The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK ®. C.J. Henderson

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СКАЧАТЬ flinch needlessly—bad loss of face. Then I showed them I was going to take them out one by one and stack them like firewood.

      The batters came forward again, rising to my challenge. This time they were swinging. I tried to time my catch but I was off. One caught me in the side. Hard. I slid on the snow and rammed into a parked car. The second batter stepped up, the cheers of his fellows making him reckless. Swinging down, he went for my skull—took out the Toyota’s windshield instead. I kicked sideways burying my foot to the cuff in his side. Bones cracked. His. Good, I thought.

      The first batter came back again, stabbing. I sidestepped twice then faked a slip. He struck again, too quickly. With better timing I grabbed out and took his bat from him, sliding it out of his gloved hands with a twist. He turned to run, but I put everything I had into a spinning return hit and broke his ankle, sending him rolling through the street, screaming for mercy.

      The second blade carrier debated facing me on his own for a second, then stepped away, melting back into the ranks with his head hung. Smarter than he looked. The gang stood their ground, silver breath mixing with the burning gunpowder and smoke wreathing through the air. The night continued to hammer noisily around us, the constant explosions becoming our silence. I’d lost my cigarette in the slush. Lighting another one, working at keeping my bare hands from shaking too badly, I questioned the boy in charge.

      “Had enough, Sonny?”

      His eyes bored through me, heating buildings on the other side of the street. Spitting into the slop at our feet, he growled:

      “Full of tricks, aren’t you, ghost man?”

      “Oh, cut the crap.” I exhaled smoke at the gang. If he was an adult, I was dead. He’d have someone gun me down and that would be it. I was gambling I’d figured him right, though. If I acted like I wanted everything to end then, I was sure he’d misinterpret and go for me himself. Which was, of course, the only way out I’d seen since the gang’d first arrived.

      “I’m tired, and you’re scared,” I told him. “You can’t afford to lose any more face, and you don’t know what to do about it. My advice is ‘give up.’ Take this band of rejects to whatever flop you throw yourselves into at night and get out of this the easy way. No one’s been hurt too bad yet—especially me.”

      Without hesitation he began to shrug off his coat. “So you haven’t been hurt too bad yet; eh, ghost? Well, let’s see if we can’t change that.”

      He’d taken the bait. Now, if I could just live through another fight with the toughest beast in the pack, I might be able to get through the night. Winded and trying not to show it, I shrugged off his attitude, sucking as much nicotine down as I could before I had to start moving again. Sonny stared at the baseball bat in my hand and then picked the fallen one out of the frozen mess it lay in, wiping it off on his sleeve. He pointed at a large construction dumpster and walked away toward it. I followed. So did the gang.

      “Emperor of the mountain,: he sneered. “Winner decides what happens.”

      “Yeah; doesn’t he always?” He looked at me; smiling. I pulled down a last lungful and said, “Okay, Sonny. Let’s get to it.”

      The dumpster was filled with the guttings of an apartment building in the icy throes of winter gentrification. Ten feet wide, thirty-five feet long, six feet deep, it was filled with old wiring, rotting pipes, broken plasterboard and bricks, and nail studded splinters of wood. One corner was a stacking of old-fashioned windows. The top layer was one of garbage, some in bags, most tossed in loose or torn free from its wrappings by hungry cats and desperate humans. A wonderful little arena.

      Sonny was already coming across the field by the time I got to the top. Bracing myself, I swung up to take the first hit, barely able to shift positions to take the second. He slammed at me unmercifully, swinging at me from the left to the right to the left, on and on, waiting for me to fall into a rhythm so he could break the pattern and paste me. I matched him, blocking hit after hit, feeling the numbness starting to climb my arms.

      Knowing I couldn’t keep taking such punishment, I waited for a weaker strike and then pushed, putting our bats off to the side and our faces up against each other’s. Letting my weapon go, I caught his bat arm with both hands and threw him off balance, unfortunately only into some soft garbage bags. He started to get up but I threw myself on him, forcing him back down into the trash. He thrashed about, trying to stand, but I kept the pressure up, pushing him down as deep as I could into the bulging plastic sacks. His raking fingers tore several open. Our bouncing around freed more.

      Snow started to mix with the frozen grease and decaying pus from the bags, making it impossible for us to hang onto each other. Sonny slipped away from me, clawing his way across the arena, gasping for air. I tried to grab his ankle but sunk to my knee in the trash, suddenly finding my leg trapped in the bricks and debris below.

      “Now,” came Sonny’s rasping voice, “I’m going to kill you.”

      I jerked at my leg, tearing pants, skin, and muscle, but freeing it. Sonny came forward, swinging one of the bats at me so violently he almost threw himself from the dumpster when he missed. I dragged myself out of his path just barely in time, grabbing up a couple of broken bricks as I stood. He came at me again. I lobbed the first at him—missed—only denting a parked car’s door. Weighing the second in my hand for a moment, I let it fly; he hit it away with the bat. It fell to the street, almost clobbering one of his followers.

      “No more jokes, ghost man? No more tough talk?”

      My breath was scorching my throat. Blood was sluicing from my leg, the pain filling my eyes with tears. My side still hurt from the first batter’s swing in the last inning.

      “Naw,” I admitted. “No more jokes.”

      “Well then—if you can’t amusing me anymore, faggot, you know what that means, don’t you? It’s dying time!”

      He stepped across the trash gingerly, watching his footing, coming with a smile to dash my brains out. Too tired to dodge or resist his attack, too close to the end of my resources, I pulled out my .38 and gut shot him, sending him thudding into the street below.

      Instantly five of the Time Lords started to clamber up the sides of the dumpster. Two in the background began pulling out guns. Conserving ammo, I grabbed up one of the stacked windows and flung it at the first three heads coming over the side. One ducked; one got a broken chin; the other lost an eye. I pitched two more windows into the crowd, catching one of the marksmen, sending another backpedalling for cover. A knifer came over the wall, tearing through my coat and nicking my side before I could get hold of him. I slammed him across the jaw with all I had left, sending him falling into another behind him. That one’s screams told me he’d fallen onto something sharp and nasty. Too damn bad.

      As more guns came loose I readied my .38 again. My head was empty of thoughts except for how many of the enemy I could take with me and which ones I wanted the most. I’d hoped to bring things down to just their leader and myself—to take him out and then bluff the others into leaving. Hadn’t worked. A hail of automatic weapon’s fire gouged at the metal of the dumpster, sending thick sparks and ricochets off into the surrounding fireworks. A couple of slugs went by me. I took aim at the main shooter and was just about to fire when I suddenly spotted dozens of figures moving through the gloom at both ends of the street. A bull horn sounded, orders barking at us in Cantonese. The Time Lords lost interest in me immediately, looking to the left and right, sizing up what was happening. A Chinese youth in a good suit with a sharp-edged haircut came up to the dumpster. Offering me his hand, he called:

      “Come СКАЧАТЬ