by Tia Wilson
Red spat into the dirt and turned to Blackjack “Whats her story?” he said.
“She rides with us now. Things got a little dicey back in the bar. She came through for me.”
“Can she be trusted?”
Blackjack turned and glared at Red “She can be trusted”.
Red knew he had stepped over the line, he also knew Blackjacks weakness for dark skinned tail. Sometimes it would blind him to a woman’s more craven nature. Red had seen it time and again, women who threw themselves at Blackjack, excited by his power. Sometimes they where regular folk who wanted a bit of bad to shake up the humdrum. Others times it was some batshit crazy woman who was nothing but trouble. Red had seen it all and he knew Blackjacks weakness for damaged women. He attracted them like a coyote to a rotting carcass. Red was usually the one left to handle the fallout when Blackjack became either bored with them or the crazy became too much. He would need to keep his eye on this one. Something about her didn’t sit well with him. Red always trusted his gut.
The two brothers walked out with Pike between them. As soon as he saw the open grave and what was awaiting him his legs gave out from under him and he voided his bladder again.
“Please please no, not this, not this” he babbled as the brothers picked him up and dragged him forward.
All rigidity had left his body and he flopped around loosely in the brothers iron grip. He looked like a rag doll his head lolling back and forward as he mumbled. His eyes wide and white as he looked to the sky and then back to the pit.
“Don’t do this Blackjack, I will do anything for you. I can infiltrate the other gang and kill the leader for you. Bring you back his fucking head to show you my allegiance. Please anything, ask anything of me. I will prove my worth to you” Pike said as tears streamed from his eyes.
“Enough” said Blackjack.
“You know how this goes Pike. You have to go in the ground. If you tell me the truth I will let you out.”
Pike looked from man to man as cold waves of panic spread through his body. His face glistened in a cold sweat. His shirt clung to him in damp patches. He looked around wildly hoping vainly for help, hoping for anything to stop him having to enter the liars tomb. His wild gaze only returned steely looks of determination from the other men.
The brothers dragged him towards the open coffin. Pikes body suddenly went rigid as his legs began to pinwheel like a cartoon roadrunner. Nothing he could do delayed his slow inevitable march towards the open coffin.
As he drew ever closer to the coffin he stopped crying and wailing seemingly resigned to his fate. Blackjack had seen this before, sometimes a calm quiet would befall the marked man once he knew all options were gone.
When his shins hit the edge of the coffin all resistance left his body and he slumped forward as the brothers lowered him into the coffin. The lid was quickly placed on top and secured with heavy metal clamps. The lid of the coffin had a circular hole cut in it, large enough to see the occupants face.
Pike looked up at the small patch of greying sky above him, his face pale and ashen and streaked with tears. The reality of his situation rammed home with the loud metallic click of the securing clasps. He began to trash his legs, kicking with all his might against the coffin walls. He slammed his fists against the coffin lid bloodying his knuckles.
His mind folded in on itself trying to come up with a way to free himself. To walk tall and free. This was not how it would end for him.
The coffin shook as the brothers lowered it into the grave. Pike felt a deep coldness in his bones, was this how it would feel to be dead he thought. Clods of dirt fell into the grave and pattered across the lid. Inside the coffin the sound was thunderous.
A sound like a thunderclap assailed Pikes ears and the coffin shook as one of the brothers jumped into the pit and stood atop the coffin lid. The lid bowed slightly under his weight. His boots scratched on the lid and sounded like a plague of rats skittering along the coffin.
Pikes view of the grey sky was blocked out by the the big meaty head of a brother looking down at him through his porthole to the world. A thin smile played across the brothers face. His eyes were cold and hard and dead. No regret, no hesitation, no emotion was evident. The brother was a man merely doing his job. Pike knew he would not help him in any way.
The brother atop the coffin took a metal pipe that was resting beside the grave and began to screw it into the hole on the coffin lid. Once it was secured the pipe stuck up higher than the sides of the grave.
The brother climbed out of the grave and picked up a shovel. He looked to Blackjack, who nodded to go ahead. The two brothers began to shovel the dirt back into the grave.
A raven flew over Pikes slim view of the world, its wings extended as it soared. Pike let out a long guttural moan as the first clod of dirt hit the coffin roof. Bang! The sound reverberated around the coffin. Bang! Another clod hit the roof. With the last of his strength Pike lashed out against the wall and the ceiling, kicking and punching as hard as he could. All rational thought leaving him as he trashed and fought against his confines. Pike was reduced to the level of a flailing animal.
Bang after bang rocked throughout the coffin as the dirt was shovelled in. The sound then changed as the coffin became covered in a layer of soil. No longer did Pikes ears ring with the cadence of each explosive crash of dirt. Each shovelful of dirt made a soft TWUMP! sound as it was thrown into the grave.
Pike stopped trashing and ran his fingers back and forth over the lid of the coffin, searching for any tiny seam that he could wedge his fingers under. Everything felt smooth to the touch. Ridiculous escape plans flitted through his mind, scenes from B movies he had seen as a child where the hero had punched his way out of a grave and then pulled himself up through the sodden earth like a monster from a fairytale. His mind clung to the one fact of the situation, they wanted him alive. Why else would they leave a sizeable pipe sticking up, if not to let him continue to breathe.
Pike tried to steady his breathing in an attempt to calm himself. His chest felt like it was bound in steel and lifting his hand to the coffin lid took a mammoth amount of effort. His whole body shivered as it was drenched in a cold acidic sweat. He focused on the small circle of sky above him and tried his best to calm himself.
The last clod of earth was thrown into the grave and the brothers tamped down the soil with the back of their shovels. The grey metal pipe stuck up from the ground to around waist height of the men standing around.
Blackjack walked over to the pipe and peered down into the coffin. Pike looked so very distant to him, he was not a man anymore and had been reduced to a rat trapped in a box.
“Why did you do it” Blackjack asked, “The time for bullshit is over”.
Pike tried to modulate his voice to try and sound as calm as possible. It didn’t work and his voice calm out cracked and broken.
“I did it for us. I did it for the gang. Please Blackjack get me out of here. Let me make it up to you. Ill bring you The Mans head on a stick. Please let me out of here,” he said as he began to cry again.
“That’s not good enough. Remember this face, it’s the last thing you are ever going to see,” Blackjack said as he walked away.
Pikes worst fears were confirmed. They were going to leave him here to die a slow painful death. All thoughts of escape left him and he trashed around kicking and screaming until his lungs burned.
“A sandstorm is coming for you Blackjack. It is going to swallow you whole” Pike roared at the top of his lungs.
Pike scratched at the roof of his wooden prison, two of his finger nails sheared off from the force of his efforts. He left trails of blood as he continued to slam his fists uselessly against the lid.
Pike froze and his body went as rigid as tempered steel when the first few drops of liquid poured from the pipe and dripped onto his forehead. It ran down the side of his head and some beads gathered in his ears. His nose burnt with the smell as the brother standing atop the grave tipped the lar
ge canister forward.
The gasoline poured out of the pipe onto Pikes face, burning the lining of his nose and he coughed and spluttered as he swallowed some. He turned away as it continued to flow. It drenched him, soaking into his clothes and pooling at the end of the coffin due to a slight tilt.
Pike coughed and choked and his mind would still not let him grasp his situation. It would still not face the grim finality of what awaited him. He still believed he could some how escape like some sort of muscled super hero.
Click! The noise filled the coffin. It was the noise of a thousand demons beating on the door, the sound of the grim reaper sharpening his scythe. It was the noise of a lighter being lit.
Pike looked at his tiny porthole to the outside world his eyes wide in shock. A hand crossed over his field of view and dropped a burning lighter into the hole. It spun and the last thing Pike saw was an image of a skull engraved on the back of the lighter. The lighter twirled and spun as it fell, its yellow flickering flame holding steady. The lighter landed on pikes head with a clunk and slid off.
Pike thought “It’s gone out”, and then his world turned to heat and flame and suffering.
The flames engulfed his body, hair and flesh melted in the intense heat. Pike screamed in agony as his lungs where burnt from the inside.
A gout of flame shot out of the pipe and into the air. The watching men stood back. Blackjack fixed his eyes on the pipe, his face a mask of stoic resolve. He felt like his feet where embedded in the earth.
Thick black smoke spewed from the pipe as the flames within the coffin receded.
Blackjack felt spent and weary. When he was younger violence used to get him hard. Now any time he had to mete out punishment it made him feel weary and old. When was the same fate going to come to him. He had done some horrible things, mostly to people who he felt deserved it. It could weigh on him sometime, the life he had chosen.
Pike had been a good man and someone that Blackjack thought had a real chance to rise up the ranks. Now he was nothing more the a charred corpse in an unmarked grave in some backwoods cabin. Was the same fate awaiting Blackjack? Was someone in his gang right now planning his downfall? He needed a drink and some time to relax or else these doubts would drive him crazy.
“I’m heading back to the ranch. You and the brothers meet me at the usual place noon tomorrow” Blackjack said to Red.
Red nodded and watched Blackjack as he walked away. Red had seen him like this before, the hunched shoulders and the cold dead look on his face. Red didn’t like it when Blackjack got like this as things could get ugly. The last time he was like this they had gone on a rampage and killed every member of a rival gang. Blackjack always fell into the pattern of dealing out more and more violence in a steadily increasing spiral of horror after something like today. He was like a junkie looking for another high. It could make him reckless. Red would need to keep an eye on him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Linda clung on tight to Blackjack as the bike sped away from the liars tomb. She had heard the screams and seen the black clouds of smoke billowing up from behind the shack. She knew that Blackjack had a reputation for dealing swift and final justice to anyone that crossed him. He was clever and he had kept her well away from seeing anything that went on. All she could get him on was the possibility of an accessory to murder, small potatoes and not worth pursuing. She wanted to take down Blackjack and his whole crew and put them away for as long as possible. If some of them got an appointment with the electric chair she would have done her job.
Blackjack had said to her that they were going to the ranch for the night. Linda's files on the gang had been pretty lacking on any kind of actionable information. She knew that the gang held several of these so called ranches at once. They switched up between them seemingly at random and then without warning they would torch them and hang out somewhere new. This gang didn't follow the usual gang structure of having one main clubhouse that they hung out in. Blackjacks gang moved constantly and left a trail of burnt out buildings behind them. She suspected that they didn't torch the country shack because they had some other snitches to dispose of.
The bike banked smoothly as it turned into a long smooth curve. Linda rested her head against Blackjack and held him tightly. She knew she would have to seduce him as quickly as possible if she wanted to stay by his side. The only line on his file under the heading “other”, scrawled in shaky block letters was; “He likes to fuck black women”.
The soothing noise of the bikes engine and the hum of the tires on the asphalt relaxed Linda and she began to doze slightly as she rested her head against him. She jerked awake as the bike went over a ramp in the road and she rubbed her eyes as the bike sped up again. They were on a small dirt road flanked by wide open fields. The road was at a gentle incline and at the top of the hill stood the ranch. The house had clearly seen better days, it was of a style that was popular fifty years ago. Shutters hung broken from the windows. Piles of empty beer cans were strewn across the front porch and broken glass twinkled in the large unkempt lawn. Parked outside were six or seven motorbikes.
Even before they pulled to a stop outside Linda could hear the music playing at ear busting levels from inside. She could hear men shouting and laughing from inside one of the front rooms. Blackjack slowed the bike to a stop and kicked out the stand. As Linda dismounted the bike every fibre of her body shouted to run from this place. This is were her training kicked in, it was normal to feel fear, it was how she dealt with it that mattered. She pushed it down inside readying herself for whatever was next. Blackjack looked back at her and a momentary look of confusion crossed his face.
“Are you ok?” he asked.
She had frozen to the spot without even realising. Linda looked up at him as she could feel a genuine sense of fear and panic bubble up from below. Fuck she thought to herself, I’m going to blow this before the operation has even begun.
Blackjacks face softened as he realised what was going on. He reached out to Linda to take her hand.
“Don’t worry about these guys. We can go somewhere a bit more private if you don’t want to be around anyone,” he said with genuine warmth.
The reality of the situation snapped back for Linda and she pushed all fear and doubt away. She was a professional, a bad ass cop,and this is what she does best she told herself only believing some of it. Self doubt has no place here. There will be plenty of time for that once she has all these scumbags in jail.
“Sorry, my husband, I mean my ex… last night came back to me. It was the mens shouts. They scared me,” she said her voice cracking slightly at the end.
“You are with me now and no one will ever hurt you again. I will make sure of that” he said squeezing her hand for emphasis.
Against her better judgement she believed him, for such a legendary figure, whose deeds of violence where whispered tales of horror on the streets he sure seemed to have a softer side. Linda thought that in another life he probably could of made an ordinary woman very happy. His intense sincerity, while almost naive in its strength was hypnotising. Linda felt a tightness in her throat and her palms tingled against his touch. She believed him when he said no one could ever hurt her again. She would cynically leverage this against him.
They enter the house and the first thing that hits Linda is the smell, stale beer and an underlying stench of rotten garbage. Empty beer cans are strewn about the floor and whole chunks of what was once an expensive carpet were ripped up from the floor. Everybody turns to greet Blackjack when he enters. Curt nods are passed back and forth.
A pool table is set up and two burly and heavily tattooed men are playing, they pause for a few seconds to acknowledge Blackjacks presence. Nobody pays Linda any attention or seems curious at her presence.
Two blonde women are collapsed and entangled on a dirty brown couch set in front of a make shift bar made from some crates and shipping pallets. Judging by the women’s sluggish movements Linda thought that they were both drugged. Her file
s on motorbike gangs had page upon page about the gangs snatching and drugging young women and basically keeping them as sex slaves until they got fed up with them. These women usually ended up reported missing and never found alive again. These fuckers will pay vowed Linda.
