Chapter 13 - The Anatomy Of A Fallen Idol
Blake stopped dead in his tracks, the heavy aluminum bat dropping six inches from his shoulder as his wild, bloodshot eye locked onto my face.
He blinked, a shudder running through his broad shoulders as the sudden, unexpected sight of me broke through his chemical rage.
He had expected to find a defenseless thirteen-year-old child he could terrorize to salvage his ruined reputation.
Instead, he found the same forty-two-year-old widower in work boots who had driven his face into the blue mat two weeks ago.
"You..." Blake hissed, saliva spraying through his cracked teeth as his grip tightened around the rubber handle of the bat.
"You destroyed my life, Cross."
"You put my father in a cage."
"You closed my academy."
"You made every loser in this town laugh at me on the internet."
"You destroyed yourself, Blake," I answered, keeping my hands resting loosely outside my jacket pockets, my balance centered over my hips.
"You chose to kick a child."
"You chose to hide behind your father's dirty money."
"And now you are standing in front of a public school holding a weapon like a common street criminal."
Blake threw his head back and let out a raw, unhinged laugh that was choked with bitter tears.
"A criminal?!" Blake roared, stepping forward, brandishing the bat with both hands like a broadsword.
"I was a state champion!"
"I was the best fighter this pathetic town ever produced!"
"People paid thousands of dollars just to shake my hand at the country club!"
"And you ruined it all for an eighty-pound weakling who couldn't take a hit!"
"Evan has more courage in his bruised ribs than you have in your entire body, Blake," I said, every word delivered with surgical calm.
"Put the bat on the ground, turn around, and lay face down on the concrete."
"If you do that, you go back to county lockup in one piece."
Blake’s face contorted into pure, murderous madness.
The last shred of rational human restraint evaporated from his eyes, leaving behind only the blind, suicidal impulse of an ego that could not bear to exist in defeat.
"I'm going to kill you, plumber!" Blake screamed, lunging forward with explosive speed.
He didn't use kickboxing technique.
He didn't measure his distance or manage his footwork.
He swung the thirty-two-inch aluminum bat in a full-power, horizontal kill-strike aimed directly at my neck with enough kinetic force to shatter a human spine.
The metal cut through the cold air with a sharp, whistling hiss.
Against an ordinary citizen or an untrained father, the blow would have been instantly fatal.
I did not duck backward.
I did not try to catch the heavy metal with my bare hands.
The moment Blake committed his weight into the swing, opening his chest and planting his lead foot, I exploded directly into his chest.
I closed the distance before the bat could reach the final quadrant of its arc where maximum terminal velocity was generated.
The aluminum barrel grazed harmlessly against the heavy canvas of my back shoulder, but my forward momentum drove all two hundred pounds of my frame directly into his sternum.
The breath exploded out of Blake's lungs in a wet, choking gasp as our bodies collided on the concrete walk.
Before he could recover his balance or attempt a secondary strike with his elbows, my left hand reached into my jacket sleeve and pulled out the sixteen-inch steel pipe wrench.
I did not swing the wrench at his head.
I did not crush his cheekbone or fracture his skull.
With clinical, non-lethal precision, I drove the heavy square steel base of the wrench directly into the nerve cluster behind his right clavicle—a specialized disabling strike known in close-quarters combat as the brachial plexus stun.
The biological reaction was instantaneous.
A massive, involuntary electrical shock surged through Blake's nervous system, causing his fingers to open instantly in a dead spasm.
The aluminum bat clattered harmlessly onto the sidewalk, rolling into the damp grass.
Blake’s knees buckled beneath him, his right arm dangling completely paralyzed at his side, his face turning an unearthly shade of pale blue as his central nervous system misfired.
"Down," I whispered into his ear as I stepped behind him, catching him by his leather collar with my right hand.
I hooked my heel behind his left calf and drove him face-first onto the cold concrete walkway with the unyielding momentum of a falling anvil.
Blake hit the ground with a heavy, concussive thud, his forehead striking the rough sidewalk, his breath leaving him in a pathetic, wheezing whine.
Before he could twitch, I placed my heavy right work boot directly onto the center of his shoulder blades, pinning him to the earth with two hundred pounds of dead, immoveable downward pressure.
I reached down with my left hand, grabbed his left wrist, and twisted it up behind his back into a classic military hammerlock, locking his shoulder joint at its anatomical threshold.
If he moved two inches, the joint would dislocate with the sound of a dry branch snapping.
Blake lay face down in the dirt beside the sidewalk, spitting blood and mud from his mouth, entirely incapacitated, unable to move a single limb.
The entire engagement had lasted precisely four point six seconds.
The heavy aluminum bat lay resting peacefully in the yellow clover three feet away.
The double glass doors of the middle school slowly pushed open.
Principal Margaret Hayes stepped out onto the concrete landing, her cell phone still pressed to her ear, staring down at the fallen champion with wide, breathless eyes.
Behind her, three teachers and the school security guard stood frozen, unable to process the sheer speed with which the threat had been neutralized.
"Margaret," I called out calmly, keeping my boot firmly planted on Blake's spine.
"Tell the 911 dispatcher that the suspect is secured."
"Request an ambulance for narcotics intoxication and secondary cranial contusion."
"And tell the sheriff's department that Blake Haron will be waiting for them on the front lawn."
Blake let out a muffled, broken sob against the cold concrete, the tears running freely now, washing away the dirt and dried blood on his cheeks.
The five-time state kickboxing champion was crying like an abandoned toddler on the walkway of the very school he had come to terrorize.
"Please..." Blake whimpered, his voice broken into shattered pieces.
"Please take your boot off me..."
"It hurts... I can't breathe..."
I looked down at the back of his neck, feeling neither vengeance nor triumph.
"You didn't care about Evan's breath when he was lying on your mat, Blake," I said, my voice low, quiet, and as cold as an Iowa January.
"Now you know what the floor feels like."
"Remember this feeling for the rest of your life."
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"Because every time you think about hurting someone weaker than you, this is where your choices will bring you."
Two minutes later, the wailing sirens of four county sheriff cruisers echoed from the south, their red and blue emergency lights flashing through the bare branches of the oak trees.
