While Dax and Carlo had been inside, a city bus had broken down across the street from Scallion’s Gym. Not the best spot in L.A. for that to happen. The neighborhood wasn’t the crummiest Dax had seen—not by a longshot—howdy there, Helmand—but there was a definite air of turn-up-this-alley-at-your-own-peril to most of the side streets. The obese bus driver, guarding his vehicle like the captain of a stranded ship in pirate waters, was engaged in a colorful slanging match with a couple of hookers who desperately wanted to catch a bus to Echo Park.
Dax shook hands with his old sparring buddy, and they both promised to keep in touch. While Carlo made his way toward the corner of Main Street to hail a cab, Dax slung his gym bag over his shoulder and headed in the opposite direction, to the parking lot shared by the auto parts store and the 7-Eleven—where Scallion’s gym members were allowed to leave their cars for up to three hours, provided they left a member’s badge clearly visible in their windshields.
The cold wind began to bite, so Dax dug into his bag for his hoodie. No sooner had he fished it out than a hard, sweeping blow knocked his legs out from under him. He went down onto his side, scraped his ass on the edge of the curb. Someone kicked his ribs from behind, then stomped on his shoulder when he struggled to get up.
Instinctively he made himself small, covering up as best he could while this evil fucker rained kicks and fists down on him. The guy was big, broad-shouldered, and wore a tracksuit. Under his purple Lakers beanie, his head was bandaged. An intense blankness in the bruised and bloodied face told Dax that he might be dealing with a nut job, maybe just escaped from the psych ward of some hospital. But his blows were ferocious. They hurt like hell. This guy knew how to hurt, and if Dax didn’t do something quick, this would not end well.
“Get the fuck away from me!” He planted a vicious boot on the psycho’s kneecap, staggering him back. Dax got to his feet and, despite nursing a splintering pain in his right side, rushed his opponent as though his life depended on it. He’d never lost a fight in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now, outside his own gym, at the hands of some Loony Tunes out on a homicidal day pass.
The man saw him coming, sidestepped, and threw Dax off his feet with a perfectly executed hip toss.
Jesus, who was this guy?
Again Dax got to his feet, trying not to display how much his ribs hurt. “Who the hell are you?”
“Don’t remember me, huh?” Section Eight spat onto the sidewalk. “You will. You fucking will after this.”
Dax widened his stance. “Come at me again and I’ll break you in half.”
“Yeah. You’re ten men when it’s someone else’s fight you’re pissing on. Out here you’re nothing. You make me fucking sick.”
“Hollis? Thad Hollis? But I—”
“You what?”
“I saved your life last night. What are you doing out—”
Hollis marched up to him and swung a punch. Dax blocked it, jabbed his bandaged opponent in the nose, rupturing what had to have been barely healed cartilage. Blood ran down to his mouth. Hollis didn’t seem to care. He just spat the blood away and swung again. This time Dax caught the man’s arm and jammed it up behind his back.
“You need to stop this shit,” said Dax. “Cool it, okay?”
Hollis replied with a sneaky elbow as he escaped the arm lock. It caught Dax in the temple and left him seeing stars. Three or four hard blows to the face knocked Dax into the road, where he had to steady himself on a fire hydrant before he spilled into an onrushing Buick.
“I’ve had enough of this shit.”
“We’re just getting started,” said Hollis. “Nobody humiliates me in front of my fans like that.”
“You were dead in your feet, Hollis. That ref would have let you choke out before he stopped it. Do you hear me? You could have died last night.”
“Bullshit. I had it under control, and you pissed it away.”
Furious, Dax grabbed hold of the fire hydrant with both hands and wrenched it as hard as he could. The metal squealed, carked. Then he marched right up to his opponent, ducked a haymaker and slapped an inescapable, vise-like headlock on him. “I’m done trying to convince you. You’ll just have to pick up where you left off last night. Lights out for real this time.”
“Screw you!”
“And next time you come after me, one of us dies.”
“Get off me!”
“No more favors. Last night, that was your one-off.”
With all his freaky psychotic strength Hollis tried to pry Dax’s fingers loose, but he couldn’t get enough leverage. He just didn’t get it. Once a Marine got the upper hand in a combat situation, you’d have more luck taking a bone from a bulldog than you would at getting the best of him. And Dax was pissed off to boot. He’d risked his reputation last night, risked the ire of the IMMAF, and this ungrateful piece of shit wanted payback? Against someone who’d saved his life?
He should just snap the bastard’s neck and call it a day.
But damn it, he wasn’t that guy anymore. He didn’t know what the hell he was, but those days of thinking swiftly in terms of life and death were behind him now. They had to be. His soldier’s instincts were not wanted here, either inside the ring or out of it. Last night had proved that. Those stupid, bloodthirsty assholes. No, using force to do the right thing here was not treated kindly.
Maybe he should have stayed in the Corps after all. At least there, in the suck, no one had pretended any of it made sense. Everyone kind of knew, even if they didn’t say so, that things had been FUBAR all along and would not be changing anytime soon. But here, the insanity was that no one could see how deluded they were. They had rights with a capital R, and that was good enough for them. It didn’t matter that they no clue what to do with those rights, when corruption was all around them and the best they could do was hate on a guy who thought challenging a referee to save a fighter’s life was more important than watching that fighter take more punishment.
A part of him wished he hadn’t lifted a finger last night. It would have saved all this. But the stronger part of him, that part he’d clearly brought back, undimmed, from Afghanistan, told him to be himself, to fight the fights that needed fighting, and to never back down.
So he squeezed until Hollis passed out. Then he dragged the idiot to his car and drove to the nearest hospital.
He checked them both in.