by Jack Hunt
“Not until we get Kiera.”
“Kiera Shaw?” Corey spun around looking vaguely interested.
She nodded.
“Where is she?” Corey asked.
“Back at the old people’s residence.”
“Oh fuck no, we aren’t going back there,” Billy said blowing more smoke out. “She’s on her own.”
Ally scowled at him. “No one asked you to help.”
“Good, as I wasn’t going to give it,” he replied while making his way into the living room and looking around.
“Don’t listen to him, he’s an ass,” Corey said.
“Yeah, an ass that just saved yours.”
“Please, you didn’t save me.”
Billy came wandering back into the kitchen looking all pleased with himself. “That skinhead was going to blow your head off. If it wasn’t for my distraction you wouldn’t have got the gun off him.”
“You are full of it, Manning. I had it well under control,” Corey replied rooting through the cupboard. He pulled out a wooden mop, placed it against the sink and snapped it in half. Meanwhile we looked on with curiosity. He reached under the sink, pulled out a can of wasp spray, then shook it up and down. He went through some drawers and pulled out some masking tape and began tucking it into his pocket.
“What are you planning on doing with all of that?” Ally asked.
“You ever seen the flame that this shit spits out?”
She shook her head.
“You might if any of those baldies show up.”
“We’re not going in there.”
“Yes we are,” Ally said.
Billy leaned against the counter. “No offense. I’d be glad to help but do you know if she’s even alive? If they have her, I expect they’ve already had their way with her and killed her by now.”
“Why do you immediately jump to a conclusion that they would do that?”
“Uh. Look around you. You think this is fucking Disneyland? They are savages. There are no cops to stop them and no one is coming to save us. They are going to do whatever the hell they like.”
Ally scowled at him and hobbled back into the next room. I tossed Billy the bird and followed her.
“Pay no attention. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“Would they do that?”
I remembered what I had heard one of them saying back at the residence. They didn’t say her name but I kind of figured it was her.
“We just need to go and get her.”
“Why are you dodging the question?”
I turned back. “I’m not.”
“But you’re one of them.”
“What, because I shaved my head, and got a swastika tattoo?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“People are entitled to make bad life choices. I’m sure you’ve made some yourself.”
With that I turned and went out of the room. I was getting a little tired of people thinking that I was one of them. Back in the kitchen the other two were still going on about some shit that I didn’t care about.
“Grab your stuff, let’s go.”
“I’m not going in there,” Billy said.
“No, you’re not. You are going to take Ally back to her father. You still got the two-way?”
Corey reached into his bag and pulled it out and handed it to me.
“Come in, Murphy?”
The radio crackled.
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve got your daughter. Where are you?”
He gave the address. “Is she okay?”
“Yeah, a bit cut up but she’ll live.”
“Cut up?” he shot back.
“Her leg is injured but I bandaged it up.”
“Make your way back.”
“Billy is going to bring her back. We are going in to get Kiera.”
I heard Kate in the background say her daughter’s name.
“Sam, did you say you’ve seen my daughter?”
I cleared my throat and looked at the other two guys before pressing the button. “Yeah.”
“Is she okay?”
“We don’t know, Kate, but we’re going to get her.”
Murphy got back on the line. “You need some help?”
“Of course, but you are there and we are here. Don’t worry about us, just do what you got to do.”
When I got off the line, Billy was all up in my face.
“I’m not taking princess anywhere. And who the hell are you to give me orders?”
I grabbed a hold of him and threw up him against the wall. “Your mouth is going to get you in a lot of trouble. Just do what you’re fucking told.”
“Oh, what are you going to do, eh? You gonna beat me like your baldie friends out there?”
Corey placed his hand on my shoulder. “Just let it go, dude, he’s not worth it.”
Staring intently at him, I released my grip.
“Just because the world has gone to shit, it doesn’t give you the right to act like an asshole,” he said walking off.
“I can take her,” Corey offered.
“No, I need someone with me who isn’t going to run at the first sign of trouble.”
“Do I have a say in the matter?” Ally appeared in the doorway.
I shrugged. “I just think it’s best, with your leg and all, that you head back.”
She frowned and I got a sense that I had overstepped my boundary. “I’m not an invalid. I can help.”
“No offense but you will slow us down.”
She clenched her jaw and I saw her fist ball then release. She cast a glance at Billy and he smirked.
“Trust me, princess, I don’t like this anymore than you do.”
“So what’s the plan?” Corey asked.
“Plan? There is no plan. You don’t plan for stuff like this. You wing it and hope to god you get out of it alive.” I turned back to Corey. “How many more of those cans are down there?”
“A shitload. They must have had one hell of an infestation problem.”
He opened the cupboard and there were about ten cans.
“Toss them in a bag. I’m going to squeeze back into my wet pants.”
BACK DOWN
We watched Billy and Ally stroll off into the distance. Billy offered to support her with his arm but she refused. I caught her mutter something about how she’d rather die.
Corey checked his ammo before we waded our way back through the forest towards the residence. My pants were still wet and I could feel them pinching my leg. It was the most uncomfortable feeling.
As we got closer to the residence we could see more of them outside. Not all of them were going house to house like they had been doing the day before, most seemed content to linger around drinking, playing heavy punk music using a generator and taking potshots at glass beer bottles. A non-stop party.
Markus Wainright was among them.
My mind drifted back to the first time I had got introduced to Markus. Six foot four, a Nazi eagle on his chest and a spider web that ran over his bald head, he looked as mean as he acted. And like most of them, if you got on their good side, they were as nice as ever.
He ran the local mixed martial arts gym in town. It originally started with backyard tournaments, then when more and more people showed up wanting to be trained, Mount Pleasant MMA was born. Of course he couldn’t support himself on memberships alone. So his extracurricular activities such as selling drugs offset the losses from the gym. Not everyone who signed up for the gym became a skinhead. Some left after a couple of months because they couldn’t handle the way they spoke about others in the town. Others couldn’t take their hard-nosed attitudes or their lack of empathy for weakness. He observed those who came in over a period of a year. He only took on those who showed a taste for violence, were loyal and could be trusted. Most of his staff were convicted felons. They had done time for one thing or another.
I had been there six months when he approached me. I was in the middle of a spa
rring session when he stopped it and pulled me to one side.
“You’ve got a lot of heart, kid, but I notice you back away once your opponent is on the ground.”
“Fight’s over.”
He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “It’s never over until they aren’t moving.”
That was the first time I got a sense of who I was dealing with.
“Look, let me show you. Nick, let’s go.”
Nick was sitting in his corner with his gloves on. He hesitated for a second and looked around at the others. The other six guys that were sparring in the room stopped and watched. They knew that whenever Markus got on the mat, they were about to watch a train wreck. I stepped back to give them room and they began.
At first Nick jabbed a few times and I could tell he was being cautious. Markus picked up on it too.
“Come on. Don’t hold back.”
That’s when Nick got a few jabs in. Markus returned with a few punches and landed one that nearly knocked Nick on his ass. It was when Markus went for a right jab, Nick shot out of the way and landed a hard hook to the side of Markus’s face, that he saw red. There was no hesitation. No thinking about what he was going to do. He turned and ran at Nick, slammed him twice in the face and then threw him into the wall. The guy landed in a heap and was trying to get up when Markus jumped on top of him and started pounding him in the face. Five, ten and then twenty punches later when his face was swollen and he was letting out a gargled breath, Markus stopped. Markus got off him and looked at me. He smiled a toothy grin that was covered in blood, then brought his foot up and brought it home on Nick’s nuts. Nick didn’t even respond.
He was placed in intensive care for several weeks. He never returned to the gym. No charges were filed against Markus as Nick never told the police how it happened. I later learned that he had a beef with Nick. Something to do with the way he had come on to his woman. That was a serious no go. Whether there was any merit to the rumor was neither here nor there. In that moment I knew that I wasn’t dealing with someone that was just dangerous. I was dealing with someone who enjoyed hurting others.
His comment after the fight was just four words. “Don’t ever back down.”
With that he disappeared out back.
I stared intently at him from the tree line.
Corey snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Sam. Are you with me?”
I shook my head. “Yeah.”
“Are we going in?”
I nodded slowly and we made our approach. At the rear fire door we opened it and slipped inside. In the corridor we made our way down to the first room and tried the handle. It was open. I wanted to make sure that if we needed to dive into a room, we at least knew which rooms were unlocked. We did this with multiple rooms on our way down the corridor.
“Where is she?”
“I think she’s over in the east wing.”
I remembered the map on the wall. We were on the south side. As we made our way up the hall that took us closer to the east side, a door opened and a skinhead came out doing up his belt. He turned sharply to the right but he saw us in his peripheral vision. Before he could get a word out I slammed the butt of the gun in his face and knocked him to the ground. I followed through with three more sharp jabs and then motioned for Corey to open the door that the guy had just come out of.
I crouched down and slung my rifle behind my back. I fished around in his jacket and found a 9mm handgun. I snagged it up and tucked it into the back of my waistband.
Corey pushed the door open but instead of holding it he rushed inside. The door swung closed and I jumped up at the sound of a scuffle. I shouldered the door and entered. Lying motionless on the bed completely naked was Kiera. Corey was strangling a skinhead on the floor who had no pants on. I rushed over and then I saw who it was.
It was Tommy Black.
“Corey,” I tried to pull him off but he just pushed me away.
“This fucker deserves to die.”
Tommy was gurgling and trying to grab at Corey’s face but he just kept leaning back.
“You’re going to kill him, Corey.”
As strange as it sounded, in that moment I felt torn. I knew Tommy. At least I knew the guy that had introduced me to the group. Right then Tommy managed to pry Corey’s hands away and push him off him. I stood there frozen for a minute maybe two.
I had spent time with him. He was the only one who had treated me like a person from the time I had arrived in Mount Pleasant. Now Tommy was on top of Corey.
“Help,” they both croaked out. My eyes flitted to Kiera on the bed. I shook my head, unable to comprehend what they had done. A second, maybe two and then I brought the butt of the gun against the side of Tommy’s face. Once, twice and then a third time. He collapsed on top of Corey. Arms draped at his side.
Corey coughed hard. “What took you so long?”
I went over to Kiera. She looked as if she was in a comatose state. Her eyes were open and she was looking up at the ceiling. I threw a blanket over her naked body and untied her restraints.
Corey got up and gave Tommy a kick, twice.
“No time for that, help me with her. Get her clothes.”
The moment I got one of her hand restraints loose, Kiera went ballistic. It was as though she snapped out of whatever world she had escaped to in order to handle what they were doing to her. She scratched my face and I let out a yell. Her legs were still restrained so was one of her arms. Corey tried to help but he only ended up with a smack in the eye.
“Kiera, it’s me, Corey.”
She didn’t respond. She was jacked up on something, or running on pure fear.
“Corey, go lock the door.”
While he went over I tried to calm her down and let her know that we were there to help. They had muzzled her with a rag otherwise I was certain she would have attracted attention. The only way I could get her to stop trying to scratch me was to put myself behind her and hold both of her arms. I kept repeating in her ear. “I’m not here to harm you. We’re going to get you out.”
Slowly but surely she stopped resisting and began crying.
“Corey, her clothes. Toss them over.” I kept a firm grip as I slipped the top over her using one hand. Once we had her top half covered up, I released her slowly and backed away to see if she was going to go ballistic. Instead she just stared into the distance.
“You ready?”
I figured Corey knew the moment we untied her legs that there was a chance she would attack us. We couldn’t tell if she realized we were there to help or if she thought we were planning on moving her to another room to continue whatever sexual acts they had done to her.
It was like releasing a tiger. There was no telling what she would do next.
Tommy groaned in the corner and Corey went over and slammed him as hard as he could in the face again with his gun. He slumped to the ground — out cold.
Once the final restraint was untied, Kiera didn’t move. I handed her the skirt that was at the bottom of the bed but she didn’t even look at it. It was if she had gone inside herself.
“Give me a hand.”
The moment I tried to lay her back so Corey could get the skirt on, she went nuts.
“Hold her,” Corey said as he attempted to get the skirt on without getting kicked in the face. If it wasn’t for the fact that she was petite, I was pretty sure she would have battered us. Once her skirt was on I released her.
“Kiera. We’re going to take you back to your mother.”
Her eyes locked on to mine. “I need you to trust us. Can you do that?”
She hesitated, nodded and that was all I needed to see.
Outside in the hallway it was empty.
“Okay, let’s go.”
We shuffled out and filed down the corridor heading back towards the fire exit at the rear of the building. My nerves were on edge. Corey held on to Kiera’s arm and went ahead while I turned back keeping an eye out. Rounding a corner, we were on the
last stretch of corridor before the exit, when two skinheads came out of a room. I lifted my gun and they dived back inside the room. What followed next was a series of shots. I unloaded about eight rounds to prevent them from coming at me. While I was running backwards, I heard the door open and Corey and Kiera rushed outside.
What I didn’t see because I was running backwards was a skinhead come out of the next corridor. He slammed me into the drywall almost breaking it. A few sharp jabs to the face and I was now fighting for my life. Out the side of my eye I could see the other two skinheads were out of the room and rushing down to help their pal.
The door swung open, a gun fired and the guy in front of me collapsed.
“Come on,” Corey screamed. I fired a few rounds at the two who were coming up and hit one of them. The other one hit the ground out of fear. Rushing out the door, Corey slammed it closed and pushed a large BBQ in front of the door.
As we began running for the forest I heard my name called out.
“Sam.”
I turned to see Markus Wainright.
“You are dead! You are a dead man.”
Corey threw the bag of aerosol cans. They landed a few feet from where we had just come from, and then he fired at them. The explosion was huge. Not only did they ignite and create a massive fireball but the explosion caused the BBQ gas cylinder to explode. The sheer force caused several of the windows around to break and it sent the group of skinheads with Markus rushing for cover.
We didn’t stop to look back. We entered the forest and sprinted as fast as we could around trees, over rocks and through the stream. Even when I felt like I was going to throw up a lung, we kept going. If I slowed, Corey would grab me and pull me on. Likewise, I did the same. All three of us kept running until we had made it through the forest to the lower east side of Mount Pleasant.
The journey back to the address of a home on the east side consisted of a lot of stopping and starting. We hid behind a group of vehicles and spent half an hour inside one of the homes until a group of armed skinheads passed by.
When we made it inside the gate of the address Murphy had given, Murphy came out. His eyes were wide but his reaction didn’t come close to the one that Kiera had when she saw her mother. Both of them sobbed hard. Kiera collapsed into her mother’s arms. There on the floor she rocked back and forth with her.
