Crimson Highway by David Wickenhauser (i can read with my eyes shut txt) 📕

Hugh exited through the big double doors, caught his bearings, and headed back to the truck. He followed the line of trucks parked in the same row where he knew James had parked his rig. He moved in and out of the areas of light and deep shadow cast by the sparsely spaced parking lot lights.

As he walked past a space between two trucks parked in a dark area, he heard a loud scuffling from behind the trucks. It sounded to Hugh like a fight in progress. Someone was getting hit – hard. He decided to investigate, and followed the sounds.

What he saw chilled his blood. Five large men armed with baseball bats and tire irons had surrounded James. They were young, they were fit, and they were probably very confident that they could handle this lone man. It looked all the world to Hugh like a pack of wolves on a lone deer.

They were about to find out just how tragically overmatched they were. Hugh was no stranger to hand-to-hand combat, and he had the confidence that came with surviving actual life-or-death experiences in a war.

James appeared to be holding them off successfully, but his battered and bloodied condition meant that one or more of them had landed some blows.

Hugh sprinted toward the group, his sandwich forgotten.

Just as he got close enough to join the melee, Hugh saw that two of the men had dropped their weapons, and had come up behind James. They had grabbed him by both arms, and were attempting to force him onto the ground.

The other three moved in with their weapons raised, planning to bludgeon James into submission. James fought like a wounded tiger, but it was evident that the five-against-one odds were going to be too much for him.

Planning to even the odds in a big way, Hugh charged out of the darkness, flying into the fray. His strategy was to quickly put down the men grappling with James, so that James could join him in finishing off the remaining three.

Hugh aimed a hard right kick, stomping down against the right knee of the attacker holding onto James’ right arm. While that guy collapsed to the tarmac permanently out of action with a shattered knee, Hugh then used the downward momentum that the kick gave his torso to pivot to his left and, with the full mass of his two hundred twenty pounds of hardened muscle, bone, and gristle behind the move, swung the back of his left elbow violently up into the face of the attacker on James’ left side, instantly smashing his nose flat and knocking him into unconsciousness.

Two of the five were out of commission, and James was free. That took all of five seconds. Now where were the other three?

He found out soon enough as he heard a sharp crack like wood splintering very near his head. He ducked and turned, and saw the guy with the baseball bat recoil in excruciating pain. His bat was still intact and flying off into the darkness, but his large, right forearm radius bone was shattered and splintered into a pulpy mess.

Now free of the men holding onto him, James had gotten back into the action. He stood beside Hugh in a martial crouch, having delivered the devastating kick just before the man with the bat would have crushed Hugh’s skull.

As the wounded man doubled over in pain, his face caught Hugh’s upward moving knee. The perfect confluence of knee and face meant it was a foregone conclusion for the attacker.

Three down. Now, where were the fourth and fifth?

The two remaining attackers had split up, and had moved to either side of the pair, cautious because of the destruction that their victim and this newcomer had unleashed on their buddies. It was apparent that they hoped to rush Hugh and James at the same time from opposite directions. It didn’t work out that way, because Hugh and James flew together at the man on Hugh’s right. Their combined assault put the man down immediately.

The remaining man looked on in confusion at the pair of truckers still standing, and at his four buddies now lying unconscious or writhing in pain on the pavement.

He came to the erroneous conclusion, however, that he was still in the fight. Obviously he must have been swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool when brains were dished out, because he rushed at James and Hugh with the tire iron, swinging it aimlessly and amateurishly in the pair’s direction.

Dumb idea.

“Mine!” James yelled.

“No, mine!” Hugh yelled back.

They elbowed each other, rushing to be the one to finish off this last assailant, both of them racing at the remaining attacker together. The result was devastating, but predictable.

Hugh stepped right and feinted a right to the guy’s left side, drawing the tire iron in a loopy, swinging arc at the spot where Hugh no longer was. The guy realized his mistake too late to save him from the bone-cracking blow of James’ hard left against his exposed right side, breaking ribs and punishing his kidney.

The guy faltered, and staggered backward. Hugh finished the wounded guy off by smashing the heel of his martial-arts-hardened hand into the guy’s face. A sickening sound escaped his would-be attacker’s pulped lips, his legs collapsed under him, and the fifth guy was definitely out of it.

The whole episode took less than a minute.

James and Hugh stood there, breathing hard, bent over with their hands on their knees, grinning at each other like idiots.

“Hola, Isabel, that was fun!” James said, panting from the exertion, but pumped from the activity.

“Hey, old man, looks like you were a little rusty there.” Hugh teased, panting slightly himself, more from the adrenaline than from the exertion.

"You could at least warn a