Timecaster Page 11

  I swiped at Camilla’s face, snagging her burning doobie and mashing the hot ash into Rocket’s knuckles. He dropped me and jerked his hand back, and I let loose with a hard left to the roider’s kidney. It was like punching a giant pile of sandbags.

  Rocket threw a roundhouse, much too fast for a guy so big. I managed to pull away from the brunt of it, but he caught the very tip of my chin. The blow spun me, and I dropped to my hands and knees, trying to discern up from down. My eyes gravitated to the counter. In one spring, Rocket leapt on top of it. His combat boots were almost as long as my arm.

  I crawled in the opposite direction, feeling the vibration as he jumped to the floor. Moving as fast as I could, I scurried under a heavy faux-wood table, and tried to remember where the front door was. From under the table it was tough to judge.

  Several people laughed, and I realized I was the source of their amusement. This wasn’t the first time Rocket had put on a show for them.

  The table suddenly disappeared. It reappeared on the other side of the room, crashing into the wall forty feet away. I stared up and saw Rocket looming over me.

  I twisted onto my back and thrust my foot at the one place I knew he didn’t have muscles, right in the balls. My kick bounced off, harmlessly. Then Rocket raised a size thirty-eight shoe of his own. I could picture my rib cage and pelvis being crushed, and didn’t much care for that picture, so I tucked in my arms and rolled sideways.

  His stomp made the floor shake. After a few revolutions I got on my hands and knees and stood to face him.

  Rocket had a smile on his face, obviously enjoying himself.

  “This is the part where you beg me not to kill you,” he said.

  “Does it help?”

  “No. I’ll kill you anyway.”

  He stepped closer. I stepped away. I tried to run left. He got in front of me. I feinted right, then left, but he blocked each attempt, gradually boxing me in. It took less than thirty seconds for him to herd me into a corner of the room. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.

  “You gonna beg?” he asked, his expression playful.

  “Please don’t beat me to death.”

  “That’s not very good.”

  “Pretty please, with pink sugar on top.” I didn’t have to fake the cowering at all; my knees were knocking together.

  “I saw what you did with my aunt. Twisted her head around. That’s what I’m gonna do with you. But first I’m gonna do it to your arms and legs.”

  He threw an easy jab. I took it on the shoulder, and it knocked me back into the wall. The impact made my eyes water.

  “I twisted this one guy’s arm around eight times. You know what happened then? It came off. Like a fried chicken leg.”

  Another jab. I brought my arms up to block, and it felt like I’d tried to stop a bus. Rocket was just playing with me, like a deranged child who pulled the wings from butterflies. I was nothing more than a toy for his amusement. Something harmless, to be used and then forgotten about.

  That pissed me off.

  I latched onto the anger, using it to push back some of the fear. Rocket lobbed another jab my way, but this time I sidestepped it, grabbed his shirt, and rammed the top of my head up under his chin.

  The roider staggered back. When he regained his balance, he jammed two giant fingers into his mouth. He pulled something small and bloody out from between his lips, then looked at me, amazed.

  “You knocked out my—”

  I repeated the maneuver, cracking my head against his jaw so hard I saw stars.

  Rocket yelped—probably the first time he’d ever made a sound like that—and then spat two more teeth onto the floor.

  I gave him another swift punt between the legs, got no reaction, and dove past him as he snapped off a haymaker, his fist burying itself in the wall with an explosion of plaster dust.

  Beelining for the exit, I ran right into Lewis and two of his Nazi pals. Lewis had an aluminum bat. I made my fingers stiff, got inside his swing, and poked him in the throat hard enough to break cartilage.

  One of his friends hit me in the shoulder, but compared to Rocket it was just a love tap. I started a war between my elbow and his nose, bringing them together three times in rapid succession. His nose lost.

  The third guy punched me in the gut, then screamed when he noticed something behind me. I doubled over just as Rocket’s fist missed my head, instead connecting with the Nazi. His upper body snapped backward with a nauseating crack. He crumpled to the floor, never to goose-step again.

  “Fucking shit monkeys! It’s Roidzilla!”

  McGlade had apparently taken his nose out of the girl-on-girl action long enough to see what was going on. I tugged the folding knife off of my utility belt, opening it up. I doubted the three-inch blade would do much, but it was better than nothing.

  “Shoot him!” I screamed at McGlade.

  “With what?”

  “Your Taser!”

  “No Tesla service in dissytown, partner.”

  Rocket darted in close. His chin and shirt were soaked with blood. I jabbed with the knife, driving it into his stomach. With amazing speed he swatted my hand away. The knife remained lodged in his abs, looking tiny among the striations. He flicked it away.

  “Use your Magnum, McGlade!”

  “I didn’t bring it.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “I didn’t want it to get stolen. Have you seen how dangerous this place is?”

  McGlade was an asshole, but he did have a point.

  Rocket spread out his arms, trying for the bear hug. I didn’t want my insides to squeeze up out of my mouth like a tube of toothpaste, so I stepped away and kicked him in the groin again, which he ignored.

  “He’s a roider,” McGlade said. “His balls are the size of peas. If he even has any left.”

  I dropped to my knees and crawled through Rocket’s legs just before his arms closed around me. Then I did a quick spin and worked his kidneys, left right left right, like I was whaling on a heavy bag at the gym.

  Rocket grunted, and caught me with a backhand that connected with such force I was actually lifted off the ground. I landed on a torn-up pool table, fell behind it, and lay there for a second, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Before it did, Rocket was stomping over, kicking chairs and tables out of the way. His earlier, playful look had been replaced by something dark and scary.

  McGlade called out, “You seem to have the situation under control here, buddy, and everyone else is leaving, so I think I’m gonna hit the road.”

  “You’re an asshole, McGlade.”

  “Pretty much.”

  He ran out with the rest of the crowd.

  I looked around, and noticed Lewis on the floor next to me, clawing at his broken trachea and turning a shade of purple normally reserved for plums. I grabbed his dropped baseball bat, then got unsteadily to my feet, ready to hit a home run.

  Rocket hesitated when he saw the bat. He stopped, his pecs twitching, his forty-inch biceps flexing. I couldn’t get over how huge he was. A basketball had only a thirty-inch circumference. This guy’s arm was thicker than McGlade’s pudgy waist.

  The roider feinted a grab. I swung and missed. He rushed me. This time, my swing connected. I aimed at his elbow, putting all of my hundred and ninety pounds behind it, the impact making the handle vibrate in my hands.

  Rocket howled, and I aimed the next one at his head. He shifted, the bat bouncing off his overdeveloped trapezius. I was rearing back for another swing when his enormous hand grasped my face, cutting off my air. Then he began to squeeze.

  Talk about tension headaches.

  Before he could pop my skull like a grape, I switched my grip on the bat, thrusting blindly in the direction of his head. I connected with his chin and he released me. I advanced, swinging wildly. He was so big that I didn’t know if I was damaging him, but I did manage to back him up against the wall. Seven, eight, nine times I struck him, my hands stinging with each impact. He kept his he
ad covered pretty good, so I worked the body, worked the arms, figuring something inside him had to break eventually.

  Then Rocket managed to catch the aluminum bat between his side and his arm, ripping it from my grasp. He held it out in front of him—

  —and bent it in half.

  Then he screamed. Not a scream of pain. Not a scream of fear. This was closer to a lion’s roar—the sound of an angry predator, asserting its dominance.

  One of the reasons I didn’t use steroids, other than possible shrinkage of my masculine parts, was because I’d seen the dangers of roid rage on the job. Before timecasting, a good number of assaults involved roiders. Too much testosterone led to temporary—and in some cases permanent—insanity. During rages, some people were even immune to Taser shocks. I’d witnessed roiders bust out of flex-cuffs and break through brick walls. Any trace of humanity, logic, or common sense was lost in a roid rage. You might as well have been dealing with a mad bull.

  That was how Rocket looked—like he’d abandoned his humanity. Bending a bat was nothing for him. He could go way beyond that.

  Which was why it didn’t really surprise me when he picked up that pool table.

  What did surprise me was how far he was able to throw it.

  As soon as he pressed it to his chest I ran in the opposite direction, getting a good thirty feet away before looking around for a weapon. I figured the table—slate and metal—weighed at least twice as much as Rocket did. He wouldn’t be able to chuck an eight-hundred-pound table more than thirty feet. No way.

  Then I heard the crash and saw the pool table skidding across the floor at a high speed, plowing through overturned chairs, smashing Lewis’s head open like a dropped pumpkin, and finally banging into me.

  I rode the pool table another ten feet, and then it slammed me against the wall.

  Amazingly, I didn’t seem to be injured. It hurt, sure, and I’d be pretty bruised up, but nothing seemed broken or crushed.

  The panic set in when I tried to move.

  I couldn’t. The table had me pinned against the wall.

  I was trapped. And Rocket was heading my way.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  There are stories that, when confronted with frightening or emotionally overwhelming situations, human beings can exert feats of strength disproportionate to their size. Mothers lifting cars to save their children trapped underneath was an oft-told example.

  Those stories were complete bullshit. I couldn’t budge that pool table a single inch, no matter how hard I strained against it, and I’d never been more frightened or overwhelmed in my life. The only disproportionate thing in my entire body was my bladder, which felt enormous and clenched tighter and tighter each step closer Rocket got to me.

  The only time I’d ever been this frightened, other than the skydiving fiasco, was years ago, back when being a timecaster meant catching crooks instead of visiting grammar schools. Someone had been planting bombs in nursing homes, and following the perp’s trail led me to a cache of plastic explosives hidden under a snack table during a geriatric polka night. The six seconds ticking down on the bomb’s timer had paralyzed me with fear. There wasn’t time to get the elderly out of there, or even time for me to take cover, so my only choice was to try to defuse it.

  Looking at that bomb, I had known I was going to die. I knew it the same way I knew I’d hit the octeract point while timecasting. It was a whole-body feeling, as real and as sure as any tactile experience.

  Dying was something I desperately didn’t want to happen, so I’d waited until the last possible moment to take the long shot and disconnect one of the wires. Blue or red. Blue or red. I knew one would save me, and the other would kill me. Luckily, the wire I pulled was the right one.

  But now I didn’t have any wires to choose from. I felt the same overwhelming sense of my own demise. Death was counting down for me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  When Rocket finally reached the pool table, he cocked his head to the side, licked his bloody lips, and stared, as if studying a bug on a pin and finding it sexually arousing. Exhibiting superhuman self-control, I managed not to piss myself, and instead used my only remaining weapon. Truth.

  “I didn’t kill your aunt. I didn’t even know who she was. Your cousin Neil hired me to find her because she’d gone missing.”

  Some of the rage melted off his face, replaced by confusion. “Neil?”

  “Do you know your aunt used to be a man?”

  “Yeah. He invented the intranet.”

  Actually, he’d only invented the search engine the intranet used, but I saw no need to correct Rocket on that point. He raised a fist, ready to pound me into the wall.

  “That means”—I spoke quickly, flinching away and squeezing my eyes shut—“now that your aunt is dead, you’re a billionaire . . .”

  The blow didn’t come. I peeked open one eye. Rocket had his hand in the air, but he wasn’t throwing the punch.

  “I’m rich?”

  “Your aunt is dead. You and Neil are her only surviving relatives. You inherit all of her money and possessions. And there’s a lot.”

  He lowered his fist. “Who’s Neil?”

  “Your cousin.”

  “Don’t have no cousin. My mom only had one brother—Aunt Zelda. I’m really rich?”

  “You could hire Donald Trump the Third to be your cabana boy.”

  Rocket didn’t look enraged anymore. If anything, he appeared pensive. Maybe I’d actually have a chance to—

  “I’ll save you, Talon!”

  McGlade came running up behind Rocket. He had my tiny folding knife raised up over his head.

  “McGlade! Don’t!”

  “Die, you enormous son of a bitch!”

  McGlade stabbed Rocket in the left ass cheek. To my trained eye, it didn’t seem to be a killing blow.

  Rocket snarled, then stared down at McGlade. McGlade grabbed the knife’s handle and yanked on it.

  The knife wouldn’t budge. It was lodged to the hilt in the roider’s rock-hard gluteus maximus, and I doubted nothing less than a block and tackle would be able to remove it. McGlade grunted with effort for a few seconds, trying both overhand and underhand grips. He even tried bracing his foot against Rocket’s leg. Eventually, he gave up.

  “You got a really strong ass, buddy,” McGlade said, out of breath. He wiped his brow with his sleeve, then gave the knife handle a baby pat. “You should keep it there. Makes you look tough.”

  “You’re dead,” Rocket told him.

  “Kinda figured.”

  Then McGlade took stupid to the next level. He reared back and kicked the knife blade.

  Rocket’s eyes practically shot out of his head. He howled, the roid rage once again taking control, and backhanded McGlade so hard it could be heard in neighboring states. Then he turned his fury on me. Shoving the pool table to the side as if it weighed nothing, he grabbed my shirt and lifted me up over his head.

  I’d felt trapped before. Now I felt helpless, which was even worse.

  He tossed me, visions of broken bones and organ failure swirling through my head as I spun through the air.

  Incredibly, miraculously, I landed on something soft.

  “You broke my fall,” I said, amazed.

  “You broke my ribs,” McGlade groaned underneath me.

  I disentangled myself from McGlade and picked up an overturned metal chair. Rocket rushed at me, fists clenched. I kept him at bay like a lion tamer, poking at him without letting him grab the chair and pull it away. He still had my knife in his buttocks, but I didn’t think asking for it back was a smart idea.

  “You’re rich now,” I said, as we circled each other. “You don’t want to go to jail for murder.”

  “I’ll hire a good lawyer.”

  “Bust the chair over his Nazi head, Talon,” McGlade said from the floor. “This fucknut gets that kind of money, he’ll start the Fourth Reich.”

  Rocket turned to McGlade, snarling. I busted the chair ove
r his Nazi head. The roider stumbled, falling to his knees. I reared back to hit him again, and he kicked out one of his enormous legs, sweeping my feet out from under me. I dropped the chair and slammed onto my back.

  McGlade screamed. I watched. Rocket had his arm. The giant snapped it in half, like it was a breadstick. I saw McGlade’s knuckles touch his elbow. He saw it, too, and lost consciousness in midscream. Then Rocket gave me his full attention.

  “No fun when they pass out,” he said. “You gonna pass out on me?”

  I felt like passing out right then.

  I’ve had some experience with violence. While timecasting discouraged most inappropriate behavior, there were still instances of two people coming to blows because they were both convinced they were right.

  Usually, violent acts were fast and ugly. Two or three quick hits, someone going down, and a hasty retreat. People didn’t like to linger. Dwelling on the violence you’ve committed, even if it was justified, was never a satisfying, wholesome experience.

  Fights—outside of a televised hyperboxing match—rarely lasted more than thirty seconds. A fight that traversed the entire length and width of a dissy P&P bar, complete with smashed furniture, bent bats, tossed pool tables, broken bones, lost teeth, stab wounds, and several deaths . . . It was unheard of.

  So when I forced myself to look at Rocket, it was eight kinds of surreal. This shouldn’t be happening. Not to me. Not at this moment. Not in this country.

  I’d spent most of my adult life making sure things like this didn’t happen.

  I felt overwhelmed. And tired. So tired.

  There might not be dignity in surrender. But there is finality. The willingness to give up, just so it could be over, was a powerfully tantalizing feeling. With one direct punch, Rocket could end my life. My pain would end along with it. My worries would be gone. If victory was impossible, why keep fighting?

  I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and realized I already knew the answer.

  This battle wasn’t with Rocket. There was no contest. I couldn’t beat him.

  So it wasn’t about winning.

  The battle was with myself. The measure of a man’s worth was all about what finally made him give up.