So the giant would have a fairly high center of gravity, and once toppled would be unable to help himself from falling. That gave Jak a possibility. But why didn’t he want to use the blaster? That would make for a quick chill.
But then again, remembering the chilled corpses he had seen, Jak figured that a clean chill was the last thing that the giant wanted. He liked to inflict pain. That thought was emphasized for him by the memory of the wounds in Dean’s knees, and the sight of an old handblaster holstered in the small of the giant’s back as he and Jak began to circle each other. The blaster looked absurdly small nestled into the shiny material that covered the vast back, but allowing for the giant’s size and the wounds he had seen, Jak figured that it had to be a fairly high-caliber weapon, perhaps a .357 Magnum blaster similar to his own.
The thought vanished from his consciousness as soon as it flitted across. It was pointless to speculate right now. The only thing that mattered was defeating the giant, preventing himself from getting chilled.
They circled slowly, the giant’s face red and shiny with sweat in the sun, eyes glinting with blood lust and lips drawn back over his strong white teeth with a leer that bespoke his intent only too well. He shuffled around in a wide circle, large feet crunching and rustling in the undergrowth.
Why hadn’t Jak heard him approach? He was so bastard clumsy and loud that the albino should have been able to hear him from half a mile away.
The nagging feeling in Jak’s gut increased as this thought flitted through his mind. The odds were stacked heavily, and he felt as if he were playing a game where no one had bothered to tell him the rules.
That wouldn’t be the first time. He had to make sure it wasn’t the last.
The giant’s shiny one-piece costume shimmered in the sun. Because of its tight fit, and the kind of material it was, it inadvertently telegraphed his movements to Jak.
With a deft and wickedly fast flick of his thick wrist, the giant sent the rock skimming through the air toward Jak’s head. It was a sharp-edged flint, and at that velocity could have opened his skull and spilled his brains on the grass.
Could have—if the lightning-fast reflexes of the albino hadn’t already read the movement. By the time the rock reached the point in space where Jak’s head should have been, the wiry albino was already executing a roll to bring himself out of the sideways leap that had carried him out of the rock’s flight path.
“Fuck,” he swore as his shoulder struck a stone in the earth at the very apex of his shoulder joint. He felt the sudden jarring down his left arm as the nerve caught fire and then deadened temporarily.
By the time the word had escaped his lips, he was up on his feet again, trying to hide the temporary disability from his opponent.
The blood-lust sneer turned to a snarl of anger as the giant followed Jak’s path. Missing with the stone and finding that his opponent was more than a little faster than he had imagined had done nothing more than anger Jak’s opponent. And from the sudden glimmer in those animal eyes, Jak knew that the giant had registered Jak’s injury.
With a roar, the giant sprung at the albino teen, using all the power in his thighs and calves to propel himself through the air from a standing position. He would have gained momentum by stepping forward first, but what he lost in this way he more than gained in surprise and valuable fractions of a second.
Jak swung himself to one side, unwilling to play odds on another jarring blow from the ground. He spun away from the flight path of the giant, enough to prevent the man driving him into the ground, but not enough to stop himself from receiving a glancing blow that took his spin into an uncontrollable tumble. Even that glancing blow, hitting him just below his injured shoulder, was hard enough to drive the air from Jak’s body and make his head reel.