Blood Games (7 page)

“But not fighting,” the boy said primly.
“I don’t want Willy fighting.”

“Is he your dad
?” Ink asked with sympathy.

“
Willy?
” The boy burst into laughter and scratched at his head. “No, he’s not my dad! He’s not my uncle either. Mom bought him so I would have some company all day long on the weekends and through the summer. She works three jobs. It’s highway robbery, she says, what babysitters cost. And I’m too
old
for a babysitter. So she got Willy to help me out. Because I’m blind,” he added, like Ink would not have noticed. “But she doesn’t like him. When she’s home, he has to be in my room so she doesn’t have to see him. Once the construction guys forgot to bring him back for two days and she never even noticed he was gone.”

“What kinds of things can he do?” Ink asked.

“He’s good at weights,” the boy said. “You need something heavy moved from here to there, you just let him know. But you have to tell him a couple of times. Not just once. He won’t get that. But he’s smart, real smart for a zombie. The construction guys always tell me how surprised they are at how smart he is. The smartest one they’ve ever seen! He can even hammer a nail. The other zombies they’ve had can’t do that. They just drop the hammer after a few seconds.”

“That’s great.”

“But I remind them every time: never,
ever
take off his headlamp or move the beam out of his eyes. He’ll go crazy on you! So, what kind of project do you have? What’s your name? I’m Billy. Billy and Willy. It rhymes. I did that on purpose.”

“I’m Steven,” Ink lied.
“I’ve got a big property, a very big property that needs a fence in back. It’s got real uneven ground and I don’t want to drive my truck over it to get the boards where they need to go. I’ve got two guys who can nail them up lickety-split, but going back and forth with the boards . . . they aren’t strong enough or fast enough, and they’ll charge me for every minute they’re lollygagging over the pasture.”

“Willy can do that.
Can’t you, Willy?” asked the boy named Billy. “That’s no problem for him. He’s strong as an ox. Do you want him for one day or two?”

“Two would be better,” Ink said.
“Like I said, it’s a big property. Are you sure your mom won’t mind? I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“My mother is not part of this transaction,” the boy said
, his tone and carriage becoming formal. Ink almost laughed at the little blind businessman. “If she notices, which she won’t, it’s my problem. But she doesn’t come into my room when she’s home, and she’s almost never home. She makes me come out if she wants something. Two days is going to cost you one hundred big ones, mister. No personal checks, no credit cards, and I don’t make change or give receipts.”

“I’ve got cash,” Ink said calmly, although he wanted to scream.
He’d clean up this zombie, change his name from Willy to something divine, invent a fighting history and a battle with Samson that would captivate everyone in earshot.

Opening his wallet, he looked in.
Goddamn Nadia! She had sneaked into the spare bedroom while he was asleep and raided his pants. All he had was two one-dollar bills. He pulled them out of his wallet as the kid said, “Your other guys, are they good?”

Ink almost asked what other guys.
“The ones building my fence? They’re good enough, I suppose. Just guys. Why?”

“Because some people
are mean to zombies. They take off the headlamp in a house or field and watch the zombie freak out, run away and shoot him with a tranquilizer gun when they’re tired of running. I don’t want anyone doing that to Willy. He’s my friend. He can’t help it that his brain doesn’t work so good. So he’s to be treated real nice when he’s with you. Respectful. You got to feed him some meat twice a day. He likes hamburger best, the fifteen-percent fat kind. If it rains tonight, put him in a shed or under a porch. Don’t just let the rain fall on him.”

“It’ll break the headlamp,” Ink said.

“Not just that. Willy doesn’t care if the rain falls on him. But I care, and he’s mine. If you mess him up, I’ll mess you up. Denny will get you and he’s a big guy.”

“With hair like a gorilla,” Ink said as a little joke.

Billy didn’t laugh. He wanted to be taken seriously, so Ink took him seriously. Ink counted out the two one-dollar bills into the boy’s palm and said, “Fifty, one hundred. One hundred big ones. If he does the job well, I’ll tack on an extra twenty when I bring him back.”

The boy fingered the bills.
Then he smiled and scratched another place on his head. The skin looked raw there. “All right, Willy, you got a job. Hear that? A job! You be a good zombie and do everything you’re told. Have him back by tomorrow at five, mister. I’ll be waiting.”

“Is that right before your mom gets home?” Ink asked
.

“No
, my mom isn’t home until nine or ten. Sometimes she’s even later than that. Five is when our favorite reality show starts.”

“You and your mom?” Ink asked in confusion.

“Me and Willy! He’s so smart that he can turn on the TV with the remote and change the channel when I say. We like to watch
Ride the Wind
and Mom won’t buy us streaming or even a VCR and blank tape so we can watch it any old time. She hates it. You ever see that show? About the fraternity? It’s Phi Beta Fart House doing their ultimate challenges.” A fart sound whistled through the boy’s lips. “They got a new challenge every week. Last week was beer pong. They played until one guy threw up all over the table. It was awesome.”

Ink bit back the comment that
Billy couldn’t see it, and Willy couldn’t understand it. Taking the zombie’s arm to guide him away, Ink said kindly, “I like that show, too.”

Chapter Three: The Games

On the way home with the two-dollar zombie in the trailer, Ink felt a measure of relief. He wouldn’t have to skip the Games and lose face, or show up with only Scrapper and lose face in a different way. He had a fighter, albeit one that was going to meet a swift end in the ring.

He had to pick a name.
Greek and Roman gods and mythological creatures were the most popular, with a scattered bunch of Indian and Native American and Biblical names thrown in the mix. Sooner or later, there was going to be a ban on Zeus and Hades just like a ban had once been placed on Killer. There were too damn many of them. People into numbers had observed that betting never reached the fever pitch it should between two well-respected fighters if those fighters happened to be named My Personal Hades and Welcome Hades, or some variant of Hades thereof. The names were too similar. Red Hades, Blue Hades, Shady Hades, Hades A-go-go, Hades Lady, Ace of Hades, Hound of Hades, Open Hades, Lacy’s Hades, Bloody Hades, Your Last Hades, Total Hades, it went on and on and those were just the names of current fighters off the top of Ink’s head. Zeus was even more ridiculous in its infinite usages, Ink’s favorite of the pack being the inexplicable Puce Zeus. So he wouldn’t go for either of those. He already had an Apollo, as did a lot of people with pretty boys, and Poseidon had a smaller but still quite common presence. There were dozens of fighters named Jupiter and Mars, many Neptunes like he had once managed, Ceres and Saturn and Lares . . .

Norse gods and goddesses were on the upswing,
but still uncommon enough to garner attention and make the audience whisk out their cell phones to search the online encyclopedia for which one that was. Ink had seen two zombies named Odin at Filo, a Lord Freyr, three who were dubbed Loki, and Gorvich had a Hel. Someone had had a Váli who didn’t survive his first show. Meaning
battle-slain
, it seemed like a jinx of a name. There weren’t going to be too many Váli zombies after that.

And Snotra!
Ink had forgotten all about Snotra, the Norse goddess of wisdom, and her stupid manager who grew exceedingly offended whenever people giggled at the name. The announcer at the Gershwin stadium had broken into laughter every time he had to say it during the melee and the first match. Ink giggled just remembering it.
Snotra.

The name he chose
couldn’t be too obscure, and traffic was moving too quickly for him to read a list of names on his phone. The only one that popped to mind was Thor. A charge ran through him. Thor! Thor had wielded a magic hammer that could smash things to smithereens. People would recognize that name, and Ink couldn’t think of any zombies currently named Thor. No, the only Thor fighter had been over a year ago, his career beginning and ending simultaneously at his very first melee. No one would remember that ill-fated Thor by now.

Oh no, we know who killed Samson.
No mystery at all! It was my newest zombie and what a shock. I set them up to practice together in the rink, turned around for just a second to charge my cell phone, and when I turned back, it was all over. Absolutely vicious, Thor. Samson got him pretty good, you can see from those cuts there, but Thor was calling the shots that day. Since he wanted to get to the Games so badly, I brought him!

Ink would compose and rehearse
a story like that until it was second nature to give it. Nadia would have to do the same. Or she could just sob for sympathy and refer the questioner to Ink. That would be better. Thor was going to die in the melee, just like the original one had, but Ink would have no egg on his face. Accidents happened in training. The electricity had gone out around the Hill in a wild windstorm one evening years ago and the Hodgings lost two good fighters before it came back on. They had invested in a generator after that, as had many others.

Everything was delayed due to Samson’s death, but Ink would catch up.
It would take another two years, four or six even, but he’d build himself back. This was only going to make him stronger. He had to believe it.

He
did
believe it. You only lost when you quit, and he wasn’t quitting. This was his destiny. Fortune, fame, and a permanent seat in the clubrooms at stadiums once his zombie fighter swept the Games . . . he would just keep fighting until he got there.

And he
had saved the lives of Billy and his ignorant mother. A zombie as a friend and servant! A pet and a babysitter! All it would have taken was one swing of that long hair to cover his eyes, an old battery making the light flicker or go out while Mom was at work, and it would have been all over for the blind kid. People didn’t know what the hell they were doing with zombies. But Ink did. The only thing they were good for was fighting. Bypassing the hardware store, he called up the vet and asked her to meet him at the stables. Nadia sent a text just as he hung up with Jackie. She wanted to know if she should bring back Chinese or pizza for dinner.

They had
talked
about this. Or he had talked, and she hadn’t listened. Only on Fridays were they allowed to splurge on take-out from a restaurant. They couldn’t afford to do that every damn day of the week. If he were a bachelor, he wouldn’t have splurged ever. But marriage was about concessions, and he had conceded Fridays to a treat.

It wasn’t enough for her.
It was never enough. She didn’t appreciate the treat of those Fridays; she resented the deprivation on the other six days of the week. If she wanted to go out every night, then she had to get a job and pay for it herself. He wrote a text saying as much while sitting at the longest red light in the world, and received an angry response that she was looking for work.

He knew what
looking
meant. It meant she noticed NOW HIRING signs when she shopped. But she considered herself above jobs like working a cash register or being a receptionist like she had been before. So the job search never got off the ground since she was too good for what was available. Another text came in that announced she had posted a resume online.

That isn’t a job search
, Ink wrote.

All you ever do is criticize!
If I’m only ever going to be wrong in your eyes, why should I do anything?

She never did anything anyway!
The light finally turned green as he typed testily that the refrigerator was packed with food. All they had to do was pitch something into the microwave and warm it up. Then he stopped responding to her texts. Let her order sixty dollars’ worth of food at the pizza place and find out there was only fifty-five bucks in the account.

He got home. The vet arrived just as he was stepping out. She
parked her dirty pick-up behind him and Ink called, “That was fast.”

“I was finishing a job
nearby,” Jackie said. Her pants were equally dirty.

“A horse?” Ink said.
Jackie treated a lot of those. She thought people who had horses were the craziest of all large animal owners, and being the lowest vet on the totem pole at her clinic meant the senior vets shuffled off a lot of crap jobs with weird people onto her.

“
A trek through a pasture to check on a horse reported to be in a bad way.” Kicking mud off her boots, Jackie rolled her eyes. “The receptionist told me
distressed
. I got there and the owner said
depressed
. He’d just retired the horse and moved her from paddock to pasture, and was worried because the old girl didn’t seem to be making friends. The horse was fine. The owner is a kook.” She opened up her toolbox and pulled out a clipboard to fake some papers for Thor. All of the vets did it. There was so little regulation on zombies that paperwork was a joke.

Ink
lifted the back of the trailer and the two of them peeked in. Thor was sitting in the far corner and staring at his light. It was a wonder they didn’t go blind. Going in, Ink got him to his feet and brought him out. Waving her hand in front of her nose, Jackie said, “He needs a hose.” So did the trailer, which reeked of Thor.

They led him into the stables.
Ink hadn’t cleaned up the bloody hay and bits of brain in Samson’s stall yet, and Apollo’s was still a shitty disaster. Hiring a street kid had totally slipped his mind. Walking around to Priapus’ stall, he checked on its state. Zombies didn’t have the sense to use toilets, but Priapus liked to leave his droppings in the same corner. Nor did he track through them. As the vet inspected Thor in the aisle, Ink hustled for the wheelbarrow and shovel. He scooped up the shit and mat of hay underneath and wheeled it outside to the dump pile to deal with later.

Not leaving anything to chance, the vet
was trimming Thor’s bangs. She was breathing out of her mouth by the time the last hairs fell to the floor. “These are definitely fighting scars on his chest and arms. So he does have a history in unofficial rings, and a successful history.”

“How do you know that?” Ink said, mystified.

“He’s alive,” Jackie said, and that should have been obvious to him. This fighter had just been wasting away in front of a television set in Venice! As they peeled off Thor’s torn, crusty clothes and began to wash him off, Ink felt better and better about his purchase. This zombie was
very
well built. He’d put up a solid fight in the melee before going down.

First though, they had to clean out the caked shit on his ass, and apply
balm to his irritated skin. The vet swung his dick and balls around to get every last inch of him clean and medicated. There were more scars on Thor’s back from a whip. So he had been in armed combat. Those didn’t last too long. Even the zombies who could hold and use weapons usually dropped them within minutes to attack each other with bare hands and teeth.

And speaking of teeth, Thor’s
were a mess. The vet winced at their state and said, “These haven’t been brushed in years. If they ate sugar, their teeth would be even worse off. How often do you brush yours?”

“Twice a day,” Ink said.
“Sometimes three if lunch is messy.”

“No
, not
yours
. Do I look like your dentist? I don’t give a shit about yours. Your zombies’ teeth?”

“Every Wednesday and Sunday night,
just like you said.”

“Good.
Do that with him, too. And
floss
. People pay so much damn money for dentistry that a little extra care a week would save.” She squinted at the zombie’s hair. “Lice. Lice everywhere. Save the time and energy and money and just shave him. Throw out those clothes; don’t try to save them.” Since the lights overhead were so bright, she took off the headlamp and gave it to Ink. Thor stared up to the ceiling.

Ink hadn’t been planning to put those stained clothes in his washing machine.
They were getting chucked in the burn pile. Nor had he planned to treat Thor’s hair. Why bother? He’d be dead in the ring very, very soon.

The vet put sheets of newspaper on the floor and placed a chair on top of them.
After repeating the order to sit twice, Thor got a clue and sat in the chair to have his head shaved. Ink would roll the paper up around the hair and add that to the burn pile. Maybe he would sprinkle a few of those lice in Scrapper’s hair first. Nadia would piss herself to find them, and shit herself to catch them. No, Ink wouldn’t do that. It risked spreading lice around to everyone, and he couldn’t bear the thought of shaving Medusa’s long hair. Most female fighters had medium length to long hair, and the shorthaired ones rarely became fan favorites. Maenad had dreadlocks down to her ass. Nor did Ink want to spend hours washing his zombies’ hair with medicated shampoo, combing out the little buggies, and checking for eggs. The papers would dutifully go to the pile and he’d mop down the aisle with bleach.

While the vet shaved
the zombie, Ink tidied up the stall. Fresh hay, fresh water, a clean bowl for meat mash, a new beef-scented vitamin lick, everything was set up nicely. Thor was only going to live here for a few days, but no one could ever say that Ink Delwich didn’t treat his zombies well. They were his worth. Managers who escorted filthy, half-starved zombies covered in fleabites to the stadium . . . well, people noticed that, and not for the right reasons.

After Thor was shaved and had had his toenails and fingernails trimmed, his teeth brushed and flossed, they gave him another wash.
A bad odor still clung to him faintly, having been growing for so long in his unwashed skin that he was saturated in it. Jackie mumbled to herself
twenty-five to thirty years old, I think,
and he’s had extensive dental work from before.
From before he had been infected, the virus either waltzing past his vaccine undaunted or finding him free of it. No one would drop serious cash on fixing a zombie’s teeth, even if that zombie was his or her own family unless they were very wealthy.

The vet shined her light into Thor’s mouth to show a little bit of cement on his teeth.
The guy had had braces at some point. There was a tiny dot on the lobe of his left ear, testimony to an earring in the past. Everything had healed on the inside, but the pucker of the scar was still there. Braces made it seem like Thor had made it to his early teens before he got infected; the earring made Ink think late teens.