Page 14 of Rogue

“Well, I warned you, now why don’t you sleep it off before you taste some real pain.”

“Taste this!” Red-faced and almost blind with rage, Roy came at me like a bull, his bloodied fist swinging in a wide arc to take my head off my shoulders. I didn’t wait for it to fall, just stepped in close and jabbed mine straight into his solar plexus. He gasped as the hit made contact, made all the more incapacitating by the momentum of his mad rush. He’d be feeling it for weeks, and as he folded over in pain, I stepped back, grabbed his grey top, and brought his head down onto the edge of the nearest table.

Somewhere, people were shouting, screaming for someone to stop. Other things were said, but that was all I caught. I wasn’t listening. They were only distractions now, and I couldn’t afford to get distracted. Sidestepping Roy’s body as it slumped to the floor, I back stepped, grabbed up the coke glass from the table where I’d left it and brought it round into the side of Trucker top’s face as he came at me. It exploded on contact, leaving my hand stinging and him with a few more scars to add to his collection.

Hawk Face was right behind him. Literally, he let Trucker take the hit so that, as the bigger man went down, he could pounce. His right fist cracked against my temple, a jarring blow that made stars dance across my eyes for a second before his left hand grabbed my shoulder to drag me back for another. Bad move. On pure reflex, my knee came up to meet his groin. Then, as my right swung up to meet the inside of his left elbow, breaking his hold and throwing him off balance, I stepped back to bring him further forward before bringing my left elbow up to meet his oncoming nose. The crack of shattering cartilage was almost deafening that close and the blood that fountained out of his broken nose would have nearly painted my face if I hadn’t followed up with a hard kick that sent him tumbling backward over a table.

Then I was backtracking as Trucker came at me, one side of his face red from brow to chin. Not that I was scared. I just had to keep moving. That was how to win a fight when outnumbered. It didn’t matter how big and strong you were. Stay in one spot for too long and the bad guys would converge on you and beat you down. If you kept moving and hit hard and fast, you could take them down one by one.

Only it seemed Salt and Pepper knew that rule too, because as I twisted around a table I glimpsed him circling round to meet me, and behind him, Top Knot had blocked the way through to the games room. It was a smart move, but they’d also cocked up.

Almost halfway between me and Salt and Pepper, there was a serving tray on a table. Debra had put it there when she went to help the new girl. It was little more than a sheet of cheap plastic, like the ones in McDonald’s or Burger King, but it would do the job.

Throwing a blind hand out as I continued back stepping, grabbed the plastic and swung it up and around in a high arc that met the bloody side of Trucker’s face. I doubt it would have added to the shit storm of pain the glass exploding against his face had dealt him, but the hit was enough to knock him down across a table. My body pivoted with the swing, twisting to confront Salt and Pepper as he ran around the next table to block me off and, having drawn my arm back, I jabbed the edge of the tray into the apple of his throat. He dropped like a sack of old potatoes, his hands clawing at his neck, but all that came out of his mouth was a gurgle.

I didn’t think about Top Knot, didn’t plan what to do about him. I just know he was not about to come to me. He was playing it smart, making me come to him. So I did, in a manner. Instead of just running at him, a flick of my wrist sent the tray spinning out of my hand, across the room and into his abdomen. He doubled over with the hit, groaning. Even so, he still tried to swing for me. It was a decent effort, but winded, he lacked the balance to carry it through. I blocked it, slamming the meat of my left hand into his hooked elbow, holding it there mid-swing as my right smashed into his balls. He screamed at that. I couldn’t blame him for that. The only thing worse than a hit to the bollocks was a kneecapping. That didn’t mean I was about to take it easy on him though and with his knees suddenly turned to jelly, all it took was a pivot to throw him through the swinging doors and across the pool table.

Except, then something hard shattered against my shoulder and I stumbled right in there after Top Knot, the table edge-rushing up to give my ribs some good news.

I just got my hands up in time to brace, but the hit was like taking a swing from a baseball bat. Biting back on the roar of pain as my front seemed to combust beneath my shirt and jacket, I threw a glance back. Trucker Top was back for more and followed me through the doors and brandished the bottle he’d just broken on my back like a knife. Behind him, Salt and Pepper, and Hawk Face, were pulling themselves together, and I could hear Top Knot’s feet dancing a jig as he tried to climb back up.

Things were about to get messy.

Then I spotted an old glass ashtray sitting on the side of the table and drove my leg backwards in a kick that Trucker must have walked right into because I felt the heel of my boot meet soft meat. He let out a strangled noise, but I had already pulled my leg back and was twisting away before he could slash at me with the bottle. In one move, I’d scooped up the ashtray and pivoted round to face him as he stumbled back a step. Then I was going at him, forcing the bottle aside with one hand, punching the ashtray into the core of his throat with the other, driving him back against the closest wall before kicking his knee out from under him. He went down hard, choking and spluttering as his hands grasped at his throat like he was trying to undo an invisible necktie that had been pulled too tight.

Something clanked to my left, and I glimpsed Top Knot pulling a Pool Cue from the rack on the wall. Wish I’d seen that. One of those would have made this a walk in the park.

Judging by that big stupid grin on his face, Top Knot thought so too. Though judging by the way he held it, that was his only idea. He certainly didn’t have the foggiest how to handle it. He just swung it up above his head and ran at me, screaming like the dumb hillbilly bad guy in a Steven Seagal film. Fortunately, old Steve always knew just how to handle them.

I wasn’t quite a Zen master, but when the bad guy came running at you and you were holding a weight of solid glass, it didn’t matter. Cranking back my arm, I hurled the ashtray at him.

There was no time to aim, but he was so close, I didn’t need to.

It rebounded off his jaw with a sickening thud and skidded under the table, sending his swing way off course as I stepped in with a brain-rattling hook that I retracted and turned into an elbow jab. He fell back a step, but then recovered enough to come at me with the cue again, swinging it in a wide hay scything arc. It missed by miles and cut over the table with a high whistle, dragging him around, exposing his back. It was too good of an opportunity to miss. Grabbing that stupid fucking Top Knot, I gave it a hard jerk that dragged his head back and down, so his own weight threw him across the table and knocked the fight right out of him.

That left only Salt and Pepper, and Hawk Face to go. They’d pulled themselves together and were half running, half stumbling through the mess of tables and chairs. Dragging the cue from Top Knot’s limp fingers, I turned to meet them.

Hawk Face came first this time and was greeted by a quick sweep of the cue's point that smacked him across the head and sent him skidding right. I followed, pivoting and stabbing the cue’s butt back into Salt and Pepper’s midriff as he came through the doors. He doubled over, and I left the stick there just long enough to brace my kick into Hawk’s balls. Then I twisted back around to face Salt, retracting the cue and then reversing it in my hands so the butt swung up to crack against his jaw before a round kick sent him through the swing doors as I brought the cue around in a swing across Hawk’s ribs. He bent with it, his mouth opening in a scream that died away as my knee came up to meet him with a wet smack.

He crumpled to the floor, curling into a ball, not out cold but definitely feeling very sorry for himself. A quick glance around confirmed the others wouldn’t be feeling up to another round anytime soon. Dumping the cue onto the table, I turned my back on the carnage, pushed back through the swinging doors, and came face to face with Roy.

He looked like a mess. A bloody mess. A right bloody mess. Head wounds had a habit of bleeding a lot and the meeting between his head and the table had opened up a gash across his temple that was leaking down his face. But it was the knife in his hand that caught my attention. An NR-40, the soviet fighting knife that was issued throughout the Red Army after the Winter War revealed the Soviet force lacked a good close-quarters weapon and had seen service throughout the Second World War. It had long since been taken out of the official military kit, but, rather than vanish from history; it had become one of the favourite toys of Russian Organised Crime. A deadly weapon that comprised a smooth wooden grip painted black, an S-guard, and a single-edged 152mm blade that was stabbing straight for my chest.

In any other moment, that would have been me done. Fast reflexes were good, but they could only carry a body so far. In the end, everything always came down to limitations, and I was at mine. Roy was too close, and while he certainly wasn’t faster than me, he had the element of surprise, but I had luck. I always had a certain sort of luck. The sort of twisted luck that meant you got caught in traffic and missed your non-refundable flight, only to learn later that same flight crashed into the Rocky Mountains.

I was lucky because at any other moment this guy might have waited before trying to knife me, taking the time to gather his wits or regroup his senses. As it was, he was dizzy from the knock to the head, and losing all that blood now smeared across his face had to be having an effect because he missed that last vital step to stab the knife home. He overextended himself and I grabbed his knife hand and pulled it even further off course as I stepped outside the blade, then into him. Swinging a left hook that cracked against his cheekbone, I then dropped the arm down, wrapping it around his extended arm before pressing down on his wrist with the other.

It was a simple hold, but one that gave the user absolute control of the subject with minimum use of force.

I didn’t press down hard, just enough for him to get the message.

Either drop the blade, or I’d break his arm.

He tried to fight my grip. Tried to flex and tense and bend the limb the right way, gritting the teeth he had left and glaring daggers at me even as his back arched up to ease the agony searing up the length of his arm. So I pressed down with a little more insistence. He got the message. His fingers opened immediately with a small gasp of pain and I scooped the NR-40 up mid-fall. No sooner had I released his arm than my knee was driving up into his, making his legs buckle and I urged him down to the tiled floor.

“You shouldn’t play with knives,” I mocked, grabbing and twisting Roy’s arms behind his back, pinning them there with my knee.

“Fuck you, Limey piece-a shit,” he spluttered, no doubt his ego refusing to admit defeat without the show of defiance.

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