––––––––
He made a play for his shoulder holster. If the gun hadn't been in my hand already we would have all been dead. His speed was unbelievable. By the time I had my pistol pointed at his chest he had managed to remove a Desert Eagle .50 cal. from the inside of his jacket. It was best described as a hand cannon.
"Drop it. Now. You aren't that fast."
Surprisingly he did. The weight of it caused a loud thud as it hit the dirty carpet. His eyes never left mine.
"Didn't expect to see me, did you? Kick it over to Neena," I said.
After Nami put the gun in her kiddy sized backpack, I motioned for Chuck to back out of the room.
"We're taking the stairs down. You guys go ahead of us. Chuck Norris and I are going to be right behind you."
Slowly we walked down the hallway toward the stairwell, my gun pressed against his back. Behind us, at the end of the hall, the elevator dinged as it passed our floor. A dirty used fork sat on the floor outside a room on our right. As Chuck and I walked under the dim exit sign and into the stairwell, I could see Sammy and Nami disappear under the overhang of the steps, almost a floor beneath us already.
Now was my chance to find out the truth. Letting my mental defenses down, I latched onto his mind, sifting through his memories. What I saw proved worse than anything I could have imagined.
"You craz—"
Chuck became a blur as he spun around and grabbed my wrist. He slammed my hand on the railing hard enough to make me drop the gun down the stairwell. Twisting my arm with his left hand, he punched me in the chest with his right.
The pain was immense as I fell back through the door and into the hallway. The carpet didn't provide much padding as my ass landed on the floor. The buttons on my shirt, already stretched to their limit, burst open. Stumbling up, I walked backward on the balls of my feet as Chuck followed.
Sammy and Nami started calling my name from the bottom of the stairs.
"Run! Don't come back up here!" I yelled as loud as my aching chest would allow.
The elevator was behind me, but on a different floor. The stairs were beyond him. I had no choice but to stand my ground. Unfortunately, I couldn't win this fight if he was in a wheelchair and I had a chainsaw. Judging by the smirk on his face, he knew it too. He was too advanced of a fighter for me to use my ability on him to predict his movements. Highly trained fighters react on instinct; they don't follow a predetermined set of moves.
He feinted forward, and then threw a right cross that flew past my face as I moved sideways, into a left hook. My equilibrium went to hell as I staggered into a door with a do not disturb sign hanging from the knob.
"Read the sign asshole!" a male voice yelled from within.
Chuck threw a side kick at my face which I barely managed to avoid. The impact on the door caused it to splinter and bow inward.
"Jesus!" the man in the room cried. The damage to his door must have persuaded him inside. "I'm calling the cops!"
Wary of Chuck's power, I resumed backpedaling toward the elevator.
As we squared off again I figured a good offense might be the best defense. Throwing a jab-cross-hook combination, the best I've got, had me swinging at air. Faster than I could react he moved to my right, punching me in the temple. He followed that with a spinning back kick that nailed me in the stomach. It felt like someone hit me with a sledgehammer.
I tried not to focus on the fact that I just ate a spinning back kick thrown by a Chuck Norris lookalike.
My limited boxing training didn't extend to defending kicks. His next blasted my left knee, crumpling me to the floor again. The leg began to stiffen at once. I started crab walking away from him, my limb dragging on the floor behind me. My left hand fell upon something small, cold, and metal – the fork I had seen earlier. It wasn't a chainsaw but it would have to do.
With a smile, he lifted his foot waist high and stomped on the same knee.
A scream escaped me as my frantic hands grabbed at the damaged joint, the agony causing my vision to blur. Leaning over, he grabbed both sides of my ripped uniform and pulled me up until we were face to face.
"No smartass remarks, tough guy? Nothing funny to say?"
"Let me show you what I think of your sissy kicks," I said with a bloody smile. Then I jammed the dirty fork in his neck.
Rearing back, he clutched at the utensil, his face not showing an ounce of pain.
If I didn't get some distance between the two of us, he was going to break every bone in my body. Throughout the years I'd become fond of my bones, so that didn't seem like a good option.
Pushing myself up on my good leg, I hobbled in the direction of the elevator. Chancing a peek over my shoulder, I saw him pull the fork out and throw it against the wall. I must have missed his carotid artery as the blood wasn't flowing as I'd hoped.
"You may want to swab that with alcohol; I wasn't able to sterilize it first," I called back as blood spilled down my chin.
Ten feet from the elevator, I heard the ding signifying it stopped on our floor. Fighting through the stiffness in my knee, I continued forward as the doors opened. A portly man stood in the corner, his mouth dropping open when he saw me.
"Officer, are you all right?"
Chuck tackled me from behind, driving us into the elevator. My face smashed into the railing midway up the wall. Blood poured into my mouth as my teeth dug into my cheek. Chuck grabbed a fistful of my hair and slammed my forehead into the control panel, my nose mangling on the lobby button. I fought against unconsciousness as my body slid into a seated position.
While the doors to the elevator closed, the chubby man grabbed Chuck's shoulders, trying to pull him off me. I wanted to warn him against it, but my mouth couldn't form the words. The help was short-lived, as he took a ridge hand chop to his throat. Falling into the back corner opposite of me, his huge eyes rolled around wildly as he clawed at his busted throat.
When Chuck turned back to me I connected with an Ash Benson Special Delivery. A slight grimace was all the reaction he gave me.
"What are you, a eunuch?" I slurred as I tried to spit the taste of copper from my mouth.
The blows started hammering down at a furious rate. Some connected with the top of my head and forearms as I tried to protect myself; others crunched my eyes and nose as I slumped to the floor. Blood streamed down my esophagus, making breathing difficult.
Chuck reached down and grabbed my throat with his right hand, isolating the rest of my air supply. He pulled his left hand back, preparing for a devastating punch.
Catching hold of his wrist with both hands, I pulled him forward while kicking my right leg over his shoulder and encircling my knee around his head and arm. Wrapping my left knee over my right ankle, I completed a triangle choke. Despite the misery that was my knee I squeezed with all that I had, cutting off the blood supply to his brain.
Reaching around with his free arm, he grabbed onto his trapped hand and lifted me off the ground. The amount of strength required to do that to a man my size is mind boggling, yet he did it with relative ease. I knew what was coming and tried to brace for the impact. With his remaining strength, he power bombed me onto the floor, my shoulders and back taking most of the collision. The elevator bounced up and down from the contact.
For what felt like the fiftieth time in the last two days, I had the wind knocked out of me. I had the abnormal feeling of something shifting inside. Whatever it was made the agony of breathing even worse. Despite my body breaking down I squeezed my legs even tighter, locking the hold in.
He banged on my thighs, trying to get me to release the choke. The ferocity of his punches lessened with each passing second. Tension ebbed from his muscles as he slipped into oblivion. Though his body crumbled, I kept the hold locked in for several seconds more, making sure he was out. The smart thing to do would be killing him, but I didn't have it in me to murder an unconscious man.
When I tried to release him, my injured knee didn't want to cooperate and I had to pull it straight with my hands. I thought about standing, realized that wasn't going to happen, and decided to just lie there and wallow in misery. The choking sounds coming from the Good Samaritan had abated a little as he seemed to be able to breathe. It looked like his trachea hadn't collapsed.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened to the main lobby. Four or five people stood by the doors, staring in at the bloody bodies strewn on the floor.
"Going up?" I asked.