Braggadocio

The Octagon looked bleak and decidedly inhospitable as it sat in the darkness at the far end of the nearly empty Training Hall. Residual steam rose in swirling clouds above the fighting space; smoky tendrils reaching out for purchase in the open beams of the ceiling. Lights blazed from above, hot and suffocating, illuminating every inch of the pit. The shadows had been effectively pushed back and dared not battle the light in this place.

Down in the Pit, Monk stood with his feet planted firmly in the sand. He held two reins out in front of him, caressing them as if he were running his fingers through a lover’s hair. Standing roughly six feet behind the harnessed UD, he held the thing on a short, but very effective lead. Headgear was strapped tightly over the thing’s head; lengths of leather bound by dull, metal clasps. A short baton of hard rubber acted as a bite block. The setup prevented the diseased mouth of the UD from getting a grip on anything or, God forbid, actually getting a hold of anyone. It wasn’t pretty, but it made handling them more or less safe. Despite all of the preventative measures and specialized equipment, Monk still kept a fully loaded shotgun propped against the wall… just in case.

The dead thing at the end of the reins shuffled and stumbled its way across the sand, intently focusing its gaze on Cleese as he crouched before it. While its gait was off-kilter to begin with, its present lack of coordination was mostly due to Monk pulling on the lengths of leather now and again, dragging it off balance. You know, for safety’s sake. The thing reached out its hands pleadingly for Cleese like a child asking for a beloved toy. Its fingers were splayed and pumping. An anxious look of expectancy lit up its slackened features.

And all the while, its jaws were working. Its mouth ground back and forth and drooled, hungering for just a taste of the living meat which danced before it just out of reach.

Even though Monk heard all about how Cleese was some sort of prodigy and had even seen a bit of his talents for himself, he was still mighty impressed. The kid was a little unsure here and there, but all in all he was as close as Monk had seen to a sure-as-shit natural. He flowed when he should, stood firm when he needed to and he didn’t make too many stupid mistakes. He fought with a Zen-like calm that was not too different from the way some of the Budo Warriors did, only Cleese brought a shitload more power and aggression to the party. There was none of that "bend like a reed in the wind" shit in him.

Nope. None at all.

The way Cleese worked was nothing short of inspired. Whenever he went to the inside, the UD would reach out to strike and as if by magic Cleese would no longer be there. It was as if he’d vanished into thin air only to reappear on the thing’s flank—on its weak side. It was then, when he was safely in the dead thing’s blind spot, that he’d strike with a devastating impact.

Monk couldn’t imagine what this kid was going to be like once he got used to being around these things and they put him into Live Combat. He mentally noted a need to talk with Adamson about increasing the number of UDs they kept in The Pen. This kid was going to send a lot of them out of here in pieces.

Despite his natural acumen, mental acuity and physical superiority, he was still holding back. It was like he was there in body, but his spirit was off lurking in some darkened nether region of his brain. Monk almost got the impression that Cleese didn’t want to hurt the damn things. Silently, he wondered if maybe he ought to give Cleese a bottle of hootch just to help him recapture a bit of the mindset that brought him here.

Monk smiled almost imperceptibly as he watched Cleese wrestle with what was left of his conscience. At first he was all gung-ho. Then you could see the seed of his scruples sprout. After that, his consternation was evident from his furrowed brow and lack of commitment. After a bit, Monk decided it was time to cut the crap.

"Listen you stupid shit," Monk shouted as he jerked the UD back around. "You really need to hit ’em harder. It’s what they’re fuckin’ here for. They’re goddamn training aids."

Monk wrenched the leads violently and threw the UD so far off its balance that it pitched over sideways. Blood dribbled out of its mouth and landed on the sand dyeing it a deep maroon.

"What the fuck are you holding back for? For fuck’s sake… It’s not like they’re gonna get pissed atcha. I mean… goddamnit ! They’re not even human any longer. They gave up being that a long time ago."

Cleese looked at him and frowned. He took a long look at the dead woman in the harness staggering to her feet. Her face was an angry, hungry grimace; her body a horribly ruined shell. Still though… she’d been somebody’s wife once… or somebody’s mother or….

Slowly, he dropped his hands to his sides.

"Man, that’s just despicable. She was a person once… What about her? Huh? What about her family? Do they even know what’s happened to her?"

Monk let the reins slip through his fingers a little and the short fat woman in the soiled housecoat who looked like she might have been somebody’s grandmother jumped Cleese. The two of them fell to the ground in a mass of flailing arms and kicking legs. Her hands clawed and scratched their way across his chest. Her jaws opened and snapped shut as they descended with a remarkable quickness toward his throat.

Abruptly, Monk yanked her back, sending her sprawling onto the sand.

Cleese looked up from flat on his back.

"Motherfucker…" Cleese gasped.

"Never forget why you’re here, Captain Fuckin’ Sensitive."

Cleese quickly ran his hands over his torso, obsessively looking for any lacerations.

"These things will eat your fucking liver just as soon as look at you," Monk shouted, "and don’t you ever fucking forget that!"

Monk yanked the woman roughly to her feet by tugging on a strap at the back of the bridle. He quickly released her and, planting his boot in the small of her back, kicked her toward the center of the pit.

"And you know what? Fuck their families!" he shouted. "They’ve all been well compensated. You don’t need to worry about none of that. All you need to remember is the shit I tol’ you: ‘grab—kill—and move on.’ You got me?"

Cleese looked at him angrily.

"Huh?!?" Monk repeated. "Do you fuckin’ remember having that goddamn conversation? Look, you do what I taught you, you dumb sonofabitch. Do it or I let Granny Clampett here eat your dick on a toasted Hoagie bun. Are we fuckin’ clear, Cherry?"

Cleese unhappily nodded his understanding.

"Now," Monk said, pulling the woman back to her feet by her reins and wheeling her around, "pretty please… will you fuckin’ punch this cunt?"

Cleese scrambled back to his feet and strode toward his target, his hands coming up into an open-handed, ready position. The closer he got, the more determined he looked. With his brow set and his mouth firm, he lowered his chin toward his sternum and came on like a freight train.

Briefly, even Monk was taken aback by the look on his face. For a second he almost felt sorry for the dead thing at the end of the lead. She was standing at Ground Zero and her jacked-up brain didn’t even know it—but she was sure as hell about to find out.

The woman reached out for Cleese the instant she saw him; moaning coarsely and salivating over her bite block. Monk gave her a little more of the lead and she staggered hungrily toward Cleese. As she closed in, another rope of blood and drool dribbled past the bite block and hit her chest. Now within just a few feet, the woman raised her arms and reached out hungrily.

Cleese responded in an exquisite fashion. He ducked under the grab, bobbing briskly, and then hook-punched her—hard—in the chest. Muhammad Ali himself would have been proud. With the force of the punch, the woman’s ribs caved in with a sickening crunch. A splinter of bone carved its way loose and proceeded to tear through one of the lobes of her lungs. Any further attempt she made at vocalizing suddenly sounded raw and painful.

As her body bent from the blow, Cleese delivered a fast Muay Thai knee strike to the right side of her jaw setting it to hang loosely from her skull. Unceremoniously, he threw the thick musculature of his back into a savage palm–strike directed at the back of her head. Monk tried to pull her out of the way, but Cleese’s blow came too damn fast. Her skull made a hollow "clu-chunk" sound; like an over-ripe melon being dropped. Her occipital bone fractured and shards of skull tore through the spoiled grey matter beyond. Her face abruptly went slack as if the very life had been kicked out of her, and it had. She took two drunken steps forward and fell face first into the sand where she didn’t move again.

"Ooooo-k, shit…" Monk said, dropping the reins to the ground in disgust. "That was pretty goddamn effective, but still utterly useless for our purposes here today. You’re going to need to learn some control, my friend. You need to learn to dole that shit out like it was medicine. Now, we’ll have to go harness us up another one."

"Not today you won’t…"

 A voice from the pit’s entrance punctuated the sweltering air.

"It’s 1900, Monk, and my time in the pit."

Lenik walked out onto the sand with Cartwright trailing behind him like a scolded puppy. Cartwright carefully shut the hatch behind them and dutifully followed after his partner. The fighter came toward them, walking as if he owned the place. With his chest pushed out and his shoulders squared back, he looked like he thought he was really something special.

Monk, Cleese, and every other fighter—with perhaps the exception of Cloverfield, Shenkel, Gonzales and Llewellyn—knew better.

They’d already talked about how doomed Lenik and Cartwright’s relationship was. Cartwright was an experienced fighter, but Lenik had the stronger personality and the bigger mouth and when an inexperienced student usurped a competent teacher it always ended in disaster—for them both.

"You ladies’ll have to go play elsewhere. It’s time for you to let a real man work." Lenik said, nudging his mentor. As he walked past Cleese, Lenik looked at the dead woman in the sand and hissed, "Real nice…" as he rolled his eyes.

"No problem. We were just leaving," Monk replied casually. "Say, be a sport and clean this shit up, will ya?" He waved his hand over the dead woman. "I mean, it is your time in the pit after all."

"Hey fuck you, Monk!" Lenik whined. "I ain’t cleaning this!"

"Heya, Cartwright," nodded Monk as he passed the older man.

Grabbing up his shotgun, Monk walked out without looking back.

Cartwright stared back at Monk and said nothing. His face was set, but his eyes told a different story. For a brief moment he almost seemed embarrassed by Lenik’s behavior. Slowly, he walked over and pulled the dead UD by her headgear toward the side of the pit.

Cleese smiled broadly at the two men and followed Monk out of the pit and up to where the older man was stowing his shotgun in a rack just outside the door. Beyond that, the cool calm of the grandstands waited like an oasis in the desert.

~ * ~

"That sonofabitch," Monk hissed as the two of them sat cooling down in the stands.

Cleese leaned back, resting his upper body’s weight on his elbows. He was busy trying to get his heart rate and body temperature back to normal after his exertion in the pit, but Monk… Monk seemed intent on raising his high enough to give himself a stroke. If Cleese had learned anything since meeting the old man, it was that he was prone to explosions of anger. After he calmed down he’d forget all about whatever it was that he felt slighted him—whether real or imagined. Then it would be business as usual and he’d return to his normal cantankerous self.

"I oughtta go pop that young punk right in the fuckin’ mouth," the old man grumbled.

"Easy there, Trigger."

"You know I’m going to hear all about that shit from the suits upstairs…" he jerked his head back toward the pit. "But…" and he chuckled guiltily, "I couldn’t resist."

"Would ‘sorry’ help?" asked Cleese, feigning embarrassment.

"I mean, look at him," Monk said, ignoring the interruption. He pointed back toward the lights of The Octagon with a stubby finger. "What a fuckin’ asshole!"

Lenik was standing down on the sand in the middle of some defensive drills. Easy shit mostly, just getting in close and batting advances away with his protected forearms. Cleese had learned that kind of crap a long time ago, back when he was a kid and had to fight off the older kids for what little lunch money he’d been able to scrape together. As he watched the fighter before him, he took a minute and evaluated his potential.

Now that he had an opportunity to see him in action, Lenik was—in Cleese’s considered opinion—more of that cannon fodder he’d noticed when he first arrived. The man talked some shit, but when it was all said and done he had a nasty habit of leaving his right side exposed time and again. He was ripe for an attack from his blind periphery or even from behind. He was over-confident and stupid and he would no doubt be carried out of here on a litter.

By now Monk managed to calm himself down and took an interest in what it was that Cleese was looking at in the pit.

Cleese saw him out of the corner of his eye and nudged him.

"Toes up…" Cleese said, nodding toward the pit.

Monk nodded in return.

"Ain’t that shit the truth?"

"Hey, Cleese…!" came a sudden and unexpected shout from under the lights.

"What do you want, Lenik?" returned Monk.

"Let me show ya a thing or two… Something that old man of yours would never demonstrate in a million years!"

Out of curiosity, Cleese sat up and focused his attention down onto the pit’s floor.

Lenik sauntered over to the UD (a male about forty-five in a soiled button-down business shirt and tie) and, in one a fluid motion, tore off the headgear and tossed it aside. Mr. Shirt-and-Tie stood dumbfounded for a second, rolling his head about in drunken circles. Lenik backed away from the man and drew the machete he wore strapped to his thigh.

Cartwright moved across the pit, shaking his head at his partner’s actions, to retrieve the harness. It was pretty clear that Lenik did this kind of showboating all the time.

"Stooopid shit…" Monk groaned as he rose to his feet.

Lenik crouched, waving the weapon in front of him as if it were a magic wand.

The UD stood still for a second, grabbing hold of what little bearings its dead mind could muster, and took a tentative step toward Lenik. Then it stopped and looked up toward the lights. It stood still for a second, sniffing at the air as if trying to sort it all out. Then, abruptly, the dead man lunged screeching toward one side.

It grabbed a very surprised-looking Cartwright from behind, knocking him forward and off his feet. The old man never saw it coming. Both Cartwright and Mr. Shirt-and-Tie fell face-first to the sand with a grunt. The UD’s face bounced off Cartwright’s back. Long goblets of saliva left puddles of mucous behind in a circular pattern. The thing quickly angled its head, moving as if by instinct, toward the exposed nape of Cartwright’s neck.

Cartwright only had time to marvel at the speed with which the dead man moved before his blood ran in thick streams down the back of his tunic.

Surprised, Lenik shouted and did the unthinkable. He jumped on top of the two men.

Cleese almost had to laugh out loud at the sheer stupidity of the man. It knew no bounds! Any fighter worth his salt knew that you never jumped into a brawl that was already on the ground. Your legs often got tangled up in the multitude of flailing limbs. You slipped. You fell. You spent the rest of your night getting to know the tip of some guy’s (or a group of his friends’) boots as he tried to kick in your sternum.

Cleese and Monk reflexively came off the benches and sprinted around the railing and toward the pit’s entrance. They instinctively knew that whatever was going to happen in the pit would already be decided by the time they got there, but that didn’t stop them from trying. Lenik would have either hacked Mr. Shirt-and-Tie’s head from his shoulders with his pig sticker or the dead man would be sucking up Lenik’s blood like gravy. There just wasn’t a lot that they could do to prevent the outcome.

It was safe to say that Cartwright got tagged. From the way they went down and with Lenik now in the mix to further fuck up the situation, this was not going to end well. The last image Cleese could recall of the scene had a lot of crimson in it, and that was never good.

Not in this game.

The two men made their way rapidly along the gangway, rounded the stairwell and burst through the door to the pit. As they came running through the hatch, they saw Mr. Shirt-and-Tie bent over Lenik happily chomping away on a chunk of the man’s exposed stomach. A wet, smacking sound echoed hopelessly within the emptiness of the pit.

Monk, who’d forgotten his shotgun in his haste, came up behind the zombie and deftly slid his protected right arm under the thing’s gnawing mouth, just across its throat and under the jaw. He braced his left arm behind the thing’s head and clamped down like a vice.

He quickly glanced downward and found himself staring into Lenik’s eyes. Despite the fact that the guy was an asshole, Monk was saddened as he watched the fighter’s life drain out of his gaze and his breathing stutter to a stop. As he died, his mouth quivered and one eye drifted closed.

Monk wrenched his gaze away and torqued down on the UDs neck, making sure he felt the cervical vertebrae tighten and bind up. Then, he bore down with all of his strength.

The crunch of the thing’s neck breaking was almost silent. Cleese had cracked his knuckles and made more noise. It sounded almost like it would have been a relief, like when a dislocated shoulder popped and the bone fell back into place.

Mr. Shirt-and-Tie made a small sharp snort and then his body just sort of deflated into itself. Monk threw his body aside like it was a sack of shit and quickly bent over to check on Lenik. It was pretty obvious from the extent of the wound and the amount of blood splashed about that the man was truly dead.

Monk’s shoulders sagged and his head dropped in frustration. No matter how many times he’d seen fighters die, it always broke his heart, even an asshole like Lenik. He suddenly jerked his head to the side as remembered Cartwright. He swiftly looked up at Cleese.

"Check him," Monk commanded and he pointed at Cartwright.

"Check him?" Cleese asked dumb-founded. "Check him for what?"

"To see if he’s still alive."

"Are you fuckin’ crazy? His throat’s torn out!"

"What…?" Monk’s face screwed up and he squinted. He looked over at Cartwright and, as if seeing him for the first time, noticed how badly the man had been hurt.

"Ah, fuck…"