Castling (2 page)

Alison nodded
and hurried off with the basket, coaxing her two workmates to take refuge behind a solid looking checkout.

This left Rook alone
against a trio of dangerous hoodlums, armed only with a spoon.

Suppose the l
east I can do is make it fair on ‘em.

He sheathed his spoon.
Held upright in the tub, Rook placed it securely on an adjacent shelf, casually beckoning to Skinny Jeans. The young man strolled over, his firearm swaying listlessly in a loose grip.

“
Chief! See you found your medicin-“

The ridge of Rook’s
left palm half crushed the windpipe. Gripping the firearm with his right, he twisted it sharply, snapping Skinny Jeans’ wrist. Unable to scream, the muted thug dropped to his knees, desperate to relieve some pressure from his warped limb.

Rook reversed the butt of the
gun into his victim’s jaw. A sickening slap and Skinny Jeans folded, unconscious. Slumping to the ground, strident whistling escaped his nose.

Arm automatically lining
up the shot, Rook raised his freshly acquired pistol. A hauntingly familiar
clack
sang through the checkout stands. The first round cleaved through the distant hoodie’s forearm.

The
thug’s gun clattered to the floor, before his blood’s red could seep through his sleeve’s green. The following two projectiles found their way into the meat of his calves. Rook’s second opponent fell whimpering, trembling on the ground, eyes rounded with shock.

Th
e juicer’s bulging blue eyes simply stared as Rook’s hands blurred over the firearm. The clip was still dropping as he ejected the last round from the chamber. Field-stripping the weapon in a single fluid motion, he let it drop in pieces from his hands.

His final,
inhumanly built obstacle appeared decidedly unimpressed.

Okay fine. That wasn’t terribly intimidating. I basically just disarmed myself, and made a wee mess. Different tack: Let’s try a lit
tle flattery.

“How about,”
Rook queried, unzipping his jacket, “we skip the part where you beat me to death and you can be on your way, no harm done?”

The juicer snapped open a circular latch on his harness and
cranked the dial within. The slosh of orange gloop accompanied a growing tension which entwined the grey bulk of his shoulders, neck and alarmingly stout arms with bulging veins.

He
snarled; a guttural rumbling, repeating across the entire supermarket.

“Well that’s a fairly emphatic no” Rook sighed,
snapping with his Smartphone camera. A series of blinding flashes captured the juicer’s likeness, who in turn vocalised his discontent with a stifled scream.

“Mind this,”
Rook called, tossing his mobile to Alison. Having packed his goods in tall brown paper and huddled with her colleagues beneath a checkout, she snatched the phone from the air. “I’m expecting a text.”

The juicer charged. The floor rumbled.
Produce rocked on its shelves. Rook pulled his coat off by the sleeves.

Swerving under a thundering right, he tossed
the jacket over his opponent’s face. As the larger combatant tore the garment free, Rook’s closed fist found its way into the juicer’s unprotected crotch.

Thankfully
, it was not similarly buffed with meta-human cocktails. And Rook was saved the embarrassing tale of how he fractured his hand on some guy’s junk.

The juicer doubled over, eyes watering, groaning through his mask. Rook grabb
ed the harness and the tube bunching at the base of his opponent’s skull. Twisting about, he drove his every ounce of strength and torque into wheeling the giant.

It worked.

One hundred and eighty degrees later and the juicer’s face smashed through the adjacent fridge’s plexi-glass door. Further muffled groaning ensued.

S
lop filled tubing still choked in his fist, Rook bounced the skull off the sharp edge of a conveniently located shelf. Yanking the huge, lacerated head backward, he exposed an unprotected throat from beneath the respirator.

Rook’s
spare fist shot forth, bony knuckles bruising the juicer’s windpipe. A shrill, choked rasp emanated from the masked thug.

Rook punched again.

Way too eager.

His fist slapped
into an awaiting palm. The juicer’s fingers closed like a vice, ragged nails splitting his skin. Trapped in a cliché, Rook pushed against the young thug’s sudden defence, hoping momentum and leverage might finish what raw strength could not.

But juicers were no
t designed to be outmuscled.

“Balls.”

A strapped boot thundered into Rook’s sternum. He was launched straight down the cereal aisle. After five airborne metres, he skidded to a halt, landing cushioned by some dislodged porridge.

Senses a
lready recovered, trachea rapidly adjusting, the towering hoodlum charged anew.

Rook kicked up his legs, landing on his feet wit
h just enough time to slip a wild haymaker. He twisted to the juicer’s back and leaned, swaying on his rear leg to evade a spinning backfist from the twirling thug.

Tilting in,
Rook’s rigid fingers snaked upward, opening a deep gash in the larger man’s brow. Blood poured down and in, blinding the left eye.

Unconcerned, the
brute persisted, swinging hooked arms as sledgehammers. Amidst a series of relaxed dips and parrying gestures, Rook mistakenly tried to block one outright. His skull rattled as a result. An uppercut chased it in with such ferocity he was forced to halt its path with a raised knee.

Another hook from the right
followed. Rook dodged backward, slapping down the consequent jab. An opening appeared as the juicer stepped with an overhand right.

Rook darted in, catching the blow with a raised forearm
. A chop clean through the muscle ruined the juicer’s bicep.

As the thick right ar
m fell limp, accompanied by an agonised grunt, the point of Rook’s elbow worsened the damage to his opponent’s eye. The socket fractured. The juicer staggered, then dropped like a stone to the cold ground as the slimmer, smarter combatant stamped into his kneecap.

“I’m betting,” Rook
panted, taking a cautious step back from his downed foe, “my offer’s sounding pretty good about now, eh?”

Skull fractured, trachea bruised, right arm useless and left knee
held on by a sinewy thread, the juicer climbed to his feet. The revitalizing hoses tripled their amber output.

“
I can go back over the terms, if you’d like?” Rook pleaded, pushing himself upright again, “They were quite generous...”

Fresh tactics not forthcoming, the juicer charged anew.

Elbows bombarded the top of his bald, unprotected scalp, as he caught the slighter man around the waist. Ignoring them, the doped combatant hoisted Rook and drove him into the ground.

The impact reverberated, rattling the jars on the right hand
aisle, rocking the fridge doors to the left and driving the wind from Rook’s lungs. Before he could so much as rack himself with a juddering cough, the first of the giant’s hammering blows split his bottom lip, rolled his jaw.

That was unpleasant!

Blood pooling in his mouth, Rook permitted the second strike fall onto his eye. It was a gamble certainly, but the juicer’s growing confidence was also a distraction.

Pinned, assailed,
Rook slid the kitchen knife from his back pocket unnoticed.

The third blow cocked back, fist clenched,
grey forearm pulsing. A haggard wheeze hissed through the respirator’s honeycombed nozzle. The whirr and squelch of tawny fuel rung painfully in Rook’s ears. He twisted his grip, resting his thumb securely on the knife’s base.

And waited.

The face sized fist descended.

Rook twisted, throwing his left forearm up to parry the blow.
Punch redirected, cracking off the hard floor, his right arm reached up behind the juicer’s neck. His knife sliced through the tubing bunched at the skull’s base.

Orange paste slopped down, spl
ashing the aisle with a gummy sheen. The thug jerked upright. Back arched, hands clawing desperately at the severed pipes. A terrified shriek obscured the mask’s gurgling.

Hoping
to add injury to injury, Rook kicked upward. A rising shoe forced its way into the massive diaphragm, hidden beneath the harness.

T
he pulped juicer reeled. Rook retreated, rolling over his shoulder. Before his opponent could so much as steady himself with a bracing hand, Rook was on his feet, wrenching the handle to the nearest fridge.

His
whole form coiled into the effort.  The transparent door swung faster than its hinges catered for and was ripped free. The sheet of thermoplastic smashed across the juicer’s head, its hard frame catching his neck.

The hoodlum
toppled in a hail of bent hinges, cracked plastic and squirting fuel.

K
itchen knife spinning in his grip, Rook settled his thumb on the blade’s grind. He strode toward the scrambling giant, his pace casual. Despite the swelling around his right eye and the blood dripping through his teeth, he was the picture of serenity.

The juicer’s flesh
was sapped, all that vein bulging might almost drained. His muscles had already begun their inevitable sag into atrophy.

“Alright.
How ‘bout we call it a draw?” Rook coughed through a crimson grin.

A huge arm lashed out.

Rook’s caught it, looped under the offending elbow and jerked. As the hoodlum yelped at the dislocated limb, a knife snuck under his tricep and severed more tubing.

Rook hopped forward,
thrusting with his knee. The respirator shattered, falling in pieces from the juicer’s dripping, swollen face.

“Okay, so
sarcasm’s a little beyond you,” he sighed, snatching a handful of harness and dragging the young man’s face but inches from his own, “No harm, I’ll clarify. If you do me the favour of staying down, I’ll do you the service of calling a ruddy ambulance.”

A
scarcely perceptible nod conveyed the juicer’s concession, hoses jutting askew from a broken nose. Rook slackened his grip and smiled warmly. Beads of dribbled red stained his sleeve.

A moment later he bounced off the ceiling.

Even as he fell, crashing to earth, tumbling across the cold floor, he still had no recollection of being struck. Nose gushing, jaw aching, Rook had thought the juicer unable to summon the speed, let alone power, to almost put him through the roof.

“Tha
t’s what I get for thinkin’!” Rook groaned, prone, lifting his head to find the berserker barrelling down on him.

Better do something about that...

His hand flashed. Steel hummed. The giant collapsed mid-stride, a kitchen knife jutting from an already damaged knee.

Rook’s
chest heaved, his face bled, his body shook from the dying adrenaline.
Seven months? What was I thinking?
Groaning, he permitted himself a well earned moment, luxuriating on the cool floor.

Eventually, h
e spared a glance for the shrinking brute. Vigour depleted, body broken, the lad lay dying in a pool of the same toxin which had made him beyond human, just moments earlier.

Normally a staunch f
an of irony, Rook felt oddly depleted.

“Well, I can certainly fix that...”

Surging upright, he limped over to his safely deposited tub. Rook pulled the spoon free and gorged. It was less than dignified.

C
almed, Rook strolled to the nearest checkout and liberated a plastic bag. Hobbling over to the felled juicer, he knelt alongside the young man. Gripping the handle of the protruding blade, Rook advised, “Deep breath.”

Rook pulled the
weapon free. Overwhelmed, the giant sagged into a lump of unconsciousness. Artificial blood was already coagulating about the wound, damming it shut.

“Gross!” Rook winced, l
icking the back of a chocolaty spoon.

Carefully wrapping the ooze coated, blood stained
cutlery in the plastic bag, he slid it in his back pocket and returned to Alison.

“Consider yourselves thoroughly helped. Now
, one of you be a dear and phone for an ambulance... or a forklift. Not you Alison! Hand over the goods.” Rook smirked, the corners of his mouth black with crusted blood.

Slack jawed, wide
eyed, Alison passed him a brown paper bag stuffed tall with cholesterol. Rook took it into his left arm and motioned with his right. She placed a long screened Smartphone into his palm.

He had one new message.
Thirteen minutes old.

“I’m presuming you
meant ‘Droll’ and not ‘Drool’... :P”