Outlive (The Baggers Trilogy, #1) (21 page)

             
Hailey finally lost it. Her hands were trembling and she turned to Mobb and screamed: “
SHUT UP!”
A string of saliva ran from her bottom lip to her upper lip. Her scream was throaty and primitive, full of rage.

             
The smile dropped off of Mobb’s face. “Oh, sugar. Oh, sugar.” His voice was low. People at tables all around were watching him. If Mobb Harvey hated anything, it was being embarrassed. “I’m going to knock your pretty teeth out of your bitch ass mouth. C’mere!” He reached for her. His arms were longer than other peoples’, which was one of the reasons for his tremendous success in the boxing ring. Harvey almost reached the back of Hailey’s hair, but she leaned forward just in time. He grabbed the back of her chair and yanked it toward the bars, but she leapt out of it and onto the table, crying and spilling water, wine and food. She tried to pull her skirt down; down on her knees, it was very revealing.

             
“Stupid bitch,” Mobb said, and people gasped as he began to climb up the rods of the gate that enclosed the Boxers. For a man of his size, Mobb’s agility was counter-intuitive. He climbed with the ease of a chimpanzee, using only his arms. People shouted for him to get down. The rods swayed beneath his weight of two hundred and thirty pounds; not only was he bigger than Baggs, but he was leaner, too. Word spread among the crowd, and soon everyone in both the stadium seating and at the dinner tables were looking up at Mobb; some faces wore bored expressions, some were excited, some seemed apprehensive, but none of them went to get help.

             
They’ll let him beat her,
Baggs realized. He looked at Hailey Vixen, still sobbing on the table. She appeared to weigh no more than one hundred twenty pounds.
Mobb might even be allowed to kill her. Byron Turner probably wouldn’t mind having her replaced with someone bigger.

             
Mobb Harvey got to the top and began to roll over the bars into the Boxer’s cage.
Please fall, please fall and break your cocky back,
Baggs thought. But Harvey didn’t fall. Even drunk, he was extremely graceful. He made it over the top and then began to slide down on the inside with ease. Instinctually, all of the Boxers stood up and huddled in one corner to get away from the man; Hailey Vixen scooted off the table and filed in with her teammates. Harvey’s eyes were alight with a mixture of anger and pleasure.

             
Harvey made it to the ground. “Give me the whore and no one gets hurt,” he said. He was smiling.
I don’t think he wants us to give up so easily. I think that he wants a fight.

             
People began to chant around the room, “Harvey, Harvey, Harvey!”

             
He waved at the crowd and they whistled and cheered some more.

             
Baggs thought,
would it be worth it to try to defend her?
Baggs was certainly no match for an athlete like Harvey, but maybe he could fight him off long enough for help to arrive. Baggs looked around. It didn’t look like anyone
would
help.

             
“Give me the whore,” Harvey said again. He took a fighter’s stance and began to step towards the huddled Outlive contestants. His eyes were red; his words were slurred. He was drunk with alcohol and in intolerable rage at being talked back to by a
whore!

             
“Back off!” Hailey Vixen yelled, and Harvey zeroed in on her. He took four steps, pushed through the crowd of Boxers, and grabbed her by the hair. He threw her onto the table, back first, and began to climb on top of her, still smiling. The crowd loved this course of events. Harvey grabbed Hailey’s top, despite her screaming protests, and ripped it in half so that she was now partly exposed. He was laughing. She kept screaming and the crowd kept cheering.

             
Baggs felt sick.

Hailey’s eyes rolled in her head, looking around at the crowd. With the big man on top of her, pinning her down, she looked like a caged animal. Sweat glistened on her forehead. Tears ran down her cheeks. “HELP! HE-ELP!” she cried.

Without thinking about the consequences, or the Choke that was tightly wrapped around his neck, Baggs acted. He picked up one of the upholstered wooden chairs, held it high above his head, and brought it crashing down atop Mobb Harvey. A leg struck the back of the man’s head and cracked in half. Baggs thought that the blow would knock Harvey out. He was wrong. Harvey turned and sneered at him.

“Really, bitch?” Harvey said to Baggs. His diamond earrings sparkled in the light. So did his eyes.

Baggs thought about his Choke, and wondered why the security guards hadn’t used it to subdue him yet.
They probably think that Harvey can handle me.
Baggs tended to agree.

Someone in one of the tables below shouted, “Kill ‘im, Harvey!” Someone else shouted: “Teach him a lesson!”

The drunken athlete sprang off the table and was on his feet in front of Baggs. Harvey’s hands were as big as Baggs’s; Baggs had never encountered anyone else with such big hands. Harvey’s hands were lean and heavy with tight skin running over hard bone and muscle.

Harvey shifted his weight to punch Baggs in the face, but Baggs was ready for it. Adrenaline ran through him. Everything was in slow motion. Harvey’s left hand came soaring up towards Baggs’s chin, and Baggs put up his forearm to block the punch. Harvey’s left was an inch from connecting with Baggs’s forearm when something unexpected happened. The fist stopped in midair. Baggs had one slow moment of confusion and then realized,
It was a fake punch.
The realization came too late. The world-class right hook was a quick blur in his peripheries before slamming into his face with the force of a train. Baggs’s head snapped backward, and for a moment, everything was a blur.

I’m fighting a heavyweight-boxing champion,
Baggs thought.
And he’s going to make me pay for antagonizing him.

Three punches came up to Baggs’s stomach as fast as bullets from a machine gun. Baggs flexed his abdominal muscles, but it did little good. The wind was knocked out of him, and a searing pain radiated all the way to his back.

             
This is bad, this is bad.

             
If he’s this quick when he’s drunk, what must it be like to fight him when he’s sober?

             
Then came an uppercut to Baggs’s face. Again, his head snapped back. His nose ran with blood like it was a faucet. Harvey laughed and took a few steps backwards, readying himself for another flurry of punches.

             
Baggs had never fought someone so formidable. He looked over at his teammates, huddled in the corner by the bars. Hailey was in the middle of them, holding her ripped dress up so that it covered her body. Larry had his hand over his mouth and looked sick.
Maybe he doesn’t like blood,
Baggs thought. Baggs’s nose was leaking substantially, and a small puddle was forming on the floor.
It’s broken,
he thought. Tonya Wolf, the murderer, still held an impassive look on her face, except there was now a twinkle of something different in her eyes—
excitement, maybe? She did say that she liked blood.
At the tables below, men, women and children alike were enthralled in the unexpected entertainment.
They thought they wouldn’t get to see me injured for an entire week. It’s sick, but they probably feel lucky.
Baggs scanned the perimeter of the bottom floor. There was a group of police officers in the corner, their eyes hidden by dark visors. They did not move. They leaned against the back wall, enjoying the entertainment like everyone else.

             
Baggs felt the surge of adrenaline wearing off. He was only able to utilize his peculiar, hormone-fueled strength for a short time, and then his body was tired. His arms felt heavy; his knees wobbled. He looked at Harvey, wondering what he could possibly do to avoid serious injury.
How long will they let him punch me?
Baggs wondered.
Until I’m dead? Until my brain is bleeding? Will Tessa still get to keep the money if I die here instead of on the sand in the Colosseum?

             
Harvey took a step forward. He had a classic boxer’s-stance—elbows cocked, shoulders back, knees slightly bent and one foot in front of the other.
That’s it,
Baggs thought.
He’s a boxer. He’s not a fighter, he’s a boxer.
That was all he had time to think before the punches began to come fast and hard.

             
Baggs’s plan was to assail Harvey with attacks that would be considered illegal in a boxing ring. He hoped that Harvey would be taken off-guard and not know how to respond. He feared that Harvey would respond with cheap shots of his own, perhaps stomping on Baggs’s head until it burst open in a spray of blood and brains.

             
Harvey faked left again and then punched right. Baggs took a shot to the nose and the pain was incredible, unthinkable. He couldn’t stand it. His eyes filled with tears and his body surged with hate and rage.
Stop hitting me! You started this! You were going to rape the girl!

             
Baggs gave a fake jab of his own. The punch flew towards Harvey’s face and the athlete jerked back to juke away from the blow. But it never came. Baggs pulled his fist in, bent his knees, and jumped as hard as he could, thrusting his knee heavily into Harvey’s groin.

             
Harvey’s face contorted into expressions of confusion and pain. Baggs wasn’t done. Using all two hundred pounds of his body, he did a second dirty move. This one, like the knee to the groin was illegal in boxing rings and in mixed martial arts arenas for how devastating it was. He brought his heel down in a vicious stomp on Harvey’s left foot. Stomping on someone’s foot is perversely devastating; the bones that run through the area are thinner than the bones in chicken legs. They crack easily, and the effect is mind-numbingly painful. As Baggs brought his foot down, he was thankful for the hard, square heal in his shoe. He stomped as hard as he could. Harvey, who was still in shock from the knee to his groin, was in no position to defend the next surprise attack. The foot came down and Baggs heard and felt bones break. The impact sent a jarring sensation up his own leg.

             
The heavyweight-champion collapsed onto his knees, unable to support his weight on his broken foot. As that happened, Baggs thought he was lucky for three reasons. One: Harvey was drunk—none of this would be possible if he wasn’t drunk. Two: Baggs had not drunk alcohol. Three: Harvey hadn’t thought that Baggs would play dirty. If they both started off taking illegal shots at one another, Baggs would have surely lost.

             
As Harvey came to his knees, Baggs saw the man’s eyes. They said,
I’m going to kill you. I’m not going to stop until you’re dead.

             
Baggs felt his Choke tighten quickly on his neck.
Perhaps the security guards now think that there is an issue.
He knew that the robot would soon issue some kind of punishment to subdue him—it would either cut his head off, shock him, or inject him with a sedative. Baggs remembered that Caballas said that they don’t like to kill Outlive competitors.
They probably won’t want to kill me; by fighting one of the best boxers in the world in front of all these people, I’ve made it so that everyone will want to see me compete in the Colosseum.

             
Baggs concluded that they would either shock him, or inject him with sedative, which was somewhat good, because it meant that he would not die instantly. However, once he fell unconscious, Mobb Harvey would have a few minutes with Baggs’s limp body to deliver sick blows of revenge. Baggs looked down at Harvey’s hate-filled eyes and knew that he had about one more second to deliver a knockout blow.
If I don’t, there’s a real chance that he’ll kill me.

             
Baggs used another tactic that was illegal in cage fighting—a knee to the face. The knee joint is as hard and thick as a baseball bat, and when driven up, a human Baggs’s size can get enough force behind the joint to kill someone.
I hope my girls don’t see this,
Baggs thought.

             
He crouched, coiled his big leg muscles, and then straightened his whole body like a spring, driving his knee into Mobb Harvey’s exposed face. He felt the face crumple beneath the blow. The boxer’s head rocked back so violently that Baggs wondered if he broke the man’s neck. Harvey fell to the floor, clearly unconscious.

             
Then, Baggs’s choke took action to subdue him. Baggs had been wrong in assuming that the device would either shock him or sedate him. It did both.

             
First, it shocked him. Baggs felt his neck flex and all the muscles in his torso lock up in painful convulsions. He stood still, frozen by the volts of electricity that coursed through his body before collapsing to the floor.

             
Then, he felt the injection. It felt like a bee sting and went straight into the right side of his neck. Whatever the medication was, it worked surprisingly fast. He felt his neck go numb first, and then the world began to gray around him.