Too Fast For Hope

by Adair Rymer

  “Por favor, vete,” I calmly asked them. Just go... Please.

  The unwounded mother nodded. She took the dead boy from his dying mother and wrapped him in the ratty, bleached blanket, that the kids were playing on, to conceal all the horror. The fabric around the boy's head bloomed red. An image that will haunt me forever. An image so horrible, I'd only be able to remove it from my brain with a sharp knife.

  The mother's strength of will was enough to usher the children out through the back door. They disappeared into the safety of the all-enveloping darkness. I prayed to any bastard gods that might be listening, to let them escape unscathed. If they wouldn't give me peace, at least let them have some.

  The gun in my hand was so much harder to hold than it had ever been before. The woman beside me was fixed with terror as she struggled for air. She had a sucking chest wound, there was no hope for her. She was alone, out in the middle of the desert, surrounded by monsters. It was a horrible way to die. I took her hand in mine.

  A motorcycle engine in front of the post office, turned over and revved then gunshots rang out. My heart froze as I listened for retaliatory assault rifle fire. Fortunately none came. Star was alright. I breathed a little easier at least for the moment. The dying woman squeezed my hand with all the strength she'd had left.

  “Lo agarramos. Matamos a los hijos de puta que te hicieron esto.” I told the woman that justice had been dealt. She looked at me gasping, her eyes were puffy with sorrow and fear. Streams of blood tinged tears ran down her sun-worn cheeks. She was in so much pain. I closed her eyes, kissed her forehead and told her that everything would be alright.

  Then I shot her in the heart.

  Her hand went limp. Grief crushed me like the big metal cylinder of a street paver for what I had caused and what I'd been forced to do because of it. My eyes welled with tears. I wanted to cry. Near-indiscriminate death was the only thing I was ever good at. 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 my mind like the remnants of a waking dream.

  “In my wake, I leave only ruin,” I repeated them aloud. With renewed vigor the words thundered in my head with hurricane force until that was all I could hear. The echoes in my soul became deafening. They eclipsed everything else, the sounds of Star coming in the front door, carefully calling my name, the bikes pulling in, all of it. There was only the sound of my defeat.

  I pressed the barrel of the gun into the bottom of my chin and squeezed the trigger. All the noise in my head mercifully ceased.

  Click.

  Empty. The gun slipped from my hand to rap sharply against the wood planking between my legs. The last bullet I'd used on the girl. I wish I had at least known her name. Or the boy's.

  The tears dried up. The grief subsided and drained into the vast caverns of my charred heart, which beat strictly out of habit. 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 unshattered.

  “Ohmygod, Remy!” She gasped, taking in the horror then rushed up to hug me. “Is there anyone else alive, what happened? Are you OK?”

  Her warmth brought me back from the brink but even still I couldn't find the strength to answer her. At that moment everything was fuzzy. I only loosely knew 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 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 replaced grief.

  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. The Lobos questioned the only man I'd left alive. Heavy, leather-clad footfalls fanned out as they search the building.

  “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 crept 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. My mouth and throat were cast in lead. It felt like I was wading through a muddy waist-high marsh to get back to her.

  “Jesus Fucking Christ, gringo! You. You are a difficult man to kill, amigo. Bones, I found our Santa Claus.” Spyder scanned the room and stepped in, gun drawn. Aged browns and dusty greys of antiquity painted with violent shocks of vibrant red spray and pools. “Damn, you killed the girl too? Shit, ese... you know how to fucking party.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling and hearing Bones enter the room.

  “Poet?” I could hear the surprise in his voice. No one would've expected to see me alive after what Bones had done to me. “I'll be damned... How was death?”

  “I sent them your regards.” 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 beneath his colors.

  The shaking stopped, my body and intent were stone still. The cup of my soul was filled to bursting with a biblical flood of bloody, savage, rage. All the hate and hurt that radiated through me like a ruptured nuclear plant was forced down, buried beneath a mountain of single-mindedness. I released the poor woman's hand and stood up. There would be a time to grieve and pour out my weakness, maybe even a time to atone.

  But this wasn't it. There were more people to kill first.

  “Why did you call me, Poet. What is all this?”

  “An unsanctioned meth lab on Lobos turf,” I said coyly, testing his resolve.

  “I have fucking eyes, gringo.”

  “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 have my attention. I'm all ears. What do you got to say?” Bones was genuinely curious as to why a dead man would come back to life to help his killer.

  Couldn't blame his skepticism but if I didn't sell this story, both Star and I would be headed back to the grave, permanently.

  “Your plan is going to fail without my help. Attacking the Veins during the annual sounds good on paper but you don't know their defenses, habits or firepower. You'll be walking right into a slaughterhouse,” I said evenly. No hint of hesitance or nervousness in me whatsoever.

  “So you know we got a mole inside. Whose to say we don't know exactly what's in store for us. Why do we need you?” Bones was good at this. By giving a little he was hoping to see how much I knew.

  “It's being hosted in Leslie this year, my old clubhouse. Your mole may be connected, may even be in Deadeye's crew, but if he knew the full specs on our chapter, you wouldn't be recruiting every scumbag that could rob a store.” I was referring to the hangaround that I took out at Moretti's butcher shop. “You're raising an army because you're flying blind.”

  It was a bluff. An educated guess. Wasn't a secret that they were pushing hard for new members and there was no way their mole was in our chapter. I knew every one of those guys. None of them would rat.

  Bones regarded me carefully, he wasn't the kind of man that made rash decisions. He was a mathematician, weighing all the variables on how to proceed. This was just another chess game. Whatever the outcome he couldn't be seen to lose face or show weakness. I had to tread lightly, balance the appropriate amount of fear, anger and respect.

  “Why do you want to hurt your family so badly? How can I possibly trust a Vein? One who I already put in the ground once but was too stubborn to stay there.”

  “Money. All of mine plus interest is in a safe at the clubhouse. I go back there alone and they'll kill me. If you let me help you, I can get you in at the right time to do the most d
amage. The Veins are weak right now, that's why they're pulling shit like this with support clubs. Misdirection. But you take out the mother chapter, you cut off the Veins head. Without that the body dies. No more Steel Veins. Lobos take whatever the fuck they want and me and my girl disappear to a beach somewhere.”

  “Greed. Turns out the great Poet is just like the rest of us. I knew that asylum story you were spinnin' last time was bullshit. Now, money... Money, I can understand.”

  “¿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. We 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've never let on that I knew Spanish, even to my own club. It was the only weapon that could never be taken away from me.

  “Well?” I asked, playing dumb. “We have a deal?”

  “Si but know this, if you double cross me?” Bones tossed me a burner phone.

  “You'll what? Shoot me again? Yeah, I got it.” I flipped it open and looked through the contacts. One number. His.

  The deal was done and I was emotionally exhausted, it was time to go home. I rifled through the pocket of the biker I let live and grabbed his bike keys.

  “One last thing, Bones,” I called for him, while standing over the groaning Black Knight that was laying at my feet.

  He walked into the front room where we were and jerked his head up in a go-ahead-and-speak motion.

  “When you're done with this prick—” I thought of the girl and her kid that were killed in the other room and how these assholes were the ones that brought them here. 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 spreading blood like a famished sponge. The biker howled, his face contorted with pain and tears. “— you kill him slow.”

  Bones nodded. I took Star's hand and we walked out.

  The key slid nicely into the bike of the four I was hoping for, a new, burnt orange, Harley Sportster. I checked it for bullet holes. Finding none, we both got on and the engine turned over like a dream. I revved it a few times listening for anything that sounded off. The bike 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 it all went down, even if it was successful in the end. The cost of that success chipped away a part of my soul that was lost forever. But as we rode off, the vibration under me and Star crushing me in a warm hug, I felt a shred of home, whatever the fuck home was, and there was a small amount of peace that came with that.

  I just worried that it might not be enough. What I had seen and done tonight dragged me down into a darker place than I'd ever been before. Felt like I was drowning in oil.

  I wished for one last bullet.

  Chapter 5

  Star

  Something that happened inside that ghost town post office had rattled Remy. It must have been the way that woman had died but I was way too afraid to ask him. I was afraid that he might tell. If a man made of barbed wire like Remy could be rattled then what hope was there for me? Whatever happened would've destroyed me. It was selfish but I was glad he had me wait across the street...

  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 someone stepping out from a jacuzzi surrounded in snow. When he started the bike's 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 interrogation. 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 were packed dirt for a few miles but the second the back wheel hit real pavement, Remy opened the throttle up and we took off. Not like a bullet but more like a catapult. The Harley was much louder and had more of a sense of weight than Remy's Ninja. On Remy's old bike, half the time I couldn't tell if we were still on the road or if we had lifted off like a jet.

  All in all, I liked the feel of this bike better, it felt more substantial but I definitely understood why he 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.

  I wasn't as much of an adrenaline junkie as Remy was. I just loved the shrugging off of expectations and obligations that came with this lifestyle. I felt invincible... to a degree. Guns still scared the shit out of me. I didn't even kill the guy who ran for his bike earlier. I got a lucky shot off that shattered his hand preventing him from riding away and shooting back at me. It was the Lobos that finished him off as they rode in.

  We traveled in a pocket of roaring wind and sound till we pulled into our crappy little motel with so much speed and sensory deprivation I had no idea how long of a ride it was, it really didn't matter. I closed my eyes most of the way to just focus on the rhythm of the ride.

  I hadn't realized how much I missed being on a bike. I could only imagine how Remy felt.

  Pushing open our door it struck me how absurd it all was. We left this small one room apartment as just another frustrated, dead end couple but returned to it with a fierceness of purpose. Despite the heavier-than-usual, lead suit of sorrow that Remy wore, the fire in his movements and in those dark eyes was unmistakeable.

  I wanted to ask him about the church car and what had happened to him in that room but the time didn't feel right. He seemed to want a little space so I’d save my million questions until tomorrow.

  Remy stripped off his shirt by the mirror and cleaned the blood off his hands and arms. Then, propped up on his elbows as he ran his wet hands over his face. He gazed into his reflection. Back lit, under a shock of hair, his eyes were polished coal and when his gaze shifted to me, through that mirror, I shuddered at its intensity.

  Even semi-hidden, that burning passion within him ignited my skin, goosebumping me with arcing electricity. It was easy to forget just how dangerous Remy was. Four men are dead tonight because of him. It was the danger, not the killing, that turned me on. I did notice that seeing bodies didn't frighten me as much anymore.

  When I started changing out of my dusty waitress outfit, he turned and faced me with an unreadable expression. I had his full attention. I fell into his hard eyes and watched them scrub every inch of skin that I revealed. My clothes fell around me in a heap, my naked form laid bare for him to feast on if he wanted me. His eyes ravaged me but were somehow harsher than I would've expected. I was left to wonder if he was actually seeing me at all.

  I closed my eyes and prayed I knew what the answer was.

  The faint foot falls of his thick rubber soled boots vibrated through my curled toes as he came closer. I could still smell the copper of dried blood on his clothes. Remy walked completely around me, I braced for a touch that never came.

  I opened my eyes when the shower turned on. I felt dejected. Did he not want me? I slipped on my ridiculous pajamas and laid down in bed. A thousand thoughts turned over in my head until eventually sleep muted them all.

  Sleep was torn from me like the last stubborn leaves from the Ash tree we had in our backyard during a harsh winter gale. The room was dark, and for a moment, I didn't remember where I was. There was only the startling sensation of my pajama bottoms and panties being ripped down and someone going down on me. Flashes of Top and the first night at Muse's haunted me. Tough
as I was now, that man still scared the hell out of me!

  My hands immediately sprang down to stop whoever it was. It was when I felt the scar on his cheek and the hard angles of his face that things began to feel more familiar. Remy, thank god, I sighed.

  My body straightened when I felt his tongue push between the lips of my pussy and slowly spread me apart. Something I would've enjoyed a lot more had I not been still shaking off a groggy, waking numbness.

  Still, I couldn't shake this nagging worry. His touch was quick and rough, which was fine. I liked rough but there was something unsettling about it all. Mechanical. The immediacy of it, the urgency of it. It felt like they were disembodied limbs that were touching me. Like there was no 'Remy' in there. It freaked me out a little.

  “I'd gotten worried,” I'd said tentatively. He hadn't said a word to me since before he walked into that post office. “Thought you—”

  Remy cut me off by abruptly changing position. He was now on top of me, his hard cock slid up the inside of my naked thigh. His power and dominance still felt great but something, that was hard to place, was very off. His touch was alien to me. I didn't know who he thought he was fucking but it wasn't me.

  “Stop.” He didn't. His hands squeezed into my upper thigh hard enough for the pain to surpass the point of erotic.

  “Please, stop.” He continued, I could feel the tip of his cock brush my pussy. I wasn't sure where his mind was at, if he could even hear me but this was all wrong. My heart raced not with that amazing thrill I felt every time he touched me but with a rising fear like when his older brother, Top, had taken me.

  “Remy! Stop!” I grabbed his cock and forced it away.

  He stopped immediately. I'd finally broken through to him.

  He collapsed atop me, his head rested on my chest. I hesitantly ran my fingers through his hair and placed a hand over the scars on his back. His heart... I could feel it racing just as fast as mine, if not faster. What the fuck had just happened?