodier now, more battered than before. I felt a tinge of guilt.

  Two men stood by his side, and he wasn’t moving, was barely breathing.

  “Do it,” Michaels instructed his men, and I watched as one of them shook Delaney awake, while the other readied a semi-auto handgun.

  “Delaney,” said the first man. “Smile for the fuckin’ camera.”

  Delaney’s eyes opened wide as he saw the handgun rising steadily up into his line of sight, and I could see – could feel – the terror coursing through every part of his body.

  “No!” he screamed, straining at the bonds which held him to the chair. “Nooo!”

  Then came the shot, a loud crack through the cellphone’s tiny speaker, and Delaney’s screams were silenced as the opposite side of his head was blown out by the exit wound; blood and bone sprayed from his skull and his eyeballs bulged out, blackened with an eight-ball hemorrhage; and then his body relaxed, and the broken head slumped on his shoulder.

  “You fucking son of a bitch,” I spat at Michaels. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  Michaels clicked off the phone and smiled at me. “You’re right,” I said, “I didn’t. You made me do it, you dumb bastard. All you had to do was lose, but you couldn’t do it, could you? How hard would it have been? Let him hit you once, go down and stay down.” He shook his head sadly. “But you had to go and be the hero, didn’t you? Had to prove yourself, I guess.”

  I was still shaking my head, not quite believing what I’d seen. I didn’t feel guilty as such – I’d been placed in an impossible situation, Delaney might well have ended up being shot anyway, and he’d brought the whole thing on himself by dealing meth in the first place – but I was disturbed by Michaels’ utter ruthlessness.

  “Anyway,” Michaels said casually, as if he’d not just had someone executed, “I’m not gonna tell people who you really are. Delaney’s dead now anyway, so what does it matter?”

  “You’re a real gentleman,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he said with a smile. “I don’t want to tell anyone, cos maybe they’ll move you out of here, and I definitely don’t want that. I want you right here, with us.” He gestured at the two goons he’d come with. “I want you to meet my boys here, Frank and Karl. They’re gonna help break you in.”

  “Break me in?”

  “Yeah, for my gump stable. Don’t you remember our little agreement? You didn’t go down for the fight, so I’ve killed Delaney like I promised, and now I’m gonna turn you into one of my bitches. Get ready to have your ass reamed, son. I bet you, you’ll like it.” The two men started to move toward me, grins spreading across their ugly, tattooed faces. “You better try and like it, anyway. Cos after today, getting fucked in the ass is the only thing you’re gonna know.” The men were next to me now, reaching for me, and I pulled hard against the cuffs, desperate to escape. “The best advice I have for you, is to relax. They’re gonna do it anyway, it’ll hurt less if you just relax and take it.”

  The men grabbed me and started to wrestle me, to turn me over, and my mind was spinning, desperate to find a way out, to –

  “Take your hands off that man!”

  Everyone turned to look, and we were greeted by the sight of four armed riot officers, two on either side of the man who’d shouted across the room.

  Warden Nathaniel Gordon.

  I’d never been more happy to see anyone in my entire life.

  Chapter Seven

  The powerlifting rapists backed away from my bed, and I took a deep breath of sheer, unadulterated relief. Even Michaels moved away, and I guessed that the warden was in charge around here, despite what the AB chieftain would have everyone believe.

  But I wondered what Gordon was doing here. Had he found out about the tournament?

  Gordon nodded at the guards. “Officers, get those men out of here.” They stalked forward, and the three AB boys moved toward them, hands out, ready to be cuffed. “Not you,” he said to Michaels. “You stay.”

  I watched as the guards escorted Frank and Karl out of the room, Gordon waiting patiently until the three of us were alone.

  “Take a seat, Trent,” Gordon said, and Michaels did as the warden said, sat himself down on a hard plastic chair next to one of the walls. “Good boy. Now, what’s the problem?”

  “You know what the problem is,” Michaels said. “This crazy sonofabitch killed Deke, that’s what the damn problem is. I lost a lot of money.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing – Michaels was talking to the warden as if he knew all about it.

  “You knew about the tournament?” I asked.

  Gordon laughed. “I’m the warden here, Mitch. I know everything. Of course I knew about the tournament, you think Bush organized it?” He shook his head. “He’s a scout, you know, he keeps a look out for fighters, but he’s not an organizer. He’s good with the crowds, manages the betting, but I handle the logistics.”

  “He wasn’t supposed to win,” Michaels complained again.

  “Oh, pipe down, Trent. You may have lost some money on this one, but think about it. Look at what a prospect we have for the future. Deke was a force of nature, but he was obvious – everyone put money on him, right? Now look at this guy.” He pointed at me. “Nothing special, right? Odds against this guy will make us a hell of a lot more money, down the tracks. Nobody’s gonna bet on this sonofabitch, especially not early on. And get this,” he continued, clearly enthused. “The crowd loved him. Tearing Deke’s eyeball clean out of its socket? Damn, they’ve never seen anything like it, he’s a damn hero in there.”

  “He crossed me,” Michaels said, undeterred. “He has to pay.”
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  “Look at him,” Gordon said, pointing to my padded throat, blood seeping through it still. “Maybe he’s paid enough already.” Michaels tried to speak, but Gordon stopped him. “And even if you don’t think so, you and your boys are to stay away from him, do you understand me? This man is going to become very valuable for us, whether you think so or not.”

  “Tell me how.”

  I wasn’t used to being treated as a commodity, and I didn’t like it. “Hey,” I said, “you mind talking to me?”

  “I’ll tell you both,” Gordon said. “I’ve set up another tournament. Bigger, better, more money. An inter-prison championship. I’ve got three other wardens on board, we’re gonna pit our champions against each other. Semi-final, then final.”

  “There are three other prisons doing this shit?” I asked.

  “That I know of. Could be more, but people are careful, don’t want the word getting out. Could you imagine?” He laughed. “Anyway, it’s the perfect environment for it, isn’t it? Thousands of men cooped up for years, bored, nothing to do; hardened criminals for the most part, no stranger to violence. Great pickings for a program like this.”

  “You holding it here?” Michaels asked, and Gordon shook his head.

  “No, not here, and I’m not telling you where it is. But I’ll cut you in on some of the action, if you do something for me. You’ll make back what you lost today, plus some extra.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Michaels asked.

  “We’ve got more dead bodies here than normal,” Gordon began. “Even with lockdown, it’s going to be hard coming up with a viable story for it. We need a scenario where a lot of people could die, or get injured.”

  A wide smile spread across Michaels’ face. “Riot?” he asked, and Gordon nodded.

  “Yes,” he agreed, to my shock. “Just a small one, maybe use it to settle up some of your scores with that nigger gang, okay? I could do with them being thinned out a bit. We’ll throw these bodies in there with the rest.”