Kung Fu High School (26 page)

Maria was doing her best not to look disturbed. After all, she trusted in her thick boots and armor. Jimmy was barefoot and in gym clothes. Advantage her, with all the broken bulb glass on the slippery plastic of the mat. Just as her eyes were nearly adjusted to the new low level of light, Jimmy stepped out from the darkness behind her, right in front of the exit doors. He pushed. They did not open. He pushed harder. Nothing happened.

Maria turned and smiled. She didn't need to angle her neck to the leftover light so that it would hit the key that dangled on a chain there. Like silver. Jimmy knew she had it. Removing a kinfé from his right forearm, he straightened his body, and tore one sleeve away from his T-shirt, using it to wrap over the wound, below the elbow, nice and tight. He dropped the kinfé, the one stained with his blood, onto the mat beside him, then nodded.

Maria rushed toward him, pushing the pace. She started with a jab that hit Jimmy's blocking forearm like a ton of bricks. He stumbled backward and quickly decided not to block with his hurt forearm. But Maria was on top of him, keeping her punches tight and not swinging wildly: a thundering hook to his body, a jab toward his jaw that caught his shoulder, an uppercut that caromed off his collarbone and just missed his chin. He slumped to all fours on the floor. She backed off looking confident, not wanting to end it too early, still a bit afraid of his capabilities. Never had she thought it would be so easy.

"Get up!" she said, feeling the rush of power in beating up on an opponent that was supposedly superior.

"Get up!" She yelled it this time.

Jimmy was on his knees on the edge of the lit circle, holding himself up by his unwounded arm and crouching.

"Get up!"

Maria was becoming impatient. If he didn't get up, she'd hit him while he was down. She didn't care.

Slowly, Jimmy raised himself up to his full height. Even in the dim light, Maria could see the tremendous bloodstain spread across his chest, completely blotting out the red cougar on his yellow shirt. She hadn't hit him that hard, she thought. But Maria's pleasant feeling of surprise turned into a sinking thing, a lump in her throat dropping down to the growing burning in the lining of her stomach, for in his other hand, Jimmy dangled the key on its chain. Maria touched her neck for confirmation but she knew it was gone. She was feeling strangely light-headed. When she looked down, the sight of two kinfés sticking out of her stomach was not surprising. Though she did wonder, how did they go right through Kevlar and miss the trauma plate? Not that it mattered. In fact, it didn't even feel like her body as she fell to her knees then over onto her side, crushing her outline into the mat with a crinkly thump.

Looking at Maria's motionless body, Jimmy shook his head. He hadn't thrown the kinfés, but he'd pushed them in. It was his fault. She'd rushed him with those pointy things sticking out of her. All that armor must've dulled it at first. That, or made her feel impervious. He couldn't dwell on it though. He had to go or he'd be next. Unlocking the double doors, Jimmy kicked them open and threw a star above him to break the remaining light in the wrestling room.

More fighters were waiting outside when the double doors opened, but they didn't dare go into a dark room. Two got pushed forward by the others. To check it out. They caught stars in their ribs and turned screaming, showering the air with bloody droplets, just as Jimmy bounded out of the room like a free tiger. Staying low along the landing, he broke through the group and leaped off the balcony and high over the lobby. He landed atop the tallest trophy case, a huge oak thing that stood at least fifteen feet tall.

Balancing easily, he turned just in time to see one kid stupid enough to make the leap after him. Too bad the kid didn't jump far enough. Jimmy didn't even need to kick out at the poor bastard as he slid through the air and hit the hard tile with a sickening open fracture of a splat. He started moaning and Jimmy jumped down to the top of the soft-drink machine to the right of the trophy case and then shimmied over the stairway rail to the front of the gym lobby, the main entrance to the building.

Two kids coming in through the front doors took up fighting positions but that didn't distract Jimmy from the Blade behind him, jumping a high kick toward him off the top of the soft-drink machine. Poor timing really. Because Jimmy grabbed his leg in midair, ducked, and slung the Blade over his head like a bowling ball still in its handle bag right into the two kids near the door. Picked up a spare on the 3/10-pin combination.

No time to gloat though. Three Runners were almost on top of him. One kicked at Jimmy, missed, and ended up round-housing the plate glass of the trophy case right out. The rectangular pane wobbled, then split in a huge "V," the top half coming down like a guillotine, hitting the floor and spreading out in shards like a wave hitting the beach with mostly sea foam at high tide. Unbalanced by the force of the blow, the stuffed cougar mascot tumbled from its perch among the trophies and onto the floor. So Jimmy kicked it in the flank and it spun on the slick floor, sending chunks of glass skittering across the tile in the process. The still-sharp claws of the outstretched paw mauled one of the Runners in the leg. It stunned him just long enough that he wasn't able to block the trophy coming at him. He got clocked with a 1978 Division 4A Cross-Country Fields Cup Trophy, at right about Lucerne in the countryside of Switzerland above his ear.

In my experience, the best way to take leg fighters is just to step up and use good old front-foot boxing on them. Get in tight, use solid body control and footwork, back off from the low kicks and push in when they kick high but watch out for the knockout blows. Of course, it helps when they're focused on Jimmy and don't see you coming so you bring down a vicious rabbit punch on two of them and they turn only to get kicked by Jimmy from behind.

See, I came from the quad side into the gym entrance. And I brought a whole army in behind me. We couldn't go back out those doors and we didn't need to speak. I led. We had to take the five stairs down and to the right, cut left around the drink machine, in front of the other huge oak trophy case and head for the indoor swimming pool because its chemical-soaked exit doors were the only things that connected the gym building to the main building. Then all we had to do was go through the cafeteria and make a decision, either back out into the quad, to the original meeting position about an hour too early, or up the stairs and into the classrooms. Either way, those were our only hopes of finding Melinda.

As luck would have it, our path to the swimming pool side door was blocked by seven kids looting the concession stand. They'd already lifted five or six boxes of candy out from underneath the roll-down black metal security gate. Somehow, they'd managed to wedge it up and now the thinnest girl I'd ever seen was trying to push out a cylindrical container of soda, but it was stuck in the maw of that stingy gate. She must've been the only one tiny enough to squeeze through the hole and empty the concession stand from the inside. A bailing line of sorts had been formed and the kids would pass a box of candy from arm to arm like buckets of water before the last guy dumped the box into a big plastic trash can with no liner that was obviously meant to carry all the boxes together for a quick getaway.

Deer in headlights, that's how every single one of them looked when they saw me with my busted hands and Jimmy with his blood-spattered T-shirt, shorts, and bare, cut-up feet. Bound to happen, I guess. Rogues just trying to help themselves out, taking advantage of the chaos and not following the plan. Which would've been fine if not for the fact that they stopped midlooting, dropped boxes, and decided to roll on us. And with at least thirty guys immediately behind us, turning around wasn't an option. So I cut right, down the narrow hallway.

We'd get to the pool the back way, down the hall and out through the locker room. We'd have to. Contingency plans were running short and there were no more exits. I was already looking behind me when I flew around the corner, setting myself to slam the huge black door behind us so it would lock automatically and we could pick our way through the locker room carefully instead of having to sprint with more kids on our tail. Of course, I hadn't planned on catching a hard shot to the shoulder that spun me, sending me hard into the wall. I crumpled. Felt like someone had opened up my shoulder blade like a car's hood, stuffed a burning coal inside, then slammed it shut so I couldn't pull it out. It just smoldered.

It was Jimmy that shut the door instead. I heard the click as I pushed myself to my feet and saw Donnie K. standing there. Mr. Big Bad Runner flexing his shoulders, stretching his neck. Like he'd been waiting a real long time.

"Snuck up on me last time," he said, resetting his body from the vicious shot he just put on me. "Was long past time for a little JB on that ass."

Big Paybacks are called James Browns at Kung Fu, JBs for short. He must've meant to kick Jimmy, but one was just as good as the other to Donnie. Only problem was, he just made Jimmy mad. Usually, Mr. Humble Little Farm Boy respected his opponents. He honored them, did not humiliate them, never crushed them. But I could see it in his eyes when he put the soft edge of his hand on my arm and pushed me behind him: Donnie was going to get crushed. I felt a surge of cruel excitement that gave me goose bumps on the parts of my skin that weren't torn or bruised.

The banging sounds on the other side of the door had stopped and the hallway was dead quiet. That meant two things: the looters were probably back harvesting candy bars and the other thirty or so kids chasing us had split in two, fifteen to watch the door I was leaning against, while the other fifteen headed through the pool-side door and backtracked through the locker rooms to catch us in this very hallway. Whatever Jimmy was going to do, he needed to do it real fast.

"D'ya know that I couldn't even move my hands to eat until yesterday because of what ya did? I dare ya to fight me without that paralysis magic-trick shit." Donnie was wrecked out of his mind. He had to be. Nobody sane or sober would call out Jimmy Chang and expect to lead a normal life with a functioning body afterward. Donnie'd been lucky and he didn't even realize it So Jimmy walked out to the middle of the hallway and Donnie backed off to the end, blocking our only exit: the boys' locker room.

The other thing that Donnie didn't realize was that the extremely narrow hallway favored jimmy because Donnie's leg-fighting style had much less room to maneuver. Should've picked a better venue. There'd be no roundhouses. No dragon kicks. Only straightforward stuff. But, although the hallway was narrow, it didn't feel cramped. The ceiling was real high, about twenty feet off the floor. The redbrick walls extended all the way to the top, pinching in along the white paneled ceiling.

It was Donnie that started it. Kicking furiously with high-low-high combos, he brought his kicks in faster than I've ever seen them: left, right, left, right, but every time he aimed for Jimmy and then slung a leg shot at him, Jimmy wasn't there. He'd already moved out of the way. The foot came left, Jimmy was right, the foot came right, Jimmy was left, every time. Jimmy didn't block a single kick. He didn't have to. Not a single one came close to hitting him.

Jimmy crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. Mimed a yawn. That just pissed Donnie off worse. He came even harder. He got up on his standing leg and continued with a flurry led by his right foot, as he hopped forward and unleashed a series of hard high kicks at Jimmy's head. But each time Donnie kicked, Jimmy would move his head just enough to avoid them, then he'd sneak in the quickest of movements, and pinch Donnie's calf hard. Like Mr. Miyagi catching flies with chopsticks.

I didn't even see them, just heard Donnie getting madder and more out of control, grunting and cussing, heard the strained movements of his clothing whipping about. So he kicked harder and each time he did, he got a pinch on the calf, a horse bite. He wasn't smart enough to realize that Jimmy was degrading his muscle strength, that eventually he wouldn't be able to lift his legs higher than his waist because of the bruising and blood rush. Like getting a real gradual dead leg instead of all at once.

By the time Donnie was breathing heavily, Jimmy had jumped a foot up the walls. He was spread-eagled across the narrowness of the hallway, holding himself up with an arm and leg each on the opposite walls. Donnie fell for the bait. He kicked the wall where Jimmy's right hand was, but Jimmy moved it up, so Donnie brought the same foot left but missed again, crashing his foot hard against the wall. When he saw he had no chance of catching one of Jimmy's hands, Donnie kicked out at Jimmy's unprotected torso but Jimmy went from vertical to horizontal on the walls faster than I've ever seen a human being move, like he was defying gravity.

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would've sworn it was impossible the way he jumped and kicked his back legs out to new positions on the walls above, and his whole body was completely vertical, so that Donnie's foot flew past him by a few centimeters and I saw Jimmy's shorts ripple from the air created by the power of the kick. So stupid Donnie kept kicking. Back and forth like a pendulum at Jimmy's hands and feet, trying to bring him down, probably breaking his toes and mangling his heel but never once getting close. Jimmy just crab-walked up the walls, higher and higher until Donnie was jump kicking high above his head, missing all of Jimmy and getting slower and slower. If Jimmy was the fisherman, Donnie was the marlin and he'd fought his fight. He was done.

So, as amusing as it was to watch Jimmy utterly humiliate Donnie, I knew we didn't have much more time before fifteen guys streamed right through the locker room entrance and cluttered up all the fighting space in the hall like hair in a drain.

"Jimmy, we gots to go!" I yelled, and my words echoed off the high walls. Apparently, it was the only signal he needed.

Donnie was hunched over, hands on his knees and breathing too hard when Jimmy sucked his arms and legs in and collapsed into a freefall of easily ten feet. But just above Donnie's head, Jimmy brought his hands together and behind his own head in what we at Kung Fu would call a preacher's punch, dropped his legs to a more vertical position as he slammed both fists down onto the top of Donnie's back as one, not very hard because he was arching backward and bringing his legs back to horizontal, already a goddam one-hundred-eighty-degree turn in midair, just as Donnie felt the preacher punch and stood straight up.