Hook and Shoot (21 page)

Zombi, the tip of the Yakuza spear, ready to drive into the heart of Warrior and bleed it dry.

Shuko, maybe crawling out from under the cage to hamstring me, cut me down before anyone can stop him.

Lying to Eddie was easy. “I got this.”

“We,” Gil said.

I almost believed him.

Train. Eat. Sleep.

Try to sleep, anyway.

Sunday night I dreamt I was fighting Zombi in Tezo's pit, Tezo standing above us with chunks of his swollen head shot away.

“Well?” he said. Blood and cold water poured out of his skull into the pit.

Shuko was hiding in the filth along one wall, half-buried in a puddle of piss and hair. He stayed very still, just his eyes whirling. I didn't look directly at him—that was his cue to emerge.

I stared across the pit at Zombi, standing there in his press conference suit with a gold medal hanging from a snake around his neck.

He bowed.

I bowed, saw I was standing in the claw-foot bathtub, half-full of stagnant water and trash.

“My poor feet.”

I straightened up so I wouldn't have to see them down in there. In my peripheral vision I watched Shuko slip something out of the puddle and slide it onto his face. It was Gil's face, the edges straight and raw from Shuko's blade. It was much thicker than I'd expected, maybe just swollen from the puddle.

“You can't get me,” I said.

Gil laughed. “What do you call this?”

Monday morning I slopped into the cage with Gil and the Snarl brothers and one of the guys they'd been bringing in, a wiry pole of beef jerky named Ronald.

“Technique and conditioning the rest of the week,” Gil said. “We can't risk you getting cut.”

This was good. Get lost in the movements, the kind of discomfort I could get comfortable in.

Vince said, “No problem. We can dig into the real shitty stuff, the dirt, case this Zombi cat pulls any of it.”

I froze, mouthguard half in. “What the hell have we been doing so far?”

“Huh?”

“Don't worry about him,” Gil said. “Show me some nasty.”

Ninety percent of what they did to me would get Zombi disqualified in an MMA fight. The other ten was legal but might make the ref vomit.

I almost hoped Zombi would try some of it. I'd never wanted to win that way, but considering I'd been ready to toss the fight a few days earlier, I wasn't feeling picky.

After a break Gil set up a circuit for me and the catch wrestlers, a bastard workout he called Dante's
Inferno. He put a barbell loaded with three hundred fifteen pounds in the middle of the mats and had us spread out and jog around the edges.

“Lunges,” he called.

We lunged, one knee dropping to kiss the mats, hands up and chins down. Drive up; open the hips.

Gil said, “Dead lifts, Woody, eight reps. Everybody else, burpees.”

I sprinted to the barbell, gripped it shoulder-width, and set my feet. Ripped it off the floor and let it hang from my arms like they were cables. Set it down and pulled again, again.

Vince and Robbie and Ronald stopped circling and banged out burpees, dropping to touch their chests and thighs to the mats, then springing to their feet, jumping and clapping overhead.

“Eight,” I yelled.

“Shadowbox backward.”

We circled again, shuffling backward. Slipping, bobbing, weaving, jab-cross-hook. I saw Zombi stalking after me, stepping into the punches. I felt the impact, watched him react to it.

Hard as I tried, I couldn't get him to blink.

Gil said, “Vince, dead lifts, eight reps. Rest of you, tuck jumps.”

Vince took a few deep breaths over the bar, then got to work. We stood in place and jumped as high as
we could, pulled our knees to our chests at the top of the jump. Vince put the bar down after four reps and shook his arms out. Around the mats the jumps were getting slower, turning into hops.

“Eight,” Vince said.

“Push-ups.”

I didn't bother counting.

“Ronald, dead lifts, eight reps. Peanut gallery, bear crawl.”

We circled on all fours, hands and feet, scampering after the heels ahead and fighting for air, cores locked down for stability.

“Eight.” Ronald's face was an alarming shade of red. He tilted his way into the circle and tried to join the bear crawl, ended up with some kind of camel/
crab hybrid.

Gil called Robbie to the bar while the rest of us planked out, rigid on toes and elbows, dropping sweat and curses onto the mats.

“Eight,” Robbie said.

“Shake it out.” Gil pulled weight off the bar, got it to two twenty-five. After one minute of rest, he said, “Shadowbox forward. Go.”

Zombi retreated from me, shot for my legs. I kneed him in the face and rocked him with an uppercut. He just stared back.

“Woody, hang cleans, eight reps.”

I pulled the barbell up and let it hang, the weight feeling much lighter compared to the dead lifts. That didn't last long. I bent at the waist, let the bar drop to mid-thigh, then shot my hips forward. Shrugged the barbell up and pulled, got it chest-high and threw my elbows underneath, racked the bar across the front of my shoulders.

Reversed the process, yanked it up again. My forearms screamed.

“Eight.” I couldn't open my grip to let the bar go. Had to put a foot on it and shove myself away.

Everyone ran through the hang cleans while the circle suffered. Squat jumps, shrimping, frog hops. If a guy failed on a barbell rep Gil sent him back to the circle—for safety, not as punishment—but nobody wanted it to come up.

Another minute break, then Gil stripped more weight off and called for power snatches, taking the barbell from floor to overhead in one explosive movement. The hundred thirty-five pounds felt like a truck axle.

We spiraled down the circles of hell. Split squat jumps, backward sprawls, more burpees.

“Eight,” Robbie said. It sounded thick, pushed through a gag reflex.

Guys dropped to the floor like strings had been cut. I closed my eyes, rocked side to side on my back, and fought for air, the burn in my lungs scoffing at
the lactic acid in my legs.

As I cooled off I knew another layer of armor had been forged, body and mind.

Another level of pain I could go to, settle in, and survive.

No, thrive.

I felt great.

Opened my eyes and saw Zombi standing over me, no expression or damage from the shadow fighting. Shuko's shadow stood next to him, leaning on a sword.

“You done with him?” Shuko said.

Zombi nodded, bowed, and turned away.

The week slipped by, hours broken down to either work or rest. During work I felt like a beast; at rest I felt it was all just preparing me for the slaughter.

Burch checked in each night, his voice stronger but still hollowed out. The calls were all the same: “Everybody still alive?”

“Yes,” I told him.

“Same here. Any unfriendlies hanging about?”

“No.”

“Right. Cheers.”

Click.

Eddie didn't send an interview crew like he had for the Burbank fight. He wanted Zombi—and possibly
me—to come and go as quietly as possible. I didn't know if we'd even be on pay-per-view, maybe slipped in before the prelims when the stands were still being swept.

Shuko was either keeping his word about Saturday or lulling us. Three times I made it all the way to my truck, keys in the ignition, ready to drive to Argo's office and find a ceiling fan to put his face in until he told me where to find Shuko. At least find out if Argo was lying about not working with the Dojin-gumi. Each time I gripped the steering wheel, thinking,
Then what?

My house was already full of trouble. No need to go begging for more. Eddie was right; the only thing I knew for sure was who I was fighting Saturday night.

Thursday I pulled Vince aside. “If you were me, how would you go at Zombi?”

He crossed his arms and tugged his lower lip. “In sparring, what's the hardest you've hit me?”

“Fifty percent, maybe less.”

“Okay, fuck off. I can't chew anything tougher than deli meat.”

“Sorry.”

“Your natural style is all straight lines. Right at him, right through him. Problem with that is the more you throw at him, the more opportunities he has to catch something. Combine it with his judo, your straight lines got a good chance of getting tossed
and bent. That's option one.”

“I gotta tell you, option one sounds pretty terrible.”

He put a hand up. “I apologize. I should have said the worst one first. Two, you take his style and go beyond it. Not just imitation, I'm talking mimicry. You become him and therefore know what he'll do next, beat him to it.”

“I only see one flaw.”

“Your catch wrestling sucks. There's no way you can pull it off.”

“So it's not really an option.”

“Well, nobody wants to feel cornered. I figured you'd take option one anyway, no matter what two was.”

Just like Eddie and Gil said. When my strategy is survival, the other guy has to come along or die.

“Cheer up,” Vince said. “You're so worried about all the things he might catch you're forgetting the good news. If you catch him—once—with one of those wrecking balls you got hanging off your arms, he's spending a few days in the hospital. Guaranteed.”

The weigh-ins on Friday started early with a fan expo at the Golden Pantheon Arena, sponsor tables manned by Warrior fighters and lines of fans hopping up and down to get a photo.

“Choke me.”

“Can you punch me in the face?”

“Like you did to Corman, the knee to the ear.”

Everybody smiling, nobody's teeth covered in blood. It was pretty nice. I stood in a corner with Gil and felt mildly racist for putting hard eyes on all the Japanese guys walking around.

“You're scaring people,” Gil said.

I rolled my shoulders out and stopped squinting. Put on a nice face and looked over the crowd in time to see a man cutting a path toward us. Baseball cap, slight build, head down. I spotted the lower half of his
face. Asian for sure, possibly Japanese.

I handed my bottle of water to Gil.

The baseball cap was twenty feet away.

Ten.

It tilted up.

Thirteen-year-old kid, maybe fifteen. He pushed an event poster and a Sharpie into my hands. To occupy them?

“You charge, bro?” SoCal accent.

I checked him over.

He checked me back, glanced at Gil. “Uh, for your autograph?”

It didn't feel like a trap. “No.”

“Not yet,” Gil said.

I hovered the Sharpie over a blank spot on the poster while I thought of something to write.

“Just your name, man. I don't need any affirmations.”

I signed it.

“Thanks. Wait, what's this say?”

“Aaron Wallace.”

He considered it. “Can you—?”

I slashed
Woodshed
over my name, spun the poster back to him.

When he was gone Gil said, “You gotta relax. That kid thought you were gonna elbow him in the neck.”

“Nah.”

“Have we been here long enough?”

“Lady from Warrior said two hours. What's it been?”

Gil checked his watch. “Twenty minutes.”

“Jesus. Let's get out of here.”

We hugged the wall to an exit, which dumped us into the part of the arena they had curtained off for the weigh-ins. Security had the doors roped but recognized me or the fighter credentials around my neck. The production crew was running around tilting lights and checking sound.

Davie Benton spotted us and headed over. He did color commentary for Warrior broadcasts and hosted the weigh-ins. His red hair looked a foot high and his muttonchops were dyed black, possibly to mourn themselves.

“Gil, Woody, welcome back. What gives, man? You pull the biggest upset of the year, and Eddie has you fighting some no-name at the bottom of the card?”

“Thank you,” Gil said.

“Right on. Just seems like bad business. You got some heat going. He should be jumping you in line for a title shot.”

“Quite a few guys been working their way up to that. I don't want to cut anybody out.”

“My man, rather knock 'em out, right? People are talking though. A fight between you and the Coroner? Don't blink.”

The heavyweight champ was a slab of granite
from Eastern Europe who'd served as a mortician in the Soviet Army. Gil and I had talked about the matchup and decided by the time I got a title shot—if it ever happened—the Coroner could be vanquished, even retired. It wasn't worth the anxiety yet.

I asked Davie, “Heard anything about Zombi?”

“Not much. He's a bit of an enigma—that's what I'm gonna say on air,
enigma
—but it came down from Eddie this guy won't be around long, so don't hype him too much. Question is, why is he here at all?”

“You ask Eddie that?”

“When would I? Guy's been a fucking ghost lately. We had a meeting last week about something big, I mean, big, an overseas event. He shows up on a computer screen, video chatting from some place looked like a bomb shelter. Cheap-ass Warrior banner behind him, acoustics all fucked up.”

“He around now?” I said.

“Somewhere. Look for the gang of hotel security. But don't plan on talking to him. He's got some British asshole giving everybody the pointy finger. ‘Fack off, mate.'”

Hard to pretend I didn't know that was a dead-on Burch.

Then the real thing walked through the door leading a crowd of blazered security, a blue faux hawk in the middle somewhere.

Burch pointed at me. “You. Over here.”

Davie said, “See what I mean?”

Burch still looked rough. Waxy with dark circles under his eyes, which were too shiny and sucked back into his head. He secured Eddie in his nest of casino security below the stage and left him talking to a sweaty guy wearing a headset.