Tank: Apaches MC

by Stephens, Olivia

  “I’m not going to beg you. I’m telling you that if you don’t let her go, I will kill you.”

  Abe circles around me with Sierra still in his grip. Her feet dangle, as he pulls her up to the doorway, swinging it wide open. “Do you hear that? That’s my men coming, and when they get here, we’re going to toast both of your bodies, and then we’re going to ride out and take what’s left of your poor excuse for a club.”

  My heart pounds, as I think of Sierra dying here like this at the hands of this monster. She deserves so much better than this. I gulp, as I squat down and drop the gun to the ground. That hand raised and free, I slowly remove the other one and kick it towards him.

  “Tank! No!” Sierra cries out, her voice completely gone from the strangle hold.

  “Kill me. Let Sierra go and kill me. You can have the Apaches. You can have Guzman’s territory and product. But don’t hurt her because of me.”

  Abe studies me curiously with his beady black eyes. His hand raises the gun towards my head as he smiles slightly. “Oh Tank. You think you can make that decision for me? You’re dead wrong. After I’m done with you, she’s next. And this time, I’m going to finish the job.”

  I open my mouth to object, as I put a hand up to object. I want to keep fighting for her, arguing for her, but I know that there’s nothing I can do but hope that this gives Sierra time to make a run for it. I lower my head and begin to charge, my feet taking me to my own death. I feel his chest and stomach cave around my back and shoulders as he yells out something that sounds just like a laugh.

  And then, my worst nightmare happens. A gun fires. The sound of the pop makes me duck out of the way of the sound. But I guess the direction wrong. My body falls to the ground with a heavy, uncontrolled thud. A warm liquid forms around my back and side. And all I can hear is the sound of Sierra’s muffled cries as everything else fades to black.

  Chapter 30: By Land

  I’m not dead. At least, I think I’m not dead. I’ve been shot before—once in the arm by an Aztec defending his turf and another time when I first joined up with the Apaches. It was just part of the hazard pay, really.

  But this shot was different. I didn’t feel the burn that comes with being nailed with a bullet. The feeling of flesh being parted is something you don’t forget easily, and I’m not getting flashbacks. And there’s no pain either. At first, that’s why I think I may be dead. But there’s also no white light to greet me, and no friends and family above me singing a Hallelujah chorus. Not even the Devil is stalking my corpse.

  I do hear an angel though. It’s Sierra. Her voice rings through the noise and the chaos. She’s shouting incoherently like a mad woman, but still, her voice is as sweet and as gentle as ever.

  “Tank! Tank! You have to get up. We have to go… NOW!” My eyes pop open, and I take my first breath. “Tank! Come on… I need your help… please!”

  My body shakes itself back to present. I sit up slowly, feeling every inch of myself as I try to figure out what the hell just happened. The door to the outside is open and the sound of motorcycles approaching is even louder than before. Sierra notices me being out-of-sorts as she explains, “He’s gone. That guy we thought was dead shot him,” She points at Guzman’s men. One of the corpses is now collapsed up against a wall, the gun still warm in his hands. “He got Abe in the neck, but he managed to crawl out the door. I don’t know where he went though so we have to get out of here!”

  She was in a panic. Whatever happened before we got here was nothing. All we could do is run, and run fast. I pick myself off of the ground and grab her clammy wet hand in mine. Together, we dart out the door and towards the gate I entered through. We pass the guard booth just as we see the first headlights of the motorcycle gang peering around the driveway. I pull her inside as quickly as my arms can grab at her waist.

  She shrieks, as she sees the dead security guard lying face down against the floor. The shock of the broken neck is gruesome enough that even I have to cower away from it. There’s nothing I can do but put my hand across her mouth and pull her down to the floor to wait. Around twenty bikers pass the little hut along with an ammo van taking up the rear. One by one, the bikes turn off and men’s voices replace the sound. The first shout goes up loudly as they discover the pile of their fallen friends just five feet into the door.

  I know this is the best time to fly. I grab her once again, and we cross the driveway to the clearing, deep within the trees. She hobbles along behind me as I hear her audibly wince in pain. Her battered body won’t make it the mile to where we discarded our bikes, so I do the only thing I can think of—I pick her up and run with her piggyback.

  My feet practically leap through the bushes and the shrubs, past the sandy fields and the lightening sky. It’ll be morning soon, and our spot will be given away in just an hour or so if I’m not careful. Still, that darkness I had getting in is becoming less and less of an advantage, as I try my hardest not to trip over the uneven ground with Sierra bobbing around on my back.

  We pass the rancher’s home which is still burning. The flames are still spreading to the tree line, as the frame glows black against the red and orange flames. The sky becomes a cloudy black from the soot and smoke mingling with the dry air. I want to look away knowing that inside is the body of one of my best friends, but I have to look. I have to slow down and see it for myself.

  Sierra begins to cry as we approach the backside of it. To her, it’s an omen of a night she will never forget, and I don’t blame her. She’s seen and experienced way too much, more than I could have ever imagined, even as the leader of the motorcycle club. My heart grows heavy for her, as I adjust her position on my back and begin sprinting away from it all.

  In my ear, she is whispering prayers and bargaining with the Creator. “Please, oh God. Please help us get out of here. Make this go away, and I’ll do anything you want.” She repeats it over and over again until I set her down to take a breath. We’re only about five hundred feet or so from where I remember leaving our bikes. The fork of the road is in plain sight just beyond the ditch, but I can’t seem to make myself get there.

  It’s when I place her gently down on the golden grass that I hear it. At first, I think it’s an animal. This part of El Paso is known for mule deer and Mexican wolves. But the sound is of something with two feet running at us. Sierra notes it first, as she crawls on her hands and feet backwards towards me, hovering behind my body as I reach for the gun still stuck in my back pocket.

  “Back off!” I scream, as it comes within feet of us. “I will shoot you!”

  I turn around to Sierra and place the gun I stole from a body into her hand, “If you have to, you aim to kill. You get me?”

  She nods silently, choking back the tears she is forcing herself to hold back. I lean down and scoop her back up as we run from the sound in the clearing towards the light at the end of our tunnel. We zig zag, making ourselves moving targets, but my feet are headed towards that one streetlight just a few trees away

  “Tank!” Sierra whispers, terrified, as she points just in front of my face, “The Aztecs!” A group of bikers are swarming up ahead. They have formed their own makeshift roadblock designed to trap us in. Two bikes circle one another as the other men light flares on the roadway. I don’t stop to look any further; I place Sierra down, take her hand, and run straight towards the bikes.

  In a flash, I hitch Sierra onto the back and saddle myself. Before I start the engine, I turn to her, “Do you remember what I said about the gun? You’re going to have to be my shooter, Sierra.” I feel her nod into the back of my t-shirt as her left hand holds on tightly to my waist. Her other arm reaches out into the darkness with the gun cocked and loaded.

  As soon as I turn my engine on, the men come running. Whips of tree and dust fly at us as the Aztecs shoot randomly into the direction of my bike. I peel off into the clearing, dodging cacti and shrubs as best as I can. Sierra doesn’t fire back though. There’s still no one in sight as we swerve off
towards the gravel road, past where the Aztec roadblock is set up.

  Two bikes appear behind us, as if by complete magic. Sierra shakes as she inhales deeply and fires. She hits the first one directly in the tire, though by accident. The bike swerves wildly till it falls into the ditch, the driver rolling in a heap. She lets out a squeal before remembering the second one.

  The Japanese bike is slick, almost faster than my Harley is. It pulls within ten feet of me, as I add even more power. Sierra fires again, missing. The driver fiddles with his gun but the whipping wind throws him off as the shot hits my mirror. “Shoot him, Sierra!” I call back to her as I hear her cry out. The man pulls even closer, so close that he could jump on our bike if he wanted. His gun raises towards my head, and I close my eyes.

  But the fatal bullet isn’t for me. Sierra’s shot hits him square in the chest causing him to lurch backwards towards his bucket. His bike stays steady and upright at first before the driver falls. The bike flies at us, and I only have seconds before I am able to grab Sierra and pull us both off. We hit the gravel hard, her rolling on top of me and into the grass. My skin scrapes and tears at the tiny pebbles, but I’m intact.

  I cough, clearing my throat from the dirt and dust we tracked up. The smoke from our two bikes becomes unbearable, as I choke back the exhaust. I stand slowly and look around at our surroundings. We’re back in the middle of nowhere. A few lights of houses dot the skyline, but everything else is blank, and I realize that I’m alone.

  “Sierra!” I call towards where I think she rolled off to. The grass moves in response as I run down the side of the ditch to the bottom where she lays. Her body is more beat up than ever, but she is breathing, and her eyes flicker up at me as she tries to say something. A few fingers reach up to touch a large scratch along my eye. I kiss her palm gently, as I place it back on her chest and attempt to pick her up.

  “How sweet.” The man’s voice pops from the darkness. “Too bad it’s over. You lose. But hey, at least you’ll both die together.”

  In the roar of our accident, I couldn’t have heard the third bike appear. But Abe dismounts and points his gun directly at my head. I set Sierra back down and step in front of her as the shield. “You don’t have to do this Abe.”

  I take the man who is about to kill me in—the caked blood covering his face, neck, and arms, the body that sways in pain, and the leering grin on his face. He snarls at me almost joyfully, “Are you actually asking me not to kill you?”

  “I’m asking you not to kill her.”

  “Too late. I can kill her first, if you want though. I mean, I’d like to punish her by having her last moments seeing you with a bullet in your brain, but I can compromise for an old friend.” His arm stiffens as he steadies his aim. My hand reaches behind me, but my gun is nowhere. It must have rolled out of my pocket during the accident.

  He takes a few steps at us as I swallow hard. My mind flashes back to my first meeting with Sierra and how she dared to touch me in that ICU waiting room, the flush of her face when she realized who I was, that first deep kiss… All of our moments together came rushing to me one by one so that time felt like it could replay itself in those few last seconds of my life.

  My hands raise towards my head as I wait. He chuckles one last time as he says, “Oh, I’m going to enjoy th—”

  “You’re not gonna enjoy anything, you sick son of a bitch!” Sierra’s voice screams into the dark. A blast goes off from just behind me, and I watch, stunned, as Abe’s body flies backwards. Another bullet soars into him, his shoulder flying up with his head lowered back. A third and fourth hit him, as Sierra’s voice shouts and cries out in pain. Abe falls to the ground stiffly with a thud, as I spin around to see Sierra and her gun still aimed towards where he stood.

  “Sierr—”

  She cuts me off as she drops the gun to the ground and lets out a long breath of air. Her hands search and find me in the dark, and finally, her tired body collapses in my arms. Days pass before she will wake again, but when she does, I’m by her side.

  Chapter 31: The Beginning of the End

  “Sierra! Come on! Everyone is waiting for you!” Carmen taps her foot lightly, as she leans against the wall. Her purple floor length gown is floating in the wind next to the open window. I turn to face her, examining her makeup and hair.

  I pat the seat next to me lightly, as I say, “Come here. Come sit by me for just a moment. Everyone else can wait.”

  She pouts a bit, her shoulders dropping as she hikes up the hem of her dress and sits next to me at the vanity. I pull her in close to me, letting her head rest on my bare shoulders. I inhale deeply, getting the scent of her perfume and a whiff of her hairspray, before softly saying, “Thank you for being here with us. It really means a lot to us—to me.”

  “I owe you two my life. I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you guys taking on Abe and the Aztecs. And what Tank did for Anthony, letting him in the club, and giving him full immunity and protection… that’s above and beyond.” She pulls off of me and grabs hold of my hands. “You’re marrying a good man, Sierra. He loves you more than anything in this world, even more than that club of his. And plus, not many guys would stick around for a full year while you recovered and then graduated from college. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thank you, Carmen. I’m proud of you, too.”

  The last year has been a complete whirlwind. Once Tank got me back to El Paso, I joined Carmen in the hospital. Yet, there’s no police guards to watch out for me. Tank covers it up by telling the doctors that I was in a bike accident, so they don’t bat their eyes when I’m getting “visitors” of Apache-clad club members nearly twenty-four seven.

  The physical scars healed quickly. With the help of Tank, I fly through physical therapy…and Carmen pushed me even harder. And when I’m ready to go home, I walk out the hospital on my own two feet and into a new rental Tank has secured for me.

  Carmen joins me a week later, and we both make the pact that we were going to graduate college no matter what. We wouldn’t let Abe and the memories he left us hold us back any further. And on our graduation day, Carmen and I secretly spend the afternoon ripping up old pictures of him and burning it in our fireplace as an effigy to everything he had done to us.

  Still, there were nights where Tank would wake me up, his body covered in scratch marks and my fingernails pink with blood. I would apologize a million times to him, and he wouldn’t bat an eye. He would hold my hand as I sobbed and pull me close when I couldn’t form the words to tell him about the pain I went through. A month after he officially moved in with me, he even drove me to my first therapy session. I only kept the detail out about me killing Abe out.

  Everything slowed down once I was out of school. Tank and I fell into this rhythm that was almost its own kind of beautiful in its simplicity. Tank would handle club stuff while I went to work as a librarian. At night, some of the guys would come over, and I would tutor them or work on GED prep classes. Even Tank joined in, though I’m still trying to convince him he’s smart enough to pass. Afterwards, I’d make dinner for whomever was home with us and I’d let Tank get his business taken care of until it was our time to go to bed together—our only promise to one another. Neither of us could sleep if the other one wasn’t around.

  Tank also made it his mission to make me a part of his world. One sunny and stifling Texas day, I came home to another Harley in our garage. It was his gift to me, along with the lessons needed to get confident on it. My first ride out was shaky and terrifying. I had never, ever wanted to learn to ride, but Tank persisted. And by the fourth or fifth day at it, I was a pro, brave enough to weave in and out of traffic on the highway with Tank riding right behind me.

  That evening, he pulled me aside along the highway. The setting sun was right in front of us, as it glowed a vibrant gold against the dessert’s black. He pulled me off of my bike and onto his, with my back leaning against the handlebars and my legs wrapped around his. As I leaned back, loo
king up and over at the purple and pink clouds, he leaned down and whispered words I thought I’d never hear from him. “Be my wife, Sierra. I don’t want to imagine a world without you. And I don’t want you to belong to anyone else. Say yes, and I promise you won’t walk a day alone.”

  I sat there silently, my watery eyes still focused on the clouds and the stars that peaked in through the clearing, and in that moment, I couldn’t imagine a life without him either.

  Now we’re here. It’s two months later, and wedding planning has completely knocked me out. With the motorcycle club, there are so many traditions and rituals that you’d think Tank was the one in the strapless, lace gown. But we managed to get through them all.

  Anthony is waiting for me at the start of the aisle, his tuxedo-covered arm waiting for me to hold on to it. We watch with the biggest smiles on our face as Carmen walks steadily down the aisle, her limp from the attack barely noticeable. And when it’s my time to follow her, I let Anthony lead me to my husband. We share our first kiss as a married couple under the halo of stars as men clad in jeans and black jackets hoot and holler along.