Lenik crouched, waving the weapon in front of him as if it were a magic wand.
The UD stood still for a second, grabbing hold of what little bearings its dead mind could muster, and took a tentative step toward Lenik. Then it stopped and looked up toward the lights. It stood still for a second, sniffing at the air as if trying to sort it all out. Then, abruptly, the dead man lunged screeching toward one side.
It grabbed a very surprised-looking Cartwright from behind, knocking him forward and off his feet. The old man never saw it coming. Both Cartwright and Mr. Shirt-and-Tie fell face-first to the sand with a grunt. The UD"s face bounced off Cartwright"s back. Long goblets of saliva left puddles of mucous behind in a circular pattern. The thing quickly angled its head, moving as if by instinct, toward the exposed nape of Cartwright"s neck.
Cartwright only had time to marvel at the speed with which the dead man moved before his blood ran in thick streams down the back of his tunic.
Surprised, Lenik shouted and did the unthinkable. He jumped on top of the two men.
Cleese almost had to laugh out loud at the sheer stupidity of the man. It knew no bounds! Any fighter worth his salt knew that you never jumped into a brawl that was already on the ground. Your legs often got tangled up in the mult.i.tude of flailing limbs. You slipped. You fell. You spent the rest of your night getting to know the tip of some guy"s (or a group of his friends") boots as he tried to kick in your sternum.
Cleese and Monk reflexively came off the benches and sprinted around the railing and toward the pit"s entrance. They instinctively knew that whatever was going to happen in the pit would already be decided by the time they got there, but that didn"t stop them from trying. Lenik would have either hacked Mr. Shirt-and-Tie"s head from his shoulders with his pig sticker or the dead man would be sucking up Lenik"s blood like gravy. There just wasn"t a lot that they could do to prevent the outcome.
It was safe to say that Cartwright got tagged. From the way they went down and with Lenik now in the mix to further f.u.c.k up the situation, this was not going to end well. The last image Cleese could recall of the scene had a lot of crimson in it, and that was never good.
Not in this game.
The two men made their way rapidly along the gangway, rounded the stairwell and burst through the door to the pit. As they came running through the hatch, they saw Mr. Shirt-and-Tie bent over Lenik happily chomping away on a chunk of the man"s exposed stomach. A wet, smacking sound echoed hopelessly within the emptiness of the pit.
Monk, who"d forgotten his shotgun in his haste, came up behind the zombie and deftly slid his protected right arm under the thing"s gnawing mouth, just across its throat and under the jaw. He braced his left arm behind the thing"s head and clamped down like a vice.
He quickly glanced downward and found himself staring into Lenik"s eyes. Despite the fact that the guy was an a.s.shole, Monk was saddened as he watched the fighter"s life drain out of his gaze and his breathing stutter to a stop. As he died, his mouth quivered and one eye drifted closed.
Monk wrenched his gaze away and torqued down on the UDs neck, making sure he felt the cervical vertebrae tighten and bind up. Then, he bore down with all of his strength.
The crunch of the thing"s neck breaking was almost silent. Cleese had cracked his knuckles and made more noise. It sounded almost like it would have been a relief, like when a dislocated shoulder popped and the bone fell back into place.
Mr. Shirt-and-Tie made a small sharp snort and then his body just sort of deflated into itself. Monk threw his body aside like it was a sack of s.h.i.t and quickly bent over to check on Lenik. It was pretty obvious from the extent of the wound and the amount of blood splashed about that the man was truly dead.
Monk"s shoulders sagged and his head dropped in frustration. No matter how many times he"d seen fighters die, it always broke his heart, even an a.s.shole like Lenik. He suddenly jerked his head to the side as remembered Cartwright. He swiftly looked up at Cleese.
"Check him," Monk commanded and he pointed at Cartwright.
"Check him?" Cleese asked dumb-founded. "Check him for what?"
"To see if he"s still alive."
"Are you f.u.c.kin" crazy? His throat"s torn out!"
"What...?" Monk"s face screwed up and he squinted. He looked over at Cartwright and, as if seeing him for the first time, noticed how badly the man had been hurt.
"Ah, f.u.c.k..."
Chivalry Before...
A murky haze hovered over the campground that had been set up high in the hills of the Golden State National Recreation Area. The dense fog blanketed the a.s.sorted tents, trailers, and mobile homes in a thick, swirling miasma and gave the place an ethereal, dream-like quality. The mist carried with it the sweet smell of the dew-moistened foliage as well as the throat-clogging scent of burnt wood. The odor left everything smelling like a campfire doused by a sudden rain. Groups of people milled about the compound, some in search of food or water while others scoped out places to get medical attention or some much needed sleep.
Everyone in the camp went about their business, but they all had that wide-eyed look of someone who"d survived something dark and terrible. With eyebrows perpetually raised and the whites of their eyes visible around an open-irised glare, their gazes flitted about nervously, as if expecting whatever it was that had spooked them before might return to wreak havoc again. The more resilient and well-grounded of them had been able to quickly adapt to their new lives here in the camp over the last few weeks. A few had even managed to rediscover laughter and the easy manner in which people were able to become friends. Others though... They would forever wear the emotional and, in some cases, physical scars of what had been carved into them by seeing and doing things they were still only barely able to articulate.
Off to one side of the main area sat a couple of large tents where several husky men cleaned and repaired the vast array of guns which had been found or brought to the camp. Boxes of ammunition scavenged from a nearby National Guard base lay stacked on large wooden pallets toward the back of the tent. The ordnance had been liberated by a few of the foraging crews routinely sent out on midday runs into the once bustling metropolis at the base of the foothills. These teams had even been able to pick up a few Guardsmen found barricaded in one of the rooms on the base. The soldiers had come in real handy, acquainting the gunsmiths with some of the more exotic weaponry found in their armory. Hastily nailed together wooden racks of Rugers, Berettas, Colts, Brownings, Mossbergs and even a few compound bows were lined up inside the tent while the hardware being worked was spread out on tables in the early morning light.
The gunsmiths talked and laughed, but mostly just bulls.h.i.tted with one another as they adeptly refurbished and rea.s.sembled the guns before them without giving them much of a verifying glance. If they hadn"t already had a comprehensive knowledge of the armaments when they came here they did now, if only through the sheer repet.i.tion of constant maintenance and repair. The ability to field strip, oil and rea.s.semble a weapon-or quickly learn how-was an essential skill here. It was the only thing keeping them from being drafted into doing the "s.n.a.t.c.h and grabs" that the other-less knowledgeable-men were doing. These excursions into the highly dangerous surrounding areas were not something anyone wanted to be a part of. Out there, it wasn"t a matter of if you"d get hurt, it was a simple matter of when.
In the center of the camp, around which most of the activity took place, two "roach coaches" were parked back to back. Plumes of greasy smoke billowed from the exhaust vents on their roofs. In the cramped s.p.a.ce between them was a makeshift larder where vegetables and a.s.sorted dry goods were prepped for cooking. Off to one side, a gas powered generator hummed as it fed a series of freezers, where the meat was kept, and refrigerators which were used to store dairy, eggs, and some medicines. Teams of men and women in oil-spattered clothing worked diligently, making sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs and lots of hot coffee. This was an army now and, as any soldier knew, a successful army ran on a full belly. It was these folks" job to keep the group fed and it was one that they took pretty seriously. Even though they were forced to play things a little bit on the frugal side when it came to rationing their stores, there was still enough in the larder to keep them all sufficiently nourished.
Around the armory and food supply, a dozen mobile homes were arranged in a loose circle. Around them, various styles of tents cl.u.s.tered like newborn pups around their mother. Along the outer edge of the perimeter-on hunting stands mounted in the trees-sharpshooters sat silently whiling away the time with Sudoku puzzle books or water-damaged p.o.r.n magazines. Each guard made sure to keep his eyes moving in a vigilant triangle: left side, right side, magazine. If anyone or anything was so unfortunate as to venture into his eye-line and did not move with the stride or purpose of a living person, it would soon be greeted by some very precise bullet placement. The men in the trees were put there for a very good reason. Life-long hunters, they"d proven themselves time and again and could shoot the b.a.l.l.s off of a flea at a hundred yards.
All in all, these folks had become an efficient and well-honed survival organism. They"d had no choice but to do so. After experiencing some of the things they had recently, they"d needed to come together quickly and luckily their cohesion had met remarkably few speed b.u.mps. Yes, there were a few of your garden variety personality conflicts and even fewer vain attempts at "power grabs," but for the most part things were going smoothly. Cataclysm had a way of doing that-of forging alliances between the most unlikely of parties. Whether a person was young or old, rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, these folks instinctively knew that they would need to put their differences aside if they were to all survive. They"d been given a role and a purpose and each was imminently aware of the fact that survival depended on them doing exactly what they"d been asked to do. If one of them was lax in his duties, then all of them potentially would suffer. And now that the world was getting spun on its collective a.s.s, suffering meant a h.e.l.l of a lot more than some hurt feelings or a few skinned knees.
As the group went about its business, a sudden shout erupted from the tree-line on the south side of the encampment. Talk of the alarm and what it might mean rippled quickly through the crowd. This isolated place had been chosen on purpose and any encroachment from the outside was news. As a result, any word of what was happening in the real world was both welcomed... and feared.
A teenage girl who"d been delivering food and thermoses of coffee to the sharpshooters out on the perimeter came sprinting through the tents and RVs and into the center of camp. She wore a pair of faded denim overalls, a cream-colored thermal shirt and had her hair pulled up in high pigtails which accentuated her face. She was barely eighteen, but there was a beautiful woman blossoming there and more than a few of the men in camp were beginning to notice. The girl ran-sidestepping people and jumping over obstacles-without stopping until she reached the armory tents. Her gait stumbled to a stop and she fought to catch her breath before trying to speak.
Bob Wolf, head gunsmith and the unofficial leader of this militia, set the Browning BAR Safari he was working on aside and walked from around his worktable. He approached the panting girl and held his hand out to offer her some stability. Wolf was a big man with long graying hair and a full salt-and-pepper beard. Even though he was a little thick in the middle he still looked like one tough customer. He was the kind of man who, due to his past as both a decorated veteran and an ex-biker, led naturally. His history and level of experience gave him an unquestioned air of authority. When he talked, people listened. It was a large part of the reason why they"d turned to him when the rules of the world got abruptly changed. He was younger than one might expect, given the responsibility he now shouldered, but he wore the mantle of leadership well. The red in his eyes, however showed he was also a bit overwhelmed by the present situation.
"Jenny?" he said paternally, putting his hand on her shoulder and steadying her. "Catch your breath, honey and tell us... what"s the matter?"
Jenny Maguire panted and drew heaving lungfuls of air into her chest. She looked up at Wolf excitedly. When she tried to speak, her voice came out in asthmatic gasps.
"Take it easy, child," Wolf said, his voice sounded grizzled but still holding a sense of rea.s.surance. The gathered crowd leaned in as one to listen to what the girl had to say.
"A...a...a..." Jenny barked, "a man."
"Where?"
"At... at the northwest tree-line."
"They found some people?" someone in the crowd asked.
She shook her head back and forth, tossing her hair about like kite tails swirling in the wind.
"No... just... one... one man."
Cleese sat at the end of a long picnic table, aggressively wiping slices of bread across the plate in front of him. His eyes roamed over his surroundings warily as he stuffed fingers full of food into his mouth. It had been a while since he"d eaten actual cooked food and the fare these people were serving up warmed his stomach and stuck to his ribs.
With every mouthful, his head became clearer and thinking back, the last memory he had of a full meal was the one at the bar, before everything went to s.h.i.t. He"d just finished eating and was about to settle down to spend the evening indulging in his favorite sport-compet.i.tive drinking-when things got hazy. He had a dim recollection of some commotion that had started after something had been broadcast on the television, a foggy memory of people talking excitedly about some crazy s.h.i.t. The bits of conversation he was able to pull from the sludge of his memory seemed like something out of a horror movie more than anything else. Then there"d been the sound of wood splintering and his memory of the night blurred into visions of pale faces with gnashing teeth, punches being thrown, and the sticky sensation of blood on his hands.
The next thing he knew, he was walking in the early morning sunshine and nursing one h.e.l.l of a hangover. After that, it had been what seemed like days and days of running and fighting and the constant struggle to make his way through the city and across the bridge. The memories of that time were not anything he wanted to hold onto. He preferred to let them lurk at the furthest periphery of his thoughts, for they offered him little solace. Once across the bridge, he"d decided the best plan was to put some distance between him and where he knew the dead lurked by heading into the woods. He could figure things out once he had some time to rest and get an idea of exactly what the f.u.c.k had happened-and how bad it all was. That little plan was interrupted when he was stopped by Wolf"s heavily armed men.
Flash forward to the present and Cleese finding himself here.
After a quick but welcomed shower, change of clothes, and food, he was ready to have some of his questions answered. Unfortunately, the things he was hearing didn"t make any more sense than his memories did.
Wolf sat across from him and was just finishing his explanation of what was now what. Cleese listened carefully as he polished off a heel of bread coated with the last remnant of his meal. On any other day, he would have called the man a "bulls.h.i.tter" if he was being nice or a "f.u.c.king liar" if he wasn"t and then sent him packing. Today though, some core of his intellect, some small shard of his drunken memory, was able to vouch for the veracity of the man"s story; no matter how far-fetched.
"So," Wolf concluded and sat back in his seat, "that"s where we are. The dead aren"t exactly obliged to stay dead any longer, and as you well know it"s pretty dangerous out there."
The young girl in ponytails suddenly appeared at Wolf"s side and set two cups of steaming coffee before them. She cast a quick, yet surrept.i.tious glance at Cleese.
"Thank you, Jenny," Wolf said and smiled at her in grat.i.tude.
Cleese half-stood and thanked her with a reflexive slight bow. The girl looked at him and smiled. Then, as quickly as she"d come she disappeared back into the crowd.
Cleese grinned as he sat and looked at the steaming cup. Picking up the Styrofoam cylinder, his hands were instantly warmed by the hot smoky fluid within. The first sip sent cascades of warm flavor down his throat. Cleese kept the cup at his lips and blew across the rim. Breathing in the rich aroma, he cast his gaze into the surrounding crowd. His eyes were met by a small sea of normal-albeit frightened-faces. The interesting thing was not one of them stood out as exceptional. These were not soldiers, not by any stretch of the imagination. What he saw was the run-of-the-mill faces of grocers, students, delivery drivers, businessmen, and cashiers; all of them just regular people who"d been thrust into a nightmare far beyond their wildest reckoning. Hot on the heels of that thought came the realization that unless things radically changed in the world,the vast majority of them would be dead inside of a month.
"We"ve managed to make a safe place for ourselves up here," Wolf continued, "but it"s still pretty touch and go. We have supplies. We have food and ammunition. But we know all too well that one-just one-of those things getting inside the perimeter would mean the death of every one of us."
As Cleese drank his coffee and pondered all that he"d been told, a pot-bellied man stepped out of the crowd and sat down uninvited next to Wolf. The guy gave off a bitter vibe due mostly to the perpetual look of disgust on his face; the expression of someone who"d just stepped on a slug in his bare feet. From his build, Cleese could tell the guy had some muscle on him back in the day; probably from playing high school ball. These days though, he was just another fat guy who was way past his prime, laboring under the misconception that he was a whole lot harder than he really was.
"Enough of this s.h.i.t, Bob," the guy interrupted. The man tried to look Cleese dead in the eye and push his dominance. Cleese stared back unimpressed. In his day, he had given hundreds of fat slobs like this the b.u.m"s rush; tossing them onto their a.s.ses out of the back doors of more bars than he could count. In the end, it wasn"t Cleese who looked away.
"Cleese," Wolf said as a way of introducing this pudgy a.s.shole, "this is Fred Bartlett. He"s been helping out with scheduling the security watch around the camp and leading some of the recon runs into town."
"Charmed," Cleese said to Bartlett and, as if in dismissal, returned his gaze to Wolf.
Bartlett returned his gaze to Cleese for a moment and his sneer intensified. He snorted in what pa.s.sed for disgust and then went back to his obviously prepared bit of bravado.
"So, tell me... Cleese was it?" he said with an exaggerated smirk. "How is it that you-all alone-made it out of the city in one piece? Everyone we"ve run into out there has been either severely injured or infected. Yet, here you are... neither one of those things."
"What can I say, Fred?" Cleese responded wryly. "I"m a talented motherf.u.c.ker and a mean, mean man."
Bartlett turned and rolled his eyes exaggeratedly to the obvious appreciation of his collected short bus of sycophants off to the side. There was the bespectacled bald guy who looked like a pharmacist, the Polack with the big nose and clown hat of hair on his head, the ex-corporate suck-up who was now playing at survivalist tough guy, and the dark complexioned dude with the even darker circles under his eyes. This confederacy of dunces watched over Bartlett like he was their own personal Jesus.
Something told Cleese that these dopes would soon become a major sore in his a.s.s. He chalked it up as little more than a hunch, but if experience had taught him anything, it was that his hunches were rarely wrong.
"Well, I don"t know about any of that, but..." Bartlett said, looking back incredulously, "I"m of the opinion that you"re either one of the luckiest men on the face of the earth... or, and this is much more likely, that your story is full of more holes than a block of Swiss cheese."
"Well, s.h.i.t, Fro-derick... that just plain ain"t nice," Cleese responded with a slow smile. "You wound me."
As this exchange was transpiring, Wolf"s gaze drifted over the a.s.sembled crowd, judging their mood. He quickly realized that this avenue of bickering and macho posturing was proving to be a fruitless one and would, in the end, be ant.i.thetical to them continuing to work together as a team.
"Well, whatever..." Wolf interrupted. "You know as well as I do, Fred, we all have our stories and maybe Cleese will share his one day. Right now though, we still have a schedule to keep and there"s enough of the day left that we can do that run into the "burbs and recon that strip mall we saw last time out. I"m convinced that pharmacy has some s.h.i.t we can use. Agreed?"
Bartlett c.o.c.ked a sideways grin and nodded. He figured that whatever Cleese"s story turned out to be, they would get to the bottom of it soon enough. They"d all see him for what he was-a fraud-and they"d see that he"d been lying about where he"d come from and what he"d done. Awkwardly, he stood up and took a step away from the table.
"Cleese," Wolf continued, "you"re welcome to stay here for as long as you"d like, but we"ll need to find something for you to do, some way to contribute. No one rides for free around here and you look pretty able-bodied."
Cleese nodded. "I"m happy to help in any way I can."
Bartlett, who"d taken another step toward the crowd, stopped and looked back over his shoulder. A wide grin of smug self-satisfaction spread across his face. It was pretty obvious he"d done himself a bit of quick thinking.
"Hey, Wolf... How"z about we get Mr. Talented here started by having him come with us to check out that drug store?" Bartlett suggested. "We"ll get him a gun and I can show him the ropes."
Both Cleese and Wolf saw the idea for precisely what it was-an opportunity for Bartlett to establish a pecking order with the New Guy. It was a move that would by definition put Cleese in a subservient role.
Bartlett figured to use it as an opportunity to put Cleese in the s.h.i.t and when he went p.u.s.s.y, he"d be exposed for what he was-a phony and a coward.
Cleese knew it would be fine and perhaps even shut this f.u.c.kin" idiot up once and for all.
Wolf shook his head and was about to shoot the idea down, but Cleese quickly interrupted him.
"That sounds like a swell idea, Freddie Boy and maybe, while we"re out there, we can get us some matching tee shirts. You know... his and hers."
Wolf looked at Cleese and thought that there just might be more to the guy than what met the eye. Sure, he had the look of someone who had been in some sc.r.a.pes, but his relaxed manner said there weren"t a lot of situations he felt he couldn"t handle. If nothing else, a couple of things would become apparent. First, they"d get a chance to see how well Cleese handled himself under pressure. Second, Cleese just might take Bartlett down a few notches. It sounded like a win-win to Wolf.
Wolf looked at Cleese and gave him an appraising stare.
"Listen, friend..." he said, "right now, the a.s.shole-to-Good Guy ratio is at an all-time low around here. I"d like to keep it that way. Now, I don"t know you from Adam, but you strike me as someone who can handle himself and may just come in handy."
Wolf stroked his beard and stared more intently.
"I"m going to put a modic.u.m of trust in you in the hopes that you don"t f.u.c.k up and make me regret it. Sound fair?"
Cleese shook Wolf"s hand and said, "Fair enough."
Wolf nodded to him and then looked over at Bartlett.
"Go get your team ready, Fred. I"ll get Cleese a gun and have him ready in twenty."
Through the binoculars, the drug store they"d come to recon sat like a monolith at the far end of the lifeless parking lot. As he sat in the pa.s.senger"s seat of a midsized Self-Haul truck, Cleese lowered the eyepiece and looked over at Bartlett. Seeing the human facial equivalent of a dial tone, he shook his head in disgust and raised the gla.s.ses back up to his eyes to get a more comprehensive look at what they were up against.
Past the trees and down the hill, the pale cement and red brick of the store"s geometrically designed facade gave the building a cold, sanitized appearance. A large blue and white sign which read "Accinelli"s Drugs" hung from the flat face of the building, its vivid color a bright and contrasting eyesore. Across the sweltering tarmac, two buildings were set at right angles, half-framing the parking lot around the pharmacy. Their retail s.p.a.ces were a mixture of small specialty shops: a beauty shop, an Indian restaurant, a sandwich joint, and a mailing store. A few cars were sporadically parked about the lot, abandoned by their owners back when things went south. Some still had their doors open from when the occupants either abandoned their vehicles or were pulled from behind the wheel, but a few-the ones toward the back of the lot-were shut tight. Near the front doors of Accinelli"s, a beat up old Honda 650 laid on its side like a horse left to die in a waterless black desert. A rainbow-hued mixture of oil, water and gasoline pooled beneath it.
Oddly, there were only a few of the dead roaming around and they were busy moving about the dumpsters at the back of the lot near the Indian restaurant. The rotting garbage drew them in as they continued their never-ending search for food.
Cleese lowered the binoculars and again looked at Bartlett.
"Looks ok to me. There are a few of them, but they"re pretty spread out or busy with that dumpster."
"Well, then... by all means, if you say we"re good, we"re good. Let"s go check it out," Bartlett responded and put the truck into gear. The guy acted pretty much like a d.i.c.k when they first met and his mood had only gotten dourer as the day wore on. Not that Cleese gave much of a f.u.c.k. He"d pretty much written the guy off as a waste and was now only following his lead in order to secure a place in the compound. Against considerable odds, Wolf and his people had managed to pull a good thing together in the crush of it all. Cleese was willing to help out for as long as he could. Or as long as it suited him. Truth was... while things looked good now, he knew how quickly s.h.i.t could go south and so he probably wouldn"t be sticking around for long. He"d help them out while he could, but he wasn"t exactly the type to go all in.
It just wasn"t how he was wired.
The truck pulled into the lot and drove around the perimeter in a wide arc, moving indirectly to the front of the drug store. Bartlett was obviously doing his best to keep them out of the sight of the few dead that were milling around. There was no sense in broadcasting their presence if it wasn"t absolutely necessary. When the truck came to a stop, the back door slowly rolled up so it made as little noise and possible and four figures jumped out. Bartlett and Cleese climbed out of the cab and the group was soon gathered at the back of the truck. All of them moved a.s.suredly, holding their rifles tightly to their chests. Leaving the back door of the Self-Haul open, the men cautiously approached the building.
Coming back into the city from the safety of the compound was never fun nor was it ever easy. Inherently, the excursion was dangerous and, though everyone was called upon to do it, it was not an activity anyone relished.
Well, not anyone sane that is.
Cleese shouldered the heavy SIG 556 SWAT rifle Wolf gave him and directed his gaze at the spot directly in his line of fire. With every step, the weight of the 9mm in the shoulder holster he wore thumped against the soft flesh of his armpit. As he moved carefully across the sidewalk in front of the store, he took the opportunity to give Bartlett"s crew a closer look, summing them up. Cleese believed that knowing your cohorts-what their pros were, what their cons were, and being able to make a guess on which way they"d fall if a bad wind were to blow-was essential to remaining an upright and breathing member of the human race.
After giving them the once over, he was disheartened to arrive at the conclusion that these guys were all jolly-timers and were likely to get him-and themselves-killed in short order. They were total amateurs playing army. They"d been given a shot of courage after they"d come up victorious against a distinctly brain dead enemy. They were, at least to Cleese"s mind anyway, little more than walking liabilities.
As they"d geared up back at the campground, Bartlett had done the formal introductions and Cleese made it a point to take some mental shorthand on each of them. There was Hines (who, as it turned out, was a pharmacist, so he"d made a good call on that one). His beady eyes peeked out from behind a pair of thick-rimmed gla.s.ses which constantly slipped down his nose. His bald head reflected any offered light. Next up was Pugnowski. The guy was a goof with the big nose and a volcanic eruption of red hair coming out of the top of his head. Harrison had, once upon a time, been an executive or some s.h.i.t. Now he was Rambo on a f.u.c.kin" day pa.s.s. Finally, there was Del Castillo, a Spanish dude with a paunch and an annoying habit of calling everyone "Bro."