Kung Fu High School

by Ryan Gattis

  THE SAND WITCH

  That was probably the worst part, I noticed the odds shift and I got overconfident. So instead of sprinting up to the teacher's desk, which I had brief access to, I decided to cut behind the twins and take two quick leaps on the chair portions of the student desks but it didn't work out so good and I slipped right off the second one and fell hard on my elbow. Cue would've laughed at me, even harder at the fact that I would've broken the damn bone if it wasn't for the elbow cup in my turtleneck. But as it was, I was only in minor trouble when I went crashing to the floor and slid to the back wall, hitting the brick right next to the window. Again, thanks to my padding, the wall didn't take off a few layers of skin but a pushed-out, uneven brick caught me in the shoulder pretty good.

  With a tomahawk kick coming straight down on me, I did all I could. I put up both forearms to block and thanked god for those shunts when it hurt minimally. I gave a solid kick to the standing leg of the tomahawk kicker and I felt his knee buckle so I slid forward to my left, bent my knee, and brought my right heel backward in a devastating crab kick that wiped out Señor Tomahawk. He hit his head hard on the brick wall behind me while falling forward. I had just enough time to pop up and jump over a desk to get more to the middle of the room but I caught a nasty kick in the ribs as I did it. It threw me off balance but I landed well.

  The twins, however, were down and bloody. That meant it was just me left. Facing the door, I had two Fists coming from behind me and the other three coming straight at me. So I went sideways and hopped up on the teacher's desk. Another smart guy decided to push the desk as hard as he could and ram it against the wall, knocking me off. Which, in theory, would've been a great idea were the desk not bolted to the floor. He should've known that. Every bathroom in the school had no mirrors, no doors on the stalls, and when you went to use them, you had to bring your own toilet paper because the rolls always disappeared. Quite simply, everything truly worth taking was bolted to the floor at Kung Fu, even the bookcases, filing cabinets, and certain chairs.

  Because of that little oversight, he merely smacked hard against it and caught my boot toe and all three nails in his mouth as a reward. His jaw collapsed like an empty tissue box and at least one of the nails drove into his tongue and under it, cutting into the sluglike soft tissue and lodging there. Fuck. It took a reflex effort from both of us to rip my boot free of his mouth and as he screamed bloody murder on his way to passing out, multiple fragments of mandible bone and shattered teeth fell clean out of his face and scattered across the floor. Following soon out of the newly vacated hole was a wad of greenish chewing gum—spearmint probably—riding a wave of clumpy blood, a barrel going over a waterfall. I jumped down from the desk, grabbed the rusted-but-still-rolling teacher's chair from underneath it and slung the thing toward the exit door. It aced a big Fist right in the knees. I dodged laterally and a punch clipped the side of my head as I felt the hardness of the chalkboard rebound against my back.

  And then I just reacted. Didn't even think about what I was doing, I just swept, got low, then jumped and followed through with a kick that had my whole soul behind it. And somehow, the Sand Witch connected. The kid I hit stuck flat to the floor like they were made for each other. I didn't know how it worked. I couldn't explain it and as I was trying to put it together in my mind, I shuddered hard and the room shuddered with me. Walls moved with my breathing. My ears popped. No. It couldn't be. I was good at this, shutting down, going to work, training my brain not to feel my own effort, my punches that immobilized and chipped chunks off my knuckles, split them wide open, snapped the odd carpal bone as the collision instantly transferred its force through bone, joint, muscle, and tendon, like a tornado spiraling all the way up my arm, through my shoulder only to blow itself out in my chest, the kicks that cracked bones, jammed my toes, strained tired muscles, twisted my ligaments into obscene shapes, flimsy paper things that threatened to tear at any time. I couldn't start feeling now. I wasn't at home. It wasn't dark. I wasn't safe.

  Worse was I could see Cue in my mind's eye, smiling at how I did the Sand Witch, did it right and didn't fall or hurt myself too badly and then the thought slapped me: I was in the corrupted temple. I was the little girl in our madeup story. The one the Sand Witch thought was a boy but didn't eat when she found out the truth. I was the spared one.

  Through the blanket-thick blur across my vision I didn't see the last few faces, only their awkward splashes of movement, like they were underwater with me. Like we all fell in a pool. So I just followed through, powered by every last decent memory I had of Cue. Powered by all my fear that I'd be left in the corrupted temple, all alone. Everyone else would either be eaten or far away. Couldn't smell or hear, could only taste Cue's old blood on the last buds on my tongue and it made me want to vomit, to get it outside of me. I could feel bile climbing up the vertical of my throat like it was a mountain slope and summitting, creeping into the back of my mouth, searching for daylight, and as repulsive as it was, that sticking stain, I didn't want it to go. I couldn't puke now. That salt-blood taste, I needed it. I hated it. It drove me. I didn't want it to leave. It was all I had left of him, the last of his life. I stood up.

  Lucky for me too. Just in time to see the last Fist coming at me, I kicked her with a straight leg in the diaphragm and as she was doubling over, she caught my plastic-protected knee in her mouth. She spit chunks of teeth onto the tile and they sounded like rolling toy cars beneath her feet as she stumbled forward, looking like she was about to come up for more so I stomped on her fingers and whacked her in the side of the neck. She keeled. I wanted to kick her again but I didn't, better to save it.

  I wasn't crying. Not real tears anyway. I wasn't thinking about what Jimmy and I did. No. Hard, I brushed at the water trickling down my cheeks with the coarse plastic knuckles. Dusted the shed shavings from blunt contact at the same time. Didn't mean to. But even good plastic wears like bad carpet, loses chunks along its edges with rough use, and in doing so I accidentally mixed a wet, anonymous smear of blood on my cheek like an artist's palette, like Dad's palette? I confirmed it. The tears were real, but not attached to anything. Crocodile tears, the kind the sharp-toothed reptile cries when it eats its prey, when it's swallowing. Yeah, that was it. They weren't for Cue. They weren't for Jimmy. They weren't for me. Couldn't be. Not now. The more I breathed, leaning over my knees, the more the room came into focus. Now was not the time to lose it. I had to survive.

  Two opponents left, had to be, but they were nowhere to be found. The door was unlocked and open. They must've run. And that was a huge relief, because I was so sore I didn't think I could throw another decent punch for a month, my muscles were aching so bad but my adrenaline was still flowing, just had to channel it in the right direction, away from Cue, no more memories, only toward the present, to the sounds of chaos in the hall: hoarse, raging voices, metal slamming down on metal or wood or tile or wall, screaming reverberations of fighting, glass breaking, even one-note laughter. It seemed like all of Kung Fu was rolling at once, every single room in every single building. What was left of the Wolves was getting wiped out. Melinda? I had no idea where she was, in the main building somewhere. I had to get to jimmy. Had to think. Fifth period was his gym. Shit. That meant this little girl had to use whatever was left in her, to fly.

  GETTING OUT

  I wasn't stupid. Retrieving my backpack, I pulled out the chuks and then strapped the pack on, good and tight. Prior to my exit, I dragged one of the smaller, unconscious Runners to the door and pushed her through the open portal only to watch her get kicked by phantom legs from both sides. I'd found my last two kids, and the looks on their faces were comical as they realized they'd kicked the wrong person, one of their own. I almost felt bad bringing the swinging nunchakus down on their nearly innocent faces. No I didn't. They fell like tipped-over cardboard cutouts.

  The hallway was anarchy: I ran past a Wolf smashing a guy's head with an open locker door that was nearly off its hinges. Two Whip
s were dragging the body of a Wolf down the hallway to the bathroom. There was a fight in every room. Some doors open, some doors not. I didn't check them all, just ran the hallway gambit smacking anyone who looked at me funny. Had to find Jimmy. Had to get to the gym. And that was all the way across the quad and the possibilities of me getting there became a lot more remote the second I turned the corner and almost crashed headlong into a mob of Blades that shouted those oh-so-cliched-but-terribly-true words in unison: "Get her!"

  I didn't even hesitate. I turned right back around and took the nearest corner staircase, leaping the stairs three at a time as I dodged two kids getting tossed down. I wasn't seeing faces so much as I was seeing mannerisms, postures that indicated fighting styles, body movements that told me who was hostile and who was a friend. These weren't really nameless, faceless bad guys. These were kids I went to junior high school with. They all had their fucked-up stories, lives, hobbies, secret dreams, and families to go home to. They all wanted to survive just as much as I did. Too bad. I got no apologies. Emotions got attached to nothing, so long as I could keep it together. Because right then, it was merely cause and effect, only action and reaction. There was simply a running commentary of moves, counters, a flat description in my head. I couldn't handle anything else. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, pulling myself up on the railing, the only thing that mattered was an exit. It was time for the unexpected.

  I banked right at the top of the stairs and found myself in front of the huge reinforced hallway window, maybe five feet by eight feet, that looked down on the cafeteria roof I could hear fighting, but no one nearby. I slung the chuks at the glass: one, two, three, but they kept rebounding, only making tiny holes in the huge pane. I needed something bigger. Twisting the chuks onto the hammer loop of my khaks, I broke the glass for the fire extinguisher behind me on the wall and hoisted the heavy thing above my head and brought it down as hard as I could on the holes I already made.

  I got maybe six good shots in before the first of the mob came up the stairs and they briefly pulled left like they were all one body, one big amoeba, before they saw me at the window. The first Blade forward tried to yell something but the poor guy caught the bouncing extinguisher knee-high and toppled with a torn patella just as I backed up as far as I could for a six-step running start into a jump kick, Bruce Lee—style, straight-legged, whole body forward. I put all my one hundred and thirty-five pounds into that kick. There was no way in hell I could've broken that window if it was any other school, but the sheet of glass gave and my relief turned to immediate fear as the whole thing flopped out into the air in front of me like a hinged Japanese screen doing its best impersonation of a paper airplane. Never let anyone tell you that falling is like flying. It isn't. Falling is like fuckin' falling and the landing is the worst. I came down on the cafeteria roof relatively flat footed and far enough from the window to be safe. I rolled well, but some cracked triangles of glass embedded themselves in my neck, scalp, and probably my back along the way.

  A little dazed and reflexively picking the glass from my neck, ear, and head, I thanked the school board for cheap workmanship on the buildings. That is, until I saw the first guy from the mob jumping down onto the cafeteria roof behind me. As it was, I was about twenty-six feet off the ground and I hadn't thought much beyond taking a running leap at the flagpole about five feet into the quad from the cafeteria entrance. So that's what I did. I just jumped, again.

  I missed the pole but caught the metal rope for the flag in my hands somehow and rode it all the way down to the bottom, banging my head and hips on the pole because of my momentum, cutting my hands so deeply I could see metacarpals peeking through chunks of ragged redness. Skin and fat torn up and clumped together like overdone pasta, the tiny spirally kind, lay heaped on the tendons that ran down to my fingertips. I used to have palms. That burn of lost flesh was by far the worst burn I ever experienced. The worst pain I ever experienced period, worse than getting stabbed. Only good news was the guy behind me on the roof decided it wasn't worth it to make the jump and he was trying to scramble back into the window hole as the rest of the mob took off down the stairs after me.

  I had maybe thirty seconds to pull off my plastic knuckles for slightly better flex in my fingers, claw open my backpack and wrap loose, ugly bunches of gauze around my hands, and then finish with the most inexpert duct taping ever. I couldn't tell you how I was able to tape both hands into fists in under twenty-five seconds. Everyone tells me it's impossible, and I agree with them, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened. I was in shock, dragging my backpack behind me by my elbow and running toward the gym entrance before the mob came out of the main building behind me.

  By the time I pulled myself through the front entrance to the gym building, the one with eight doors that opened onto a raised floor that held the remnants of the past, the old school treasures, Jimmy was right in front of me: fighting in the entryway. He was using the stuffed cougar mascot's outstretched paw to defend himself. The trophy case had been shattered and one kid was already laid out on the ground in front of Jimmy, bloody-headed, with a guilty-looking trophy nearby, dented and red.

  JIMMY A.K.A. GYMKATA FOR REAL

  What I found out later: there was method to Ridley's madness. See, we're not allowed to wear street clothes to our gym classes. The gym building is actually connected to the main building by the cafeteria extension, which snuggled up to the indoor swimming pool. And fifth period was Jimmy's gym class, so he went to the locker room and put his gym clothes on. No weapons, no protection, just Jimmy in a pair of school-issued red shorts, a yellow T-shirt that said MLKHS in red above the face of a roaring cougar and some socks and athletic shoes, white ones. Probably not the best idea to leave his protective gear behind but he did what he was told and followed the coach and the rest of the twenty-five kids in the class up to the second-floor landing and into the gymnastics/weight room.

  The coach pushed open the big wooden double doors and led everyone onto the blue gymnastics flooring as the different-sounding bell went off and the idiot must not have known what it meant because he just kept on with class, saying something like:

  "Alright, y'all got your circuit training forms, now I want those filled out before the end of the period, and Drew, Peter, and Billy, y'all better actually do the exercises this time. I'll be watching ya."

  It was only Jimmy's second time in the combined gymnastics/weight-lifting room: L-shaped and large, it was yet another cost-cutting measure of the school district administration, severing what used to be a large rectangular room only meant for one thing, gymnastics, into three pieces and making it multiuse by bricking off a quarter of it for a wrestling room that was padded on every wall with the school colors and had a big red wrestling mat doubling as the floor. It had no windows. That was the county's money at work.

  Right next to the wrestling room was the weight room, the skinny bottom part of the L, occupying the other quarter of the rectangle but it didn't have a wall between it and the gymnastics equipment. The uneven bars were right next to the leg press sled, the only border that separated them was the color of the carpet. Weight-lifting room: maroon pile. Nearly every piece of equipment was for free weights, bench press, leg curl, and shoulder press. Each little metal skeleton lined up along the wall except for the far one, which was full of mirrors and hand weights on metal shelves.

  On the far side of the gymnastics room, in the corner, was a climbing rope only accessible by the giant pad in place for the vault and springboard. In front of that was the runway. Stretched out along the wall, next to the uneven bars, stood the balance beam. It was all too close together.

  Normally, every class started with stretching. Everybody got in a circle and the coach would tell them what to do. But that didn't happen.

  "Alright, y'all, circle up. Stretch it on down now," he said, and looked at his clipboard, shook each leg like he was about to start running, and then rolled his head on his neck and popped a new piece
of gum in his mouth.

  Jimmy was the only one who sat down. He knew that wasn't good. He didn't need to look up and survey the eyes of his classmates. He just pulled his right shoe off then the sock.

  "What the hell? All y'all need to sit your asses down or we'll be running laps." He was starting to get mad. Coach was like, "Lots and lots of laps."

  Three Whips and a Blade shut the big double doors and locked them by driving a metal rod from the shoulder press, which was conveniently lying next to the wall, down through the horizontal push bars. As it was, no one could pull them open from outside. Jimmy had his other shoe off, the sock too, and he was still sitting. The rest of the class moved behind Jimmy, blocking off the exit through the weight room.

  "That's twenty laps right there, boys! Want more? Fifty! I can't wait to see ya puke. Whew, I didn't think y'all were that stupid. Besides, I got the keys." And the rest of his talk was really to himself as he turned his back on the doors. "Bunch of dumb-asses, man, I don't know where they get this stuff..." The sound of a ten-pound iron weight on the back of a skull isn't the most pleasant noise in the world. When the coach hit the floor face-first and bounced one inch up off the cushioned mat before settling, it began.

  Jimmy hopped to his feet as if on a wire, took one step back and without even looking, grabbed the collar of the smallest kid in the whole class. He didn't strike the kid as the others gathered weapons: weights, bars, jump ropes. He just waited. The kid was so scared of Jimmy that he started to cry. Big, uncontrollable, where's-my-mommy tears and it wasn't long before the kid broke out in moans that came from the bottom of his lungs and sliced through the buzzing of the fluorescent lights high above them like double foghorns.