Then, a sound was heard that helped her to remember.

Cli-Click!

Cleese felt the Beretta jump in his hand before he even realized he'd pulled the trigger. To be honest, it surprised him just as much as it had the crowd in the stands. 19,939 people jumped in their seats as one and then exuberantly let out another explosive cheer. The sound came down like a torrential downpour, drowning out even the sound of Cleese's heart beating in his ears.

The whites of the little girl's eyes were washed away by an internal explosion of blood. Her milky gaze pierced Cleese's own and then she let out a long, gurgling snort. Smoke swirled up from one nostril in a looping curlicue of bewilderment. Those eyes, now set free, rolled up toward Heaven and returned home, back to the angels.

Cleese's bullet sheared its very violent way through the child's nasal cavity, turning bits of bone and meat into secondary projectiles and churning what lay beyond into paste. The slug ricocheted wildly within the confines of her skull and quickly carved her reanimated brains into mush. The back of her head immediately exploded outward, throwing blood and grue into the air and splattering it like a Rorschach drawing across the sand.

Cleese watched with a sudden sense of detachment as her little, fragile body briefly teetered and then dropped to the ground like a felled tree. It was as if, having already pulled the trigger, his compa.s.sion for her evaporated in a red mist of apathy. He felt nothing as he watched her body crumple to the sand. His lack of sentiment, much less guilt, toward killing this child troubled him more than anything he'd encountered thus far in The Pit.

The stadium crowd was still on its feet, screaming and applauding, their din rattling the timbers of the building. Instinctively, they sensed that a new champion was in the making; someone who could make good on the promise of communal redemption that the Octagon held. Having eradicated the first round's dead so effectively, they now knew that Cleese was somebody worthy of their love. He was someone that they could revere.

Ok that sucked... that really, really sucked hard.

Cleese dropped to his knees, now somehow out of breath and bowed his head. He blindly reholstered the Beretta, the metal squeaking into the oiled leather. As the crowd above showered their adulation upon him, his attention focused on his fingertips as they swam hurriedly over his forearm as he searched for any signs of injury.

No blood. No wound.

Hot s.h.i.t, he was ok!

He was all right. He'd made it.

He smiled and felt himself begin to relax.

And then the buzzer sounded for the second round.

The Three Stooges The foyer of the Joseph F. Weber Industries building stood as both a testament to the man and to the business he'd created. Predictably, it was an amazing thing to behold: ostentatious without being overly flamboyant, cla.s.sy despite the nature of the firm's stock and trade. The structure was a colossal monument of rigid steel and shimmering gla.s.s which towered over the city and cast the buildings and streets around it in perpetual shadow. It stood like a giant middle finger jutting up from the fist of the city.

Inside, a huge atrium-fully four stories high and impeccably decorated-greeted visitors as they entered the building through the ma.s.sive bronze and gla.s.s revolving doors. A mult.i.tude of plants had been placed about the foyer and were so plentiful that the place had a distinct jungle-like feel. Jutting down like stalact.i.tes from the ceiling high overhead, large fans made of bamboo and oak spun lazily above, their motion gently stirring the air-conditioned atmosphere. Their movement created a soft breeze which wafted refreshingly across the expanse of the lobby. The building was a magnificent showplace and one that had won several architectural awards since it had first been erected. The place was almost too nice.

Cleese hated it immediately.

Although he was astounded by the building's stateliness and its inordinate sense of style, there was something about it that just didn't sit right with him. It was all too sanitary. The place felt restrictively clean, annoyingly orderly, and utterly, utterly spotless.

h.e.l.l, you could probably eat off the floors.

G.o.d knew he'd eaten off of dirtier tables in his life.

s.h.i.t, he'd eaten off of dirtier plates!

Walking briskly, he was able to pa.s.s the front desk without the receptionist noticing. He continued toward the bank of elevators tucked away in a small alcove at the far end of the lobby. His appointment was in an office up on the fourth floor and he'd left his hotel early so as not to be late. Punctuality was something that had been drilled into his head since he was a kid. He hated being late. He hated it even more when others were.

It all boiled down to a respect thing, he guessed.

He'd been summoned to Corporate via a note-meticulously typed on League stationary-from some marketing cat named Monroe. It had been sent to his dressing room along with a bottle of scotch immediately after his match. No one would tell him anything about it or what it meant. He'd just been "called." After checking with several of the more seasoned fighters around the compound, he got the impression that it was best not to ask. It was better to just go where you were directed and hope nothing bad came of it. Cleese figured after the night he'd had, it probably wasn't anything too terrible.

A short, heavyset woman with curly grey hair stood waiting patiently for the elevator going up. She wore a boxy overcoat and her shoulders hung at a tired angle. As he approached, the woman looked up and then quickly looked away. Nervously, she glanced askance back at him. Cleese smiled broadly at her in lieu of saying "h.e.l.lo." She smiled back at him with a worried expression and clutched her purse a little tighter to her chest.

The elevator doors slid open with a hissing sound and Cleese beckoned her to go ahead. Hesitantly, she complied, as if being trapped in a small box with him was the last thing she wanted to do. He stepped in after her and moved to the back of the car. He then turned around, putting his hand into his pocket as he did so. The doors closed with a whisper behind them and, for a second, there was an odd little silence. As they stood there, the woman looked over and managed a feeble smile.

Cleese grinned broadly back at her.

"Gum?"

Her smile fractured like fine crystal.

"Ex-excuse me?" she said, her voice having gained a vibrato from somewhere.

Cleese lifted his hand from the depths of his pocket and opened it so she could see the two pieces of bubble gum held in his grasp.

"Would you like a piece of gum?" he repeated.

She smiled nervously and shook her head.

"No. No, thank you."

Cleese shrugged and nodded his head toward the elevator control panel on the wall near her.

"Fourth floor, please."

A sudden light bulb appeared invisibly over the woman's head and she pushed the appropriate numbers-hers then his-on the keypad. Overhead, somewhere above the acoustic tiling, the sound of gears and pulleys engaging was heard. The car jerked a little as it moved and both of them settled in for the ride, each waiting for their floor. The woman stared intently as the numbers over the door clicked off one by one. It was as if, by the sheer force of her will, she hoped she could make them go by faster.

Cleese looked surrept.i.tiously at the woman out of the corner of his eye. An image of the first UD he'd trained with in the pit-the old woman in the housecoat-flashed before his mind's eye. Dirty this ol' gal up a little, he thought, b.l.o.o.d.y her nose up a bit, and she was the spitting image of the UD. He let his gaze wander down to his right arm, the one that had so recently worn the gauntlet, the one that had wielded the spike. He flexed his forearm slightly and watched the cords of muscles dance beneath his skin. His attention drifted and it soon became focused on a spot at the back of her head, where her skull met her neck. All too easily, he saw the chrome shaft sliding in.

Cleese looked back to the piece of gum in his hand.

"You sure?" he asked, offering again, tying to break his morbid train of thought. "I mean, I thought everybody liked gum."

The woman smiled and waved him off sheepishly. "No. No, thank you."

Cleese unwrapped one of the small pink squares and popped it into his mouth. He smiled, balling up the wrapper between his fingers.

"I don't read the comics," he said confidentially. "They're never funny."

The woman smiled awkwardly again and kept her gaze locked onto the numbers above the door. From her expression, the numbers still weren't clicking themselves off fast enough to suit her.

They rode the rest of the way to the fourth floor in silence.

The elevator slowed and finally came to a stop with a nauseating lurch. With a small, metal cry, the doors slid open. Cleese stepped out into the hallway, looking from right to left. The woman stood inside the elevator and nervously looked toward the control panel and again tried to use the force of her will to make the doors close faster. Finally, the elevator began to move and she stole a glance at Cleese.

He looked back over his shoulder at her, grinned, and gave her a little wave.

"B'Bye..."

She offered a half-hearted smile and, as the doors slid shut, he could see a look of relief roll across her features.

Cleese walked down the short corridor that led away from the elevators and paused. He saw a plaque mounted by screws onto the wall. The small square of gold finished metal had numbers and arrows inscribed on it telling which direction in the corridor led to which room. He looked to the right, got his bearings, and resumed walking. Moving along the corridor, Cleese continued to take in his surroundings and tried to envision exactly why he might have been brought all the way up here. He'd had a good night at his fight and everyone seemed pretty pleased. Still, he couldn't help but feel the same way he had when he'd been called to the Princ.i.p.al's office as a kid. To occupy his mind, he went over in his head what he knew about the League.

Joseph F. Weber Industries was an umbrella company which owned the WGF and UFL as well as a number of other, smaller commercial concerns. The corporation liked to call what they did something other than "zombie fightin'." They preferred something euphemistic and a bit more respectable. What was it Masterson had called it? "UD Engagement?" But Cleese's dad had always said to him (when he said anything to him at all), "Son, you can put a pig in a dress and, no matter how nice the dress is, it'll always be just a pig in a dress."

Then again, Cleese's dad also used to tell him, "Here's a dollar, Boy. Go get me a pack of smokes down at the corner market...and be slow... because I'm gonna be f.u.c.kin' your momma."

So, there you go...

The more he thought about it, the more Cleese figured this meeting was arranged so that they could discuss a more permanent-and binding-situation between him and the organization. And that only meant one thing... Money. Real money-not the chump change for which he'd initially signed on. Real "f.u.c.k you" money! Why else haul some dumba.s.s Cherry all the way out here from the sticks and treat him like he was somebody? He knew he'd had a pretty awesome fight and he'd been told that the audience reaction to his match had been huge. So huge that they were obviously willing to spring for all of this: a four star hotel, a generous per diem, as well as access to the hotel's restaurant and-most importantly-the bar.

First cla.s.s all the way.

On the plane trip over, he'd come to the conclusion that if he was really going to do this crazy s.h.i.t, he was d.a.m.n well going to get paid for it. If only for what he'd been through last night-he needed to live like Elvis... or Howard Hughes... or maybe both.

He continued moving down the hallway and finally arrived at a door with another gold placard in it which read "Suite 411." He retrieved the slip of paper from his pocket and made sure he was at the correct place. Seeing that he was, he stuffed it back into his pocket, knocked once, and then opened the door.

Cleese stepped out of the isolation of the hallway and into a room full of people. He'd walked into what looked like a meeting that was already in progress. Three individuals were gathered around a conference room table; huddled over some reports in manila folders.

"Excuse me..." Cleese apologized as he stuttered to a stop, and began backing out.

"Wa-wait!" one of the men said. He was a tall, rail-thin guy who sported a ponytail and wore a very nice suit.

The marketing guy.

"Cleese... Cleese..." Ponytail said as he stood up and lunged toward the door, right hand extended in greeting. "I'm Philip Monroe. I'm the one who wrote you."

Cleese stopped in the doorway and reopened the door.

"I'm sorry," Cleese said, his arms out and palms open ignoring the offered handshake preferring to bow slightly instead. "I thought I was interrupting something."

"No... No... In fact, we were just talking about you." Monroe stopped and made a broad gesture with his arm toward the two other people in the office. "This is Monica Johansson from Sales."

Monica was pretty in a b.u.t.toned-down corporate kind of way with blonde hair that cascaded down her shoulders in all the right ways. Her body showed the results of a regular regimen of that useless cardio-kickboxing s.h.i.t through her trendy business suit. Cleese smiled slightly at the thought of her and forty or so other women all feeling empowered as they threw half-hearted punches at empty air. That all said, she was still pretty hot looking. As Cleese looked her face over one more time, he sadly noticed that her expression said that she knew it because she had a look which spelled "s.h.i.tty att.i.tude" in any man's language. Her face was perpetually pinched up in a continual sniff as if someone was holding a small t.u.r.d just under her nose.

Cleese bowed in her direction in lieu of shaking hands. It was generally regarded among the fighters that being in the League had an odd, double-edged sword quality to it. Everyone learned soon enough that one of those edges was that regular people didn't really like to touch you; the mark of the dead, and all of that. As it turned out, the other edge of the sword was that there were a lot of women who were very turned on by the thought of being touched by you; the mark of the dead, and all of that.

Whatever...

Cleese didn't shake hands with people now because he didn't want to embarra.s.s them... one way or the other. It was sort of beside the point that he'd never particularly liked the feeling of people touching him.

"Yes," and the woman actually preened. "Mr. Cleese. Saw your fight... loved it." She smiled and did a quick squint, pinching her eyes and betraying the corners she'd cut on her plastic surgeon. "Loved it and loved you! Absolutely fantastic! And, there's been quite a reception forthcoming from our audience, I might add. They absolutely loved your arm thingy. h.e.l.l, the Internet message boards are positively sizzling!"

And she actually winked at him.

"Uhhh... thanks."

Cleese cautiously stepped just a little bit deeper into the room. It was funny... Here he was someone who'd just fought a pit full of the living dead, but this was a room he was anxious about entering and closing the door behind him. This whole situation was exactly the kind of interaction that always made him feel all wonky inside. He'd never been the kind of guy who liked the sensation of having smoke blown up his a.s.s. His face said as much now, but from the look of things, these three chuckleheads weren't the type to pick up on such subtleties of body language. Too self-absorbed. He silently hoped that it was not going to get too terribly smoky in here.

He didn't think his a.s.s could take it.

He took another step deeper into the room and quickly cataloged the minutiae of his surroundings as a force of habit. There was a large, mahogany conference table set in the middle of emerald green wall-to-wall carpet. Along the walls, dark wooden bookshelves held row after row of very legal-looking books. The whole decor struck Cleese as being very Christmas-y. Gathered around the table, sat Monroe... Monica... and another guy who was balding and had an expression on his face like someone had just shot his dog. Cleese decided straight away that the guy looked like a mortician.

"And this is Richard Murphy from the networks."

Well, I was close.

Cleese smiled and bowed again slightly.

"Cleese..." Murphy said, standing and then adjusting posture just a little bit straighter, pulling his gut in just a little. "May I call you Cleese?"

"Sure..." Cleese said dryly, "after all, it is my name."

"Of course... well-um, yes. Cleese, I think I can speak for everyone here at the League when I say that your performance at last night's Fight Night was sens-sational. I mean, you really did us proud, Son. Top notch! Weber Industries is very pleased."

Sniff! Sniff! Oh, great... Smoke.

"Well, thank you," and Cleese smiled broadly, "d.i.c.k."

Murphy's posture sort of deflated and he sat back down.

"Uh-ok...," blushed Monica. "Well, we here at Corporate just wanted to get a chance to meet with you today. You know, get a chance to talk, get an impression of you... and for you to get a feel for us." She directed the emptiest of smiles in his direction. "We wanted to make sure that everyone was happy in their situation and to check and see that we were all on the same page."

She looked briefly to her colleagues as if she were getting a consensus.

"You see, Mr. Cleese, we'd like to offer you a more permanent and substantial spot on the roster."

The men at the table nodded, smiling stupidly with all the sincerity of Cheshire Cats.

"How would you feel about that, Mr. Cleese?" Monica asked. Her drawn-in eyebrows rose expectantly.

There was something in the woman's tone and manner that irked Cleese. Maybe it was the way she was banking on her good looks to seal an already a.s.sumptive sale. Like it was that easy. It might have been the fact that they'd hauled him all the way here as an obvious show of wealth and power. He couldn't really put his finger on it, but the whole thing was like a burr under his saddle. A voice deep inside of him told Cleese that these were people who were not to be trusted. Monica had a way about her that struck him as oil-slick smooth and about as sincere as a gigolo's promise.

It was the same with the old guy. d.i.c.k.

And Monroe-with that dorky ponytail and Euro-trash suit... s.h.i.t, that was one pretentious motherf.u.c.ker if he'd ever seen one. What that guy needed was to do an honest day's work... or maybe spend fifteen good minutes in Cleese's world sometime. The experience might just wipe that smug look off of his Botox-deadened face.

Monica, d.i.c.k and Monroe.

Federation Weasels.

Corporate f.u.c.ks.

Cleese looked around the room as he carefully considered his response. He had always hated this kind of bulls.h.i.t: Corporate America. It was a culture based on stabbing your friends in the back; a community made up of snakes and sharks. At least on the street, if someone was going to f.u.c.k you, they'd at least take the time to look you in the eye as they slid the knife between your ribs. Here, the knife was usually delivered in conjunction with a pat on the back. You know, all friendly like.

Although... Cleese had to admit it, these were some very nice digs and what kind of loser was he, living in dorm rooms and sweating bullets, punchin' holes in the heads of reanimated corpses and risking his a.s.s day after day, night after night? Meanwhile, these people sat back in their plush corner offices and made bank on his blood, sweat and fears. The more Cleese thought about it, the more it all seemed unfair to him-promise of an a.s.s-load of money or not.

After all, where was Monk's payday? Hadn't he worked diligently for these imbeciles for too G.o.dd.a.m.n long and, when all was said and done, all he was getting was that knife-filled pat on the back, a gold watch, and a one-way ticket to Palookaville. Cleese then considered what happened to Lenik. That f.u.c.k deserved everything he got, if for nothing else than his own d.a.m.n hubris. But, where was Cartwright's payday? Cleese saw the way that guy left the compound: in a pine box, wrapped in plastic, bound by twine, with a tag tied to his toe.

Toes up...

Silently, he decided that it was worth the risk and just about time to kick this thing in the a.s.s.