Ruger was on him with all of his terrible force and speed and rage bursting forth. He trampled Val as he leaped at Crow, fists swinging. Ruger knew he had no time or chance to wrestle the gun out of this man’s hand, so he swatted it away, sending it sailing end over end into rain and muddy darkness. It struck the side of the car with a muffled metallic clunk! His forward rush sent Crow tumbling backward, and Ruger rode him down like a surfer setting for a wave. Crow landed on his back and slid, and before the slide had spent itself, Ruger was smashing him with rock-hard fists.
Karl Ruger had only lost one fight in his life. He had been eleven at the time and a sixteen-year-old kid had plain whipped the tar and tears out of him. The teenager had beat him so bad that young Ruger had lain in the street, crying, peeing in his pants, trying to stanch the bright red blood that blossomed from his nose. The older kid had laughed at him and kicked him when he was down, and other kids, most of them older, but some of them his own friends, had watched and laughed.
That was the only fight Ruger had ever lost.
A week later he pushed the sixteen-year-old under the iron wheels of the elevated train, watching with bruised eyes as the bully’s body was torn and reduced to red rags.
Since then, no one had ever beaten Ruger. No one had ever even stood up to him for very long. It was the ferocity of his attack. He went into a fight at full speed, not building to it like most people do. Every blow was backed with a deep knowledge of how to hit, and where, and how to hit hard and fast and often. He’d learned that in South Philly bars, in a dozen jails, in back alleys, and in a score of fights he himself had started just to test himself, to learn how good he was. It mattered to him that he was good enough to survive anything that came down the pike. Anything. If a person stood up to him, no matter how tough, how big, how well armed, Ruger took him down. All the way down. Down to blood and death and closed coffins.
He went after Crow like that, and tonight he had all his frustrations and disappointments boiling inside him, putting more steel in his fists, stoking the fires of his rage.
Crow toppled under him, and Ruger straddled his waist, locking his legs around Crow’s hips for balance, and began the work of beating this man to death. Blood burst from Crow’s eyebrow and nose, his cheek ruptured and tore, and the fists never stopped. They kept hitting and hitting.
Then suddenly Ruger was falling!
Crow had brought his knees up, planting his shoes flat on the muddy ground, and then with all his strength and speed, had arched his back and twisted. Ruger was lifted like a rodeo rider on a bucking bull, and as Crow twisted, Ruger’s weight pitched him sideways. As they fell, Crow balled up his right fist so that the secondary knuckle of his forefinger protruded, and as they landed he punched Ruger once, twice very hard in the very top of his thigh.
The pain was so intense that it made Ruger howl.
Snarling in pain and surprise, Ruger kicked himself free and rolled catlike to his feet, and Crow came up off the ground at him. Crow faked high with both hands as if to tackle Ruger around the middle and then dropped suddenly to one knee and hooked a sharp uppercut into the tender flesh on the inside of Ruger’s thigh, missing his groin by half an inch. Ruger’s leg buckled and twisted, and he went back down.
Crow leaped at him, but Ruger kicked out as he fell and the thick heel of his boot caught Crow in the chest and using his leg like a strut, he threw Crow over his head.
Crow tucked and rolled and was on his feet first, spinning and crouching to face Ruger.
Ruger staggered to his feet, ignoring the pain in his leg. His hands opened and closed, opened and closed as if he were squeezing something that would scream.
Ruger’s eyes narrowed as he moved. Suddenly it had become a different fight. From a murderous attack — the kind of attack that had worked for him so many times in the past — he now found himself in a real fight. Whoever this guy was, he could fight, and in a twisted way Ruger was actually enjoying it.
They circled each other for a few seconds, making tentative half lunges, feinting, dodging half-thrown blows.
It was Ruger who made the move, and he made it as fast as the lightning that lit the sky. He used a variation on Crow’s trick and faked high, then dipped and dove for Crow’s legs. The move was an old favorite of his: wrap the legs just above the knees and bear forward. The poor sap goes down hard on his coccyx with two sprained knees to boot.
Crow stepped into the rush, and as Ruger’s arms closed like a crab’s pincers around his legs, he punched downward in as hard and true a vertical line as a drill press, driving the two big knuckles of his right hand between Ruger’s shoulder blades, dropping all his body weight with it to try and break the man’s back. It was a devastating blow, but the mud was soft and Ruger was hard. Still, the air went out of his lungs for a moment and he tasted mud in his mouth.
Crow stood over him for a moment, chest heaving, heart hammering from fear as much as from exertion. He had never seen anyone move so fast or hit so hard or fight with such animal ferocity. He risked a glance at Val, who was on her knees, one hand massaging her throat, he face slack with dizziness and nausea. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, and even opened his mouth to say something, but Ruger abruptly reached up and punched him right in the balls.
Crow screamed and staggered back, cupping his testicles, yet backpedaling to give himself room.
Ruger got to his feet, covered in mud like a golem, and he smiled with muddy teeth. “I’m going to fuck you up so bad they’ll have to bury you in installments.”
“Talk is cheap, dickhead,” Crow wheezed. His groin felt as if it were on fire.
Ruger hurled a handful of mud at Crow’s face, and followed it with another rush.
Crow was not as hurt as he pretended. A strike to the groin, even a hard one, does little actual damage. It’s just pain, and it is the pain that stops most people, but some people don’t care as much about pain. They know it, they’re used to it; it may not be an old friend, but it is an old companion. Crow was long acquainted with pain, even the pain of a hard punch in the balls. It hurt him, but hurt can be dealt with.
He waited in his half crouch, looking done-in, letting Ruger close the distance, letting Ruger provide the force.
Then he slid in between Ruger’s reaching arms and turned half away, catching one of his arms with one hand, and cupping the back of his neck with the other and then pivoted his body as fast as he could. Ruger’s force, plus the speed and arc of the turn, plucked Ruger right off the ground and sent him flying right into the driver’s door of the big brown Impala. The back of Ruger’s head slammed into it and he rebounded with a grunt, leaving a deep dent in Missy’s door. He slid down to the ground shaking his head, tried to get to his feet, and fell back again against the door, head lolling.
Crow stepped forward and grabbed him by the hair, hauled him ten inches away from the car so he could look at the man’s face, snarled in disgust, and then literally threw him backward into the same dented spot on the fender, ringing his skull off the crumpled metal. Ruger sagged bonelessly to the ground by the tire and lay there in the rain, blood running from his scalp.
Crow looked down at him, watching for signs of trickery. Ruger didn’t flicker so much as an eyelash. Just to be sure, and because his battered face was really starting to hurt like a bastard — and because the dread of this man still turned an icy knife of terror in Crow’s guts — Crow kicked him in the mouth and shattered all of the man’s front teeth.
Ruger fell over sideways, face forward into the mud.
Crow stood there, swaying, feeling his knees wanting to buckle. Fireworks were going off at the corners of his vision and there was something wrong with his head — it felt as if it had been badly broken and poorly taped back together. He wanted to vomit, or collapse. Instead, gasping, holding one hand to his streaming nose, he turned and slogged through the rain and the mud to Val. He swooped down on her, gathering her in his arms, aware of her hurt, her dangling arm, her bruised face, but needing to feel her solidity, her realness in his arms. He showered kisses on her mud-streaked face, kissed her hair and her eyes. She was crying with big, painful sobs, and each one stabbed into Crow as surely as a needle.