Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within (2 page)

With his arm stretched out straight, caught between my legs and hands with my hips threatening to dislocate his elbow, he had no choice but to grit his teeth and tap out. Tap or snap, as my old sensei used to say. Not that I would have actually finished the technique and broken Sanchez’s arm, but I could have if I’d wanted to.

I released the hold, rolled away, and stood up. Sanchez ignored the hand I extended to him, the wooden brown of his face darkening into an angry shade of purple, and got to his feet.

“Again,” he said.

“Again, what?” I challenged, glaring.

He glared back for a few heartbeats. “Again,
sir
.”

I motioned for him to step back, and he fell into a stance.

“Go.”

The word was barely out of my mouth before he was on me again. The second bout went even quicker than the first; the kid was pissed off and making dumb mistakes. My own temper began heating up at his recklessness, and I started turning up the pressure, hitting him harder and using my strength to my advantage.

It was frustrating—I had taught him better than this, and he should have been able to put up a better fight. He knew not to let his temper get the best of him, but he was letting it happen anyway. As the round went on, he continued to fight well below his potential, so I continued to make him pay for it.

All too soon, Gabe blew the whistle. I had taken Sanchez’s back and was applying a chokehold when the round ended. The kid glared sullenly when I reached down to help him up, but this time, he took my hand.

“Listen, man, you have got to get that temper under control,” I said as I hauled him to his feet. “I know you can fight better than that. I’ve seen you do it.”

He paused, searching my face for sincerity. After a moment, he let out a sigh and ran a hand through his dark hair.

“
Tienes razon, seńor. Disculpa
.” 

I shook my head. “Apologies won’t keep you out of a pine box, Sancho. Get it together.”

He nodded tersely, glancing up. “You’re bleeding, sir. Want me to get a medic?”

Just as he said it, I felt something drip out of my nose. My hand came away red.

“No, don’t worry about it.” I waved him away. “I’ve had worse.” 

As he jogged away to get some water, I pulled a tissue from my shirt pocket and ripped it in half, stuffing the two pieces into my nostrils. Gabe came over to check on me while I pinched my nose to stop the bleeding.

“You all right?” he rumbled.

I nodded and jerked a thumb toward Sanchez. “I’m fine. We need to work on his ground game.”

Gabe glanced in his direction, frowning. “There’s no time. We only have three more months to train, and weapons and tactics are more important right now. Just do the best you can.”

The big man patted me on the shoulder and walked back to the Grinder, hustling recruits along as he went. My nose didn’t start leaking when I pulled the tissues out, so I figured I was good for another round and called out to Flannigan. The blond spitfire looked at me, touched knuckles with someone she had been talking to, and began jogging in my direction.

A former marathoner, Flannigan was quite possibly the most physically fit person I had ever met. Her remarkable endurance, paired with a sharp mind and a relentless appetite for training, had quickly made her one of my favorite students. She stood a little taller than Sanchez, albeit with a much lighter build, and had short hair that stood out at odd angles, framing her freckled, oval face.

“I got you figured out, sir,” she said with a smile as she took her stance opposite me. “You’re going down.”

I fought the urge to smile, and kept my expression neutral. “Don’t sing it, recruit. Bring it.”

The whistle blew, and for a couple of minutes, I began to wonder if Flannigan’s bravado was just her way of psyching up for the fight. Things certainly weren’t going any better for her than they had for Sanchez. But unlike the fiery Mexican, rather than getting frustrated when I caught her in a choke (and it was always a choke; I hate hitting girls), she seemed to learn a little something, always making the next bout harder for me than the last. Even so, I wasn’t having too much trouble handling her. I relaxed and trusted my long-ingrained technique to carry the fight.

And, as is usually the case, that was when I screwed up.

When I stepped into an outside reap that I had taken her down with many times before, Flannigan slipped out of it, making it look easy. I had half a second to realize that she had been baiting me before her elbow slammed hard into my shoulder, knocking me off balance. Gripping my lapels, she twisted her torso into a throw called the
uchi mata
. The throw was nearly perfect, but she had left too much space between us and was trying to muscle my weight over her shoulder instead of relying on technique. Had she been stronger, it might have worked, but the laws of physics bend for no one.

I dropped my weight and slipped to the side, forcing her to release my shirt and abandon the throw. She turned back into me, closing the distance until we were face to face in an over-under clinch.

Using my weight to my advantage, I started shoving her side to side with my shoulders trying to open up her stance. Flannigan, rather than trying to fight her arms free, stepped closer, pressed her chest against me, arched her back, and touched her lips to my ear.

“I like it when you choke me,” she whispered, making me break out in goosebumps. “It makes me wet.”

I froze up, cheeks burning. I must have blushed from my toes, all the way up to the tips of my ears. It only took me a second to get ahold of myself, but it was a second too long. Her mouth curved into a carnivorous grin just before her knee hit my solar plexus with all the gentleness of a car crash. Breath whooshed out of my lungs, hunching me over and opening up my neck. Flannigan followed up with a hammer-fist strike to my brachial nerve that turned my legs into limp noodles and forced me to lean into her to keep from falling down. This time, when she spun into the
uchi mata
, there was no slipping out of it.

My view went from earth to sky as she flipped me straight up and over, pulling on my lapels to make sure that I hit the ground with as much force as possible. Thankfully, there was no air left in me when I landed, otherwise it would have been driven out all over again.

Relentless demon that she is, Flannigan planted a knee into the bottom of my sternum, slid her fingers down through the neck of my shirt, and twisted the tough fabric into a collar choke. Even though my back was in agony, I was still cross-eyed from the brachial strike, and my lungs were too stunned to draw a breath, I somehow had the presence of mind to cross my forearms between hers, bridge upward with my hips, and break her grip. She pitched forward when I did so, allowing me to shimmy out from underneath her, throw a leg over her hips, roll on top, and pin her face to the ground.

She let fly a stream of curses as I flattened her out, pulled up on her head, and slipped a forearm over her throat. Normally I felt bad about cutting off her air supply in such a manner, but today, I found myself a little less than sympathetic toward my star pupil. Just as I began to squeeze, Gabe blew the whistle.

I got off her and struggled to my feet, hands planted on my knees, hauling in deep draughts of air. Flannigan’s eyes held no sympathy as she got up and dusted herself off.

“I almost had you that time, sir,” she said, spitting the words out.

I rasped a wheezing laugh. “Flannigan, you didn’t have shit. You hurt me that last bout, but I seem to recall choking you out four times before that. Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Next time, if you have a plan to beat me, do it on the first try. Marauders do not observe the fucking tapout rule. Got it?”

She opened her mouth to say something, hesitated, then bit down on it. “Yes sir.”

I watched the anger and defiance drain from her face, a smoothing of expression that left her looking small and disappointed. I felt like a shithead for pushing her so hard, but I wouldn’t be doing her any favors by going easy on her. She needed to learn how to fight, and she needed to do it fast.

“Go on and get some water,” I said, motioning toward the others. “Get ready for the next round.” She nodded wordlessly and left.

As she went, I wondered how many other recruits she was going to try that particular trick on, assuming I was the first victim. Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that I probably wasn’t. Flannigan likes to plan ahead and set traps for her opponents. She had probably tried it out a few times, and when it worked, decided to use it against me. The only problem I had with that strategy is that she didn’t use it at the outset of the fight.

As I had told her, marauders don’t give second chances.

The walk home from the camp was more painful than usual that morning.

Flannigan’s throw had done something unpleasant to my back, and one of my eyes had swollen nearly halfway shut. I touched the tender skin around it and wondered how that one had happened. I didn’t remember getting hit there.

Not that this was surprising. The adrenaline rush of fighting often kept damage from registering until long after it had been inflicted. Over the past six weeks, not a day had gone by that I had not noticed a bruise or a cut in the mirror and wondered where the hell it had come from. The damage was beginning to take its toll, but I figured if the recruits could take it then so could I. Youth was still on my side, at least for a few more years.

I reached the north gate and stopped at the guard shack to check in my weapons. Judging by the guards’ wide-eyed expressions and stiff posture, I must have looked even worse than I felt.

“You all right, mister?” one of them asked, a younger guy that I didn’t recognize.

“I’m okay,” I said, smiling through swollen lips. “You should see the other guy. I wrecked the shit out of his fist.”

He shook his head and motioned for me to follow him, leading the way to one of the small, hastily built shacks just inside the gate. As a safety precaution, anyone returning to town from outside the wall had to undergo a strip search to check for signs of illness or infection. Two buildings had been constructed, with sniper stations on overwatch, to allow people to do this in privacy. Brett Nolan, one of the nurses who worked at the clinic with Allison, was on duty when I came in.

“Jumping Jesus Christ, Eric,” he said, looking me over. “What happened here? You get run over by a truck?”

I let out a sigh. “Nope. Just reaping the fruits of my labor.”

“Taught those kids a little too well, did ya?” He grinned through his bushy red beard. “They kickin’ your ass now?”

I held up my arms so that he could look them over. “You know, as much as I love a little banter with another dude while I’m standing buck naked in the cold, I’ve got stuff to do. Maybe you can keep the jokes yourself and get this exam over with so I can go home?”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” he said. “I’ll be done in a minute. Spread your feet.”

I grimaced and did as he asked. After shining a flashlight over my legs and nether regions he pronounced me clean of infection, snapped his gloves off into a waste bin, and left me alone to get dressed. When I stepped outside, Mike Stall was waiting for me with my weapons, a cup of shitty instant coffee, and three ibuprofen tablets. God love him.

“Tough day at the office?” he said, as I downed the pills.

“Brutal.” I managed a smile. “Thanks for the coffee.”

The caffeine and the pain meds did their jobs and, by the time I got home, I felt almost human again. I got a fire going, heated up some water, and scrubbed off the dirt and grime from the morning’s work. Checking out my injuries in the bedroom mirror, I could see that I was going to have some nasty bruises for the next few days, but that was nothing new. The swelling over my eye was an annoyance, but thanks to the anti-inflammatory effects of ibuprofen, it was already starting to go down. By tomorrow, it would be just another black and yellow stain on my face.

I had a few hours to kill before guard duty that afternoon, so I brewed some tea and sat down at the kitchen table with a hot mug and a John D. MacDonald novel. Allison was at the clinic looking after a woman who had just given birth to a healthy baby girl, so I had the house to myself.

The two of us had practically moved in together, but I still had a room at the house that Gabe and I had shared until a few weeks ago. The big guy never said anything about it, but after being cooped up together in a cabin for nearly two years, I don’t think he was sad to see me move out. He was finally getting some well-deserved peace and quiet.

I was halfway through my tea and just turning the page to chapter two of
The Green Ripper
when a knock echoed from foyer.

Son of a bitch
, I thought.
I never get a moment’s peace around here
. I got up to answer the door, and when I opened it, Steve stood on the front porch wearing a mischievous grin.

“You know what today is?” he asked.

I blinked. “Uh. … Saturday?”