Without Purpose, Without Pity by Brian Hodge

Author:Brian Hodge [Hodge, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: DarkFuse
Published: 2012-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I’d always tended to divide humanity into the monsters and the rest of us, and that while monsters were usually made, not born, they were made early. Now, though, it seems worth wondering if there isn’t a monster inside each of us, just waiting to come out. I would never have thought so before, but Darius Thurman changed that.

He wanted to fight, and had all along, but by the time he got it, the match wasn’t going to be against anybody he knew, or even knew of. It wasn’t going to be against anyone who had any legitimate business stepping in with him at all. Not surprisingly, since they’d seen him training to regain control over his reshaped body and its still-escalating mass, none of the heavyweights from Nolan’s Gym wanted anything to do with him. Even if they had, Isaak wouldn’t have let them.

If you’re fool enough to want that, he would’ve told them, you can get yourself out from under my roof and find a new trainer, cause I’m not gonna waste my time putting what little brains you got back in your head for you.

Other fighters, from other boxing-centered gyms? No. Nobody. At least not from any camp Isaak knew of, under a trainer he respected. Word spreads at the speed of fear. For all I knew, Isaak had gone under the radar and sent notice to every trainer still around from the old days, with heavyweights who would’ve otherwise jumped at the chance to fight Darius: Do NOT let your man get into the ring with him. That’s not a thing I want on my conscience when I go to meet my maker, and if you care about your fighter, it’s nothing you want on yours, neither.

But you can’t know everybody, and even if you do, there’s no talking sense into some of them. There are always the ones you can’t teach, wannabe boxers and combat sport washouts who don’t want to listen. There’s always the toughest guy in the bar or at the backyard barbecue who thinks he can stand with a pro. Las Vegas would never run out of guys like that. Assholes, morons, and cockroaches…come what may, these would be the last lifeforms left.

And among them were guys who couldn’t wait to fight Darius.

Las Vegas still had the rudiments of a fight commission, and they made it happen, but they were more creative now. Alongside legit matches that still resembled what they used to be, the commissioners were willing to entertain the idea of spectacles that hearkened back to old-time carnival brawls and the arenas of the Roman Empire.

Fighting Darius Thurman one-on-one? Hardly seemed fair, did it?

But three-on-one? Now you’re talking.

You and all the rest of the city.

Bread and circuses, they called it in Rome. The cheap, easy buyoff to a people that used to deserve better.

And when the bread has gone stale, you better have a great circus.

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