I left him to his voyeurism and pushed my way through the crowd. The guy behind the counter had a clipped, black mustache, the kind favored by Adolf Hitler. It complemented the swastika tattoo on his head, done in a luminescent ink that blinked red and blue light.
“You Lewis?”
“Who the fuck wants to know?”
“I’m looking for Rocket Corbitz.”
He folded his arms. “So?”
I grabbed him by his Hitler ’stache and pulled him up over the top of the bar. “So tell him I want to see him. Please.”
Though we weren’t technically allowed to use them, at the peace academy we learned there were several compliance points on the human body. Pinching a suspect in the armpit, kidney, balls, or upper lip caused instant pain and total obedience. Lewis made a half-assed attempt to raise a fist, but I squeezed even harder, making his eyes go glassy.
When I released him, he immediately ran off.
Some skank came up to me, the scowl on her face making her look like someone was holding a turd under her nose. A large joint burned in the corner of her mouth.
Apparently dissys abused pot the old-fashioned way.
“What the fuck’s your problem with Lewis?”
“I hate Illinois Nazis.”
“Well, you’re really gonna hate this one.”
She took a deep drag off the weed and glanced at something high over my shoulder. I turned around.
It took me a second to realize I was looking at a man, and not a shaved grizzly bear. He had to go seven feet tall, and damn near as wide. All of it was muscle. Freakishly overdeveloped muscle. Every striation, every vein, every tendon was visible through his tan skin. I knew a few bodybuilders, but this guy looked like he ate Mr. Hyperuniverse, along with the four runners-up.
His biceps had to go forty inches across. His chest was so thick I didn’t know how he could fit through doorways, even sideways. Even his fingers had definition.
And on the top of his shaved head, blinking red and white, was a glowing swastika tattoo.
“I’m Rocket,” he said, he voice too low for a human being.
This guy wasn’t just a roider. He was the King of the Roiders. I could have thrown a saddle on him and won the Kentucky HyperDerby.
“Hi, buddy,” I said, trying to smile. My bladder felt like a tire with a slow leak. “I just wanted to ask—”
His massive paw shot out and grabbed my shirt. With seemingly no effort, he lifted me into the air.
“You! You’re the SMF that killed my aunt Zelda! I saw you on the news!”
Then he reared back his other hand, his fist bigger than my whole head, and I realized with absolute certainty that I was going to die.
TWENTY-THREE
“Beat the shit out of him, Rocket,” said the chick with the joint.
Rocket looked at her, cockeyed. “That’s what I’m doin’, Camilla.”
I swiped at Camilla’s face, snagging her burning doobie and mashing the hot ash into Rocket’s knuckles. He dropped me and jerked his hand back, and I let loose with a hard left to the roider’s kidney. It was like punching a giant pile of sandbags.
Rocket threw a roundhouse, much too fast for a guy so big. I managed to pull away from the brunt of it, but he caught the very tip of my chin. The blow spun me, and I dropped to my hands and knees, trying to discern up from down. My eyes gravitated to the counter. In one spring, Rocket leapt on top of it. His combat boots were almost as long as my arm.
I crawled in the opposite direction, feeling the vibration as he jumped to the floor. Moving as fast as I could, I scurried under a heavy, faux-wood table, and tried to remember where the front door was. From under the table it was tough to judge.
Several people laughed, and I realized I was the source of their amusement. This wasn’t the first time Rocket had put on a show for them.
The table suddenly disappeared. It reappeared on the other side of the room, crashing into the wall forty feet away. I stared up and saw Rocket looming over me.
I twisted onto my back and thrust my foot at the one place I knew he didn’t have muscles, right in the balls. My kick bounced off, harmlessly. Then Rocket raised a size thirty-eight shoe of his own. I could picture my rib cage and pelvis being crushed, and didn’t much care for that picture, so I tucked in my arms and rolled sideways.
His stomp made the floor shake. After a few revolutions I got on my hands and knees and stood to face him.
Rocket had a smile on his face, obviously enjoying himself.
“This is the part where you beg me not to kill you,” he said.
“Does it help?”
“No. I’ll kill you anyway.”
He stepped closer. I stepped away. I tried to run left. He got in front of me. I feinted right, then left, but he blocked each attempt, gradually boxing me in. It took less than thirty seconds for him to herd me into a corner of the room. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.