Vikings. They were a mid-sized chapter based across five states, involved mostly in drugs, underage porn and low-level human trafficking. Dry figures and facts rose up from the last debrief he'd got; their rank amongst other biker gangs, the roads they claimed as their own, their affiliations with white power organizations. The Brazen Hussy was their northern Utah chapterhouse.
He killed the engine and stepped out of the Jeep. The blacktop of the lot was hot even through his Mulberry loafers, pitted and scratchy with gravel. For a moment he stood in the dark, letting his eyes adjust to the warm night breeze, redolent with the ozone smell of the desert, the green sap of blooming cacti, and the acrid waft of gasoline. He thought about ripping up a shirt and weaving it into a turban, so there could be no misunderstanding at all. It would be good if he had his full beard, more than this scraggly stubble; but he had what he had.
A brown man walks into a white supremacist biker bar in Utah; like a joke. The punchline was coming, and he walked toward it. The Jeep's locks clicked and he tossed the keys casually into a puddle of shadow at the bar's side. After a moment's thought he took out his wallet and did the same thing, extracting only three crunchy ten-dollar bills. His heart beat hard; this stuff never got easier.
He pulled open the door. Inside it was dark, hot, and smelled like a used boxing glove; fermented sweat mingling with cracked leather and grease. All eyes swung to him, and he scanned them in turn, taking in the details even as he made for the bar, feet sticking on the stained vinyl flooring. Half the space was cordoned off; in the shadows beyond lay a stage with a strippers' pole, not tonight. Along the back wall five men were gathered round a pool table with torn blue felt, downlit by the table's lamp. Three wore their chapter jackets despite the residual heat, as if the struggling AC was doing a far better job. One was stripped to a white wifebeater, late-twenties and showing off pale muscles written with Celtic cross tattoos.
These would-be patch members; made men in the world of organized bike gangs. They looked at him with a mix of aggression and surprise. Probably this had never happened before, a sheep striding into their den.
Wren walked up to the bar. On the wall they'd hung white power memorabilia: the Confederate flag, the Don't Tread on Me serpent, a large Viking seal, a swastika Stars and Bars, a cheap-looking painting of a rosy KKK knight atop his white charger.
"I love what you've done with the place," Wren said.
The bar girl glared at him. Two bikers at the bar, mid-aged with long ZZ Top beards and leather jackets grayed-out by the sun, just stared at him, like there was no way to compute his presence here.
"I'll take a Bud," Wren said.
"I ain't serving you," said the bar girl. She was young, twenty-two maybe, wearing her bleached blond hair in natty sideshot pigtails, with a hint of meth-mouth visible in the redness round her lips. Wren looked at her and read a lifetime of coming last. Last at school, last at home, last in life.
"Why not? You clearly need the money."
Her mouth snapped open to respond, but one of the bikers raised a quieting hand. "That's all right, Liza. City boy here's got a smart mouth. Nice Jeep, too." He pointed a finger at the CCTV screen in the bar's back. "What are you, some kind of banker out of Salt Lake, getting rich off the Jew bailout?"
Wren looked at the guy; late forties with the scarred cheeks of a bare-knuckle boxer, now subtly slipping on a silver knuckleduster beneath the bar. Possibly a gang enforcer; the muscle who kept the gang protected.
"Banking of a kind," Wren said, looking him in his blue eyes. "Collecting old debts, mostly. I specialize in reparations."
The boxer laughed.
"I'll buy one for you," said Wren, "and your boyfriend there too."
The guy next to the boxer looked surprised.
"This is a gay bar, right?" Wren went on, feigning uncertainy. "I thought, all the leather? Of course, I'm not judging."
The boxer laughed, but the edge was there and building. "Boy, you must be high. I guess we should go easy for that. How you feel, Jug, shall we go easy?" He patted the hefty shoulder of the man at his side.
Jug was younger, early thirties, wearing a few metal studs in his face with a gang tattoo on his shaved skull. He wasn't a ranking member, Wren figured; not from the redness around the tat. He was a prospect at the bottom, on probation for full-blood membership.
A wannabe.
"Not that easy," said Jug, and stood. He was a big guy, maybe a linebacker once, but far along the road to fat. Wren read the desperation all over him. Bench three hundred pounds and carry close to that in his gut, or he soon would; living off roadkill, exhaust and fast food, dreaming of becoming a respected rider in the mid-ranks, though that would never happen. Wren saw the lack of conviction in his eyes, and took it into account.
Bonus.
Jug strode down the bar, circling around to take up a seat on Wren's right and cutting off his exit.
"You breed them fat out here," Wren said, admiring Jug's girth. "So this is the real America, huh?"
The boxer rested his left fist on the bar top, no longer hiding the knuckleduster. "You've got a real hard-on for this, boy. How do you think it's going to go?"
Wren sighed. Sometimes the build-up to violence made him tired. How much more honest was it just to walk up and punch someone in the face? "It depends how much of a pussy you are, and how many guys here are wearing steel toe boots."
"Steel toe boots," mused the boxer, turning his knuckleduster so it scraped on the bar. "Makes a difference, I suppose. You been beatdown a lot? You get a thrill out of it?"
"This isn't therapy," said Wren, "get on with it."
The guy shot a look to his group around the pool table. They were all watching. He smiled. "Fine, but first I gotta know just what kind of mongrel you are. Wetback? Raghead? All these shit browns blur into one."
"I'm a goddamn rainbow," Wren said. "Mexico by way of Pakistan. It's your lucky day."
The boxer licked his lips, like he was about to tuck into a juicy steak. "And Muslim?"
"Once upon a time. I'm an apostate now. Anything else you need to know?"
"I think that'll do. Jug."
Jug laid a heavy hand on Wren's shoulder. Wren looked up at him while the boxer padded over, and saw through the desperation to the sadness.
Probably his name was Boyd. Maybe he'd been cool in High School but wanted more out of life now. He wasn't smart, and for all his white privilege he'd just landed at a junk food drive-thru, spraying ketchup for college kids. His own kids, if he had any, found him an embarrassment. The tattoo and piercings were an active decision to stop being a loser and get out of the trailerpark.
It was funny. The one thing they never told you when you joined a gang was the truth: we want you because you're a loser. Trust us, we know, because we're losers too.
"What's your real name, Jug?" Wren asked, clamping his own hand over Jug's. It was rough-knuckled with eczema. "Is it Boyd?"
Then the boxer threw his punch. Wren kicked hard off the bar with his left foot just as the knuckleduster arced in, a sweeping haymaker left. His stool rocked back and he fell out of the blow's range, but his hand on Jug's jerked the fat man straight down into it. There was a toothy crunch as the boxer followed through and Jug's mouth splattered in blood, then Wren hit the floor and rolled.
"Shid!" Jug shouted, clamping his hand to his mouth. The boxer wheeled, shock on his face but holding up his guard and taking a step in. The guys at the pool table moved. Wren rose smoothly to his feet, maybe ten seconds ahead of the five of them, and fired a vicious kick to the boxer's groin.
It landed perfect and bent him double; Wren followed with a jump-knee cracking into his forehead, dropping him like a boneless sack of fat. No MMA training for him. At the same time Jug roared through a mouth full of broken teeth and charged. Bareknuckle fights in Kabul had prepared Wren well; he slipped the first and rammed the fat man's belly with his shoulder, blowing the air out of Jug's lungs. While he gasped and bent double, Wren
sped around and planted a firm push kick into his wide ass.
Jug tumbled into the five patch members as they closed in, pulling two down with him and knocking a table in the way of another. While they dealt with that, Wren smoothly slipped Jug's wallet into the back of his waistband; palmed in the charge.
"You all wanna see my Koran?" he asked, then the first pool cue came in. It was the guy in the wifebeater, muscles rippling and rage on his face. He had to be their road captain. Wren got a hand up and the cue broke over his forearm, whipping across his vision trailing blood. He sent a straight right but he was off-balance and the captain bulled through it, following up with an elbow into Wren's chin that sent him down.
After that he was done. Wren lay in their midst, rolling and flexing where he could, covering his face and eyes, taking the beatdown as they worked out their rage on him blow after blow. They stamped, and spat, and kicked, and it was good.
Finally the fog in Wren's head began to clear. He deserved all this and more.
2. BEATEN
Wren roused to a deep rumbling. Opening bleary eyes, he saw white lights rushing toward him, then past, then more coming.
Everything hurt. He ran down a mental checklist as a semi thundered by only feet away, juddering the sandy shoulder beneath Wren's cheek. His eyes worked. His jaw felt loose but he could grit his teeth. His back and sides were a blooming swell of stiffness and pain, and his breathing caught on what was probably two cracked ribs. He extended his legs and arms carefully, like an infant born on the roadside shale; no major breaks.
He rolled slowly up, steadying the dizziness with both palms on the cool blacktop. Yes, there; a broken finger. Maybe two. He looked down. In the oncoming lights he saw the fracture in the middle finger of his right hand. He partially remembered that, now: an unlucky angle when they'd started whipping him with pool cues.
He laughed, but it hurt, so he stopped, then wrapped his left fist around the broken finger. He gave a short, careful pull. The grinding and ensuing dizziness nearly knocked him out, but he clung to consciousness. Probably Jug was in worse shape; taking a knuckleduster to the face. There was something amazing about being beaten while on the ground by a gang. It was infinitely better than being beaten by one person alone. Inflame a gang enough, and they would exhaust themselves batting you around without doing much real damage.
He'd seen it countless times in Afghanistan; a mob of soldiers falling on a single civilian and beating him with all their strength, only for the victim to hobble up and run off seconds later, battered but basically unhurt.
Stamping on a guy on the ground felt good, but all you were doing most of the time was rolling his body over. Few people had what it took to hold a victim still and stamp where it would really cause damage; where bones and joints would be broken. They just worked out their anger, and when the anger was gone they wanted to get rid of the evidence.
Wren pushed himself to his feet. He ran his tongue around his gums. Plenty of blood, but it didn't seem he'd lost a tooth. Half of them were crowns and bridges anyway, lost on other days. He slipped one hand down the back of his waistband and came back with the wallet.
Jug's wallet.
It had been a long shot. In the heat of the violence, then the rush to get rid of his body, they hadn't thought to search him thoroughly. He checked his pockets; the thirty bucks was gone of course.
He opened the wallet and checked out his haul. Some crunched-up bills. Some receipts. Social security card. A kid's prom picture behind a clear window; pretty blonde with retainers. Driver's license. Address.
Jug's real name was Eustace. You couldn't make that stuff up.
Wren stood and limped along the shoulder, rinsed by the rushing lights. He didn't put out a thumb. Someone would stop soon enough or they wouldn't. It couldn't be that far until he hit a gas station anyway.
Nobody stopped.
The station was a TexCo maybe two hours later. By that time the bruising had him hunched over and walking with an ugly limp. His right hand throbbed around the swollen finger. He wouldn't be making a neat fist any time soon.
Across the stained apron, through the glass, the kid behind the counter watched him approach with wide eyes. You didn't get a lot of pedestrians on the interstate.
The kid was black and tall, with tight-knapped curls waxed close to his head. So damn young. The bell rang when Wren pushed through the door.
"The hell happened to you, man?" the kid asked.
"White supremacists," Wren said, picking up a wire basket and scanning the shelves. "You got ice?"
"I got, uh, yeah," said the kid, watching blankly as Wren started plucking products off the shelves. He craned his neck to follow. "In back, bottom of the chest freezer. Did you say white supremacists?"
"Uh-huh."
Wren picked up a box of Band-Aids, a ballpen, duct tape, a liter bottle of Black Jack vodka, a hand towel and a local map showing the small towns clustered around the nearby Manti-La Sal National Forest.
"Like, they jumped you?" the kid asked, peering down the aisle while Wren rustled in the ice chest. He caught a glimpse of himself in the freezer's mirrored back. The bruising wasn't too visible yet, but the blood was. One of his eyes was shot through with red. There were scratches and a gouge in his cheeks and forehead. So handsome, he thought. Just more scars.
"I walked into one of their bars."
He limped back down the aisle and the kid hurried behind the counter. "You did what? Are you crazy?"
Wren shrugged, leafed through Jug's wallet and put fifty bucks down. "Keep the change."
"Should I call the police?"
Wren looked at the kid a minute. He was seventeen, likely a bit of a nerd, unlikely to ever join a gang out here; maybe a cult when mid-life disappointed him. Good parents, good school, but probably not the most popular kid. College would make or break him; it all depended where he went. Either way he'd always remember this night, when a guy walked up after an epic beatdown, and what was Wren but a good role model?
"I wanted them to do it. Now I know where they live. Don't worry about me, James."
"How do you-" the kid started, before remembering he had a nametag.
Wren held out a hand. "Restroom keys."
James stared a long moment, not processing again, before he gave a nervous laugh and fished them out. "Yeah. Here. You sure you don't need some help?"
"Everybody does," said Wren and limped out the door.
The restroom was clean enough. The door didn't lock but that was no concern. He got the hot water going in both sinks then stripped and washed with the handcloth. Blood and dirt came off him everywhere. The smell of piss came too, along with a faint memory of them urinating on his head. Huh. It was their bar.
His back was a welter of rising purple, striped with bright welts where they'd lashed him with pool cues, darker blots where they'd punted toe-first. Muscle helped absorb most of it. There were a couple of round stab marks, a few slits where impact had split the skin, but nothing too serious. His legs were much the same; bruised and cramped but basically OK.
He doused the washcloth with vodka and swabbed himself liberally, enjoying the clarifying sting. Next came Band-Aids. Covered in other people's piss, with clothes he couldn't waste time cleaning now, infection was his main concern. Last he used the pen as a splint and strapped his broken finger tight.
He looked in the mirror. He looked bad; dark tan skin that could pass for a broad spectrum of American minorities between his twin heritages of Pakistan and Mexico, but puffy and bloated now. He'd passed for Pakistani-born ISIS in Afghanistan; that was sixteen months he'd never get back. He'd passed for Guadalajara MS-13 in Mexico, policing the northern border for rival coyotes and cartel mules. He'd even briefly passed for a Native American in the Big Sur terror scare.
He wouldn't pass for shit now.
His eyes drifted to the names tattooed on his chest, done on the day they were born. Their mother's name too. Shit. He couldn't think about now, and wasn't tha
t always the problem?
He cleaned up the restroom as best he could; leaving no blood, all the trash in the wastebasket. No sense in the kid having to do it.
Back in the store, holding the ice pack to the back of his head, the kid just stared.
"You don't look any better, man," he said.
Wren checked the clock behind the counter; after three. "You want to help, call me a cab."
"A cab? Uh, you know where we are right? On a highway? It's not exactly downtown."
"Uber then. There'll be someone."
"Yeah," began the kid, hesitant, "maybe out of Salt Lake? There's no Ubers around here?" He ended it as a question, as if Wren might have better information.
Wren sighed and dumped the contents of Jug's wallet on the counter. "I'm only going to," he read Jug's driver's license, "Emery. Is that far?"
The kid snorted. "We're practically in Emery, man. Thirty minutes max."
"So call the Uber. I'll wait out front. And take this," he gestured at the money. "It'll cover it. Give the rest to charity, whatever you like."
The kid stared at the money, reached for his phone, then paused. "It'll be my Uber, in my name. And you bought duct tape. You gonna kill some guy?"
"He's not gonna die," Wren said, firm and calm, like he was handling a skittish animal. "I'm not even gonna hurt him."
The kid looked distraught. "Then what are you gonna do?"
Wren gave a tired smile. It's what he'd been doing all his life. "I'm going to change his mind."
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Copyright © 2019 by Michael John Grist
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Cover art by Damonza.
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