Rash (14 page)

The funny thing was, until that moment, Bullet and I had gotten along just fine. I wondered what had gotten into him.

Hammer sidelined us for the rest of the practice.

“What did you do that for?” I said to Bullet.

“Do what?”

“No talking!” Hammer yelled at us.

An hour later, in the locker room, a blueshirt showed up and told Bullet and me to follow him. Bullet gave me an accusing look, as if whatever was about to happen were all my fault. I gave him the same look back.

The guard led us through Building A and Building B to Building C.

“Where are we going?” I asked. I’d never been to that part of the complex.

No reply. We stopped before an elevator at the northwest corner of the building. The blueshirt used his palm print to open the door.

“Go on, boys,” he said. “He’s waiting for you.”

We stepped inside. I expected the blueshirt to follow, but the doors closed behind us and the floor of the elevator pressed up against the bottoms of my feet.

“This is all your fault,” said Bullet.

“My fault?” I felt my face getting hot. “
You
tackled
me
!”

“What did you expect? I thought you had the ball.”

“Yeah, right.” I took a breath. I didn’t want to get in another fight. But there was no way he’d thought I had the ball. “You know where we’re going?”

“You stupid or what? Where do you think?”

I felt myself coming to a boil.

“
You
calling
me
stupid? Now that’s funny.”

“Watch it, newbie.”

Bullet was giving me a dark look that should have scared me, but I was losing it all over again; instead of backing off I gave him a shove, just a little one.

“Watch it yourself,” I said.

When the elevator doors opened a few seconds later, Bullet and I came tumbling out, a ball of pounding fists and kicking feet. We crashed into two tree trunks that turned out to be a pair of legs belonging to Hammer. He reached down with one hand, grabbed me by the shirt, jerked me up off the floor, and slammed me against the wall.

I wasn’t alone. With his other hand he had Bullet. We were both pinned to the wall, Hammer’s enormous hands twisted into the collars of our gold T-shirts. My feet were off the floor, my windpipe was collapsing, and all I could see was Hammer’s red face. White lips. Snake dead eyes like polished blue stones. I struggled to pull air past my compressed trachea. I could hear Bullet’s wheezy squeaking in my left ear, but the fact that we were both in the same predicament did not make it any easier. Large fuzzy black spots crowded the edges of my vision.

“You done?” Hammer asked.

I think I nodded.

He dropped us. It was only about six inches to the floor, but my legs weren’t ready for it; I staggered and fell to my knees. Bullet, clutching his throat, managed to remain upright. Hammer turned his back and walked across the room and took a seat behind a wide steel desk. I got slowly to my feet. For the first time I was able to look around.

We were in a large room about thirty by twenty feet. The wall to my left was a bank of tall windows looking out over miles of dreary tundra. You could see the curve of the earth on the horizon. The opposite wall, the one behind Hammer, held several shelves laden with books, trophies,
and football memorabilia. Between the shelves were framed photos, magazine covers, plaques, posters, and yellowing paper news clippings.

I looked at Bullet, then back at Hammer.

“Come over here,” he said.

We approached his desk. Over Hammer’s right shoulder was a large poster showing a football player in a gold helmet and jersey catching a high pass as he leapt over a cluster of purple-clad footballers. The jersey number was 99. Above Hammer’s left shoulder, mounted beneath a pane of glass, was a torn and stained gold jersey bearing the same number.

Hammer said, “Before I say what I’m about to say, there are four things I want you to understand. Number one, when I tell you I’m going to do something, I do it. Two, I never make a mistake. Three, I never break a promise, and four, I never change my mind. Do you understand?”

We nodded.

“Good. There will be no more fighting. You will save your aggressive impulses for the game. Do you understand?”

I opened my mouth to object, but Hammer cut me off. “Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t care who starts it, or what excuses you might have. If you two start up again, you will both be busted back to paperpants. You will eat nothing but cheese pizza for the rest of your sentences. Period. There will be no appeal, there will be no exceptions. You will control yourselves. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” we both said.

“Good. Now get the hell out of my office.”

In the elevator on the way down Bullet said, “You think there’s a hidden camera in here?”

I looked around. “No. Why?”

He punched me in the shoulder.

A familiar wave of anger rolled over me. Bullet was looking at me with drooping eyelids and a short straight mouth, relaxed and neutral, as if to say,
Do what you want. Fight me or let it slide, I really don’t care. It’s up to you.

I clenched my right fist and felt the pressure inside me build, but somehow I held it in check.

The elevator doors hissed open. Two blueshirts were waiting to escort us back to our cells.

“I really did think you had the ball,” Bullet said.

Rhino thought
I was nuts. “It’s part of the game,” he said from the bottom bunk. “He thought you had the ball. And even if he didn’t, what’s the big deal? Tackled is tackled. Doesn’t matter if you have the ball. You got to learn to get out of the way.”

“Maybe. Only next time somebody hits me for no reason, I got a feeling I’m gonna be eating a lot of pizza.”

“Why?” asked Rhino.

“History,” I said, staring up at the white ceiling. “Lack of self-control. It’s a family trait.”

Something hit me hard in the ass, knocking me about a foot off my mattress.

“Hey!” I looked over the edge of the mattress, rubbing my butt. “What was that for?”

Rhino kicked the bottom of my mattress again, this time knocking me right off my bunk. I landed on my hands and knees on the concrete floor.

“You okay?” he asked.

I stood up. Other than excruciating pain in one buttock and both kneecaps, I seemed to be okay.

“What are you gonna do now?” Rhino asked.

I was more shocked than I was angry. But I was getting there. I could feel my neck getting hot.

“Are you gonna hit me?” Rhino asked again.

I looked at his bland, fat, expressionless face and his enormous, powerful body. I looked around the cell. I could hit him, but then what? No place to run. Something inside me cooled and hardened and crumbled.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’d kill me.”

“See? If you need it, you got it.”

“Got what?”

“Self-control.”

“Hike!”

Lugger fired the ball backward between his legs to Fragger, then drove forward to block Rhino. As usual, Rhino thrust him aside effortlessly. Fragger backpedaled, looking for an open receiver as the unstoppable Rhino advanced upon him.

I had slipped past Rogers and Pineapple. Free and clear, I ran straight downfield along the fence. Fragger, half a second from being obliterated by Rhino, sent the ball sailing in a clean, high arc. It was long. I put on a burst of speed and stretched my arms out, willing them to grow longer. The ball touched my fingertips and, like magic, I had it.

There is nothing quite like the feeling of making a great catch.

There is also nothing like getting obliterated by a 240-pound
Goldshirt named Bullet. He came out of nowhere, driving me into the chain-link. The ball, so gloriously caught a tenth of a second earlier, popped straight up out of my hands.

There was a moment of stillness, during which I stared up at the sky and tried to figure out whether I had been fatally bonked.

Bullet’s voice reached me. “You okay?”

“I think so.” I sat up. “Good hit.”

“NAILS!” Hammer was advancing on us, red-faced and pop-eyed. “What in the HELL do you think you’re doing?”

I stood, still feeling a little woozy. I was sure that my left side would have a chain-link bruise pattern on it.

“Sorry, sir,” I said. The rest of the Goldshirts came running up.

“What do you call THAT!” Hammer pointed.

At first I didn’t see what he was pointing at. Something on the other side of the fence? Then I spotted it. The football had popped straight up out of my hands and over the fence.

“Uh-oh,” said Bullet. “We got us a bear ball.”

Hammer jabbed his forefinger into my chest. “What do you do when you catch a ball?”

“I, ah, I hang on to it?”

“You
control
the ball, nail. Now go get it.”

“Okay, okay.” I grabbed the cold metal chain-link and began to climb, but stopped when I noticed something else outside the fence. About 100 yards away a polar bear was approaching along the fence line.

“You better get moving, nail,” Hammer said. He was completely serious.

“But . . . there’s a
bear
out there!”

“Dammit, nail, you get your ass over that fence and throw that ball back over here or you’ll spend the next month cleaning toilets with your tongue.”

I looked at the bear. It was moving faster, heading straight for the ball.

“Go!”
Hammer bellowed.

I went. I was up and over in seconds. The football had bounced about twenty feet away from the fence. The bear saw me and broke into a run. I ran out and grabbed the ball. The bear had covered half the distance between us and was picking up speed. I hurled the ball back over the fence and then stood there like an idiot for two seconds. I was thinking that once I got rid of the ball, the bear would lose interest in me.

I was wrong. This bear was no football player. It was a hungry carnivore. It didn’t want the ball. It wanted me.

I figured that I had time to make it to the fence before the bear got to me, but not enough time to make it up and over the top. That bear would peel me off the chain-link like a pepperoni off a pizza. My next idea was to just run like hell. I took off along that fence line like I had a bear on my ass, which, of course, I did. I ran flat out for maybe half the length of the field. I ran faster than I had ever run before.

But when I took a quick look over my shoulder, the bear was there. Really there. Like, thirty feet behind me and gaining, grinning happily, its black tongue flopping out the side of its mouth.

If you ever find yourself in polar bear country, do not make the mistake of thinking that they can’t run. A polar
bear can hit speeds of thirty miles per hour—about twice as fast as any human. But once they’ve got that 1,500 pounds of muscle, bone, and fat up to speed, it’s tough for them to change direction.

I made a hard left.

The bear put on the brakes. His enormous paws left skid marks in the tundra as he scrambled to reverse direction. By the time he got turned around, I’d put forty yards between us, running back the way I’d come. Was it enough? How long would it take me to climb that fence? I figured about five seconds.

It was gonna be damn close, but I didn’t know what else to do. The bear was already closing the gap. I faked a right turn, away from the fence, then cut back to the left and launched myself into the air. I hit the fence about halfway to the top and kept going, digging my toes into the spaces, pulling myself toward safety. I had my left leg over the top when the bear caught up to me. Something tugged hard at my right foot. I made a final, desperate lunge and threw myself over the top.

I woke up staring at a patch of sky surrounded by a ring of faces looking down at me, a sight that was becoming all too familiar.

“You okay?”

“How many feet do I have?” I asked.

“Three.”

“Good. Am I bleeding?”

“Just a little.”

“NAILS!” Hammer’s voice scattered the Goldshirts, and then he was standing over me.

“Move your legs, son,” he said.

I did. They both seemed to work.

“That was some damn fine running,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Next time, try not to lose your shoe.”

“You want me to go get it, sir?”

“Too late.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“It was a good run, Marsten.”

In that moment I felt a tremendous surge of pride and satisfaction, as well as relief that I had not been killed. At the same time, I became genuinely frightened.

That night, Rhino and I were talking.

“You know what really scares me?” I said.

“Yeah. Getting chased by a bear.”

“That too. But what scares me more is Hammer. I thought he was all bark at first, but he really doesn’t give a damn if any of us make it home alive.”