They passed the gates and stone columns of a place called Briar Hall Farm, flickering gas lanterns on the gateposts, a glimpse of black fence and a tree-lined drive, and continued on another mile until Ghost slowed when they reached a battered tin mailbox. The driveway they turned into was gravel and badly rutted, in need of grading. The truck swayed, struts squeaking as they left the road and pulled up to a locked metal gate.
“Just a sec,” he promised, and hopped out to unlock it.
He moved the truck forward, and then relocked it behind them. She found she was grateful for the barrier: no one would drive up on them this way.
“Does Duane–” she started.
“He doesn’t have a key, no, and the only way up to the barn is by the driveway…or a really long walk through some nasty-ass briars. You’d have to cut your way through with a machete.”
A relief to hear.
The driveway rocked and jostled them the whole way up, stray branches slapping at the windshield; Maggie thought the radio antenna might snap off.
“Needs worked on,” Ghost said with an apologetic frown. “I keep thinking I’ll get up here and do some work…but then I don’t.”
“Are there any cows, still?”
“No.”
The hill came to a crest and the view opened up, rolling pastures full of waving brown grass. The fields went on and on, disappearing into the distance, framed by dark green tree lines.
“Wow,” she breathed. “It’s gorgeous.”
“That’s the house,” Ghost pointed out as they passed it, a two-story white farmhouse with a rusted metal roof and a sagging porch. The longer she looked, the more she could see wrong with it: the broken windows, a tail of stained curtain trailing from one; the missing porch rail; the mold and mildew crawling up the shady side; the bird that fluttered from the eave, leaving its nest, no doubt.
“Oh,” she said, sadly, and he patted her knee.
“It doesn’t bother me anymore,” he assured.
But it bothered her. No one should have to see their childhood home so dilapidated.
“Dad let it get way outta hand before he died, and then.” He shrugged and didn’t explain further. She knew what he meant, though: he hadn’t had the heart to fix the place up.
The drive moved around a bend and started up another hill, passed through a clump of dense trees. It ended at the base of a towering wooden barn, its doors hanging open, the interior cavernous and dark.
Maggie peered up at it through the windshield, craning her neck. “Not that this isn’t cool – it is, really – but please tell me we aren’t going to live in a barn.”
He snorted. “Nah. Target practice.”
Ah yes, the aforementioned teaching her how to shoot.
She felt a nervous flutter in her stomach, which was stupid, considering what she’d done with a gun just last night.
Outside the truck, the air smelled of crisp fall things – crispy leaves, wood smoke, the promise of snow in the months to come – and also of something wilder, denser, greener. A farm smell.
Ghost put down the tailgate, and began removing things from the duffel, laying them out in the bed of the truck. Gun, after gun, after gun, after knife, after box of ammo.
“Crap,” Maggie said, surveying it all. “Do we need all this?”
“Yep.” He sent her a smirk. “Welcome to boot camp, baby.”
~*~
“The thing about it is,” Ghost told her before they got started, “the other guy’s always gonna have a gun. So you have to ask yourself: ‘Do I wanna die? Or do I wanna fight?’”
Put that way, there wasn’t much of a decision to be had.
She was scared at first. The noise and the recoil and the knowledge of what a weapon could do – what she’d done with one last night. When she lined up her sights, she saw Chuck the redneck in her mind’s eye, replayed his grunt and his fall and the spill of bright blood across her bed. God, she’d never be able to sleep in that bed again as long as she lived.
Ghost was a good, and oddly specific teacher, though, and before long she was caught up in the minute details of the process. Stance, grip, sighting, loading. He taught her the makers and calibers of each gun he’d brought. Showed her how to empty the spent cartridges from the .38 and put new ones in. Taught her to rack the slide on the 9mm, to eject the mag and load it up with new rounds. She had a whole new vocabulary now: hollow-point, shell casing, safety. She knew what cordite smelled like, after.
They practiced until she could take down an entire row of beer cans. Until she could hit within the innermost ring of the paper bullseye targets every time.
And then it was on to knives. How to open and close them, how to hold them, where to use them on a man.
By the time the lesson was over, and they’d packed up the duffel, Maggie was sweating despite the cool weather. She was pleasantly tired, her muscles burning after their pretend-grappling with the knife.
“Do I pass muster, Sarge?” she teased.
But Ghost wasn’t smiling. “Come on. I wanna show you something.” She noted he tucked his Colt 1911 in his waistband first. Force of habit, or precaution? She wasn’t sure there was a difference anymore for him.
He led her into the barn – big box stalls strung with cobwebs, bundle of rakes and forks in a corner, rotted hay bales, inches of dust and the lingering tang of animals in the air – and to a wooden staircase in the rear corner.
“Watch out, there’s no rail.”
“Okay.”
The stairs led up into the loft. With its high, vaulted ceiling and incoming beams of sunlight, it had the air of a cathedral about it. A dusty, hay-strewn place of worship.
Ghost took her to the window and sat down, legs hanging over the edge. He swept off the floor beside him, dust flying, and Maggie sat down, her stomach swooping as she dangled her feet out into the open air. The barn had looked tall from the ground, and now it looked even taller as she stared down at the grass below.
“Afraid of heights?” he asked.
“I didn’t think so, but…” She was sure she’d break one or both of her legs if she fell.
His arm went around her waist. “I’ve got you.”
She leaned into his side.
“Look out there.” He pointed straight ahead.
She’d been so worried about pitching headfirst out of the wide opening she hadn’t bothered to scope out the view. She did now, though, and wow.
From up here, the rolling pastures looked like a gently-moving ocean, deep green and soft brown, all of it alive in the wind. She could see copses of trees, the hardwoods brilliant in yellow, and orange, and red. The house didn’t look so sad from a distance, its rust-streaked roof almost charming. The sky arced above them, a washed-out blue smudged with cirrus clouds.
“This was always my favorite spot,” Ghost confessed, tone wistful. “Still is, I guess. I come up here and sit sometimes when I need to clear my head.”
“It’s beautiful,” Maggie said. “I just…wow.”
“When I was a kid,” he continued, “and we had cows, they’d all cluster up down there.” He pointed to the ground below. “I’d toss handfuls of alfalfa at them.” He grinned. “They’d moo at me, begged like dogs.”
She smiled to think of Ghost at Aidan’s age, curly-headed and skinned-kneed.
“Collier and me would drag our toys up here – soldiers and tanks and shit. Make forts out of pallets and rat traps. Got my finger once.” He help up his left pinky for demonstration, and for the first time she saw the faint scar there.
“Ouch.”
“I cried like a girl, and then Mama swatted us both for being up here. She was always afraid we’d fall out the window,” he said with a chuckle.
Maggie swung her feet in slow circles. “She had a point, there.”
“She always did.”
She didn’t know what to say. She was thrilled to see him open up and share bits of his childhood with her, but she was afraid if she pushed, probed at t
he wrong scars, he’d clam up and that would be it.
He spoke before she could come up with anything. “I shoulda sold it a long time ago,” he whispered, like a confession, gaze fixed on the house. “Right when Dad died, when the lawyer came ‘round, I shoulda put it on the market. Hell, the guy who owns the place next door wanted it. I coulda made three-hundred grand, easy.”
“Why didn’t you?” Maggie asked, gently.
He shrugged. “Couldn’t. Just…yeah. Couldn’t do it. Ain’t that stupid?”
“No.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s not.”
“I keep telling myself it’ll come in handy one day.”
To her, the fallow fields seemed alive with possibility. She could envision the house whitewashed, with a new roof and a reworked porch, a new board fence along the driveway, white-faced cows lowing at dusk. Flowers in clay pots and the jangle of windchimes. It could be made new. It could be a home again.
But that wasn’t for her to say.
Instead, she said, “Ghost, what are we gonna do?”
He sighed. “For starters? Not get killed. After that…we’ll see, I guess.”
His arm tightened around her, and she knew that whatever they did, they’d do it together. That was the only way out of this mess.
Twenty-Nine
Now
Mercy prided himself on being a light sleeper. Unless he was blackout drunk – and he certainly wasn’t tonight, tossing and turning on a shitty dorm mattress, missing his bed at home, wishing Ava was tucked warm and sweet against his side – any little sound woke him. The floorboards popping in the cold, the wind in the eaves, a spatter of rain on the window: all of it brought him to wakefulness on a normal night.
So when he rolled over just before dawn, the dorm the underwater blue of six a.m., he wasn’t expecting to find someone standing next to his bed.
“Shit.” He jackknifed upright, hand finding the Colt beneath his pillow on the way up.
The dark figure took a step back and held up two pale hands, palms like spindly white flowers in the gloom. “It’s me,” Reese said.
“Jesus.” Mercy wasn’t sure if he ought to lower the gun. He did, though, but slowly. “What the fuck?”
“There’s bikes coming.” The kid had a rusty voice. Straightforward, no emotion, and out of use. “I heard them.”
Mercy blinked a few times, his vision clearing. The digital clock on the nightstand said it was six-twenty. “Did you go look?”
“No. I came to tell you.”
Mercy sighed and flipped the covers back. “Next time, knock,” he said as he got up, bad leg grabbing. “Okay? Don’t just stand there all…Redrum, alright?”
Reese didn’t comment, just fell into step behind him as he walked out into the dark hall.
They always kept a few lamps on, the warm light glowing off the clean floorboards of the common room. Mercy had a surreal moment, as he crossed to the door, feeling like he was back in his bachelor days, like Ava and the kids were a wonderful dream he’d finally woken from; he shuddered.
And then he heard the bikes.
A low drone like bees.
Reese materialized at his elbow, and Mercy didn’t startle thanks to sheer force of will. “They’ve been doing drive-bys. Every few minutes.”
“Hmm.” Mercy unlocked the front door and walked out beneath the pavilion, the concrete biting cold on his bare feet.
The rumble of engines drew closer, and then he spotted several headlamps. They crawled by, unhurried, until they finally slipped out of sight.
“Your old boss, I’m guessing,” Mercy said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Look, cut the ‘sir’ shit. I ain’t the boss around here. That’s Ghost. You met Ghost, you remember?”
“Yes, s…”
Mercy sighed. “I’m gonna call him. Go wake the others.”
Reese slipped soundlessly back inside.
Before he devoted himself fully to the problem at hand – the looming war – Mercy allowed himself a moment to think about Reese pulling the same horror movie routine on Roman and his crew: the silent specter beside the bed. He smirked. Served them right.
~*~
There was something people didn’t understand about living in fear: eventually, it stopped being fear at all. The human body couldn’t maintain a constant state of panic. Instead, a person developed an unnatural tolerance for horror. Numb, unresisting, the victim lived without expectation, joy, or extreme emotion of any kind. She became a sort of husk, soulless, half-alive.
Kris knew this to be true, because she’d lived that way for a long, long time. The funny part, to her, was that it was now, once she was more or less free, that anxiety turned her into a fretful mess. Every day, she felt like she wasn’t enough. Wasn’t intelligent, wasn’t strong, wasn’t capable.
For most of her life, her knowledge of pop culture, customs, and propriety had been limited to what occurred in the rooms where she was kept. She knew all along that the men who owned her were wrong. Even that they were evil. And she understood biker slang and lifestyle for the most part, thanks to observation.
But she wasn’t used to living like a person. To having opinions, preferences, urges that were anything besides the most basic and bodily. Ever since Roman took her out of that nightmare, she’d been a paranoid, stressed-out mess.
Keeping busy was the only way she knew how to fight her anxiety. So when she heard footsteps and voices in the hall, she got up, dressed, made the bed she’d been given to sleep in, and went to investigate the kitchen she’d glimpsed yesterday.
An insistent voice in the back of her head told her to ask Roman if she was allowed, first. But then another, newer voice reminded her that she didn’t need permission to do things now. Roman and the boys had told her so on many occasions.
It was the nicest kitchen she’d ever seen in person; not the gorgeous showpieces she’d seen lately on HGTV (Boomer said she was addicted to the channel), but leaps and bounds above the cramped galley they’d had in Denver. Big, stainless steel appliances, a walk-in pantry, plenty of cabinets and enough prep space for four or five cooks to work at once. She stood in front of the open fridge a moment, baffled by the amount of food it contained.
Boots scuffed the floor behind her and she whirled, one hand still on the fridge door, heart already halfway up her throat. They were in a new place full of new people, and she was spooked as a rabbit.
It was only Roman, though. Fresh from the shower, hair wet, shirt clinging to the damp expanse of his chest. She noted that he was barefoot – he must feel safe here.
She had her own boots laced up tight.
“Hey,” he greeted. “You sleep okay?”
“Yeah,” she lied. She never slept okay, but there didn’t seem much point in talking about it.
His eyes moved up and down her, assessing. It wasn’t a lecherous gaze, though. He was just checking, making sure she wasn’t pretending she was alright when she wasn’t. That was one of the mistakes this new president – Ghost – had made the afternoon she’d met him: he’d thought she and Roman were together.
But they weren’t. And they hadn’t ever been.
She thought Ghost’s assumption might be one of the reasons he hated Roman – aside from the obvious history she wasn’t privy to. But she couldn’t bring herself to correct him. Not yet. Speaking her mind was still too new, and still carried the taste of forbidden.
She wanted to ask Roman what would happen next, both with their ragtag, runaway family, and with her personally. She wanted to know if this new club would treat her the way Roman had, or if they’d expect her to act like a groupie. Or like a slave. Could Roman trust them really? Or would they betray him?
But a lump formed in her throat and she couldn’t ask any of those things. They stared at one another, their now-familiar impasse. He always seemed on the verge of asking her things, and then kept them to himself. The same way she did, she supposed.
This particular staring con
test was broken by a polite female voice saying, “Excuse me,” and a pretty brunette stepped around Roman and entered the kitchen.
Roman jumped back, rattled. “Sorry. Shit. Yeah.” And he melted back out in the hall.
Leaving Kris alone with…well, she didn’t know who this was. She didn’t look like a groupie, in her jeans, sweater, and puffer coat, a grocery bag hanging off her arm. Her smile was open and kind as she approached.
“Hi, you must be Kristin. I’m Holly.”
Kris swallowed. Her voice came out small and shy. “Hi.”
Holly set her bag down on the counter and began pulling items from it: several different flavors of coffee creamer, a box of tea bags, a tin of hot chocolate mix. “I think it’s going to be a long day,” she said, pleasantly, “so I thought I’d make sure we were all stocked up on caffeination supplies.”
Kris watched her, unsure of what to do.
“I’m going to make the guys breakfast. Do you want to help?” It was asked with another smile, her voice bright, encouraging.
Considering that’s what she’d come in here to do, Kris said, “Okay.”
She had no idea what was going on, but it didn’t seem…bad. So there was that.
~*~
“How many more calls from the hotline?” Ghost asked, tapping ash off his cigarette.
Ratchet had a fat three-ring binder open on a table in front of his laptop, already twitchy with caffeine. “Seven.” He brought up a spreadsheet on his computer. “Most were just crap – one lady said she thought the Dark Saints stole her lawn gnome – but this one sounded legit.” He opened a new screen and clicked play on an audio file.
A woman’s voice, hushed and furtive, like the woman who owned the barn: “There’s been people moving in and out of the abandoned house next door. It might be nothing, but…I don’t think it is.” She listed off an address, rushing through it, like she regretted the call, then the line went dead.
American Hellhound Page 42
