Page 10

Chapter 10

Olli

The Ice Out is not what I expected. Like, at all.

I knew, from the moment I descended a long, ill-lit staircase into a frigid bowl of bodies and mildew, that this would be . . . something else entirely. Now, as I fight to hold my place against the makeshift wooden boards lining the sprawling expanse of ice, I think I have never seen anything remotely akin to this insanity.

For one, there are more people than I expected. Like, a lot more. Like, so many more than seems even rationally possible, considering the size of the city and the comparison of fans at Dingoes games.

There are way, way more people here than at the city’s pro hockey games.

It’s crowded as all get-out in this makeshift arena, sweating bodies pressed together around the dented and dinged boards, breathing booze and cigarettes into the stale, icy air. But where I’d expected dozens, maybe hundreds, there are literally thousands and thousands.

For another, well . . . let’s just say this is not a family-friendly event. Nor is it a high-school-kid event. I’ve seen four fights in the last ten minutes, pretty sure at least one drug deal, and a whole lot of illegal gambling and betting.

I mean, yeah, I catch sight of the occasional high school kid who’s snuck past the door guards. But for the most part, you got a lot of hardened adults waving and stomping and screaming and probably drinking themselves stupid.

For the number of people crammed in here, you gotta know that the cops know about it, which leads me to believe they’ve either been paid off to turn a blind eye, or . . . hell. They’re probably down here betting with all the rest.

Case in point, yeah. There might be some folks who look like they just rolled in with a biker gang—the ghost-pale man next to me is wiry as hell, has face tattoos, and wears a leather jacket that looks like it’s taken a tumble off at least one motorcycle. But most of these people are just . . . people.

Like, normal everyday working schmucks who stumbled out of the office or off the job site and into this mosh pit from hell.

This is a citywide event.

“ Kill him!” the gorilla-sized white guy on the other side of me screams out over the boards. He slaps his open palms against the battered glass. Dude’s gotta be at least three hundred pounds of solid muscle.

My third surprise of the night—for something called the Ice Out, this sure as hell ain’t hockey. The three-v-three madness that’s taken over the pearly white surface is less a sport and more a free-for-all of hitting, elbowing, tripping, punching, and . . . well, just about everything else that’s not allowed topside.

Yeah, there’s a net on each side. Yeah, the overarching goal seems to be putting the puck into the correct net, à la hockey. Most of the players seem like decent skaters and stick handlers, have clear hockey backgrounds—in a town with this much ice and snow, I guess it’s kind of expected—but there’s a definite air of hackery over finesse.

None of these guys are Dingoes players, if you catch my drift.

And whereas the hockey I’m used to has lines and refs and you know, general rules, this carries none of that formality or restriction.

It is, if I may again be blunt, brutal insanity.

Kinda fits the vibe of everything else in this violent, illegal betting den, eh ?

A fist flies, blood splatters the ice. The curve of a blade tangles into a skate, sending the skater flying face first into the side of the net. More blood. A shoulder plows into a spine in a very illegal hit from behind. The recipient slams against the boards, then to his knees, fails to stand.

I wince. Holy ow .

The crowd loves it. Like, eats it up and begs for more.

“Get the fuck off the ice!” the wiry dude beside me roars, spittle flecking the side of my face even as his elbow narrowly misses my ribcage. It’s a good thing I’m quick. “You lose! Get off!”

“Get off!” his girlfriend echoes in a ragged, cigarette-torn voice.

“Get! Off!” the crowd agrees in a unanimous roar, like a savage beast of a thousand voices. “Get! Off! Get! Off!”

The full-strength team’s shouting now too. Pointing their gloved hands towards the door, and one of them skates forward like he’s going to try to start something.

The crowd explodes.

I wince again, because apparently I—pro hockey player and seasoned veteran of more than one fight—am soft and spineless compared to these fools. When I tell you this crowd loves the violence . . . Man. There’s a skinny blond frat-boy in a rumpled suit next to the glass literally screaming for blood.

More fists fly. More blood splatters. And the losing team’s practically shoved bodily from the ice and back onto the rubber matting. Which I guess leaves them at the mercy of the crowd.

More shouting. Spitting. Fist-waving. Money changing hands. I stumble backwards away from the door as several large, bruisery-type men surge forward to encircle the skaters. I don’t know if it’s to protect them or ensure they don’t try to get back on.

Are there like, workers in this madness?

The injured player’s still face down on the ice. No loyalty amongst losers, eh? Though I get the feeling the masked skaters in front of me don’t know any more about each other’s identities than I do .

“Holy . . .” The words die on my tongue. A couple of the bruisery guys climb onto the ice to drag the injured man off. At the very least, he seems awake and somewhat coherent.

Three new skaters take the stage in the wake of the losers. Just like that, three new bodies to bash each other around on the ice. No rest for the wicked, I guess.

Holy Lord, this is brutal.

The game begins again. The previous winners take on a new challenge, and these three newbies are just that. Well. One of them, number Sixty-Three, is complete garbage from the instant he sets foot on the ice.

Like, you can totally tell he was the guy who never learned how to skate ’cause he spent so much time in the penalty box. Not even an enforcer, just an absolute hack.

He goes for the jugular right away. Slashing, hacking, throwing elbows and fists. I don’t know that he even knows where the puck is. Does he realize there’s a puck?

The second guy is your average Joe, middle-rung skater—not a hack, but no superstar either. Solid second-liner, maybe a PKer.

The third?

Once my eyes find him, I can’t seem to pull them away.

He moves over the ice like a fish through water, like a bird through the sky, like he was made for the ice and belongs nowhere else.

Not that I’m going all Shakespearean about some faceless dude or anything. But seriously. He reads the play with uncanny instinct, cutting between bodies and sticks to gather a dropped pass or lost puck, sweeping back out to avoid wayward jabs and elbows.

Grace of a dancer, that guy.

And his hands are phenomenal. Even with the opposition literally aiming to kill, he manages to avoid deadly hits and imminent bodily harm with the simplest flicks of his wrist that curve the puck around sticks or through skates, that launch said puck directly onto the tape of his teammate .

What the hell’s he doing in this gladiator league?

He nets the first goal in a cool snap shot, then assists on the second with a mindblowingly precise corner pass that even his hack job of a teamie can’t mess up.

That one leaves the crowd bellowing, “ Forty-Seven! Forty-Seven! Forty-Seven! ” in support of his finesse.

When the guy next to me mutters, “Shit, it’s that guy!” I figure maybe he’s a fan favorite from previous encounters. The crowd loves him almost as much as they love the bloodshed.

Which for some reason gets his hack of a teammate riled up, and he whirls on Forty-Seven to throw a well-aimed punch.

Jesus, this game really is brutal. He’s hitting his own teammate! The crowd screams and hollers, presses up against the boards, so I too am pressed into the smoothed wood. So I have no choice but to watch Forty-Seven shove Sixty-Three off him.

“Fucking idiot!” he yells, but Sixty-Three doesn’t seem to hear him. Or care. Dude swings again. Forty-Seven slides neatly out of range, which just makes Sixty-Three madder and punchier.

He launches forward.

Forty-Seven’s fist collides with the idiot’s jaw in a punch so clean it swings the guy’s head around in a theatrical stage stunt.

The crowd nearly raises the roof in its excitement.

“Take him down, Forty-Seven!” the wiry guy next to me roars.

“Fight, fight, fight!” the crowd echoes.

“Forty-Seven gonna slaughter him,” the suit-clad bro beside me cackles. “Bloooood!”

Sixty-Three aims again—but yeah, no, the crowd was definitely right to back Forty-Seven on that. Duck, return cross, and Sixy-Three’s flat on his back, blood oozing from his nose, probably counting Tweety Birds overhead.

Problem is, while Forty-Seven’s occupied trying to keep his own teammate from killing him, the opposing team nets three quick goals that leave the crowd in an absolute frenzy .

“Bullshit!” the wiry guy next to me roars. “Forty-Seven should’ve won!”

“Kick ’em all off!” screams the dude on my other side, and then he’s throwing fists, and Wiry’s throwing fists. And I decide, holy moly, I’m really not tough enough for this.

I can’t even see the ice anymore, through all the bodies and fists I’m now working hard to avoid. I got a pretty face, y’know? Not letting any ruffians put their knuckles in it.

Not a whole lotta options for leaving, though. I’m jammed into the crowd, wedged in like a splinter. Elbows galore. Spittle showers everywhere. Death imminent, probably.

Sweet baby Moses, please send help. Jesus, I don’t ask you for much, but a little aid right now—

The telltale click of the gate opening draws my attention as the skaters tumble from the ice. The motion displaces the crowd, and all of a sudden, I glimpse the minutest momentary rift in the sea of bodies.

I don’t miss my opening.

I mean, I’m a pro hockey center. Openings are kind of my gig, right?

I slip between bodies to come up right behind one of the skaters—and what do you know?

The number on the back of the red-flecked jersey is a big, black forty-seven.

From this close, the faded hockey-sweat odor woven into the fabric of that shirt permeates my nostrils, but do I detect the barest hint of cologne beneath? Copper-splotched remnants of prior fights dot the white—not his first time at the Ice Out. The black hood of a sweatshirt pokes from the collar of his jersey, and above that, a curl of black ink climbs the skin behind his ear—

“Hey! You lost me my bet!” A skinny white chick with bright blue hair slides in front of him, and he sweeps past her without breaking stride. As smooth through the crowd as he is on the ice .

I follow, because he’s parting the people with his broad shoulders and general air of efficiency, maybe the blood splattering the front of his shirt and the prowess with which he dominated that ice.

Well, until his own teammate cost him the game. And probably the bets. Or something.

He shoves through a side door without pausing, but when I try to slip in behind him, a big redheaded chick with an elegant half-mask and black eyeliner holds her hand up in front of me. “Players only.”

“Sorry.” I step back, but at least it’s quieter here, on the edge of the crowd. And because Bodyguard Chick seems to be one of the few people not caught up in a bloodlust frenzy, I linger.

And then I open my big, stupid mouth. “You know who he is? Number Forty-Seven?”

She turns a set of somber brown eyes on me, sizes me up with a quick flick. “You’re not from around here.”

“What gave me away?”

“What didn’t?”

“Fair.” I crack a grin. “He play for the Dingoes or something? He’s good.”

She snorts, shakes her head. “No Dingoes player would be down here.”

Ah. Right. The masks. I’m no expert on betting legality, but I’m pretty sure gambling’s illegal in this state. “The cops?”

“No Cali boy gonna get his face cracked in,” she corrects, like aren’t I the dumbass. Which okay, I guess I kind of am. She’s right. What pro player would risk his career on a hack game like this? I don’t know how the betting works, of course, but if your own teammate can turn on you, I’d guess there aren’t a whole lot of sure things .

I’ve always been one to bet on myself, but even I wouldn’t do that down here.

Jesus, what a brutal game. Hard to believe this is the same place ringed in snow-capped mountains and pines crusted in a rainbow of crystalized ice drops.

How could something that looks like a fairytale fantasy host an event this dark and brutal? How could people love this when they have . . . all that?

Maybe it’s time for me to return topside, where I belong.