by Jackson Kane
She looked at me, gasping. Her eyes were puffy with sorrow and fear. She was in so much pain. Streams of blood-tinged tears ran down her sun-worn cheeks. It was written plainly across her face she didn’t care about vengeance. Vengeance wasn’t going to keep her alive. And the killing of some guy didn’t save her son.
Through sobbing, hyperventilating fits, the woman whispered two words to me that shook me to my very core. The last few threads of goodness within me snapped away. I was a man free-falling through the infinite blackness of a cold, uncaring void.
I closed her brownish-green eyes, apologized, and kissed her forehead.
Then I shot her in the heart.
When her hand went limp, the grief crushed me like the big metal cylinder of a street paver. My eyes welled with tears. I wanted to cry. Near-indiscriminate death was the only thing I was ever good at. What had I been forced to do?
What had I done?
“I am cancer. I am death’s handshake. In my wake, I leave only ruin.” The words I’d told Star so long ago echoed in whatever was left in of my blackened heart. Everyone around me died sooner or later.
“In my wake, I leave only ruin,” I repeated the words over and over, each time they cut unimaginably deeper. The deafening echoes in my soul eclipsed everything else, the sounds of Star coming in the front door quietly calling my name, the bikes pulling in, all of it.
All I heard was the thunderous sound of my defeat and only one thing made any sense in the maelstrom of despair.
I pressed the barrel of the gun into the bottom of my chin and squeezed the trigger.
*click!*
I was out of bullets. I exhaled, and all the screaming in my head mercifully ceased. The gun slipped from my hand to rap sharply against the wood planking between my legs. I hadn’t realized it, but I’d used my last bullet on the dying woman.
God, I wish I had at least known her name. Or her son’s name.
The tears dried up. The grief drained into the vast caverns of my charred heart which beat strictly out of habit. It was too stupid to give up the ghost and relax into oblivion. Blankly, but with shaking hands, I reached for a cigarette and lit it.
I was again, just an empty cup. Hollow, fragile, yet somehow not shattered.
Star’s pace was fast and reckless as she ran through the building looking for me. I couldn’t call out to her at all. The cascading trauma of my whole life had finally caught up with me. I was paralyzed and couldn’t make any noise at all.
“Ohmygod!” Star gasped, taking in the horror when she saw the dead woman under the filthy sheet. Star cautiously leaned a little farther behind the shredded cabinetry we’d all been hiding behind.
“Remy!” She rushed up to hug me. “What happened? Is there anyone else alive? Are you okay?”
Her warmth brought me back from the brink, but even still, I couldn’t find the strength to answer her. I couldn’t even look at her. At that moment, everything was fuzzy. I only loosely remembered where I was and why I was here.
Star was the only reason to continue on. In the briefest moment of absolute weakness, I’d somehow forgotten that. A nauseating cocktail of relief—that the gun was empty, duty to my brothers, and even more so to the woman I’d held above all else, and finally shame that I’d have left her alone at the mercy of the Lobos had all replaced the grief.
Now I felt shitty for all new reasons.
The more smoke I pulled into my lungs, the more dissipated the haze in my head became, but it wasn’t nearly fast enough. The front door slammed open loudly. Heavy, rubber-clad footfalls fanned out as they searched the building. The Lobos tried to question the only man I’d left alive but quickly gave up when he didn’t wake up right away.
“Remy! Snap out of it! The Lobos are here! Please! I don’t know what to say to them!” Star’s voice was urgent, fear creeping into her hushed pleas.
The Lobos were relaying calls back and forth, from and to Bones, as the men came across the bodies I’d left inside and out. They had us surrounded, coming in multiple exits.
She shouldn’t have come in here. It was too late for her to escape now. My mouth and throat were cast in lead as I looked at her. It felt like I was wading through a muddy, waist-high marsh to get back to her. Still…no words came to my lips.
The first Lobo who walked within eyeshot of the dead woman, looking extremely out of place against the aged browns and dusty grays of the post offices antiquity, was Spyder who walked tentatively toward the chaos of exploded cooking equipment and violent shocks of vibrant red spray.
“Jesus fucking Christ, gringo! You! You are a difficult man to kill.” Spyder lowered his gun in awe, fully taking in all the carnage. His tone took on a ragged edge as if his words were fragile slips of paper torn out of a much larger book. “Damn, you killed the girl, too? Shit... you know how to fuckin’ party.”
My eyes flashed to him, hardening.
Spyder didn’t raise his gun or step back in fear, but the discomfort he felt around me was apparent in how much firmer he grasped his gun.
That won’t save you. My eyes twitched at him.
“Bones, I found our Santa Claus!” Spyder turned and hollered for everyone else to come over.
I closed my eyes, feeling all the boot steps approach through the thin wooden flooring.
“Poet?” I could hear the surprise in Bones’ voice. No one would’ve expected to see me alive after what he’d done to me. “I’ll be damned…”
That made two of us.
“How was death, amigo?” he asked with an air of skepticism as if not fully believing what he was seeing.
My eyes opened, slowly drifting up to Bones. The man who’d killed me. He was still bald but had shaved off his pencil thin mustache, and of course, was well dressed in a fine button-down and slacks beneath his leather vest.
“Unfulfilling.” I just barely managed to growl out the word.
My shaking had stopped just before Spyder arrived, and now my body and intent were stone still. A sense of purpose trickled into the cup of my soul, mixing with the flood of bloody, savage rage that had filled me to bursting. All the hate and hurt that radiated through me like a ruptured nuclear plant was forced down, was pushed down, and buried beneath a mountain of single-mindedness. I released the murdered mother’s hand and stood up to face them all. There would be a time to grieve and pour out my weakness…
But this wasn’t it. There were more people to kill first.
“I sent the reaper your regards.” my words came a little easier.
“Why did you call me, Poet? What is all this?” Bones asked, holstering his two guns and crossing his arms. He felt comfortable enough now that the last of his men had filtered into the room and surrounded Star and me.
“Unsanctioned doxa lab on Lobos turf,” I said slowly, testing his knowledge of what was happening in his own backyard.
“I have fucking eyes, gringo.” Bones’ scowl told me that this wasn’t something he’d been told until I gave Spyder’s brother the tip.
“Meet the Knights.” I motioned to the corpse behind them. “Veins support club. I wasn’t bluffing when I said they’d stepped up their game. Figured the only way you’d take me seriously was if I showed you. Hell, I even left stumpy out there alive for you to verify everything.”
“Well, Poet, you certainly have my attention now. I’m all ears.” Bones was genuinely curious as to why a dead man would come back to life to help his killer. “What do you got to say?”
Couldn’t blame his skepticism, but if I didn’t sell this story, both Star and I would be headed back to the grave. This time, it would be permanent. “Your plan is going to fail without my help. The Veins know you’re going to attack during the annual. They’ll plan to draw you in further, overcommit, and make you walk into a slaughterhouse,” I said evenly without any hint of hesitance or nervousness in my voice or posture. It was an easy sell now that I’d talked to Tee. In essence, I was telling Bones the truth.
“So you know we go
t a mole inside. Who’s to say we don’t know exactly what’s in store for us?” Bones was good at this. By giving a little, he was hoping to see how much I knew. “Why do we need you?”
“It’s being hosted in Leslie this year, my old clubhouse. Your mole may be connected, may even be in Deadeye’s crew, but he’s not in my chapter.” I knew and could vouch for every single person in my chapter of the Veins. Bren was the only person to officially become a member in years. The rest of the club might be compromised, but our ship had no leaks. “Your mole doesn’t know anything about my chapter, how much firepower we have there, our defenses, anything. If you knew the horror show your guys were walking into, you’d be a hell of a lot more worried about the guys watching your back, not recruiting every scumbag that could rob a convenience store in broad daylight.”
I was referring to the hang around that I took out at Moretti’s butcher shop.
“You’re raising an army because you’re flying blind,” I concluded, scanning the hard faces of Bones’ men and slowly watching the apprehension seep in. “What’s your strategy? Hoping that at the end of the day, some of your guys might survive?”
It was a bluff – an educated guess, but a good one.
Bones regarded me carefully, weighing what I said against everything he knew. No-nonsense and calculating, he wasn’t the kind of man that made rash decisions. He was a mathematician at heart, and this was just another chess game. Whatever the outcome, he would never allow himself to lose face or show weakness. I had to tread lightly, balance the appropriate amount of anger, fear, and respect.
“Why do you want to hurt your family so badly?” he finally asked with genuine curiosity. “How can I possibly trust a Vein, one whom I already put in the ground once but was too stubborn to stay there?”
“Because I need you.” I swallowed hard and dipped my eyes for a moment, showing a little vulnerability. “They have all the money I’ve ever made with the club, and I want it back plus interest.”
“Greed. Turns out the great Poet toils in the dirt with the rest of us after all.” Bones smiled, shaking his head. “I knew that asylum story you were spinnin’ last time was bullshit. But money... Money, I can understand.”
“If I go back there alone, they’ll kill me.” My frown deepened. “But with you, I’ll have a chance.”
“Then what?” Bones cocked his chin into the air, exuding superiority now that he thought we were having a real conversation. “You patch in with us and become a Lobo?”
“Fuck, no. You know that wouldn’t work for either of us.” I let some of my resolve show. The Lobos would never accept me. Once a Vein always a Vein. “I can get you in at the right time to do the most damage. Once your guys kill Deadeye and his crew, the mother chapter will be gone and the Steel Veins will fall apart.”
“And you?” Bones asked.
“Me and my girl disappear to a tropical beach somewhere far away from…” I looked down at the mostly covered woman and her child at my feet.
Bones frowned at the mess. He was a ruthless pragmatist, not a sadistic psychopath. Just because he would’ve had the woman and child killed didn’t mean he would’ve wanted to.
On some level, Bones could understand me wanting to distance myself from all this.
“¿En verdad se puede confiar en este gringo?” Spyder expressed his doubts about my sincerity to Bones.
“Verifica todo. Vamos con cuidado. Una vez que él deje de sernos útil, no hay razón para quedarnos con él o la mujer. No vamos a dejar cabos sueltos,” Bones confirmed what I thought.
Star and I wouldn’t be walking away after all this was over.
They were too proud and confident of their bilingual advantage that they didn’t even bother to whisper. I still had yet to let on that I knew Spanish, not even to my own club. It was the only weapon that could never be taken away from me.
“Well?” I asked, playing dumb and extending my hand to shake. “We have a deal?”
“Si.” Bones took my hand then had one of his lieutenants toss me a burner phone. “But know this, if you double-cross me?”
“You’ll what? Shoot me again?” I flipped it open and looked through the contacts. There was only one number. His. “Yeah. I got it.”
For better or worse, the deal with the Devil was finally struck.
I was emotionally exhausted and desperately needed to go lie down. With our car now gone, there was one last thing I needed to take care of before we left.
Bones whistled, whirling one finger in the air which told his guys to start wrapping things up here. They probably would search any bodies left for anything of value then set the place to burn. As far as the locals would be concerned, it would be just another doxa-cooking explosion.
On the way out, I rifled through the pocket of the biker I let live and grabbed his keys. He wouldn’t be riding anywhere ever again.
“One last thing, Bones,” I called back to him while standing over the groaning Knight lying at my feet who was only now starting to regain consciousness.
Bones and Spyder walked into the front room where we were. Bones jerked his head up in a go-ahead-and-speak motion.
I thought of what the Knights had done here. All the collateral damage and how it could’ve been so much worse. These assholes were the ones who brought those families here. “When you’re done with this prick…” I ground my heel into the front of biker’s blown-out knee. The bones and cartilage popped beneath my thick, rubber boot. The dry, cracked, wood floor drank up the pool of blood around his legs like a famished sponge. The biker howled with a face contorted by pain and tears. “…you kill him slowly.”
Bones gravely nodded to me then turned his attention to the wounded Knight.
I took Star’s hand, and we walked out.
The key slid nicely into the bike I was hoping for – a new burnt orange Harley Sportster. I checked it for bullet holes, finding only one in the leather seat probably from some time ago. We both got on. The engine turned over like a dream. I revved it a few times, listening for anything that sounded off, but the bike only roared and purred.
God damn, it had been too long since I had two wheels under me.
I missed my Kawasaki...
I couldn’t shake the devastation that rattled me with the way everything went down, even if it was successful in the end. The cost of that success chipped away a large part of my soul that was lost forever.
Then as we rode off, the vibration under me and Star crushing me in a warm hug, I felt a shred of home return, whatever the fuck home was, and there was a small measure of peace that came with it.
I just worried it might not be enough. I had been drowning in thick, black oil. What I had seen and done tonight dragged me down into a darker place than I’d ever been before.
I couldn’t shake the wish I had for one last bullet.
Chapter Eight
…
Star
Something that happened inside that ghost town post office that had rattled Remy.
I wanted to know, to see if I could help him, but I was too afraid to ask him. With that woman and her child right there on the ground… I was afraid that he might tell me if I did ask.
I wanted to be stronger…I was stronger, but Remy was a man made of barbed wire and to see him rattled like that scared the hell out of me.
It was selfish, but I now felt glad he had me wait across the street.
Leaving the post office, I knew I was in for a hell of a ride. Remy hadn’t been on a bike since he was almost killed by that Steel Veins kill team. Eagerness exuded from him like a legendary musician getting back on stage after a big hiatus.
Remy belonged on a bike.
When he started the engine, he palmed the gas tank with a gentle reverence. I imagined that whichever angry, ruthless god Remy prayed to must have been comprised of gasoline, chrome, rubber, and hellish fire.
The bike’s sudden acceleration had broken my inertia as we pulled away from the Lobos and their brutal interroga
tion of the lone Knight. I’d only been on a bike a few times, and always found it hard to prepare for that initial burst of speed.
The roads to the dead town were packed dirt for a few miles, but the second his back wheel hit real pavement, Remy opened the throttle up and we took off. Not like a bullet, but more like a freight train. The Harley was much louder, and had more of a weighty presence than Remy’s Ninja. Remy’s old bike was so fast and smooth that if he put his arms out on the highway we’d lift off like a jet.
All in all, I liked the feel of this Harley better. It felt more substantial, but I definitely understood why Remy preferred the Asian style more. Where this bike felt like I was on a rapidly accelerating steam engine, his Ninja was like sitting on a rocket that was taking off.
Not sitting, more like, holding-on-for-dear-fucking-life!
It was the embodiment of white-knuckled, screaming, crying speed, especially how Remy rode it.
I wasn’t as much of an adrenaline junkie as he was. I just loved the shrugging off of expectations and obligations that came with this lifestyle. Being an outlaw biker made me feel invincible...to a degree. Guns still scared the shit out of me.
I had killed two men now, I reminded myself. And I didn’t even know the second one’s name.
The second killing bothered me so much more than the first. I knew first hand, one-hundred percent that Rio deserved what he got. The other biker that was fleeing for his life… He probably did too. How could he not after what I saw in there?
But I didn’t know for myself.
Despite the rocky calluses forming around my heart I really hoped I’d never have to do anything like that ever again.
We traveled in a pocket of roaring wind and sound until we pulled into our crappy, little motel with so much speed and sensory deprivation that I had no idea how long of a ride it was, not that it mattered. I had my eyes closed most of the way. I didn’t want to think. I wanted to focus on the rhythm of the ride and let my mind drift.
I hadn’t realized how much I missed being on a bike. I could only imagine how Remy felt.
