James Knapp: State of Decay

“Hello?”

“Dasalia, it’s me.”

“Shanks,” I said. The microwave dinged, and I winced as I reached in and pulled out the steaming glass.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“They found another one,” he said.

Your partner will find her first….

“Female?” I asked.

“Yeah. How’d you know that?”

I plopped down at the kitchen table, put the sugar cube on my tongue, and tipped back the glass. The cube dissolved as the hot water scalded my mouth, and I swallowed the bittersweet liquid in one hard gulp.

“We’re being watched,” I told him, blowing out a hot sigh. “I just got a call announcing the new victim.”

“The killer?”

“He implied he was. Have the officers look around; the call came literally less than five minutes ago. He could be watching you now.”

“On it.”

“Who’s the lucky girl?”

“Her name was Mae Zhu,” he said. “She was found in her car when they went to tow it. Same wound. Same chemical signature.”

Those were the only two constants in each of the murders, and the only two links we had to the killer. One was the unique shape of the wound pattern, and the other was a faint chemical trace that indicated he either worked with explosives or carried them somewhere on him.

“Send me the address.”

My phone beeped and I checked the incoming message; this murder had happened right in the middle of the shopping district.

“Any witnesses?” I asked.

“No one saw a thing.”

“I’ll see if any security cameras picked anything up,” I said. “I’m leaving now; I’ll meet you over there.”

“Okay,” he said. “Sorry to wake you.”

“I was up.”

“Your eval is today. Don’t forget.”

I sighed. I’d forgotten about the psych evaluation. I didn’t have time for that. There wasn’t enough time as it was.

“I’ll meet you over there,” I said.

I hung up and leaned back in the chair, feeling the warm, tingly feeling spread down my arms and legs as the stimulant kicked in. It was a sorry substitute for sleep, but it was better than nothing.

Try to wake up.

Pressing my palms over my eyelids, I felt my eyes aching behind them. That wasn’t my problem; I spent my whole life awake, it seemed. If it wasn’t for the sedatives, I’d never sleep at all.

My foot had started tapping as a surplus of energy surged through me, cutting through the fog and bringing me back to life. I had to get moving.

I’d showered the night before, so that was going to have to do. I brushed my teeth, bundled up, and grabbed my maglev chit off the countertop. When I made my way outside, it was still dark and bitterly cold. Sometime during the four hours or so I’d been in bed, it had snowed, leaving a thin white blanket over everything.

I pulled my coat tighter around me and started making the arrangements to have the security footage piped over. I headed down the sidewalk to the subway station, hoping victim number five would tell me something the other four hadn’t.

“Calliope …Flax …is … down !”

A judge was screaming through the amp, but fuck if I could hear anything else with my ear in the canvas and the rest of my face full of sweat, muscle, and tit. No one ever called me pretty, but if that bitch wasn’t XY, she was a freak. She was too thick and too hard, and to make weight she must have flushed out both ends for a week, because no way was she in my class. She was slow, though, and leaned too much on her size. I was seeing black, and all I knew was when I got loose, her size wouldn’t save her.

I couldn’t see her, but my palm was in her chin and I pushed until she had to move. When she went back and turned, I jammed my thumb deep under her jawbone so she couldn’t back come down and pin me like she wanted. I grabbed her jaw and twisted, and she had to get off and deal with me or I’d break it. When she did, I let go and kicked back, but I cracked into the chain-link pole at the edge of the ring. She came right back, but I got a foot in before she bashed me in the face with her big man hand, pushing me into the chain so hard I felt the skin split above my eye and blood run down my face.

She leaned down on my foot, mouth hanging open and face red, as she tried to crush me. Sweat stung the corner of my eye as a string of spit blew around on the end of her fat bottom lip. Even with my leg there it was hard to keep her back, so when she went to change position, I locked my legs around her waist and tucked her in close. She saw where she was going but was too late to stop it, and I didn’t give her a chance to tense up. I put the vise to her ribs full force and she screamed, face red and veins popping. For one split second, her brain was stuck on that and just that. I could see it.

A nose breaks easily, and hers broke flat when I fired my palm down on the bridge. Blood sprayed down her chin, and a lot of strength went out of her all at once. I let go of the scissor lock and brought one leg up on the back of her neck and locked that ankle under the opposite knee while I clamped down on her head and left arm.

By the time she saw what was up, it was too late and she knew it. That lock was death, and as I closed the triangle, cutting off her air, she knew it was done, but she kept at it. Even when I squeezed blood out of her nose and her face went dark, she tried to get up.

Tap, you bitch….

The crowd went ape shit with cheers, boos, and feet stomping on the stands. A hand reached through the cage and grabbed my wrist. Where the hell was security? She bucked like a pig between my legs, and the hand that came through the cage didn’t want to let go, so I twisted it around. The middle finger snapped as I wrenched it back, and someone screamed, then jerked it away.

As she pushed me back down to the canvas like a blind bull, I saw blood was running thick, some from my head and some from her nose, and there was a ton of it. The bitch should have just tapped; they’d have called it anyway. They should have called it.

She pushed, and her free hand grabbed a fistful of skin on my bare thigh. She twisted it and dug her thumb into my crotch.

I don’t think she meant to. Later I thought that, at least. I didn’t mean to do what I did either, but that’s how it went down. The slow grind I had on the leg lock turned mean, and I pumped it closed all at once, just for a second, but that’s all it took. Her whole body jerked, and the hand that had me let go.

“Match!” a judge screamed. I kicked her off of me and rolled away, the sight in my right eye going red as blood ran in it. From both sides I could hear feet pound the canvas as the refs charged out.

“Match!” someone in the ring yelled. The crowd sounded as if they would rip the place apart, cheering and cursing and shaking the chain link as though they were trying to tear it down. When I tried to get up, a heavy hand came down on my shoulder and pushed me back so I was kneeling.

“Wait,” Eddie growled in my ear. I put my hands on my knees and tried to see as he pushed the blood clotter into the cut over my eye. Two guys from the other corner were with the man-girl as she wobbled on her hands and knees. She groped with one red hand as blood ran down her chin, trying to push at the guy who pinched her nose shut. Her eyes swam, and I thought maybe I broke her.

Refs and guys from both sides pointed and yelled at each other, trying to be heard over the crowd as the docs looked at her neck and talked in her ear. After almost a minute, she made a face, but she pushed them away. She needed a hand and she stood crooked, but she got up. Eddie clapped my shoulder.