by Deep Pink
"Will you be staying with me," Linda said sounding slightly needy.
"Not tonight. Things will be different after tomorrow. I meant it when I said you are with me now. I will keep you safe. I swear to that."
Once they were downstairs Pops called Blackjack aside once again. Linda stood in the hall trying to seem as relaxed as possible.
"I'll ask you again. Do you want some men to go with you?" asked Pops.
"No." Blackjack said angrily, "I'll take the back roads. Nobody can match the speed of my bike, I would leave any fuckers in the dust that tried to catch me."
Pops knew not to push it any further.
"I'll be back here tomorrow. Be ready. Tomorrow we go to war," Blackjack said grimly.
Linda held tightly to Blackjack as the bike fishtailed and sprayed up a wide arch of dirt as they sped away from the ranch. In the wide expanse of darkening sky above them a multitude of stars began to weakly twinkle. A few miles from the ranch Blackjack turned onto a rarely used backroad and accelerated hard. The bike roared into triumphant life as it sped off into the night. The growl of the engine declared to the stars above the onward passage of a man fighting to hold onto his world and a woman struggling to hold at bay the panic which threatened to destroy her. The bike bellowed from its chrome windpipe as they sped onward and with each passing minute it was bringing them closer to the safe house and an uncertain future.
CHAPTER FIVE
The man stood in the middle of the road with his arms raised to the heavens. The sky was a deep black awash with countless stars twinkling in and out of existence. The man twirled in a circle and his thin rangy legs danced a stilted wooden version of a jig. He looked off into the distance and he could see the faint glow of the city off across the open plains. In the other direction the road faded off into the dark in the direction of everything of importance to the man. He stopped his dancing and shouted into the void: "All of my enemies will fall."
A loud crackle emanated from his rear pocket followed by some garbled speech. He extracted the walkie talkie and hit the talk button.
"Say again," he said.
"They have passed the first marker," a woman's voice repeated. The man returned the walkie to his pocket.
He walked over to the ditch beside the road and stiff leggedly walked down the incline to a motorbike hidden behind some low lying bushes. He removed his cargo from the leather saddle bags on his bike and walked back up the incline. His movements were not hurried as he worked. In less than a minute he had finished and he stood back to admire his handy work. On the left side of the road he had attached a thin steel cable to a roadside billboard with a faded image of a cup of coffee on it. Directly across the road he attached the other end of the cable to a speed limit road sign. The cable was pulled taut between these two points with a device the man had engineered himself. This same device also anchored it securely to the pole.
The man flicked the wire and it emitted a metallic twang. He smiled. He squatted down and with a crab like motion moved towards the wire. The wire touched the mans neck. He smiled even more broadly. He straightened up and hid with his bike. He thought to himself that the next time he heard the wire twang he might not be able to stop himself from laughing.
Three miles away a woman in a stained and ripped white dress hid in a bush not far from the edge of the road. The corner of her mouth was stained with blood and her cheek was streaked all the way back to her ear. Her eyes were unblinking as she stared at the road. A single headlight turned off the main road and swung into view. Within a minute a motorbike had speed unseeing past her hiding spot. She picked up the walkie and pressed the talk button: "Blackjack has passed me and he has a woman with him."
Her saviour and the only man she ever loved replied over the walkie: "Death to them all."
CHAPTER SIX
Clive Barrow held his breath and pulled his elbows in tight to his sides as he levelled the rifle at the red squirrel, just as his uncle had taught him. He could hear his heart beating in his ears as he concentrated. The forest was all quiet around him. His best friend of three weeks stood rigid and still behind him, holding his breath in anticipation of the shot.
The squirrel sat perched on a branch its nose twitching as it smelled the air. Clive held his sight steady and pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked against his shoulder as the sound of the shot reverberated around the hot close forest. A thin wisp of smoke snaked out of the barrel.
"Mother fucker, he bolted just as I shot" said Clive in an affected tough guy drawl. His new best friend, Grant Best was a big kid for his age and Clive feared that he would see who Clive really was and would stop hanging around with him. He didn't want Grant to know about the boy who sobbed in bed every night at the sound of the floor boards creaking as his father ambled up the stairs trailing a yellow fog of stale booze behind him. Around Grant he was something else, he acted tough and Grant seemed to believe it, or just didn't care.
"I can see a piece of bark blown off from the bullet, it was right were that little red shit was sitting. You had him alright. Now its my turn," said Grant reaching for the rifle.
Clive stood with his head slightly raised and the rifle slung across his back, sun dappled across his face, that would soon be spotted with the first splash of teenage acne. He sniffed deeply his movements closely mimicking those of his escaped prey.
"Can you smell that?" he asked.
"Smell this!" Grant said raising his leg and farting loudly.
Clive spun around breathing in great lungfuls of the fragrant forest air. He stopped and pointed off towards a break In the woods.
"Look over there, smoke. Lets go and check it out," he said, heading in the direction of the thin trail of black smoke.
They pushed through the undergrowth swatting flies from their faces as they marched on. The trees began to thin out and Clive raised his fist and drew it down in a quick motion.
"Commando style," he said, laying down on his belly and crawling through the thick undergrowth.
"Fuck that shit, I'm walking," said Grant as he bulldozed through the undergrowth.
Clive felt stupid and childish laying on the ground crawling like a worm. He stood up and brushed himself off and hung back as his red face returned to a normal colour.
"Check this out," bellowed Grant from up ahead, his voice was already breaking and would switch in and out of a scratchy baritone and a schoolboy squeak.
The two boys stood in poorly kept back yard behind a small rundown shack. In the middle of a patch of freshly dug earth a pipe stuck up and a thin wisp of black smoke trailed from the mouth of it.
"What do you think it is?" Grant asked.
Clive's eyes went wide as he realised what he was seeing, "It's an underground meth lab," he said, unable to hide the fear in his voice. He had seen the end of a news program about these labs. The image of the roof being ripped off and dirty bedraggled men spilling out into the sunlight amidst a ring of cops had given him nightmares for weeks.
Grant turned to him and could see he was afraid, that only bolstered his own bravado as he marched over to the metal pipe.
"Don't be a pussy all your life," he said laughing cruelly.
Not wanting to look totally cowardly in front of his new friend Clive slowly moved towards the pipe.
"Anybody home?" Grant shouted into the opening of the pipe.
"Are there any toothless meth heads down there?"
"See nothing to be afraid of" Grant said mockingly.
As soon as the words left his mouth his jaw dropped agape and his face went pale. One knee slightly buckled under him and he half stumbled and half fell away from the pipe. He landed hard on his ass in the dirt as he tried to scramble away backwards.
Clive surprised himself and instead of running back into the woods he ran towards his friend to try and help him.
"What is it, what is it?"
"I heard a voice coming from below," he stammered the words barely escaping his lips. "It said help me."
Clive approached the pipe slowly and peered into the dark maw sticking out of the earth. A sickly sweet smell filled his nostrils as he tried to see as far down into the gleaming metal pipe as possible. He angled his head back and forth to allow as much sunlight in. Something moved at the bottom, a slight shift in the darkness was the only thing he could make out.
Clive felt kind of stupid and was hoping that Grant wasn't setting him up to look like a fool, he whispered into the pipe "Hello is anyone there?".
Very faintly came a voice sounding like the burnt pages of a book rustling in the wind.
"Help me. Dig me out" came the voice from the bowels of hell.
The two boys began to dig.
FURTHER READING IN THE CHROME & LEATHER SERIES:
Chrome & Leather: Infiltration - A short prequel to Liars tomb - Out Now
CLICK HERE TO GET IT FOR FREE
Chrome & Leather: Liars Tomb Novella - Out Now
CLICK HERE TO BUY IT
Chrome & Leather: Deranged - A short prequel to Sandstorm
CLICK HERE TO BUY IT
Chrome & Leather: Sandstorm The 2nd Novella
CLICK HERE TO BUY IT
The final Chrome & Leather short and Novella will arrive September 2014.
To receive alerts when these publish and to get them at the introductory price of 99c sign up to my mailing list below.
Click here to sign up for my mailing list
Table of Contents
Title Page
Blank Page copy-1
Copyright
Blank Page copy
Blank Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Blank Page copy
