That guy: Urban Insanity 2

I could feel myself tossing and turning. The problem with 2 hour sleep shifts with my insomnia was that instead of sleeping in the traditional sense, I was more drifting. Half in, half out. I suppose it was a decent way to be since we had to be ready at any moment, but needless to say, I was tired.

It was Saturday night, no. Sunday morning. I could tell even in my delirium that it was getting closer to show time. The faint smell of smoke drifted through my brain.

Like clockwork, Luanne, the overweight, unwed, trailer trash woman who had been rooming next door to our room since the Regan administration had waddled herself outsidefor one of her four daily cigarettes. Apparently, she had been injured in some kind of workplace related accident. When the company finally went under, a fancy suit with a law degree had found some kind of loophole in her settlement, and she was now being sponsored by the government. Our tax dollars hard at work. Being that she had lived in that dingy motel room longer than I had been alive, I decided to get as much info outof her as I could, and the usual tactic of ‘Hey, wanna cig?’ had proved effective. She would soon need a crane to get out of bed, but more than 4 smokes a day was ‘bad for her health.’ Or as I called it, a large Diet Coke with her triple bacon cheeseburger.

But something wasn’t right. Something was different. My over-logged brain tried to filter the information.

Holidays.

Mint.

Menthol.



There it was.



Menthol. It wasn’t normal smoke.



That sickly sweet mint tinge wafted delicately under the motel room door.



And it hit me. Luanne didn’t smoke menthols.

Carlos, the toilet-wine making cholo on the other side, and in his own words “Anytime I step outside I gotta smoke, mang!” didn’t either.

I sat up, the fog lifting from my head. Matt was sitting at the worktable we had brought in, soldering something. He started to say something, probably to let me know I still had some time left to sleep, but I cut him short with a motion. I leapt quietly from the bed, and moved over towards the door. I placed my eye up to the peephole, and shifted the little lever we had installed, tilting our custom mirror just slightly. As the view warped and landed on Carlos’ doorway, I knew it was going to get sticky in just a minute. I threw a few hand signals towards Matt, and he was ready in an instant, right behind me. He passed me my bat, and I was grateful for the small level of comfort it provided, gripped in my hand, as I adjusted the mirror back to normal position so we could maintain a level of surprise. I would have killed to have my finger tensed around the trigger of my beautiful Walther, but Bob had declared this game would take place without firearms of any kind. Understandable, but anyone who had been a student of Bob’s long enough knew better than expecting to live forever.



I had forgotten all about the third team. In my mind, they were less of a threat. Honestly, it was no surprise Aarika and Madison had gotten paired together. No one could stand them, except for each other, both their names basically meant ‘warrior girl,’ and the twins, Asher and Jess, seemed destined to be together forever.



I would be willing to bet that Bob had somehow rigged the draw to ensure the twins ended up paired. Both of them were combat experts, the kind you’d see in old kung-fu movies. Everyone gave them a wide breadth of space. One on one, I could take them. Not easily, but I could get the job done. Together, however, even Bob had trouble putting them away. That was the team I was not looking forward to facing for the flag.



My guess was that Bob had told Aarika and Madison of our location to even things out a bit. They were good, sure. No one spends 10 years training with Bob and can’t compete. But they simply didn’t have the same skill level as the rest of us.



I should have figured it out the moment I smelled that damn menthol.



Aairka, the stereotypical tough as nails street girl, was about as black as they came. Smoked Kools, spoke street bitch, and was even referred to by Bob as ‘his Nubian princess.’ Her tight dreads were a point of pride for her, claiming that they helped her feel in touch with her ancestors, even though she probably couldn’t have pointed out Africa on a map if you took the names off. She took a liking to Madison, probably because there weren’t any other girls that would look you in the eye as they told you to go fuck yourself.



Madison couldn’t have been more opposite. Tall, leggy, with flowing blonde hair, she was one hell of a looker. Every guy had a thing for her, and she knew, and used it every opportunity she got. A former gymnast, she was supposed to lead her team to the championships when she was kidnapped after practice one day and held for ransom. When her fantastically rich parents refused to ‘negotiate with terrorists’ the kidnappers had cut her Achilles tendon, and sent a video of it to them. It ended in a SWAT situation, freeing Madison and killing the kidnappers, but she never forgave her parents. After a few years of physical therapy, she ran away from home, was picked up by Bob, and turned her cold, bitter energy into a passion for sharp things like the one that took her Olympic glory from her.





Even though there were no firearms, Bob said nothing about projectiles. I stood ready to pull the door open, bat at the ready, and Matt stood in the back of the room with the biggest fucking slingshot I’ve ever seen in my life.



Matt was the tech wizard. He could make MacGyver seem like a cub scout. He claimed that he could ‘make anything out of anything’ and so far, he had yet to be proven wrong. I was grateful to have him on my team. I had seen him wire his way out of spots I couldn’t even begin to think were possible. It looked like the slingshot he was holding was made out of one of the bedsprings from our room, his elastic belt he always wore, much to the ridicule of everyone else, and part of a table leg. Where he had pulled the duct tape from, I had no idea. He always had sticky fingers. What blew me away most of all though, was his ammo. No ordinary slingshot round, it seemed he had super-glued handfuls of ball-bearings together, making devastating looking fist-sized ‘pellets.’



He drew back on the belt, cocking the brutal ammo, and I stood at the ready. We knew they were coming, and they knew where we were. A gentle knock hit the door, and I gripped my bat tighter, no noise audible in the room. The knock grew louder, and with both of us breathing silently, we could hear Aairka say ‘Maybe those assholes aren’t in.’



“They’re here.” Replied Madison. “The fat bitch next door said so, and it doesn’t look like she can leave if she wanted to.”



The knock came just a bit louder. Matt nodded at me. I mumbled loud enough for them to hear ‘Just a fucking minute.’ I could hear them shuffle at the door. I gripped the door handle in one hand, and my bat in the other.



3.

2.

1.



I unlocked the door.



It came flying inwards, and chaos erupted. Matt let his first round fly, striking Aairka right in the forehead. She went down in a spray of blood. Madison was right behind her, and once her partner dropped, she launched herself into the room. I swung the bat, but she threw herself over the swing. She was in Matt’s face before he had a chance to reload.



He never stood a chance, and was dropped unconscious with a single kick.



Madison turned to face me, and I smiled. She was pretty, and we both knew I was far stronger and faster. All reasons to smile. She smiled back. But for a different reason.



I felt the double fists slam into the back of my head almost before they struck. I rolled with the blow, the world exploding into stars around me. I staggered to my feet, and barely managed to block the flurry of strikes aimed at my face by Madison, and the blood-soaked Aairka.



Stupid again.



As I passively avoided and diffused their assaults, I used the time to regain my composure. The world quit spinning quite as hard, and my eyes returned to full spectrum view as opposed to the tunnels they had been looking thru. It seemed my opponents realized this, as their attack grew more frenzied, but it was too late.



Madison threw a beautiful right hook towards my face, and I took advantage. I stepped inside it, and using her momentum, and my considerable upper-body strength, countered with an elbow straight to her sternum. The crack could have been heard over a space-shuttle launch. She screamed in pain, and dropped to the her knees, clutching her chest, gasping for air, as the broken bones squeezed her lungs.



Aairka tried to act on the moment, snaking an arm around my neck, but was standing too high, and was immediately flipped over my shoulder, crashing right into Madison’s back, causing her to scream again. Aairka went limp, a combination of blood loss and sheer impact, but Madison, as tough as she was, was left crushed, crying under the weight of her partner. I knew I only had a few minutes to act before someone called the cops, and one or more of my opponents recovered enough to do something stupid. I grabbed Matt, dragging his unconscious figure into the pitiful motel shower, and turned the cold water on. I didn’t have time to make sure he woke, so leaving him coming too under the ice cold flow, I went back out into the room. Madison was hurt bad, and Aairka was still out, holding her flat. Ordinarily, I would have expected to see Madison perform some magnificent move to free herself, but a shattered sternum would keep even the toughest people grounded.



But it wasn’t enough. I liked Matt. And it was my job to make sure he stayed safe. He was capable of holding his own against any old street punk, sure, but he was no fighter. Plus, I was exhausted. Bad combination.



I walked over to Madison. She tried to roll out from under her partner, knowing how vulnerable she was, but every movement caused her smashed chest to dig deeper into her lungs. She barely made out a whimper, much less a roll.



I let my sadistic side come out. I reached over to the table Matt had been sitting at just a minute ago, and grabbed a ball of twine he had been using for one of his projects. I put my foot on the back of Madison’s ankle. I could feel the scar tissue beneath my bare foot from where the surgically repaired tendon lay. I could tell the rapid flutters of words coming from her limited oxygen supply were pleads, maybe even prayers. I started to lean, slowly at first. Even with her lack of breath, the agony could be heard in her voice, as her weak screams rang in my ears. I only increased the pressure, absorbed in the moment, until Matt’s hand grabbed my shoulder.



He had a black eye, and a trickle of blood ran down his forehead from where his head had hit the table before he fell to the floor. But he was ok, and that was good enough for me.



“She’s done, man. We need to go before the cops show up. I’ll bet you anything the twins have a police scanner too.”



I nodded, pulled out of my sick little moment. I stepped off Madison’s leg, almost disgusted by the relief I heard in her gasps, but Matt’s hand guided me. We were packing, and as we tried to be ready at any moment, it didn’t take but an instant for us to be ready to roll. I took the rope still in my hand, and sitting Madison and Aairka upright, I bound them together by the neck. Tight enough that when Aairka awoke, she wouldn’t move for risk of choking out her partner. We stepped out of the motel room with our duffels and backpacks, shutting the door behind us. Thankfully, the cops response time in that area of the city was notoriously poor, and no one would be too excited to talk to the police.



We booked it down the road, turning into an alleyway. Within 15 minutes of our solid pace, we were at a new motel, and settled in for the ‘night.’ The team we had left in our previous room would be picked up by the cops, and would be out of the picture come Monday, but that didn’t really make things easier. The real challenge was yet to come.



I lay there on my even less comfortable bed, drifting back in and out of reality, my sleep deprived brain brought to the surface the smile Madison and I had shared for that brief moment.



I shot upright, ready to strike, detecting the presence of someone nearby. It was just Matt, waking me for my watch shift. We exchanged a knowing look as we traded places.



I looked over at the clock. 6am.



20 hours til game time.