Devil's Pocket

by John Dixon

  As Decker turned, Carl faked a jab and popped him with a short Mexican uppercut. He hoped to snap the sharply angled punch into Decker’s throat, but it only clipped the chin, and then the monster scooped him up and slammed him to the floor again.

  What a lousy way to die, Carl thought. Decker wasn’t even a good fighter. He was just strong and fast, impervious to pain and relentlessly aggressive. Carl couldn’t get set, couldn’t time him, couldn’t work combinations. There was no chance for strategy, only for single tactics delivered from disadvantageous positions.

  Over and over, Decker charged, sometimes swinging his heavy shoulders side to side like a gorilla and launching attacks from angles that made no sense in Carl’s experience. Carl ducked and dodged and managed to land a few retreating jabs, none of which had any real effect on his irrepressible opponent, whose speed, size, and ferocity overwhelmed him again and again. Decker tossed him, slammed him, flipped him, and steamrolled over him. Decker was toying with him, humiliating him, and slowly but surely breaking him down.

  And yet Carl refused to quit, just as he refused to surrender to panic. The rage-beast within him gnashed at the bars of its cage, but he fought that down, too, knowing he couldn’t afford its red temptation. Against this opponent, the reckless stupidity and overconfidence of anger would only get him killed.

  His own punches were clipping Decker, cutting him, but doing no real damage. If anything, the streaming cuts excited the mutant. He stalked Carl, eyes gleaming with amusement, and showed his broken-toothed grin. Blood everywhere.

  Didn’t even bother to wear a mouthpiece, Carl observed. Then he was airborne again, and during this slow-motion flight, he realized he had to double down.

  From the opening bell, he’d been trying to fight smart—sticking and moving, playing defense, avoiding Decker’s power, and hoping for an opening that he knew now would never arrive in time . . . because well before he had a clean shot at Decker’s throat, he’d be dead.

  He couldn’t wait for opportunity. He had to make opportunity. And to do that, he had to take risks.

  Fighting smart was getting him killed.

  Time to fight dumb.

  Get his respect, he thought. Catch him hard. Make him think twice before rushing in.

  Decker charged.

  This time, rather than ducking or dodging, Carl sacrificed defense, stood his ground, and drilled him with a punch. This was no flicking jab or sneaky uppercut. For the first time in the fight, he surrendered mobility and defense, standing his ground and twisting every ounce of power into a blasting right cross that slammed into Decker’s onrushing face like a metal bat cracking a fastball encased in scar tissue.

  Thock!

  Decker didn’t so much as blink—not even when blood from the new cut poured into his insane eyes.

  Then Carl was in the air again, tumbling across the ring, thinking, You are going to die. No dissenting voice spoke up in his mind. This was the end. He could not beat this freak.

  He landed not just hard but awkwardly, posting his leg at a bad angle and crashing into himself with his own weight. His ankle rolled, and he felt it pop, something cracking, giving away, and then he spilled to the mat.

  Decker hovered over him, grinning down with broken teeth.

  Carl scooted back to the cage and used it to haul himself up yet again.

  Decker’s icy blue eyes sparkled, as remote and merciless as frozen moons. “Hollywood,” he said, and slapped his own face, laughing. “Punch, Hollywood, punch.”

  Carl jawed him and hobbled away.

  Decker laughed harder, a new cut draining blood, and walked straight at Carl again. “Good,” he growled, nodding and slapping his bloody face. “Punch.”

  Carl let him have it again.

  More laughter. “Punch.”

  He’s just having fun before he finishes me off, Carl thought. He drew back his fist one more time but never threw the punch—firing a surprise kick at Decker’s knee instead.

  A mistake.

  Decker caught the kick, drove Carl backward, slammed him into the cage, and blasted him with an elbow that filled Carl’s head with sparks and turned his muscles to dough. His legs buckled, but panic brought him back to consciousness as he felt Decker’s arms wrap him into a bear hug that pinned his own arms to his sides. The crushing arms had him not around the chest but the waist, squeezing, lifting Carl from his feet.

  The suplex, Carl’s mind screamed, his killing move.

  Decker squatted and leapt. Carl rushed upward, then tilted as Decker, still squeezing, arched beneath him, driving Carl headfirst at the mat.

  At the last second, Carl rolled his head, and the mat slammed into him like a speeding truck. Blackness pulsed as he flashed into unconsciousness. Half a second later, he came rushing back and lay there, feeling broken. Should’ve killed me, he thought, but knew his shoulder had taken a good deal of the impact.

  Decker jumped up, roaring, hands held overhead.

  Get up, Carl thought wearily. Get him while he has his back turned, but he was still half-stunned, and it took every ounce of willpower to hoist his battered body from the mat. He stumbled after the mutant, drawing back his fist.

  But then Baca was yelling and pointing, and Decker turned—too far away, too far—and raced at Carl again, one metal fist cocked to the shoulder, ready to fire the killing shot.

  The bell rang, ending round one.

  Carl staggered back to his corner, shaking the cobwebs from his fuzzy mind, confused by the white towels there . . . then realized Davis, who was through the door now, helping him onto the stool and taking his mouthpiece, had been trying to stop the fight.

  There could be no surrender, of course. No appeal, no mercy. The ref, the Few, Decker, Baca—even the canned applause, it seemed to Carl—would demand not only his blood but also his life. He refused to allow the Few to recycle his flesh. This struggle could only end with his death . . . and that dark slumber beckoned to him now.

  Davis was talking. “. . . hear me, Carl?”

  “Yeah,” Carl said, slumped on the stool.

  Across the ring, Decker hadn’t even bothered to sit. He hopped side to side, hyped for the bell.

  What’s the point? Carl thought. He was going to die. Decker knew it. Davis knew it. Baca, the bearded man, the ref . . . everyone knew it.

  Just dial down and be done with it, he thought. Go to sleep forever. It would be so simple to give everyone what they were waiting for. Just go out there, stretch out, and—

  It hit Carl like smelling salts, bringing him up straight in his seat. That was it! He knew what he had to do, what they had to do. . . .

  “Don’t go back out,” Davis said. Tears—real tears, not tattoos—streamed from his eyes.

  “I have to,” Carl said, “and you have to help me.”

  “You go back out, you’re going to die.”

  Carl nodded. “You’re right. I am going to die. And you’re going to make sure I’m dead.”

  Davis shook his head. “I’m sorry, man, but I can’t do it. Not after Sanchez—”

  “No,” Carl said, and had just enough time to explain before the bell rang, drawing him out to his fate.

  He struggled off the stool and limped toward the center with exaggerated exhaustion.

  Decker took the bait, throwing him only twice before scooping him once more into the bear hug and flipping into the terrifying suplex that was his signature killing move.

  Now, Carl thought, and once more tucked his head into his shoulder at the last second. He exploded into the mat, and force jolted through his body, which jerked and went limp. Lying there, he felt his consciousness dim, felt his heart skip, stutter, and stall. As the world faded, he was vaguely aware of Davis crouching beside him, pressing fingers to his throat, and wailing. Carl’s breath shuddered free, and he faded to black. . . .

  THIRTY-NINE

  CARL AWOKE TO FLAMES, in flames, burning . . . not in hell or as a rendering phoenix but lying on his back, wound in a
shroud of burning fabric melting into his skin, lighting him afire . . .

  Simultaneously, he heard loud music—and instantly understood.

  This was his funeral. He lay, wrapped in his burning burial shroud at the center of a boat engulfed in flames.

  It had worked.

  Everyone had expected him to die, and he had died. At least that’s what it had looked like, and that’s what Davis had told them. The referee had both expected and found the evidence he’d needed to confirm the death—no pulse, no respiration.

  He gasped, but there was no air, only heat and flame. He uncrossed arms, spread them like wings, ripping through the burning fabric, and emerged into the airless heat at the center of a raging ring of fire. Overhead, the flaming sail and rigging made the mast a fiery cross. Burning fabric still clung to him, but there was no time even to brush it away. Instead, he drew his fist back—happy to see it still capped in metal—and smashed it into the bottom of the boat, cracking the wooden hull. He swung again and again, smashing through the planks, which gave with a rush of black water. Then, with water filling the boat, he pushed at the damaged planking, snapping it away, and the boat sunk like a stone in the dark lake.

  He dove.

  The water was shockingly cold, but it extinguished the flaming shroud, which fell away as he swam from the sinking boat, heading away from the dim shore of funeral-goers toward the deeper darkness of the far shore. His body was wrecked, stiff and badly out of alignment, his left arm no good at all as he pulled through the dark depths with an awkward underwater sidestroke, pulling and pulling until he thought his lungs would burst. He needed air, but even more, he needed to get as far away from the boat and funeral shore as possible before surfacing.

  When at last he could hold his breath no longer, he broke the surface, expelled charred air, filled his lungs, and slipped underwater again. A short time later, reaching a shoreline, he pulled himself into the shallows—the lake bottom strangely soft, like clay beneath his fingertips—and he swiveled, bringing his head around to face the lake but keeping his body mostly submerged in the manner of a crocodile.

  He’d done it.

  The music—the Phoenix Island anthem, Carl realized—died, and the voice of the bearded man, modified once more into inhuman deepness, boomed, “We honor Fighter 19. May we all die such an honorable death.”

  Yes, Carl thought, picturing the masked devil. And may you die soon.

  “And now,” the deep voice said, “ascend, warriors. Join us for the closing ceremonies of these historic Funeral Games, so that we might honor the dead and laud the living before sending you on your way back into the world, where you will walk like giants among the timid masses.” Far above, light returned to the arena, illuminating the Cauldron and brightening the lakeshore from pitch-blackness to dim gloom.

  At the center of the lake, the last scraps of burning flotsam flickered and faded. Along the opposite shore, dark figures grouped mostly in twos and threes trudged away up the slope of black sand toward the waiting elevator. Only one figure remained, a tall, gaunt silhouette that stared out into the lake until the last flames died.

  Davis, Carl thought, and wanted to call out to his friend, his magnificent friend who had saved his life by pronouncing him dead . . . but no, he couldn’t risk that, not with the straggling crowd clustered around the elevator and not with the security cameras he was all but certain were rolling now, somewhere in the subterranean darkness.

  He floated there in the shadows, his right hand absently dragging grooves in the sloping lake bottom, which was not only soft but slick. Strange. He would have expected a rough floor of volcanic rock, not this substance that felt like Silly Putty.

  Across the shore, Davis and the stragglers climbed aboard the elevator.

  Overhead in the bright arena, music started. From his hiding spot, Carl could see people filing onto the bleachers.

  As he lay there, he twisted the pain dial quickly, winced, and dialed it most of the way back down. Whether he could feel it or not, pain filled his broken body. By its echo, he estimated damages—his broken arm and ribs and toe, severe damage to his ankle and shoulder, and something wrong with his neck, which didn’t want to straighten. Cuts throbbed on his face, and his whole body pulsed with the damage of having been slammed again and again by Decker. Sharpest of all, however, was the pain he had glimpsed in his scorched arms, legs, and side, where tattered sections of the black fabric that had enshrouded him still hung from his burned flesh like flaps of charred skin. Stitched into a larger piece of the cloth dangling from his seared thigh was a triangle of red, and beneath it, slightly recessed, another red point.

  Wingtips, he thought. They wrapped me in the flag of Phoenix Island.

  He was glad to have survived—and even gladder not to have died wrapped in that particular standard, which to him represented all the evil in his life.

  As he peeled away the black-and-red fabric, actual wings rustled in the darkness, and a flock of Krebs hawks burst from the shadows and rushed upward, as if hurrying to catch the opening ceremonies. A lone bird remained, hunched upon the stones. Dark and miserable looking, it regarded him with yellow eyes.

  Overhead, the voice of the woman who had announced the fights said, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome one and all to the closing ceremonies of this year’s Funeral Games.”

  He turned over and lay in the cold water with his back on the soft incline, resting and listening to the announcer thank and congratulate the brave competitors. Sharpening his vision, he drew in the faces of those competitors and their trainers, most of whom looked far from brave. They looked haggard and confused and terrified.

  “The Few have entered the arena,” the announcer said. “Please rise and pay tribute to our most generous hosts.”

  Canned applause roared. Music blared. Along the bleachers, teams stood and bowed.

  Carl was pulling himself along the soft bottom for a better look at the opera box, when his fingers dragged across something strange running from the Silly Putty bank up onto the shore . . . what he first mistook as a braid of roots or vines, and then recognized as a bundle of thin wires. Squinting in the gloom, he examined these thin wires sheathed in multicolored plastic. Red, white, and green, they reminded him of stereo wires. Was that what they were, wires to the hidden speakers? Or were they, perhaps, wires to whatever surveillance cameras had allowed the Few to spy on the conversations he’d had with Octavia?

  Hoping these hidden cameras were locked solely on the mourning shore and not this side, he rose dripping from the water, and traced the lines out of the water and up the shore.

  These weren’t speaker wires. Why would speaker wires run underwater?

  Overhead, the announcer, who had been blabbing on, said, “The grand champion, also representing Zurkistan, Fighter 47.”

  Triumphant music filled the volcano, and Carl turned to watch as, five stories overhead, Baca escorted Decker over the black bridge to the octagon.

  He turned his attention to his discovery. The main shore was comprised not of soft putty but of rough stones that scratched his bare feet as he followed the wires out to the back wall, where, behind a dark boulder, they attached to a heavy black box, out of which rose a black antenna. On the face of the black box, a yellow light winked at Carl, as if to say, Get it?

  He got it, all right.

  He’d seen the same sort of thing back on Phoenix Island, during one phase of his endless training with Stark. The winking light, the antenna, the box, and the wires . . . this was the receiver/detonator unit, and—he shuddered with the realization—he’d been lying upon a shore of C4 plastic explosives, enough putty not only to blow this entire complex to dust but also to unleash the volcanic activity bubbling just beneath the surface. These were the explosives Julio had been hunting.

  Unfortunately, Stark had taught him only to detonate, not deactivate. He looked again at the wires. Red, white, and green. What did each do? Would severing the incorrect wire set off the explosives, or wa
s that just a movie thing?

  He started to conjure the memory clip of a not-so-recent demolitions training session, when a terrible squawking started. He jerked—I’ve triggered them!—and something hit him from behind.

  He stumbled across the rocks, and something black rushed screeching out of the gloom.

  The Krebs hawk was attacking him.

  With a mad chitter, it swooped at his head, circled, and dipped at him again.

  “Get off,” he said, batting it away. Go figure . . . he’d discovered the detonator, and this thing apparently had a nearby nest of eggs to defend.

  He blocked his face, and the crazed thing raked its razor-sharp talons across his forearm, spattering him with blood.

  What was going on?

  The hawk fluttered up and dove again. Once more, he blocked, and claws sliced his arm, the bird insane and vicious and determined. He had to stop its loud racket and couldn’t just let it tear him to shreds.

  The thing chittered madly, flapped away, and raced at him again—only this time, Carl was ready. Once more, he held out his forearm, but this time he snapped his hand forward and grabbed the thing. Huge and muscular, the hawk screamed, flapping its powerful wings and slashing him with its claws. Craning its neck, the crazed bird snapped at his face with its beak and glared at him with its bright yellow eyes.

  Feeling its talons digging into his flesh, Carl swung his arm and slammed the insane creature into the volcanic boulder.

  It crunched . . . and emitted a shower of sparks in the darkness. It fluttered on the rocks, whistling and hissing. Carl backed away, horrified, as the broken bird flapped and twitched and sparks sputtered from its torn body, within which Carl could see meat and metal, vein and wire.

  The thing shuddered, its yellow eyes faded to black, and Carl winced at a foul smell that combined singed feathers, scorched meat, and fried electronics.

  The Krebs hawk hadn’t been a real bird but some kind of cyborg—part animal, part machine, a franken-bird—and it hadn’t been protecting a nest. It had been protecting the detonator. And filming you, he thought, suddenly studded in goose bumps.