* * *
The Pit.
Mere blocks from the horror of Fulton Stadium on Martin Road, an unfinished skyscraper served the Pit Fiends as a lair. Decades ago it had been destined to become yet another corporate tower. Not three months into construction, the corp had been swallowed and the operation canceled. Now it was nothing more than 20 stories of rusted metal beams caging a ten-meter deep open basement filled with unfinished machinery for heat and water. Very few metroplex citizens ventured close, confident that the rumors they heard could not compare to the true depravities conducted in the pit.
As the eastern sky glowed a ruddy pink, Tim “Bunny” Kensington endured those depravities.
Bunny’s head swam as he swung upside down by a cable, suspended above the bottom of the Pit. Water dripped from the structure above, flowing over his bare skin. He was naked and bleeding, his bandages ripped off and wounds savagely reopened by Urgo’s serrated knife. The gang leader had brutally inflicted several more ragged lacerations over the last few hours.
“Where’s the rest of the cards, Bunny?” Urgo demanded, brandishing his weapon in the dwarf’s face. His left eye twitched.
Bunny did not respond. He could barely stay conscious. Only Urgo’s constant haranguing and slicing prevented him from passing out.
“I’m getting fed up with yoush,” Urgo growled, his speech slurred. “There’s shupposed to be a four million credits in that case! I ain’t gonna settle for two-forty. Where’s the resht of it?” He kicked at the case on the ground beneath Bunny. Certified cash cards flopped out onto the muddy floor of the pit.
Bunny watched blood drip from his fingers, marring the gleam of cards scattered in the puddle beneath him. So close...
The knife struck again, deeper this time, into his thigh.
“I can shave you for the next forty-eight hoursh. Then I’ll cut you down, fix you up, wait a week, and start again. I got training in thish. Used to do it for the corp. They never paid me no four million, though.” He laughed, and the Fiends that lounged in the Pit laughed with him.
Bunny spat blood at the ganger.
Another kiss from the knife.
A skinny Pit Fiend approached and pushed Bunny as he passed, starting the dwarf on another pendulum swing.
“Urgo, this is useless,” Wiles said. “This gimli’s too tough. He’s been bleeding all over the ground for the past three hours. I heard dwarves were made of iron, and this little runt proves it. He won’t ever talk.”
“The Hell he won’t. I haven’t even started on him yet. This is all tickling compared to what I’m going to do to him next.”
“Other people are after him. Let’s just take these cards and get rid of him. If we keep him too long the syndicate will hear about it and come down on us like a hammer!”
“The syndicate don’t know crap.”
“They will! Word’s out already that we got the goose, and everybody knows where we hang. Who knows who’ll show up? Let’s take the cards and fade.”
Urgo turned his attention from Bunny and glared menacingly at Wiles. “You fade, Wiles. Now.”
Wiles stood his ground. Urgo had led the Pit Fiends for a few years, but everyone could see that gene failure was taking its toll on him. Without the stabilizing treatments provided by the corp that he had escaped from, his genetically engineered expiration date approached like a death knell. His nervous tick, eye twitches, and slurred speech were just the beginning. Soon enough, the gang would need a new leader.
“I say we take the cards, fade from the Pit, and leave the gimli’s corpse for the syndicate.”
Silence.
Urgo’s face contorted into a hateful sneer, and his fist whitened around the haft of the big combat knife.
“I hope you like Hell, Wiles,” Urgo growled, dropping into a crouch.
“I thought this was Hell.” Wiles laughed and pulled out his own knife.
The two gangers circled each other as Bunny swung like a lazy clock’s pendulum, ticking away the rest of his life. The Fiends yelled and hooted, urging either the leader or the challenger to take first blood.
Urgo ducked under Wiles’ slashing attack. The leader lunged forward and pushed the smaller man into a pile of barrels. Amid the clash and crash of the canisters, both combatants struggled to their feet, but Urgo recovered first. Like a wild animal he leapt upon Wiles and hammered him back with bare fist and knife. In seconds, Wiles lay face down in a puddle, nothing more than worm meat, hands twitching as life left him.
Urgo spun around on the remaining Fiends, bloody knife still in hand.
“Anybody else?”
Wiles’ former supporters remained silent, while the others smiled gleefully at Urgo’s brutal victory. Despite his deterioration, he was still the king of the Pit.
“I didn’t think so.” Urgo smiled. “Time to get back to that damned dwarf.”
He turned back to the hanging dwarf but stopped short in amazement. The end of the cable swung loose, its frayed end holding nothing. Below, Bunny lay in a crumpled bloody heap. Standing above him was another dwarf, this one a bit healthier and smoking a short cigar.
“Hey, Urgo,” Noose said.
The orc glared at the newcomer. Noose carried no apparent weapons. His left shoulder was wrapped in a bloody bandage and the rest of his clothes were covered in slime and gunk. Urgo knew of Noose’s reputation for speed and lethality, but he grinned to see the rest of his Fiends, twenty or so, circling the mercenary dwarf.
“Damn dwarves never stay dead,” Urgo said loudly.
“Like cockroaches,” a ganger said with a chuckle.
Noose did not respond as he was slowly surrounded. A wide variety of firearms pointed at him, and at least four red laser dots appeared on his body.
“You a cockroach, Noose? We’re gonna shquash you!”
“I don’t like being shquashed.”
“I don’t give a slot what you like.” Urgo pulled himself up to full height, flexing his arms. “What mattersh is what I like. I like grinding little roaches like you and your pal into hamburger.”
“Do you like dying, Urgo?”
“Never tried it. Don’t plan on it any time soon. Maybe if you come back from the dead you can fill me in.”
Noose took his cigar in his hand and spat.
“Why don’t we find out together?” He pulled a device from his pocket. A red light winked on the top.
“What’s that?”
“It’s called a dead-man’s switch, Urgo. If I drop it, it transmits a signal to the detonators. Then the charges I’ve placed on the support columns explode. This whole place comes crashing down on our heads.”
Several of the Fiends muttered to each other and looked to Urgo, grasping their weapons a bit tighter. Urgo glanced from his followers back to Noose and the small black device in his hand. Everyone in the biz knew that Noose could handle explosives like no one else in Atlanta.
Urgo scowled. “What do you wantsh?”
“The gleamers.” Noose pointed down at the scattered cash cards in the mud.
“How many?”
“All of ‘em.”
“Screw that!”
“Consider it compensation for shooting me into a river of crap.”
The Fiends slowly moved away from Noose, but Urgo stood his ground.
“What about him?” He pointed at Bunny.
Noose looked down at the naked bleeding dwarf and shrugged. “He gets one chance. He tells me where the rest of the cards are. I’ll take half, and you can have the rest. Otherwise, you can keep interrogating him.”
Urgo scowled, squeezing the knife in his hand.
“You don’t have a choice, Urgo,” Noose said.
“Go ahead,” Urgo assented angrily.
Noose bent down beside the other dwarf.
“Kensington,” Noose whispered, lifting the wounded dwarf into a sitting position. “It’s me, Noose.”
Bunny groaned and painfully raised his head. “Yeah, I know.”
&nb
sp; “Listen, you’re pretty beat up. You need help.”
“Thanks for the newsflash.”
“Tell me where the rest of the cards are and I’ll get you out of here.”
Bunny looked up with a jerk, mind racing. “Huh?”
“Where’d you hide the rest of the cards?”
“Get me out of here...and I’ll show you.”
“Not this time, Kensington. You’ve played me enough. Give me the location now, or I’m gone.”
Bunny grimaced. Noose would take the money, his money. He didn’t deserve it. Bunny had planned the entire job. He had dreamed up the ploy to trick the syndicate into giving him the cards. He had taken the risks, the initiative. No one deserved the money but him.
“What’s the answer?” Noose demanded.
Greed and self-preservation battled in Bunny’s mind. He struggled to dream up a plan to get himself out of this without forfeiting his wealth, but in vain. In the end, his life was worthless without the money, and it was his only bargaining chip. Money is everything, especially in the biz.
He shook his head.
Noose stood up. “You just don’t learn, Kensington. I don’t bluff.”
He knelt and collected the cash cards lying in the puddle, the dead man’s switch still in his left hand. He rose and walked away, the gangers clearing a path.
“Noose...don’t…leave me with them,” Bunny begged.
Noose turned back, cigar clenched in his teeth. “You screwed me once too often, Kensington. Don’t worry, you and Urgo will be spending the rest of your life together.”
“No…at least…end it…don’t let him keep…torturing me…”
Noose ignored him but stopped near the gang leader.
“You got a choice here, Urgo. Let me go and keep trying to rip the info from Kensington, or try and stop me. If you stop me, we all die. Decide.”
Urgo sneered down at the dwarf, brow wrinkled, eye twitching.
“I don’t bluff, Urgo.”
“Get outa here, you damn gimli!”
Noose strode past the remaining Fiends, all of them fingering their weapons and looking to Urgo for instructions. He motioned for them to let him pass. All eyes watched as the dwarf made his way up the dilapidated stairway out of the Pit. He topped the steps and disappeared from sight.
“Holy god damn, maggot-sucking bastard!” Urgo swore, screaming and stomping.
“You want we should go after him?” one of the Fiends asked.
Urgo growled. “Are yoush shtupid? We go after him and he blowsh us to Hell!”
The rest of the Fiends moved away from their ranting leader, who finally regained control of himself and returned his attention to the one remaining dwarf in the Pit.
“And you, you piece of crap! I’m going to torture you sho long you’ll think what’s happened sho far was a vacation!”
He raised his knife.
Muffled explosions split the morning air, starting at his left and circling around the entire Pit. His gaze jerked up to the mass of metal beams above him. He saw explosions tear apart the main support girders, and watched as the entire twenty-story structure began to collapse down into the Pit.
The other Fiends screamed in horror.
“You bastard, Noose! We had a deal!” Urgo yelled as tons of rusted iron and steel hurtled downward to form his tomb.
Bunny merely closed his eyes. He never would have guessed Noose to be so merciful.
Dead Dwarves Don't Dance sample