Red Man (The Weapon Book 2) by Richard Fox

Author:Richard Fox [Fox, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2024-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

“Cor-Cor… Corrida!”

The chant echoed off speakers surrounding a small stadium deep in Durango Cartel territory. Drunks and otherwise chemically altered men chanted along with the broadcasts as they meandered their way toward the stadium.

Norman Standish ignored offers from drug pushers and prostitutes as he walked down the middle of a closed street. He turned an empty pocket out when a kid with peach fuzz across his upper lip blocked his path, holding up two sealed plastic baggies with rotgut alcohol inside. Bottles weren’t allowed into the Corrida, as they had a bad habit of being thrown into the arena and disrupting the show.

The kid gave him a disgusted look and shook his head, then rushed toward the next potential customer.

Norman wasn’t against a stiff drink, he just couldn’t afford one. He couldn’t afford anything.

“Fiki fiki five silvies,” a young woman waved at him from the window of a brothel. More women of various ethnicities were in other windows; some looked more excited to work than others.

The setting sun cued a sense of urgency for Norman, as Pumpkin Time was universal throughout the NGZ. Buildings around the Corrida were linked to the stadium through wide cattle chutes. The Durangos promised entertainment of all sorts from dusk till dawn when the Corrida was open, and anyone who bought a ticket to get in could leave the stadium and venture into a variety of different buildings offering every vice most people could think of and others Norman didn’t want to consider. The Durangos did what they could to tamp down violence and threats to anyone at the Corrida, though stray bullets were known to end a good time rather abruptly. Anyone causing too much trouble—which meant interfering with the Cartel making money—had a bad habit of becoming part of the entertainment for everyone else.

It wasn’t like anything inside the NGZ was illegal, and the Cartel didn’t give a damn about what was ethical or not. That the Corrida opened on payday for the Cartel’s soldiers and suppliers wasn’t a coincidence.

“Cor-Cor… Corrida!”

Norman stepped over a body lying in the gutter, a needle still in the woman’s arm, and looked for Gate 14. The gates ran around the Corrida, all manned by cartel soldiers. Pat-downs were thorough, and anyone dumb enough to bring a weapon to the gate had it stolen by the guards. Same with any Ubis or recording devices. The cartel had anti-Ubi (or other similar device) sensors all over the gates. If the guards didn’t take the Ubis when they found them, hack pulses would cause the batteries to malfunction and explode wherever the smugglers hid them on their person. It took a few people going up in flames for everyone else to take the hint and leave their devices at home.

One goldie for a whole night’s worth of what passed for entertainment in the NGZ was something of a bargain, though the price for everything else inside the Corrida was on par with buying a soda at an international terminal back when civilian airliners still flew over the Pacific Ocean.

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