That agreement didn’t ignore the need for a great deal of caution, though, especially given the place was named, The Viper Pit.
Preacher reached out to help Sarah off of the Harley and then he leaned in and whispered into her left ear.
“You stay close to me, ok?”
Sarah nodded, but kept silent. The building made her nervous. She could sense this was not the kind of place for a young, attractive, pregnant woman to stroll on into.
After parking the Ford alongside the Harley, Tom and the others stood next to Preacher and Sarah and peered down toward the entrance which was secured by a small section of six-foot tall aluminum mesh fencing. A short, slightly overweight, dark-bearded man with a red baseball cap, grey sweatshirt and matching sweatpants, stood next to a locked gate in the center of the fence. Another armed guard was just inside the gate. He was both taller and younger than his counterpart, and wore light brown cargo shorts and a sweat-stained white t-shirt. Both were white and held sawed-off shotguns in their hands and had the look of men exceedingly bored with their job.
Tom opened the trunk of the Ford and hunted around for an item he remembered being there. Sabina watched him put something small and metallic in his pocket after closing the trunk lid. As Tom led the others toward the entrance, the man standing guard just outside the gate pointed to a red-lettered, hand-painted sign that hung from the gated entrance.
“No guns no knives!”
Tom stopped some twenty feet from the red hat wearing guard.
“We need gas.”
The guard shrugged.
“That’s not my concern. You want to go inside, no guns and no knives just like the sign says.”
Tom turned around to face the group and spoke to them in a hushed whisper in order to prevent from being overhead by either of the two men standing guard.
“Ok, I’m guessing they want to see if we have weapons. We leave them in the car, go inside, and by the time we come out, it’s fifty-fifty those weapons will be gone. That means someone has to stay back and stand guard.”
Sabina answered immediately.
“I’ll do it - me and the kids. That’ll make three of us. That should keep anyone from trying anything.”
Tom was about to protest but Sabina cut him off.
“Trust me I have no problem defending what’s ours, ok? We have the assault rifle. We can hold your revolver for you, Tom, the hunting rifle is out of shells but they won’t know that…we can do this.”
The former sheriff considered Sabina’s offer. While it meant the group would be momentarily broken up, he also knew in order to gain access inside and hopefully locate someone willing to barter for some fuel, they had little choice. Tom reluctantly nodded his head.
“Ok, you take my sidearm, Sabina. It’s loaded and ready to go. Jackson can hold onto the assault rifle and Mika will take the hunting rifle. We won’t be long in there – I promise.”
Soon after, Tom, Preacher and Sarah stood outside the chain link gate waiting to be let in. The guard with the red cap set his shotgun to the side and gave everyone a quick pat down while the other guard held his own weapon at the ready in case of trouble.
“Ok, you’re good to go. Welcome to The Viper Pit, folks. Good luck finding what you need in there.”
Sarah could feel the men’s eyes lingering on her like a thin layer of foul sweat clinging to her skin. Preacher noticed as well and glared at the taller of the two guards as he passed by him on his way to the steel-framed, green-painted entrance door.
“You got a problem, boy?”
Preacher’s hands balled up into fists but Sarah, wanting to diffuse any further tension, reached out to pull him toward her at the very moment Tom pushed the door open with a loud, screeching cry from the rust-covered hinges.
It took Tom, Preacher, and Sarah several seconds to allow their eyes to adjust to the bar’s shadowy interior. Clouds of tobacco and marijuana smoke hovered just under the low, dark wood, eight-foot ceiling. The floor was dirt-encrusted, wood planks. The music they had first heard outside came from a single, battery powered portable stereo that hung from a rope over the center of the ten foot long bar counter that was located in the back right corner of the seventy-by-forty interior space. The voice from the stereo indicated it was set to a classic rock radio station from somewhere across the border in Canada.
A mishmash of unmatched tables and chairs were located throughout the space without any indication of organized purpose. Nearly every table had at least one person seated at it, though their faces were largely hidden within the room’s gloom. Tom quickly estimated there to be seventeen “customers” inside the space.
An especially obese man with long strands of thinning dark hair that was combed back against his large, rounded head stood directly behind the bar with two armed men who stood at either side of the chipped and stained, three foot wide counter.
Tom Dolan’s eyes fixed upon the bartender’s. The former sheriff correctly guessed the man to be the owner of the roadside establishment. Tom motioned for the others to follow him toward the bar while all three did their best to ignore the myriad of eyes that closely followed their every floor-board creaking step. Sarah in particular drew a collection of hungry stares.
The bartender’s voice bellowed against the walls as he greeted the group that approached him.
“What can I do for you, strangers?”
Tom noted how the morbidly obese man kept his right hand below the counter, no doubt near a weapon he kept at the ready. The radio began to play a long-ago Bryan Adams lament about the summer of ’69.
“We were hoping to acquire some fuel.”
The bartender’s right hand remained below the bar. He gave Tom a quick, well-practiced smile, exposing a row of disjointed, tobacco-stained front teeth. His forehead was covered in a thin sheet of sweat that trickled down and then disappeared into a pair of overly large and unruly sideburns.
“Looking for some gas, eh? How much you need?”
Tom moved closer to the bar, a gesture which he noted the two armed men who stood on both sides of the counter were closely monitoring. Like their counterparts outside, they too held sawed-off shotguns in their hands.
“Twenty gallons…maybe a little more if you got it.”
The bartender finally lifted his right hand from behind the counter and folded his thick forearms across his wide, fat-encrusted chest.
“Oh, we got it. The question is if you can afford it, stranger.”
Tom cleared his throat.
“How much would a hunting rifle buy us?”
The bartender’s eyes narrowed. He was interested.
“Does it work?”
“Yeah, it works. Needs shells, but trust me, it works. It’s a good rifle.”
The fat man’s tongue traced the outline of his thin-lipped mouth.
“Well, that could buy you maybe…a few gallons? If you had ammo to go with it I could give you more, but…”
The man’s voice trailed off as he awaited Tom’s counter-offer.
“Get the hell back!”
It was Preacher snarling a warning at two Hispanic men who stood just a few paces away leering at Sarah with eyes that clearly communicated their lust-driven intent.
The bartender chuckled at Tom.
“Oh, we don’t get pretty things like her coming in here often. The paying customers normally have to make do with old Celia over there.”
Celia was a red-headed, fifty-seven year old woman who sat open-legged in a chair against the wall opposite the bar with a cigarette dangling loosely from her downturned mouth. The front half of her green dress shirt was unbuttoned, exposing a pair of badly drooping breasts that had likely seen far better days. She nursed a half-empty pitcher of beer as she waited for the next customer willing to pay her for her half-hearted services.
Tom gave the bartender a gun-metal glare meant as a warning that he curtail any simmering violence that might erupt.
“You’d do well to keep your cus
tomers in line.”
Sarah was again attempting to pull Preacher away from trouble.
The bartender’s eyes lingered on Sarah for far too long as he estimated the profits that could be made off her, especially after the pregnancy was terminated and her body returned to form. Something in Tom’s eyes warned the fat man he might not want to push that possible business opportunity just yet.
“Hey, I’m just a small businessman doing the best I can in these troubled times, stranger.”
The taller of the two Hispanic men gave Preacher a hard shove in the chest, a move that caused an enthusiastic stirring from among some of the other customers. The possibility of impending violence excited them.
Preacher gently moved Sarah next to Tom and then glanced back at the bartender.
“So you run this place, right?”
The bartender’s multiple chins jiggled as he nodded.
“That’s right my dark-skinned friend.”
Preacher then pointed at the two Hispanic men with his left hand.
“How about a wager? I take the two of them on - just me. If I win, we get twenty gallons of fuel. If I lose, you get my Harley.”
Sarah shook her head.
“No, we can find another way!”
Tom leaned toward Preacher and whispered at him.
“You can take them both?”
Preacher issued a confident grunt.
“Yeah, no worries.”
The bartender lifted his chin at the man standing guard to his left and then motioned with his left hand toward the door.
“Check to see if there’s a Harley out there.”
The armed man walked quickly to the door and disappeared outside and then returned seconds later.
“Yeah, they got a few more out there watching over it. Two of them are women. The bike is nice – real nice.”
The bartender’s eyes widened.
“More women! Hmmmm…”
Tom slammed his right palm on the wooden counter.
“Hey! We got an offer on the table here. My guy takes on those two for the gas or the bike. Do we have a deal?”
The bartender’s eyes wandered past Preacher to where the two Hispanic men stood shoulder to shoulder. They were both younger, no more than thirty. The taller one was six-foot, the other a few inches shorter. Both wore their dark hair several inches over their ears and forehead and had sparse beards. Their dark eyes showed no fear, indicating to the bartender they were more than confident they could handle the tall, athletically-built black man.
“Clear some space boys, we have ourselves a wager!”
Tables were shoved back from the center of the room as the chatter of multiple side-wagers filled the space. The bartender nodded at the two Hispanic men.
“If you win, I’ll make it worth your while.”
The two men grinned at one another and then the taller one pointed at Sarah.
“We want her.”
The bartender’s brows arched upward into his sweat-soaked forehead.
“Well, then you’ll have to do more than just win. You’ll likely have to kill him.”
Tom spun around to face the bartender and prepared to call the deal off but found the business end of a shotgun pointed at his head.
“The bet has been made, stranger. No turning back now.”
Tom kept Sarah next to him as they both watched Preacher lower his head, ball his hands into fists, and then slowly raise his eyes upward and stare back at the two men who would take Sarah from him.
When they saw the iced rage in Preacher’s eyes, the two men’s shared grins dissipated like light fog under the glare of an emerging sun.
They were no longer so confident of victory.
Preacher was the first to move, stepping forward with his right foot and then deftly hopping a half-step back with that same foot as the first man lunged at him with a wild roundhouse that missed badly. The former boxer then used the man’s forward momentum against him to multiply the force of impact as his right fist crashed into the man’s right cheek with a sickening wet smack.
The man fell to the floor with a loud thud and stayed down, his cheekbone fractured and his mind retreating into a state of semi-consciousness.
Preacher glared at the taller of the two men who hesitated between fight and flight. Preacher still raged at the thought of anyone doing harm to Sarah and decided not to give him that choice. He moved forward gracefully with his left fist leading and snapped a hard jab into the other man’s nose. The man’s head snapped back but he remained on his feet and managed to graze Preacher’s chin with a left hook, causing the bar to erupt in hopeful cheers.
Those cheers were short-lived as Preacher hardly felt the blow and snapped a second and then a third jab into his opponent’s face. The man’s legs wobbled and his hands dropped, leaving Preacher the kind of opening even a decent boxer would be able to expose.
Preacher was a far better boxer than merely decent.
His right fist thundered into the man’s left jaw, dropping him even more convincingly than the first. At the very moment Preacher prepared to turn around and look at Sarah and Tom, the Viper Pit’s front door crashed inward and a massive silhouette filled the entirety of the door-frame space.
A deep, throaty growl issued from the almost-darkness of the bar’s entrance.
“I’ve been chasing you for a long time, nigger.”
The source of the voice stepped further into the Viper Pit and slammed the door shut behind him with enough force it vibrated through the entirety of the wood-framed building.
Again Tom moved to come to Preacher’s aid and again he was stopped by a shotgun pointed at his head. The bartender’s eyes were wide with wonder as he took in the sight of the Beast.
“It appears your friend there has a rather large and angry enemy. Imagine that, two giants on the very same day.”
Tom didn’t understand the bartender’s reference to two giants, but he did know that whoever the bar’s newest arrival was, intended to do Preacher great harm.
“We had a deal. You can’t just let him come in here and start something without your approval, right? You got to keep order in here otherwise he’s the one running the show and not you.”
The bartender’s fleshy face tightened as he realized Tom had a point. He snapped his finger at the armed man to his right and pointed at the Beast who in turn took another step toward Preacher before staring over at the bartender.
“I’m here to kill that nigger. You have a problem with that?”
The bartender’s eyes widened even further as he looked upon the Beast’s massively-muscled frame. He gave a broad smile and shook his head.
“If that is what you feel needs to be done, stranger, you have my permission to do so. By all means, proceed!”
The Beast didn’t hesitate as he let out a roar and charged a still-confused Preacher. The former boxer was momentarily stunned by how quickly the much bigger man moved, and just managed to avoid having his head torn from his shoulders as the Beast’s right forearm passed mere inches over the top of his head in a great whoosh of air.
Preacher pivoted to his left and struck the giant man’s left ribcage and was immediately greeted with the sensation of having hit a frozen side of beef. The Beast reacted by turning and swinging with his left fist in a single motion that just missed Preacher’s exposed chin.
If this big son-of-a-bitch connects, I don’t think I’ll recover.
Preacher bobbed and weaved, making certain he kept enough distance between himself and the biker that loomed over him like some clean-shaven, scarred monstrosity from another world. As the Beast stepped forward, Preacher snapped a jab into the bigger man’s lower chest and was met with the same unyielding, granite-like body. A half-second after delivering that blow, Preacher was pushed back by a forearm shiver into his right shoulder that nearly knocked him off his feet and then just managed to duck away from another consciousness-ending right fist.
With gritted teeth and eyes blazing
with focused flames of determination, Preacher cracked another jab into the Beast’s right eye with enough force the big man grunted as he shook off the blow. Sensing a brief moment of advantage, Preacher pummeled the Beast with a right hand to his left jaw and then yet another jab that tore open the bridge of the much larger man’s nose.
The gathering inside the bar began to murmur at the improbable performance that had Preacher seemingly on the verge of defeating the giant biker. These same murmurs then quickly changed to triumphant shouts as the Beast suddenly clamped his left hand around Preacher’s right hand, yanked the former boxer toward him and then encircled his right hand around Preacher’s throat.
RACE WARS: Season Nine: “LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER”: Episodes 49-54 of an ongoing post-apocalyptic thriller series... Page 3
