Takedown (7 page)

The train was coming fast, its horn blaring, but it had not hit the brakes. He remembered his research and how it would now
be tested. Engineers would commonly see people playing on the tracks and typically not break in order to keep on schedule.
Under normal circumstances a train of this size would need a mile to stop. But if a person on the track were to somehow warn
the train to stop, they would by law have to hit the emergency brakes, which in the new double-deckers were both electric
and dynamic. But just a little farther and the train would be beyond the point of stopping before derailment.

The hero jock yanked one of the jacks free and threw it aside, then went to work on another. Hess cursed, looking back and
forth from the train to the man sabotaging his sabotage. He started to run back up but stopped, his fingers clenching his
knife. To stop the jock
would mean exposing himself to witnesses, possibly many. Thinking. As long as one of the jacks remained to hold the rail out,
the train would derail. The guy would have to remove all four jacks to be successful. But at the rate he was going, all four
would be gone. Thinking, thinking.

The gravel.

Hess dropped his knife and grabbed at egg-sized gravel. The jock, on his hands and knees, threw aside the second jack. The
horn continued to blast.

Hess threw as hard as he could, again and again and again. The first couple of rocks missed, but finding range and aim, the
next few rocks found their target, one hitting the jock in the side of the face.

“Come on, tough guy,” Hess yelled. “You’ll never make it… but I’m still here!” He threw another rock, hitting the man hard
in the side.

The jock, sweaty, dirty, glared at him angrily and went for the third jack.

“Don’t you want the bad man? Be the hero. They’ll all die and I’ll be gone.”

While working, the jock kept looking at the train closing fast. He finally stood up and waved desperately for the train to
stop. The engineer responded instantly. The locking of the brakes was painfully loud, drowning out the horn, causing Hess
to grimace as sparks lit the undercarriage.

The jock continued to work frantically, but with the train finally upon him, he jumped away from the track and down the embankment,
not looking back as the locomotive, horn unceasing, wheels screeching, jumped at the rail split, plowed the gravel and timbers
until it reached the bridge, then dipped away, falling off the bridge and into Nassau Pond. One of the other passenger cars
followed the
engine, but three others did not, instead, twisting and falling from the track onto their sides.

Hess cursed. The jock hadn’t ruined everything, but if not for him, the entire train would have gone full speed into the drink.
Hess had a disposable camera in his front pocket to capture the moment, but couldn’t think of using it with the jock bearing
down on him like a linebacker. He threw a final rock, hitting the jock in the chest. The muscleman didn’t flinch. His heart
drumrolling, Hess looked down for his knife. Eyes darting. He didn’t see it.

K
rogan had never spent a longer two years since the cursed creator decided time would begin. Not being able to engage in the
deliciously evil fun and games he had enjoyed for millenniums with his inner circle of kindred spirits was torture enough,
but to have to endure captivity in a tortoise was more than he could bear. The smaller and less discernable hearing range,
the lack of any meaningful sense of touch or pain, the distorted visual perception of colors and moving objects, the lack
of interest in, well, anything but food. And, of course, there was the food itself… and the taste. Hell on earth… and hell
to pay for those who had put him there!

But only tiny seconds remained. Krogan’s humiliating bondage within the lowly, dull-brained tortoise the preacher had cast
him into was rapidly coming to an end. The once impenetrable wall of life was now only holding him like a worn cloth bag holds
water. With its last breath, the stranglehold of Jeremy’s small life released its final grip on the powerful demon it caged.

Krogan was free.

Now, to find a new host as he had done five thousand, two hundred twenty-eight times before, rarely spending more than five
years within any single being. Krogan’s hosts never seemed to last very long after he entered them.

Like any demon, Krogan needed to find a host quickly. Being
particular could be painful, very painful, more so than any experience could be inside a host. Recently, for the last two
thousand earth years, the unseen world between possessions had become agonizingly bright, and violent, thanks to the enemy.
The creator had deceitfully and treacherously flooded the world with obnoxious light, exposing the war with unfair advantage.
In addition, angels, usually found in pairs, were guarding perfectly desirable and oblivious hosts, usually as a result of
annoying prayers from the tryingly persistent God worshipers. Insignificant, pesky hypocrites, all of them. Especially Buchanan.
His faith was rare, even now in his weakness. If not for his prayers, there would have been no guards, and the tortoise would
have been dead long ago.

Fortunately, most humans had wonderfully perverted concepts of the bothersome light, self-formulated beliefs based mostly
on their own logic and understanding. They were so easily influenced and offered excellent shields of darkness. Some offered
more of a buffer from the light than others. Host hunting could be as exciting as it was painful. And it could be done quickly.
Yet the thought of enduring another host like the last one strengthened his resolve to diligently search. But the pain, the
intense pain of the light, made local hunting preferable to scanning the globe for the ideal host. In any case, Krogan sensed
his new home was not far off. Besides, the demon had some personal unfinished business to attend to in the immediate area.

Krogan’s first inquiry required little search and was fairly unusual for him. In the millenniums gone by since the war had
begun, Krogan had revisited a host only three times. For Krogan to repossess the same host more than once, three things had
to happen. One, Krogan had to have been cast out by a man of God. And not just any man of God, but one with extreme faith,
boldness, and selfless stupidity. Two, the previous host had to be still alive—and
willing to begin a new rampage of death and destruction. And three, Krogan had to want it to happen.

Karl Dengler, his last host, was still alive, and Krogan wasted no time in finding him. Thirsty for a new body to dominate,
hungry for a new reign of terror to commence, and blistered from the omnipresent light he must endure in the meantime, Krogan
stared down impatiently at his former host. The human was just how he had left him two years ago. Huge, powerful outside…
angry, coldhearted inside.

As Krogan watched Dengler pulled a blanket off his thin bunk and draped it over himself, obviously cold. His jail cell was
small with one bed. Through the blanket, Krogan could see his name still tattooed across the back of Dengler’s shoulders.

“How dare they take him from me like this!” Krogan yelled, his voice thundering through a dimension cut off from Dengler’s
limited hearing. His fury boiled, the ever-stabbing memory of the detective and the preacher capturing him on Ellis Island,
sending both him and his host into their respective prisons. They would pay, pay, pay for that.

Although his first choice was beyond his reach, Krogan stayed in the prison, drawn by several other inmates that would have
made good hosts. Each one of them reached for their blankets as he passed by them. But unwilling to trade one prison for another,
Krogan moved on, searching… searching… searching… thirsty, hungry, burning.

For the last century certain sports figures had caught his eye. Monday night in New York did not offer much in the way of
sports. The stadiums were empty. The Garden, where a rock concert was taking place, provided many temptations, however. Two
in particular caught his interest. On closer inspection, though, one had more size while the other had more anger. If only
he could have both. Maybe he would return for one of them if need be. He left the Garden
and moved east, to areas familiar from his time with Dengler. The pain was growing worse. Not the kind of pain he enjoyed.

So much darkness to immerse into, but not all to his liking.

Something was happening at the Nassau Coliseum. Something big, loud, curious. Monday Mayhem, the sign read. Another rock concert?
No, but similar… more attractive. Krogan allowed his presence to fall within the walls of the dome. What he saw excited him.
He focused closer and closer. Reading, reading the hearts of the most attractive. He could sense his new host was near. Individual
by individual, when suddenly he stopped. Someone caught his interest. Someone set apart. Excellent size. Anger, depression,
malice, hate, rage, and a few bonus traits of vanity and pride. And yes, yes, a touch of insanity. Krogan roared with anticipation.
There were no angels anywhere in sight. In fact, he sensed the presence of at least two other demons already in this human.
They would of course bow to his desires.

J
ackhammer Hoban paced alone in the makeshift dressing room in the bowels of the Nassau Coliseum, not far enough away from
the action to avoid feeling the driving heavy-metal music pounding through the thin walls and his thick flesh. The night of
the majorly hyped rematch with Tyrant had finally come. And according to the detailed script lying wrinkled next to a half-drained
bottle of tequila on his makeup table, in the end he would lose again.

The fight would start off on fairly even ground, each challenger exchanging familiar signature moves for the announcers to
shout about into their microphones.
Then the suspense would start,
he thought sarcastically,
as if the outcome was such a mystery, the plot and choreography so brilliantly original.
He laughed, grabbing the neck of his bottle as if it were his opponent’s. If only he could have his own way in the ring.
He snorted again and took another swallow.

After the preliminary warm-up of arm locks and choke holds, Tyrant would catch him off guard with a hard forearm clothesline
to the neck, taking the initial advantage. Tyrant would then drag him to his feet by the hair, pick him up over his shoulders,
and throw him out of the ring onto a prop table that would break his fall while being crushed. The usual chairs and garbage
cans would be minimized because such a championship bout required less flash to establish interest and drama. Soon after,
Hoban would climb back into the ring and reverse the advantage with his patented double
body-roll into a figure-four. He could still remember the cheers that move used to bring, when the majority of the audience
were his fans. But that was then. Now even his favorite moves were quickly soiled with boos. And then, finally, after he would
seem to have the fight in hand and the audience on the edge of despair, Tyrant would bridge-out and drop-kick Hoban to the
floor, leaving him dazed in the middle of the ring, and deploy his ultimate crowd-pleasing layout back flip off the corner
post into his trademark A-bomb body-slam. The end.

Not just the end of the fight, but the end of Hoban’s career. The end of his paycheck. He would fall back into the abyss of
barnyard wrestling for food money, the graveyard of all has-beens who had wasted their earnings while the getting was good.
There he would sign autographs and tell stories of when he was the best to morons who would beg him to show them the way to
the top, where less than one percent of one percent ever get to.

Hoban grabbed another swig of tequila as he continued to pace despairingly. The humiliation he’d endured in their last match
was more than he could bear to repeat straight and sober. He opened the top dresser drawer and rummaged through makeup bottles
and tubes, pencils, pens, scissors, eyeliner, a comb, ponytail holders, some coins and a couple of crunched-up dollar bills
and… there it was. The vial he was after. He picked it up, held it to the light and cursed. Empty. He thought for a moment,
then went to the medicine cabinet in the adjacent bathroom. Shaving cream, razor, bottle of aspirin, and a can of deodorant.
He cursed loudly, slammed the cabinet door, and stomped back into the dressing room.

Suddenly he remembered and ripped opened the gym bag on the folding chair. He felt around until his finger brushed up against
smooth glass.

“Yes!” The vial was almost full of white powder.

Hoban was instantly at the makeup table, hastily measuring out
lines of cocaine on the glossy Formica top. Quickly satisfied with the size of each powdery row, he scavenged through the
top drawer for something to snort through. His darting eyes stopped on a cheap pen. Tiny in his huge hands, he unscrewed the
pen with meaty fingers and emptied out the ink cartridge and spring. He kept only the lower cylinder.

He was excited, anticipating the euphoric rush and artificial confidence. He did not care how artificial the confidence was.
It was all temporary anyway. He examined the tip of the pen. The hole was too small. What else could he use? He thought about
it for a full two seconds before biting the narrow tip of the pen off and spitting it to the floor. Perfect, he thought with
barely a glance. Holding his left nostril closed, he snorted up a hearty white line. He winced as a cold spike shot through
his sinus cavity and stabbed at the top of his head. His eyes dripped and his nose burned.
Excellent.
The raw inferno in his nose told him the drug was mostly pure stuff. A moment later his nostril numbed and he could taste
a bitter drip in the back of his throat. He grabbed another mouthful of tequila. Unconsciously, his knee bounced and his head
bobbed to the reverberating music, which suddenly sounded excellent.

Knocking, rapid knocking, hard at his door. “Come on, Hammer. You’re on next,” a familiar male voice yelled. Benny, his manager.
Benny no longer treated him with the respect he deserved.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Hoban shouted.

“You better be.”

Hoban cursed Benny out, then snorted another line of coke. After enjoying a brief but satisfying second rush, he slowly opened
his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror and liked what he saw. The makeup had taken care of the dark rings under his
deep black eyes. His long, curly black hair was shiny and wild, just the way he liked it. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, thick
muscular neck with pronounced veins. He wiped away the white powder residue
around his nostrils and saw the image of a man who had been the recognized champion for the last few years.

Why was the WWX humiliating him so? He did not deserve this kind of treatment after all he had done for them. What had he
done that was so wrong? So what if he had gotten a little out of control? They used to like it when he lost control. The more
he thought about the fact that he now had go out in front of the world and lose to Tyrant, the angrier he became.

Needing a final boost, he brought the jagged pen tube back to his nose and vacuumed up the remaining line. The rush came upon
him as usual. He wiped his nose and looked back into the mirror to see if he was clean.

“Aghhh!” he yelled, jumping backward in fright, falling over a chair to the floor. “What the—” His heart pounded wildly as
he scrambled on his hands and knees to the other side of the room, putting distance between himself and the makeup table.
Not the table itself, but the mirror. Or rather, what was in the mirror. Someone else, shadowy, almost transparent, was in
the mirror where his own image was supposed to be.
Staring at him!
He closed his eyes, but the ghostly face was still in his mind.

Introduction music, raw and driving. Tyrant was going out to the ring. Using the folding chair to pull himself to his feet,
Hoban looked in the mirror again, this time seeing only the room’s reflection. To his extreme relief, his own image had returned.
He snorted a nervous laugh and cursed himself for being so scared at nothing. Drugs. He could not have really seen what he
thought he saw. That was impossible. Impossible as that awful head he thought he’d seen once when he was on mescaline. He
had opened his refrigerator door to see a man’s head staring at him. He had screamed and slammed the door. Screamed just the
way he had a minute ago. When he’d reopened the door, he’d seen only a lone, large bottle of Heinz ketchup. How could he have
possibly mistaken a bottle of
ketchup for a head? Same as now, just different. The image he’d seen, or rather thought he’d seen, looked nothing like him,
except maybe in size.

He was about to shake off the experience as a strange hallucination brought on by a drug rush when the temperature in the
room rapidly dropped. Goose bumps swept across his massive forearms. He could still hear the intro guitar ripping away. Tyrant
was probably messing with Asia, that chick who was supposed to pretend to hate him for something he did to Sergeant Savage,
the Marine guy she was supposed to love. He remembered that part of the script. But why was it so freaking cold?

He exhaled from his mouth, expecting to see his breath, but nothing. Definitely cold enough to see breath. What was in that
vial of coke anyway? Had someone mixed LSD into it?
Nah.
Too soon to be seeing stuff. That would take a little longer. Maybe something really weird was wrong with the air conditioner.
Whatever it was, it was time to leave.

He took a final glance in the mirror. His own reflection. And he looked good. Great. Time to go. He turned to leave, took
one step, and stopped. He felt a shiver go up his back, and it wasn’t from the weird cold. What he had just seen, or rather
what he had not seen, scared him. When he had turned around, his reflection hadn’t turned with him. Eyes wide, he snapped
another look at the mirror, transfixed on his own image. He moved closer. His own reflection moved with him, but just out
of sync, as though it were moving and staring back at him independently. He frowned and the image frowned back, but late,
as if mimicking. The drugs?

He continued closer, slowly, cautiously, until he was right at the table. He turned his head slowly to the right, keeping
his gaze on his reflection until he was looking out the corner of his eye. The image seemed to be moving perfectly with him
now. He continued the test, left and right again, changing expressions, until he felt
quite foolish. He could feel his heart rate and breathing return to normal and was about to leave when, completely detached
from his own blank expression, his reflection laughed.

“Agghhh!” Hoban’s legs instantly felt like cooked pasta. He wanted to run but couldn’t. He fell, the laughter growing louder.
He turned his face to the floor and covered his head with his giant hands. The room’s icy temperature seemed to penetrate
his eyes until they were burning, burning cold. Pain. He continued to scream. The coldness spread from his eyes to his brain.
The laughter grew louder and louder, drowning out his own scream until… his own scream became the laughter.

He rolled onto his back, his mouth wide open, laughing, laughing, laughing. He could not stop. His brain was frozen, his thoughts
unable to control his body. His mind was screaming and his mouth was laughing when, unexpectedly, his fear vanished as if
it had never been there.

Strength returned to his legs and arms. The ice water in his veins warmed. He stopped laughing and rose to his feet. He stretched
out his arms and expanded his barrel chest, breathing deeply.

“Finally,” he said confidently, not completely knowing why he said it, but feeling as though he had just woken up from a long,
refreshing sleep. He felt good. Great, in fact. He looked at his reflection. His expression was smug, as if he had just accomplished
something to be proud of, but he did not know what it was. He looked at the bottle of tequila, and before he realized what
he was doing, the bottle was empty and breaking on the floor.

“Hey!” came a voice at the door, followed by a knock. “What’s going on in there?” It was Benny again. “Hoban… you okay? Open
the door.”

Hoban ignored the noise at the door; his gaze fell on the script lying on the table. He picked it up and read no further than
the first
sentence before throwing it aside. A moment later he opened the dressing room door and emerged, new heavy-metal music greeting
him along with Benny. The medium-height fat man with thin, greasy black hair, dressed in green slacks and brown sports jacket,
was talking, but Hoban was not listening to him. Instead, he looked at the surrounding area as if seeing it for the first
time. As if
seeing
for the first time.

“What are you doing? Are you crazy? You were supposed to be out there already. This is your intro, moron,” Benny said. “This
is it, Hoban. After tonight, we’re through. You’re a loser, pal. Who needs you?”

Hoban frowned, annoyed, then slowly looked down at Benny. He grabbed the fat man by the neck and lifted him eye to eye. “Don’t
speak to me—ever,” he said before tossing Benny aside like a Styrofoam cup. He then turned and walked in the direction of
the pounding music.