Arena Book 3
Page 21
“Son of a bitch, no you didn’t,” I mumbled as he walked away laughing to himself.
The “fans”, who looked like five feet tall Gila Monsters on two legs and walked like hunched over velociraptors, cracked their knuckles and flexed their necks as they moved toward me slowly and full of menace. Their forked tongues slithered in and out of their mouths as they tasted sweat and fear. It was like show and tell at the Reptile House this morning with all the cold-blooded bastards that seemed to come out of nowhere.
I felt the surge of adrenaline, as strong as a thousand cups of double-brewed coffee, dump into my bloodstream like an old friend. All my combat mods kicked into high gear as my heart began to beat faster. Blood pumped. If it was a fight they wanted, well, who was I to deny them.
As the nearest Gila-Minion rushed at me, I reached over to a nearby foot cart, grabbed a frying pan the size of a hubcap from a diesel truck, and slammed it into his face as hard as I could. The Minion screamed loudly as the hot metal smashed his forked tongue into his elongated snout-like face.
I didn’t stick around to see what other damage I had done. As the frying pan clattered to the ground with a bit of sizzling lizard tongue stuck to the bottom, I turned and began to haul ass. I had gotten to be a pretty goddamn good hand to hand fighter if I did say so myself, but six against one before eight in the morning were not odds I favored.
My Parkour skills let me weave through the crowded street nimbly. The Gila-Minions, while not nearly as nimble as I was, were fast as hell despite their size. And they didn’t bother to weave. They just plowed through the pedestrians like they were bowling pins. I heard aliens yell and curse in several languages behind me. I glanced back and saw three people fly into the air as if they had been bounced off a trampoline.
“Ah shit,” I cursed. Innocent folks were going to get really hurt if this freaky foot chase continued. I had to do something to take these pet shop rejects out. Without really having any plan at all, I grabbed a signpost in both hands, swung my feet off the air until I was almost completely horizontal, and kicked the nearest Gila-Minion in the chest with both feet.
At the end of the swing, I let go and twisted so that I landed on him when we crashed to the ground with as much force as I could muster. I felt the satisfying snap of his breast bone before I rolled off of him as one of his buddies tried to tackle me.
Instead of popping up on my feet at the end of the roll, I pushed off with my arms and shoulders, to spring up like a jack popping out of the box. My momentum shot me up, and I pistoned my legs into the jaw of the Gila-Minion who’d tried to tackle me. Her head snapped back like a Pez dispenser, but instead of a tasty sugar pellet, thick green blood shot out.
I landed in a crouch and was just about to turn and haul ass when a thick, scaled tail slammed into my shoulder and sent me crashing into a food cart. Fluorescent purple spaghetti that smelled like bubble gum covered my torso as I scrambled backward. Three of the Gila-Minions stood in front of me. Their muscles tensing and flexed under their overcoats. They sneered, and I could see green venom drip from their many sharp, needle-like teeth.
My hand grabbed a handful of the bubble spaghetti and threw it into the face of the nearest Gila-Minion as it sprang toward me. Apparently, he didn’t like the taste because he began to retch uncontrollably which gave me time to get my feet under me. I looked around frantically for any kind of weapon in the remains of the destroyed food cart. There wasn’t much. Out of desperation, I latched onto a seven-inch long wooden handle I saw poking from the wreckage of a pulley system that had held the giant pot full of purple bubble gum spaghetti aloft. When I yanked on it, the handle pulled free, and I discovered that it had a nine-foot length of tightly braided leather attached to it.
“Oh, yeah,” I said deep in my throat. I had a quick flashback of Sabrina, the sexy gender swapped Jack Sparrow pirate receptionist who had worked at McDonald and Son’s trucking on that fateful Halloween a few months ago. She’d asked me out to a Halloween party moments before a Marine squad had burst in and taken me to a helicopter to meet the President of the United States. I had told her about my Indiana Jones costume complete with a ten foot long whip that I’d gotten in Mexico. What I hadn't told her was that I’d spent endless hours watching YouTube how to videos and practicing with the damn thing in my tiny backyard so I could be as proficient as the intrepid professor of archaeology.
My arm flew back behind me, and I watched out of the corner of my eye as the braided leather flowed through the sky above my head like a streamer. Just as it reached its full length, I brought my arm forward like I was throwing a baseball and jerked my wrist at the last moment. The long leather strip at the end of the braided loop flew through the air at one thousand five hundred and thirty-six miles an hour as it broke the sound barrier with a loud snap! The thin piece of leather connected with the snout of the charging Gila-Minion just as it unleashed its tiny sonic boom.
The Gila-Minion wailed in pain and dropped to his knees with his hands held over his mouth. I saw blood gush through his fingers and drip onto the ground.
“Let’s dance you motherfuckers,” I growled through a vengeful smile.
The other two Gila-Minions didn’t quite know what to do, so I made up their minds for them. I arched my right arm over my head and sent the whip sailing back toward them in three fast slashes. The first one missed, but the next two cracks connected with lizard hide in sweet cries of reptilian pain. One of the Gila-Minions ran off whimpering, with a big blood and ooze covered socket where his left eye had been while the other held his stinging right hand close to his chest.
As much as I wanted to finish this asshole off, I used the gap in action to coil the whip in my right hand, turn, and run. There were still two more of the things out there, and I had lost track of them.
It didn’t take them long to find me, however. Apparently, they had used the time to go get weapons. One of them held a large butcher cleaver in his scaled fist. And when I say large, I mean fucking huge. The blade must have been easily two feet long. It looked like something out of a Honk Kong Kung-Fu movie. The other one had a giant dinner fork held like a spear.
“They have a Sur-le-Table for giants or what?” I said to myself as I skidded to a halt. We had a brief The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly standoff moment. I could practically hear The Ecstacy of Gold play in the background before the Gila-Minion with the cleaver rushed at me, and the fight was on.
I didn’t have time to bring the whip up into play so I sidestepped as the big blade cut through the air where my head had been. I kicked out with my right foot with a shot aimed at the lizard's knee, but he was no noob, and saw it coming. His tail slashed and blocked my foot. He didn’t see the elbow I had cocked and loaded as I unleashed it into his jaw. Then I shoved him out of the way as his buddy tried to poke me like a Vienna sausage with his oversized fork.
I jumped back just in time, and the sharp tines of the fork only poked through my jacket instead of my stomach. Then I delivered four quick rabbit punches to his face before I shuffled backward to put some distance between us.
They both stood opposite me, about ten feet away. A small crowd had formed a circle around us and now watched with cheers, jeers, and pumped fists. No matter where you go in the universe, something about a fight always brought a crowd it seemed. The Gila-Minions began to twirl their weapons around them in great big swirling flourishes to show off for the crowd.
I was hot, tired, and very hungry. Even though I knew it wasn't going to work because, you know, I didn’t have a gun I couldn't help myself from making a finger gun and shooting both of them as I said “bang bang” out loud.
To my surprise they both fell to the ground and writhed in pain as bolts of bright blue electricity jumped all over their bodies.
I brought my finger gun up to my face incredulously and wondered if maybe I’d gotten some kind of cool upgrade in my sleep. Then I saw the three hover-cycles with flashing red lights as they descended from the sky above.
“Hi--” I started to say but then fell to the ground as ten thousand volts short-circuited my central nervous system.
Oh, and it hurt like a motherfucker.
“You are under arrest.”
Chapter Sixteen
The holding cell I was in was basically an eight-foot by eight-foot concrete box with a crude concrete cot built into the far wall. The cot did have a very thin memory foam mattress and an even thinner gray blanket. There was a small metal wash basin next to the cot and a human-sized metal commode with no lid next to the wash basin. Which all would have been fine if the fourth wall of the room had actually been a wall and not tightly spaced red laser beams that could let not only the four police guards but also anyone who inhabited the seven other holding cells to see right in. I still hadn’t had any coffee yet, so thankfully I didn’t need to go, but if I did, I certainly didn’t want everyone watching me do my business.
I sat on the cot with my back against the cool concrete wall with my hands behind my head. This was an entirely new experience for me. I’d never been arrested before. I’d gotten close in high school when a bunch of us decided to play a prank right before my senior year started. I snuck out, met four of my buddies, and we went to the local driving range right off main street where we collected five huge trash bags of golf balls from the far end of the range. We then went to my high school. Our idea, which at the time we thought was freaking hilarious, was to dump all the golf balls in one of the interior snack courtyards of the school. That way, the next day when everyone showed up they’d be like “whoa, where’d all the golf balls come from?” And we’d just sit back and laugh.
It was one of those ideas that made perfect sense to my seventeen-year-old brain, but with the benefit of hindsight, was actually just really really stupid. Anyway, we were in the process of climbing up one of the awnings near the cafeteria so we could sneak across the roof and dump the golf balls when a local police car showed up. It was about four thirty in the morning, and the cops were none too happy to listen to five idiots soon to be seniors try to explain what they were doing with probably about two thousand golf balls on the roof of the high school. Thankfully they didn’t arrest us. They followed us and made us put back all the golf balls at the driving range, leave a note saying we were sorry, gave us a very stern “come to Jesus” talking to about other people’s property and vandalism and then sent us home. It was as close as I ever got to getting arrested. About a decade later I actually ran into one of the cops who had caught us that night at a local diner and asked him if he remembered a bunch of morons with golf balls.
He laughed so hard I thought he was going to spit out his pie and told me that we actually got very close to getting taken in for grand larceny that night. The number of golf balls we had “stolen” would have definitely put us over the line, but, it was the end of their shift, and they didn’t want to have to count all the goddamn things. Great Uncle Joe had been right about my luck being my best friend and worst enemy sometimes.
In the other cells down the hall of what I assumed was the local police precinct, after the lovely taser experience the Gila-Minions and I had been loaded into the back of a hover-paddy wagon and brought right to the cells, were the seven lizard baddies who’d tried to cook my goose. Two of them were still knocked out cold, and the other ones had thick bandages on their faces where they’d felt the bite of my whip. The two that I’d been fighting just before getting tased glared at me from the back of their cells. For some reason their eyes glowed red once they got inside. I glared back. They could go and fuck right the hell off after ruining my surprise of donuts for my friends. Which reminded me, I never got breakfast and was hungry as hell.
And I needed coffee. Badly.
I’d been sitting on the cot for what I estimated to be about an hour or so when one of the guards got a message on his radio and walked over to my cell.
“The Captain will see you now,” the guard said gruffly. He was maybe six feet tall and built like an NFL Fullback. He had light blue skin that looked like segmented armor, yellow eyes, and very close-cropped black hair. “Hands behind your back and don’t give me any trouble.”
I stood up and did as I was told. The tasers were the opposite of fun, and I very much did not want to experience that again anytime soon. When the Gila-Minions and I had been loaded into the back of the police truck one of the cops had snapped what felt like old school slap bracelets on our wrists. At the touch of a button, however, they became more than a wacky novelty item beloved by tweens the universe over and turned into very powerful handcuffs. Once my hands were behind my back the Guard touched a button on the small control panel mounted on his forearm, and my wrists snapped together somewhat uncomfortably.
“No trouble from me, boss,” I said as if I was in an episode of Prison Break.
“That’s what they all say until they start trouble,” the Guard grumbled and pulled out his taser rod that looked like a futuristic cattle prod. Earlier, in the police van, one of the Gila-Minions decided he wanted to get out and two of the cops jabbed the lizard with the taser rods. It had not been a pretty sight. Or smell.
“Won’t start no shit, won’t be no shit,” I murmured mostly to myself.
“Exactly, now move,” the Guard growled and pressed another button on his forearm. A door sized section in the laser bars appeared, and I walked out into the hall. The Guard pushed me ahead of him and I started to walk down the hallway. I kept my eyes straight ahead but could feel the hate filled angry red glares from inside the other cells as I passed by.
“See you soon, Havak,” the Gila-Minion in the last cell hissed at me. I glanced over, and it was the one who caught the end of the whip with his eyeball. He had a blinking medical apparatus over the spot where his right eye had been.
“Not if I see you first, Blinky McCyclops Face," I replied and started to laugh. “Cause, you know, I have two eyes.”
Blinky McCyclops Face growled and rushed the laser bars. I heard the sizzle of flesh and watched him writhe in agony before he fell to the floor with bar-shaped burn marks on his face and hands.
“That’s enough,” the guard said sternly and pushed me through the door at the end of the hall. It led to another similar hallway, only this one was lined with what looked like interrogation rooms. I’d seen enough of them on TV over my life to know what they looked like. There were more cops in this part of the police station. Most wore the dark navy blue with silver highlights uniforms like the guard behind me. Others had on plain clothes, and I assumed they were the detectives. Just about every alien race I’d come in contact with was represented when I glanced into the bullpen at the end of the corridor.
I didn’t get much more than a cursory look though because the guard shoved me into one of the interrogation rooms. Again, it was a square concrete block, but this one was maybe ten feet by ten feet and had a large mirror that took up one wall. In the center of the room was a plain metal table with two metal chairs. The guard motioned for me to sit. He pressed a button on his forearm, and my wrists came free as I sat down. Once I was seated, he pressed another button, and my right wrist snapped to a bar that ran down the wide end of the table.
“The Captain will be with you shortly,” the guard said, then turned and left the room without another word.
“Top of the morning to you officer,” I tossed out after the door had closed. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and almost yelped in surprise at what I saw.
I was a mess. I had purple stains all over my shirt. There was some kind of dried chunky pudding looking stuff in my hair, and apparently, I’d cut myself because there was dried maroon blood down the left side of my face.
“Ohhh-whee, you good looking,” I said to my reflection in my best John Travolta as Castor Troy from Face/Off. My stomach grumbled loudly, and I was reminded of how starving I was. “Donuts everywhere and not a one to eat.”
She was a humanoid alien of medium height with sky blue skin, blue-black hair that was pulled into a no-nonsense business-like bun on the top of her head and a pair of wire-frame glasses that showcased her hazel eyes. She wore a form-fitting uniform that consisted of a below-the-knee navy blue skirt, patent leather flats, a crisp white blouse and a very tight matching blazer with several ribbons and medals pinned above her right breast. Speaking of her breasts, they were large. And firm. And barely contained by her shirt and blazer. At her waist was a fancy belt and holster that held a small but powerful looking handgun at her left hip. She had a neat manila folder tucked under her arm and held two paper cups full of steaming liquid in her hands. She set the cups and folder down very carefully on the table in front of her as she pulled out the chair and sat down with crisp, economic movements.
She didn’t say a word as she took a sip from one of the cups, opened the folder, and began to flip through the pages. The cups were full of a dark black liquid that looked and smelled just like coffee. I felt a dull throb in my head as my body reminded me that I hadn’t supplied the morning fix of sweet, sweet caffeine. I eyed the cup longingly as it took the captain about sixty seconds to go through the somewhat slim file. After she turned the last page, she closed the folder, tapped it against the table to straighten the pages and then set it to her left. She then clasped her hands together in front of her and stared at me with her dazzling hazel eyes.
I gave her my best rakish smile. It got no response.
“Do you plan on causing this much damage on a regular basis outside of the arena, Mr. Havak?” the Captain said in a stern yet not unpleasant voice.
“Um, I really didn’t plan on causing any damage at all, honestly,” I responded. “I was just looking for a place to get donuts and coffee. Is that coffee by the way?”