Running On Empty
Crows MC
Cassandra Bloom
Nathan Squiers
Contents
1. Dear Reader
I. Business
1. ~Jace~
2. ~Mia~
3. ~Jace~
4. ~Mia~
5. ~Jace~
6. ~Mia~
II. Crossed Paths
7. ~Jace~
8. ~Mia~
9. ~Jace~
10. ~Mia~
III. Crazy in Love
11. ~Jace~
12. ~Mia~
13. ~Jace~
IV. Fucked
14. ~MIA~
15. ~Jace~
16. ~Mia~
V. Carry On
17. ~Mack~
18. More…
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Chapter 1
Dear Reader
I hope you enjoy Jace and Mia’s story.
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Part 1
Business
(As Usual)
Chapter 1
~Jace~
A pair of vertical, needle-like lengths of light cut through the dim and wonderful darkness of my bedroom. I was awake, but only just barely. This had been the case for what my heart told me must have been several hours but what my head informed me was likely only measurable in minutes. Probably not even warranting a fraction of an hour. Both my heart and my head, however, both cursed the sunlight that cut past the edges of my bedroom’s blackout curtains and stabbed me like trained assassins through my pupils. The curse spread to my lips, and though I wanted to scream it I found myself grumbling something that was a distant cousin to “fuck” before letting my head fall back in an effort to remove the daggers from my eyes.
My skull banged against the headboard, and the next round of “fuck”s were more recognizable.
I dragged myself out of bed, still cursing and now rubbing the back of my head. A digital alarm clock flashed from my nightstand, seeming to repeat in nagging flashes that it was a little after four. This, I knew, wasn’t true. The power had crapped out sometime around ten or eleven in the morning, or so I gathered from the four hours that had lapsed since then. That the day’s sunlight was peeking through my curtains meant that noon had come-and-gone; the sun had finally circled my building and started its afternoon journey. It was a safe bet that it was closer to two or three, which meant I was, in a truly uncharacteristic achievement, getting up early.
Yay me!
I rolled my eyes, spit out the foul taste in my mouth across the stretch of gray carpet at my feet, and caught myself fingering the pale dimple at my left shoulder. Forcing my left hand back to my side, I growled out another “fuck” and threw myself to my feet—ignoring the irony when I stepped in my wad of spit.
The power outage, passing with little mind paid to it, had taken its toll on my stereo. The old system was testy on its best of days, and it had a rude habit of holding grudges if one so much as toggled its volume knob too quickly. An all-out and sudden loss of power, it turned out, was enough to transcend the realm of simple grudges and pitch the once expensive and, as far as I was concerned, still impressive piece of audio hardware into a silent treatment.
And Mercury wonders why I call it ‘the second wife,’ I thought, beginning to finagle the old girl back to life.
This day, like yesterday, the day before that, and every day prior to that, was going to suck, and I wasn’t about to embark upon the first steps of a sucky day without Jim Morrison reminding me to break on through to the other side. He’d go on to remind me that people were, in fact, strange and that days of an equally strange nature were upon us. Then, with any luck, he’d tell me a bit about some riders on a storm, and that would be enough to motivate me to plant my denim-clad rear onto the seat of my chopper and ride off into my own storm. That the only troubling weather in the forecast was inside my head was beside the point, right?
Twenty long, Door-less minutes later had me certain that this was no marital dispute with my stereo. The old girl was good and thoroughly fried: a casualty of an unholy darkness that insisted to spread through my cozy section of paradise. And me? I’d slept through the whole thing; blissfully unaware of the death of ‘the second wife.’
Grumbling—I’d managed to start evolving from “fuck” to linking together a chain of obscenities that would have made my mom disown me and my old man proud—I finally turned away from the corpse of my (wife) stereo and spotted the flashing light on my phone. I was about to pass it off as another product of the power outage. It had, after all, murdered my sound system and left my alarm clock with a stutter. Then I realized that my phone was not announcing some crippling injury, but only alerting me of a waiting voicemail. It appeared that the power outage, another product of the unseasonably hot summer, had only managed to claim two victims. I sighed, seeing the name on the caller ID as I pressed “PLAY” on the message, and prepared myself for the aching temples that came from excessive eye rolling.
“Jason? It’s Eric…”
“Again,” I said with the first of no-doubt many eyerolls.
“… again,” the message echoed. “I bet you’re just going to ignore this message like all the others…”
Rolling my eyes again, I said, “You’d win that bet.”
“… but I’m still holding onto hope that you’ll come back to us.”
My eyes made another journey as I turned away from the phone, stabbing with insincere optimism at my dead stereo. “What’s wrong, Eric? The new guys not working out?”
“It’s these new guys, Jay,” Eric’s voice rambled on, “they’re just not working out. They’ve got half the work ethic and demand twice the pay.”
“And you assume that I just can’t wait to play the part of the chump and come back to work twice as hard for half the pay, that right?” I groused and, yes, rolled my eyes again.
“Which is why I’m willing to take you back at four times your original salary,” Eric boasted. “Way I see it, if I can get you back by getting rid of TWO of these lazy, money-grubbing schmucks then I’m willing to—”
“Still a dipshit, I see,” I grumbled, turning back and stabbing my finger against the machine, deleting the message.
There was an unusual sense of satisfaction in the act. Even while taking pleasure in the hollow beep that signified that my old boss’s words had been ejected from the machine and sent to wherever it was unwanted recordings went, I couldn’t quite figure out just what it was that felt so good about it. It wasn’t like I’d moved on to bigger, better things; not really. Sure, none would argue that the life I led was a great deal more exotic—and, yeah, some might even argue “exciting”—than replacing shingles and yanking out old wiring in houses that should’ve been demolished before they’d had a chance to try to power a microwave. Saying that I saw more excitement now than I had then would be like saying my temperament was better than it was when I’d been running track in high school that week I’d gotten an ingrown hair on my balls. Granted, there were less horny housewives waiting for me to “catch” them conveniently standing by their bayside windows with their open robes and their how-embarrassing-slash-oh-well “fuck me”-eyes. But I hadn’t been interested in any of that nonsense then, and I sure-as-shit wasn’t any more interested in it now.
No…
What really threw me about the satisfaction I felt from deleting the message had nothing to do with me liking my new life—I couldn’t lie to myself like I could to everybody else; I hated everything about my new life—but, rather, that it gave me an opportunity to carry some of my hatred back into that old, simple life.
It was the sort of satisfaction I might’ve felt if I had the chance to hop into a time machine and kick Larry Wakowndrie in the balls for giving me all those swirlies in middle school. Or the sort of satisfaction I might’ve felt if that same time machine took me to Annie Turner’s living room the night she stood me up so that Billy Dillinger could finger her on the couch I’d helped her father carry in only a few days earlier; the sort of satisfaction that would come from seeing their shocked faces as I flipped them off and called Annie every dirty name in the book. Or the sort of satisfaction I’d feel if I took that time machine back to the old house the night that I’d been out on an emergency job for Eric and T-Built decided to pay me a little visit…
I forced myself to stop the thoughts there, and I discovered that I’d turned away from the answering machine; I caught myself staring back at the deader-than-dead (wife) stereo. That there was hot wetness spreading from my eyes was something I wouldn’t discover for another few minutes. Glaring past the shimmering edges of my vision, I regarded the stereo as if it was something—somebody—else.
If you had to die, I wish I could’ve at least been there to see you off…
I heard the words so clearly that I initially wondered if somebody had broken in just to whisper them at that moment. That, however, was absurd. There wasn’t a pair of balls in the city big enough to try something like that. So I was left wondering something even more unsettling:
Had I actually said them aloud… or were my thoughts just that noisy?
My cell phone rang, making me jump, and I answered it with a “WHAT?” that I made no effort to filter the agitation from.
“And a chipper ‘hello’ to you from the rest of the world, as well, ya moody shit!” Danny’s voice sang back to me.
“Mercury?” I asked, then rolled my eyes at myself, thinking the words as he chimed them back at me:
“Heh! Who the fuck else would it be?” he challenged, followed by, “‘Less ya got some other fag running the books for ya. And tracking the jobs… and calling the shots… and—”
“I get it, I get it!” I groaned, combing my fingers through my hair. “You want a raise or something?”
“Nah,” Danny “Mercury” Thorn said with a drawled chuckle. “Just yer word that ya ain’t got any other fags working this hard for yer ungrateful ass.”
I scoffed at that and shook my head even though there was no one there to see it. “No, Merc, you’re the only fag in my life.”
“Don’t be so certain, Chase,” he said, dropping his voice to a playful “I’m warning ya”-level and saying, “Ain’t’cha been watching the news? We’s got agendas ‘gainst all arrows.”
I laughed at that, still wondering why he insisted on calling all straight people “arrows,” and caught myself shaking my head again. “Noted. So what’s up?” I asked.
“Wanted to know when we could expect the pleasure of yer company,” he answered, “but then ya answered the call like an angsty bitch, so now’s I gotta know who put a pricker-bush up yer poop-chute!”
“Nobody,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes at the man’s too-keen senses. “I just… the second wife croaked. Fucking outage blew a fuse or something, and to make matters worse my Doors CD was still in the damn tray—can’t get it out.”
Danny grunted into the line, and I could practically see him rolling his eyes at me. “Lemme have a whack at the ol’ girl. I’m sure I can get her singin’ again. The very least I can prolly get her to give Morrison back before she flatlines for good. Then we’ll see ‘bout getting’ ya a new one; a better one!”
“I’d appreciate it,” I said, distantly aware that I was wiping my eyes. Then, ignoring the moisture streaked across the back of my hand, I asked, “Any idea what caused the power outage, anyway? I feel like I would’ve woken up if there’d been a storm.”
“No storm, kiddo,” Mercury said, his breath coming out a little heavier than before—whatever he was doing, he was moving—“not in the way ya mean, at least.” Something passed over the receiver on his end—his hand, I guessed—and his suddenly muffled voice shouted an order to move the latest shipment to the back room for inventory. Then, “Sorry ‘bout that, boss. Anyways, it’s the heat. That’s what’s to blame for the power goin’ out. Blackouts ‘cross the whole damn city.”
“The heat?” I repeated, glancing towards the heavy curtains blocking out the windows and remembering the needles of light that had pierced my eyes earlier.
“Fuckin’ A,” Mercury drawled. “Hot as a parade of greased-up Dwayne Johnson clones out here.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” I offered, daring a peek outside. The air itself swirled as the blazing sun cooked through it and took a fresh stab at my eyes. The glass felt hot enough to fry an egg. “Shit…” I muttered.
“Yuppers,” Mercury sang back. “It’s a ‘risk the ride without yer helmet’-sort of day if ya ask me.”
“I didn’t,” I teased, deciding against wearing my leathers, “but I won’t, anyway.”
“Won’t what? Ride with yer helmet? Yeah, we know. Ya think it sends out the whole ‘fearless leader’-vibe, but really it’s just got us taking bets ‘bout when you’ll spill yer stubborn-as-a-mule brains all over the damn streets.”
I resisted the urge to say “sooner rather than later, I hope”—knowing I’d only be locking myself into a nagging, drawling lecture later for it—and offered only an “uh-huh” as I finished getting ready. “So how we looking?” I asked, heading for the door.
“Me, personally? Fucking gorgeous, of course,” Mercury said with a laugh. “But, assuming ye’re askin’ ‘bout the shipment, it looks like we’re a bit on the shorthanded side.”
I actually stopped walking at that, clenching my teeth. “Short? Fuck! How short?”
“Whoa there, cowboy,” Mercury said, his voice hurried. “I said it looks like we’re a bit on the shorthanded side. Still got a few crates to unload, and I ain’t even got a chance to eyeball the invoice reports. For all I know I fucked up the order—missed a zero or something, or maybe I just flat-out forgot to order—”
“Be real with me, Merc,” I said, cutting him off, “what’s the likelihood that you fucked up? Be honest.”
Silence.
I nodded and shook my head. “Thought so.”
“Look, Chase, it ain’t that big of a deal,” Mercury assured me. “So’s we gotta pin a few pricks against the walls and remind ‘em not to fuck with us; let it be known that, whether or not the streets are divided, we still got those turkeys by the gizzards.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, rolling my eyes. “Just that easy, right? Except it’s not that easy, Merc; not anymore. Used to be—used to be!—we could just lay a little muscle down on these guys and remind them who they’re working for, but it’s not the case anymore. Muscle don’t mean shit now that the Carrion Crew’s rolling in and actually taking lives. It’s sort of hard to put the muscle to these guys when our competition is willing to step in and flat-out waste them!”
Mercury sighed. “What do ya want me to do, Chase? Start ordering our boys to slit the delivery guys’ throats? ‘Cause, ‘less ye’re willing to take it to that point, it’s not like we’ve got a hell of a lot to work with to convince ‘em to do things the way they used to be done.”
I pressed the call button for the elevator with one hand while retrieving my keys in the other. The ding and rattle were distant noises in my head as I considered Mercury’s words and asked myself what my father would do.
Probably wouldn’t have let shit get so out of hand that your own boys decided to run off and start another crew that’s willing to take things this far, asshole.
Fair, I
thought in response to myself, except that they weren’t my boys when all this went down.
Then, just like that, my warring thoughts stalemated on the only conceivable deduction:
Michael was the asshole that had failed Dad and the rest of the city.
Not liking that thought—not liking any thought that painted my older brother in a light that wasn’t pure and golden—I accepted that, no, I must be the failure and the asshole. It wasn’t like I hadn’t already been wearing those titles. Bad enough that Michael’s funeral was still fresh on my mind, wasn’t fair to go and shit on a fresh grave.
“You still there, Chase?” Mercury called.
“Uh… yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” I answered, struggling to find my voice. “Just getting on the elevator. Might lose you.”
“What? You talking over a rotary phone or something?” he laughed, “Since when do phones cut out in elevators?”
I cursed inwardly. “Just warning you in case it happens,” I explained.
“Uh-huh,” he answered knowingly. “Look, just get yer ass out here, kay? We’ll check over the order—see if anything’s actually worth worrying ‘bout—and discuss the next move depending on what we find.”
I hung up with yet another eye roll—my temples already starting to ache and the rest of my head not too far behind—and forced myself not to look back at my dead (wife) stereo. If only I had a sense of irony. But, no, there’s no room for irony and regret when there’s iron to ride and pain to deliver. And, as the elevator doors slid open to the parking garage and I slipped out of my air conditioned fortress of solitude and into a concrete box that felt like a tunnel heading right into the sweltering pits of Hell, I discovered that any lingering strands of irony or regret had burned away.
Running On Empty_Crows MC Page 1
