Chapter 10 – The Tragic Death of Ashley Fox
The audience's attention was directed toward the platforms as the final event was announced.
"Tonight, in an encore exhibition grudge match, we have Miss Ashley Fox, standing five foot seven, weighing one hundred and, um, nine pounds. This is Ms. Fox's first fight.
"She will be going up against a champion who has not graced the ring in some weeks, at a towering six foot four, and weighing in at three hundred seventeen pounds, and with an outstanding, undisputed record of fifty-eight wins, the one, the only, Moses Modred Mohammed!" The announcer stretched Mo's name out, each word taking forever.
The bell rang the fighters were directed to the apron.
Ash saw Geoffrey in the front row. Sky's arms were around him, the rest of Ashley's friends were gathered behind them.
Mo walked down into the pit as Ash was shoved over the lip. She slid smoothly down the steeply banked floor. Mo walked toward her with no hint of aggression or malice in his steps. Ash waited for him to reach her, but he stopped just out of arm's reach.
"Interested in ending this peacefully?" Mo asked.
"How's that?" Ashley asked.
"Be my girl, come work for me," he offered.
"I don't think so," she said.
"Don't be stupid.”
She smiled. "Are you calling me stupid?”
"That's cute." Mo paused to give her time to think it over.
He looked around the packed auditorium and back to the frail girl standing before him.
The brief moment didn't seem to have changed her mind. "Look, I get it," he sighed. "So maybe it's not your fault. Let's work something out. I don't want to hurt you, but you're making me look stupid here.”
Ashley didn't know how to respond. She couldn’t give in.
She lifted her glittering hands for Mo, letting him get a good look.
He leaned forward, confused by the nature of the tiny specks of glass on Ashley's gauze wrapped hands.
The cameras got a good look too. The big screen displayed the shards of mirrored glass coating her wrapped fists.
Ashley snapped her loose hands into fists and the tiny shards shot into the air between them.
Mo shielded his eyes as he ducked. It took him several seconds to wipe the razor sharp specks from his hands and face.
Finally he approached her again.
Ashley kept her hands up in a loose fighting stance.
"Your funeral."
Impossibly fast, Mo reached out and grabbed Ashley's wrist. He backhanded her across the face, literally knocking her senseless.
She hung from his wrist like a rag doll.
The bleachers, the entire auditorium, went silent.
Mo's next strike went to her solar plexus and lifted her body into the air. He released her wrist and let her fall to the cold metal floor.
Ashley struggled to her hands and knees.
Mo kicked her in the ribs, rolling her across the floor. "I guess we just gotta tenderize the meat a bit first." He kicked her again.
Ash scrambled away and made it to her feet.
Mo approached, connecting with another backhand. The strike spun her into the sloped pit wall. He grabbed her ankle and dragged her toward the center grate.
Ash kicked free of his hand. She scrambled away and once more got to her feet.
Mo waited.
Ashley took a few deep breaths but the fury in her eyes told him she wasn't ready to give up, not yet anyhow.
Mo charged at her, moving faster than she believed he could. He swung with an uppercut designed to rip her head off.
Ashley shifted her posture, the massive paw whistled past her chin and cheekbone, but didn’t connect.
Fully committed, Mo’s strike slowed as it reached the top of its arc. If it had hit her, he might have killed her, but now she'd found his soft inside.
Mo had put everything into the strike, he’d need a moment to recover his posture; he was stuck.
Ash jabbed with her right hand; her mirrored knuckles shredded their way across Mo's eyebrow and forehead.
He stepped back and ran a hand across his brow.
It came away wet with blood and glittering mirror fragments.
Mo stepped in, swinging and missing with another backhand.
Having found his speed, Ash slid past him easily.
She drove splinter-coated knuckles into his throat, followed by a shattering right to his mouth.
Mo spit wet shards of mirror onto the floor.
His face was covered with blood.
Unable to risk a deep breath, he first exhaled forcefully, spraying blood and glass everywhere.
Ash heard the tiny shards ping against the metal floor.
Able to breath again, Mo growled and charged.
As he lunged for her, Ash executed an improved version of a move she'd just seen Macho-Man do; she went up the ramp, spun, and planted a solid right fist against Mo's ear.
The punch was strong, with lots of solid momentum, and it scrambled Mo's circuits, leaving him dangerously off balance. He stumbled to a knee.
Ash delivered a well-placed knee to his face, followed by another right hand to his eye.
Ashley took a position in front of him and unloaded on Mo's face. She hit him a dozen times before her grabbed her hip and pushed her away.
Mo stood.
He was effectively blind, his face a mess of bloody tissue.
Ashley came forward with a kick, but he caught it and grabbed her by the waist. He lifted her from her feet and slammed her to the ground.
He didn't release her, but instead lifted her several more times, smashing the small girl to the hard metal floor.
Though one small area of vision, Mo looked for the grate and shifted her battered body toward it.
Ash struggled, getting an elbow into his face, but he was far too angry for it to have any effect.
The circular grate at the center of the pit was composed of two-inch intersecting metal bars and held closed by a pressure sensitive switch. Beyond it there was nothing but empty sky for twelve thousand feet.
Mo lifted Ash and hurled her onto the grate.
She landed right in the center of it, but miraculously the switch didn't pop. Going with her momentum, she rolled off the other side, landing on her feet.
Mo was standing directly opposite.
They glared at each other.
The crowd went wild.
A second too late; the grate latch popped. It didn’t fully open, it just dropped a foot or so, and registering the lack of any weight, automatically reset itself.
Ashley and Mo never took their eyes off each other.
The crowd was screaming madly. Then the weapons began to rain in around them, the metallic clatter bolstering the applause.
Mo wiped the blood from his face. His left eye was swollen shut and his right offered only a thin sliver of vision.
A massive bowie knife slid to a stop at his feet. He picked it up.
Ash didn't move toward any of the weapons scattered about. She discretely fished the surgical knife from her back pocket. She flipped the plastic safety cap from its tip; the blade was no bigger than her thumb.
Ashley and Mo both walked away from the grate, facing each other across the weapon-strewn, bloodstained, white metal floor.
Mo rushed toward her, slashing with the blade.
Ash dodged the big knife and found the inside of his elbow with her scalpel, severing the tendons between his forearm and bicep.
Mo grabbed her upper thigh with his left, but attempting to stab her with his right, he discovered the damage she had done to his elbow.
Ash then hit the inside of his left armpit with her blade; weakening his grasp on her leg, but he didn't let go.
Ash moved the scalpel in a blinding fury and lacerated him half-dozen times, but hiding behind the massive arm, Ashley failed to reach any key arteries or tendons, inflicting only surface damage.
Mo summoned all his Hercu
lean strength; he lifted, spun and hurled Ashley again toward the center of the pit.
With her final strike, Ashley reached out and slashed at Mo's neck, but as she sailed away from him, the blade only grazed his cheekbone.
She sliced him from ear to mouth, but missed his carotid artery by three inches.
And then she was airborne.
The grate was under her and she was going to land on it.
She watched the scalpel float away as she angled to catch the bars.
Her feet came down first, her left made solid contact on an intersection between bar and crossbar.
Her right foot slipped, missed the crossbar and dropped between them.
Her hands made contact and closed.
The full weight of her landing hit the grate.
The latch popped.
Ashley felt the grate give and grabbed the bars with all she had, her right leg wrapped and tucked around the crossbar.
The grate dropped, spinning her out over the empty sky.
She vanished from the auditorium like a cheap magic trick.
Her scalpel clattered to the floor behind her.
Mo remained a motionless ball of bloody meat on the pit's white painted surface, bleeding toward the gaping hole in the center.
Situated on the western edge of the city, the infamous bar known only as Doc's floated less than two miles from the international border over the Pacific Ocean. The rundown structure hovered at anchor along the north south flyways, just over the border.
Angel City had become the last outpost of the Wild West. Over international waters, no taxes could be excised and no laws could be enforced. The lure of international airspace infected the atmosphere with lazy exuberance. There was plenty of money to be made, but hurrying attracted attention and those profiting over the border's blurry lines preferred their business remain private.
The numerous establishments all offered similar services; and just like anywhere, location was key. The building pilots would jockey for position to catch the drifting traffic that descended from the gravity-cables to the east. The architectural flotsam drifted up, down, north, south, east, west and across the border with a casual nonchalance.
The municipal authorities weren’t about to enforce Federal regulations, not when the lure of the High Seas was half the draw of Angel City. Of course the entertainment industry was still important, but Angel City had the busiest ports on the continent. Some would argue; that’s all it really was, a port city in the middle of nowhere.
Judging by the vehicles tethered to the parking lot, Doc's generally pandered to road trash. The twin antennae-style parking structures were full and several patrons had anchored at the nearby pay lot, which offered vehicle security and a shuttle to Doc's gangplanks.
The overhead sign read simply BAR.
The place overflowed with low-life, drifters, con men, thieves and cutthroats of all distinctions.
The pathologist and chief security officer for District 13 sat at the bar. A great collection of empty bottles stood abandoned before them.
"We pulled in Dunkirk's witness the other day," Morgenstern said.
Franklin Gustav Morgenstern was a giant. He stood almost seven feet tall and weighed close to four hundred pounds. A veteran of three wars, he'd served in two of those with the man to his left.
Disgraced by scandal and forced to resign, Colonel Keller was now serving as 13’s Warden. With them, on the other side of Keller, was another man; wide, loud, and given to fits of violence. They knew him only as The Texan.
"Dunkirk's witness, is that so?" Keller could not have cared less, despite the fact that the infamous serial killer and once been the unit surgeon in Keller’s former command.
Morgenstern pointed up to the vid screen. "That's her.”
Colonel Keller looked up to the monitor.
On screen, Ashley was being introduced as the challenger against Mo.
"That's Thirteen, isn't it?" Keller asked.
"It is," Morgenstern replied.
Keller waved to the bartender. "Turn it up, " he ordered.
The bartender scowled, but triggered the remote, raising the volume.
"And clear away some of these bottles, huh? What the fuck?”
The barman scowled again, but collected the glass and moved to the other end of the bar.
Morgenstern eyes were glued to the screen. "I've seen her before.”
"Really?" Keller asked, and looked back up at the data stream.
"She's Dunkirk's witness, you know?" Morgenstern said.
"You said that, you drunk bastard." Keller took a swig from his bottle.
The Texan watched the screen, but apparently not paying any attention to their conversation.
"She came in two days ago. She came in late,” Morgenstern said.
"No papers?" Keller laughed.
"Lost in the shuffle," Morgenstern answered.
The vid screen displayed a close-up of Ashley after her first solid hit to Mo's face.
"If she's bait, I'll clean that hook," Keller said.
Morgenstern wasn't listening.
The battle-scarred giant looked pale, haunted. Keller had never seen him like that.
"What the fuck is up with you tonight?" he asked.
The pathologist took a deep breath and focused. "I used to have this dream, this nightmare," he explained. "It was a long time ago. That's where I've seen her. She was younger, in my dream, younger.”
Keller looked at Morgenstern, surprised to hear the death doctor express something as intimate as having nightmares. He'd known this man for almost twenty years. They had killed together, on and off the clock.
The Texan looked over as well. "Are you serious? You have nightmares? You fucking pansy."
Keller laughed.
"Just one." Morgenstern watched Ashley's every movement. "But if I had it once, I had it a hundred times, every night for months.
"It starts out, I'm flying and it's pitch black. I can smell the air. I can hear the wind around me. Then I hear water and I smell the ocean. I'm flying over the water. I see my reflection; I'm a dragon, exhaling fire.
“I see land up ahead, a cliff-side resort town with shops along a cobblestone walkway. I head for a bluff, overlooking the water. It's a narrow strip of manicured park, with little trees and paths, separating the perfect village from the cliff's edge.
"It's beginning to get light, almost dawn. As I touch down, I realize that I'm not a dragon anymore, just myself.
I stand in the grass. A wooden fence stands between the park and me.
"As I step toward it, I feel the blades of grass crushed, broken and splintered under my boots. It's cold out; they break like glass. The sharp tread of my boots shatter them and shred them into green-bleeding shards.
“I can hear it happening. Almost like I can hear them screaming. I look down and see them bleeding green blood, the grass. And I see morning dew, wet on the leather tops of my boots.
"I look up, I look around. I see no one.
“I jump over the quaint wooden fence and then I see her. She's ten or twelve years old, standing maybe twenty feet away. Same long dark hair, same face, wearing a blue and white dress.
“I notice that her hands are behind her back.
“She smiles, like a viper. That smile scares me to death every time.
"I try and smile back.
“She snarls, her ears tuck and she's moving toward me like an animal. She holds a sword and it's on fire. She's running toward me.”
Morgenstern watched Ashley's televised fight.
Everyone watched the fight.
Mo held her down, battering her arms and head.
"Then what?" The Texan asked.
"What, then what?" Morgenstern replied.
"She slices me in half is then what.
“My head and my shoulders fall away from my torso.
“I see her look at me. She sets the tip of her burning sword between my eyes and pushes. I feel the burning metal blister m
y skin. Sometimes, I would wake up, and I swear, I could smell my own brains sizzling.”
The bar sat quiet and still.
Everyone watched the fight with diamond-tipped focus, desperate not to turn and look at Morgenstern.
The tide had turned; Ashley was winning.
But then Mo heaved her onto the grate and she vanished.
Morgenstern blinked and shook his head before slamming his beer.
Onscreen they played replays.
The girl had been thrown out the grate.
"What do you say we go slash up a couple whores later?” Keller offered. “That usually cheers you up."
Morgenstern took a deep breath. "Maybe some Russian roulette," he said. "And I hope I lose."
Keller smiled. "Now you’re talking. Clear your head out a little.”
The three of them burst into laughter.
The bartender stepped away.