Carnell, Thom - No Flesh Shall Be Spared

Another group, one who kept their members apart from the others, referred to themselves as The Budo Warriors. They’d attached a complex theology to the carnage that took place within the confines of The Pit. Each of them had given up his identity from Before and adopted a samurai-like outlook to their work here: "Live today to the fullest, for tomorrow, we die."

It was, in their minds, a perfect marriage of canon and confrontation.

Their leader, a good-looking bit of femininity named Chikara, was the stuff of legend around here: leader of the Budo Warriors, a woman without a sense of remorse, fighter beyond equal. She’d been in the League for almost as long as Monk and it was rumored that she’d come here after something she’d held dear was lost to the rampaging Dead. After she’d walked away from her life back in The World and joined The League, she’d not given a good goddamn whether she ever made it out of the pit alive. The League welcomed her mostly because she kicked ass and, as a woman, she was a rarity in this killing game.

At first, her technique was more balls than brains. Then she got wise and applied some intellect to her retribution. She periodically allowed the UDs to come in real close and almost get their grip on her—too close in many trainers’ opinions—and then she’d lash out with everything but the kitchen sink. It was a fighting style that, although unorthodox, was completely practical and incredibly proficient.

Other fighters saw what she was up to and flocked to her and her cause. Hell, everyone loves a winner and if Chikara could offer these inexperienced men knowledge to help keep them alive a little bit longer than the initial five minutes of their first match, everyone had been up for it. Chikara had been smart about it, too. She wrapped whatever fighting technique she had to offer in a tattered veil of spirituality. If she could only free these men’s minds, then their asses would soon follow. She’d doled out nourishing little spoonfuls of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer with a liberal dose of Zen Buddhism, Shintoism, and some cool lines from old Bruce Lee movies.

Soon enough, she had forged for herself a formidable team.

Monk explained to Cleese how all of the Budo Warriors believed that they were already one of The Dead and that the UDs were just another task set before them on their way to enlightenment… or God, whichever. Chikara made little differentiation between gods: hers, theirs or anyone’s. Life was merely a test given to the faithful to prove their capacity to serve. God, Jehovah, Jesus, Buddha, Allah… none of these things made a bit of difference to Chikara. A person’s relationship with his or her god was something that remained between them and their chosen deity. Chikara’s only concern was whether or not you could pass the ordeal that was set before you.

On more than one lazy evening, Monk had shown Cleese a variety of the Warrior’s fight tapes and they were an eerie thing to watch. To a man, the Warriors all had the same creepy, calm approach to their fighting: sometimes standing perfectly still until the very last second, then reacting with a lethality that took your breath away. They were, in many of the fighter’s minds, combat personified.

All of the fighters—no matter how they saw their place in the world— did agree on one thing and it was that The League was all important. It was Life. It was Death. Fame… Prestige… Money… Horror… Pain… Fear… It was what defined many of them. For the fighters, there was only the Training ("The Way is in the Training") followed by the money and the glory of the live televised events. One always followed the other like clockwork; as regular as breathing—in—out—in—out. And soon, Cleese was told, he would catch on and come to understand.

After only a short while, Cleese discovered that he felt at home here and was growing to actually like this new routine. There’d never been anything even remotely resembling a regular schedule in Cleese’s life up ’til now. He’d pretty much done as he pleased since he left home as a kid, but this new discipline just felt right to him. Sure, he’d not had to face a live (or rather dead) opponent, but he knew in time that he would, well aware of the fact that he’d be sparring with the harnessed UDs and all of this mundane shit of lifting weights and going over reaction drills was going to fly right out the fucking window.

Cleese was also pleased to find, despite the inhospitable temper displayed at their initial meeting, Monk was growing on him and vice versa. Sure, he was a foul-mouthed, hard drinking son of a bitch who’d come to the Leagues when they’d first been formed but he was also a man who knew a thing or two about fighting. In the short time they’d been paired together, Monk demonstrated to Cleese dozens of new ways to kill a man. Some were clean. Some were just plain nasty. The bottom line was that they were all effective and would, no doubt, prove useful once Cleese found himself down on the sand in the pit.

As the time dragged on, both Cleese and Monk came to consider themselves lucky to be paired with one another. Some of the pairings were not as good. Some had friction built into them from the get-go as a result of competing personalities. Others had one person exerting more control over the other and both of the fighter’s styles suffered because of it. With Monk and Cleese, it was different. It became evident that they both loved the intellectual aspect of what some called the "sweet science;" that chess-like quality combat could sometimes possess. They also came to respect one another as fighters and it was that respect that made becoming friends all the more easy.

In Cleese’s opinion, most of the other fighters were nothing more than cannon fodder, at best. Monk though… Monk was different. Monk was cut from a different kind of cloth all together. He knew something. He knew something special, but he was only willing to dole it out in tiny bits and pieces. He was like a gardener carefully watering and feeding a fragile young plant until it was able to support itself and bloom on its own.

He’d give Cleese ideas and concepts and then give him enough time and enough space to put them all together for himself. He would let it all sink in—from the scribblings he made in the sand to the lengthy discussions they’d had over fight tapes played at slow motion—and allow Cleese to internalize it, ponder it, and then turn it into something lethal, something that the crowd would suck up like mother’s milk.

Yeah, training was good. Cleese felt better than he had in years, but he also knew that they’d be climbing down into The Pit with The Dead, putting both their lives and their asses on the line.

And when they did, it was going to be a wild ride.

The Squad

Before…

Cpl. Lance Johnson intently studied the field spread out before him. The air was still and birds could be heard singing hesitantly far off in the tree line. The weeds and brush carpeting the ground beneath his boots were only a couple of feet high, but he’d learned from past experience that death popped up where you least expected it. Since joining the squad, he’d seen more than a few men fall in fields exactly like this. They’d be walking along—running Point mostly—and then, suddenly, gone.

Dragged down into the brush.

Sometimes they’d go screaming, sometimes they’d go silently, but go they did. A subdued hiss would come up from the foliage and that sound would be the only thing to mark their passing. Well, that and their shrieking… By the time any of the squad could get there and shoot off the things that had swarmed all over the guy, he would be torn to shreds. Ripped to ribbons.

After awhile, when it happened the squad would just blast a hole wherever the man had been. With the stalks of green and brown moving and all of the commotion coming from the ground, it was usually safer to just put down whatever was there—friend or foe.