by Zoey Parker
“This isn't like that,” Leo protested.
“Of course it is,” Stef shot back, grabbing a napkin from a nearby table and dabbing at her eyes. “I should know. I've certainly seen it enough times.”
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. Let's just go over to our table and talk this out...”
“Why? Are you upset about jeopardizing your big payday? Don't worry, my father will marry me off to you whether I like you or not. So go on, make your important deals with him and keep kissing his butt. I guess I'll see you on our wedding day.” She pushed past Leo, storming out of the restaurant.
Once she made it outside, she collapsed against the wall of the building, sobbing uncontrollably. Just a few minutes ago, she'd been eagerly awaiting the happiest night of her life. Now she wished she were dead.
“Miss Stefania? Are you all right?” Silvio was next to her, staring at her with his crab-like eyes and holding out a handkerchief.
But Stef felt like she'd never be all right again.
Chapter 18
Skull
The muddy stream in the bayou came up to Skull's knees as he trudged through it carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible. Ash, Bumper, and Panda walked behind him in a line, dutifully matching his pace like a trio of ducklings behind their mother.
Instead of their usual biker duds, the Devils were wearing black commando gear, paintball masks molded to look like leering skulls, and plastic body armor they'd bought from a costume shop a few towns away. It wouldn't stop any bullets, but it still achieved the desired effect.
They looked frightening as hell.
And unlike the armor, the AK-47 assault rifles they carried—and the bullets in their magazines—were very real.
“What's the point of all this crap?” Panda had asked as Skull gave the clerk at the costume shop a wad of cash. “It ain't like we're goin' up against real hardasses or anythin'. It's just Gaskin an' those inbred cousins of his.”
“First of all, we can't have them knowing who we are, or even that we're bikers,” Skull explained. “Putting aside the fact that half of us are supposed to be dead and the other half are supposed to be gone, Gaskin's dealt with the Devils and other MCs lots of times. That won't scare him off. If he thinks we're an X-factor he's never encountered before—like some super-commando squad from God knows where—then he'll be a lot less likely to give us any pushback. Besides, Richie Gaskin's a fleabag piece of shit and I've never liked him, so this is gonna be a lot of fun. By the time we're finished with him, he'll feel like the Grim Reaper stuck a finger up his ass and twisted it.”
It had been almost a week since Bax's second date with Stef. During that time, Bax had talked on the phone with Altamura a handful of times—first to say he'd wired the money to the rebels in Myanmar, and then to tell him that no, he hadn't received any word back from them yet. Skull wasn't known for his patience, so sitting tight for so long hadn't made him too happy. But Bax had assured him that this next step in the plan relied on perfect timing.
And now that it was finally time for him to act, Skull had to admit that he was having a hell of a lot of fun.
As the four Devils made their way through the mangroves and tall grasses, Skull pushed aside a curtain of peat moss. He knew it was childish, but in his mind, he kept pretending he was Martin Sheen in “Apocalypse Now”—stalking through the steamy jungles of Vietnam with his finger on the trigger and murder in his eyes, delivering grim inner monologues about the beauty and horror of war. It had been his favorite movie since he and Bax had cut class in the fifth grade to rent it.
“I wanted a mission,” he murmured under his breath in a gravelly voice. “And for my sins, they gave me one.”
“What?” Panda whispered.
Skull smiled under his mask. “Nothing. We're almost there. Remember, when we bust in, let me do the talking.” Unlike the others, Skull had also opted for a cheaply-made voice changer from the costume shop, which he'd tucked into his mask.
A dilapidated tar paper shack stood a short distance ahead of them with battery-powered lamps in the windows. Skull motioned for the others to remain silent and follow him. Then he crouched down and continued his approach.
Once they were close enough, Skull peered into one of the windows.
Richie Gaskin stood in the shack with his cousins, Marty and Cootie Graw. Marty was in his late twenties, with watery blue eyes and scraggly blonde-white hair that looked like dirty corn silk. He wore a patched, stained pair of overalls. Cootie was a bald, squat, troll-like man in his mid-thirties, with thick black hair on his arms and warts all over his face. He sported a filthy yellow t-shirt that said “Time To Rub One Out,” and a pair of cutoff denims that were so short his scrotum was almost visible.
The three men were ladling heaping amounts of white powder into styrofoam bowls of heroin and stirring them around sloppily, as a Country/Western station played between bursts of static on a battered radio in the corner.
“Didn't this asshole have three cousins?” Panda whispered. “Or was it just the two?”
“Pretty sure it was just these two,” Skull answered, re-adjusting the weight of the rifle in his arms. AKs were sturdy and reliable, but man, were they heavy.
“I ran out of baking soda,” Marty announced with a belch.
“So use some of the detergent or rat poison to cut with.” Cootie paused in his work to scratch his balls and sniff his fingertips. “An' let's hurry it up, okay? I gotta take a shit the size of a wedding cake.”
“I told you before, just go an' do it outside,” Richie said. “You ain't gotta hold it in. We got plenty of toilet paper.”
“An' I told you before, I ain't shittin' in no swamp. Had me a girlfriend who tried to do that once. She squatted down, an' the next thing she knew, she had a mud snake hangin' from her pussy by its teeth. You shoulda seen her come runnin' outta the bayou screamin', with that thing swingin' between her legs like a big black dick!”
The men in the shack guffawed loudly.
“I dunno why we're out here fuckin' around with this shit anyhow,” Marty pointed out. “You still ain't heard nothin' from Altamura, have you, Richie? For all we know, he's found some other source.”
“He'll call,” Richie insisted. “If there was someone new slingin' this shit around here, I'd have heard about it. Naw, he's just playin' it up like he's some kind of big man so's he can watch me sweat about it. Them wops an' their bullshit power trips, man. They think us good ol' boys are nothin' but a bunch've dumb pig-fuckers can be pushed around.”
That sure is what it looks like from here, Skull thought.
Skull looked around to make sure the other Devils were in position. Then he unclipped a stun grenade from his belt, yanked the pin, and tossed it through a window.
“What the—?!” There was a scramble of confusion inside, and a second later, the grenade went off with a blinding white flash and a thunderous bang.
Skull kicked down the door of the shack and burst in, followed by the other Devils. Richie and the Graw brothers were sprawled on the floor, blinking up at them and moaning in pain.
“Richard Gaskin. Marty Graw. Cootie Graw.” Skull pronounced their names like a judge handing down a death sentence. With the voice changer set to its lowest setting, he sounded like Darth Vader.
He had never felt cooler in his life.
“Your sins have caught up with you at last,” Skull intoned.
“You want the H?” Richie asked, his voice quivering. “Take it! It's yours!”
“You think you can bribe me with your cheap poison?” Skull picked up one of the bowls of powder, flinging it at Richie and crumpling the styrofoam into a ball. The heroin caked Richie's face and he coughed.
“I am your Fate, Richard Gaskin. I am your Angel of Death. There is no bargain. There is no escape. There is only penance.” He pointed a finger at Richie dramatically.
Richie dragged himself to his knees. He brushed the powder from his face, gagging and retching. Then he
laced his fingers together like a man about to pray, looking up at Skull pleadingly.
“Please...I'm so sorry...I never meant to hurt no one...my daddy left when I was two an' I got led astray, you gotta know that...but I will be good, I promise, I'll do whatever you want, whatever it takes, just don't drag me down to hell, Mister Skull Face, please...”
Suddenly, there was a deafening mechanical roar just outside the door, followed by a yowl of pain from Ash.
Skull turned in time to see a hulking figure in a tattered cloak that looked like it had been stitched together from varmint pelts. His face was broad and lumpy, and one of his eye sockets was sunken and empty. His snarl revealed a mouthful of broken teeth that looked like crooked fangs.
He brandished a large chainsaw.
Ash was still yelling and clutching at the small of his back as dime-sized drops of blood hit the floor.
“Kill 'em, Chainsaw!” Richie hollered over the sound of the machine. “Kill 'em all!”
Chainsaw stepped forward into the room, swinging his weapon and mewling incoherently. Panda and Ash were already backing away from him, but Bumper appeared to be frozen in mute horror.
“Get down,” Skull commanded, raising his rifle.
Bumper didn't move.
Ash and Panda lunged at Bumper, tackling him to the ground. Chainsaw raised the saw, preparing to bring it down on one or all of them as he cackled madly.
Skull took advantage of his clear shot, firing a burst from his AK directly into Chainsaw's chest.
The brute looked down at the bleeding holes in his body, the saw still raised above his head. Then he let out a shriek and turned, fleeing into the swamp again. The sputtering roar of the chainsaw followed him until it faded in the distance.
As Bumper and Panda silently inspected the wound on Ash's back, Skull turned and advanced on Richie and his cousins menacingly. Their butts skidded across the floor until all three of them were backed up against the wall in a row.
Skull's blood was up and he badly wanted to pump these dickheads full of bullets, but that wasn't the mission he'd been sent on. Bax had said it was important that they just disappeared without a trace, so Skull couldn't risk leaving evidence that they'd been killed instead.
“I shoulda warned you,” Richie sobbed. “I forgot he was out there, okay? I just forgot!”
Skull slammed the butt of his rifle into Richie's torso savagely. Richie screamed, and Skull heard several of his ribs snap.
“If you want to live, here's something you shouldn't forget,” Skull growled. “Louisiana is off-limits to you and the rest of your demented family. Find someplace else to be a drug-peddling redneck. We'll be watching for you, and if you ever come back to this state again—even if you're just passing through—we'll know, and we'll make sure you're the one who dies with a chainsaw in his guts. Do you understand?”
“Y-Y-Yes,” Richie stammered.
“Good. Now go.”
Richie pulled himself to his feet, clutching his busted ribs and hissing in pain. Marty and Cootie got up as well, breathing hard, their eyes bugging out of their heads. For a moment, they stood, staring at Skull and the other Devils.
Skull pointed his rifle at the ceiling and fired off another burst. “Now!”
The three men pelted toward the door as fast as they could, running off into the bayou. Skull looked down and saw trails of urine on the floor, marking their paths.
“How bad is it?” Skull asked Ash, pulling his mask off. The others took theirs off too.
“Could've been a lot worse,” Ash said, wincing. “This plastic armor may be cheap, but it still kept the saw from going in as deep as it could. A few stitches, an' I should be okay. Thank God he missed the spine, though.”
“Jesus, that was some fucked-up, horror movie shit!” Panda turned to Bumper, who was pale and shaking. “Where the hell were you, anyway, huh? What happened?”
“I, uh...just wasn't expecting a dude with a chainsaw, is all,” Bumper said, licking his lips nervously. “I got kind of a thing about chainsaws. Do you think he's dead?”
“He took at least five rounds in the chest before he ran off,” Skull answered. “If that didn't kill him, there's about twelve different infections he'll get from the swamp that should do the trick. And we know for damn sure that the other three ain't gonna be a problem anymore.”
Okay, Bax, Skull thought. Mission accomplished. What do you have up your sleeve next?
Chapter 19
Stef
Stef had been watching her father pace around their house for almost a week. She'd never seen him so nervous before—muttering to himself, wringing his hands, jumping every time the phone rang. Even when she was lying in bed at night, she could still hear his footsteps traveling from floor to floor, room to room. He'd always taken tremendous pride in his appearance, but now he was forgetting to bathe or comb his hair for days at a time, and his expensive outfits always looked rumpled.
She knew that whatever he was waiting for had something to do with Leo. She'd even heard him call Leo several times, but after each brief conversation, he continued to roam the house nervously.
When Silvio told Stef's father that her second date with Leo had ended before it began, Benny interrogated her mercilessly. She couldn't tell him that the real reason was because he'd refused to have sex with her again, so she stubbornly kept her mouth shut and her arms folded as he harangued her.
“I thought you said you liked him better than the others,” Benny yelled.
“Well, I was wrong! He's no different, and I don't like him anymore.”
Benny let out a frustrated roar, slamming his fist down on his desk. “Goddamn it, why couldn't I have had a son? Girls are so fickle. One minute they love some boy, and the next minute they hate him, and they can't even tell you why. It's enough to drive a man insane.”
“I'm not going to see him again.”
“Yes, you are,” Benny seethed. “You're going to have another date with him, and another, and you're going to smile and laugh and behave yourself on all of them. You know why? Because as quickly as your mind changed about Leo, it could change back just as quickly. And I won't let you ruin this chance for yourself just because you can't make up your mind about what you want.”
And Stef had stormed out of his office, and he'd slammed the door behind her, and she'd stomped up the stairs to her room and slammed her own door in response. It had become a familiar pattern.
Now Stef could hear the phone ringing, and her father scrambling to answer it. “Hello?”
Stef got up from her bed and opened her door, sticking her head out to listen. Was this the call he'd been waiting for?
From the short-tempered, disappointed tone in his voice, she guessed it wasn't.
“What do you mean, 'disappeared'? Did you check that cabin he's got out in the swamp?...Well, what about those fucking cousins of his? Marty and Cootie and that retard, what's-his-name, 'Bonesaw.'...Don't tell me that! Nothing 'vanishes without a trace!' Were there any signs they'd been bumped off? Any blood, or...'A couple of drops?' That tells me nothing! You're telling me nothing! Now find out what the hell happened to them, and fast. They were our only source for the shit. Hopefully, with this other deal I've got going, it won't matter—but still, we'd better find out what happened, just to be on the safe side.”
He slammed the phone down, and Stef heard him let out a frustrated sigh.
Stef couldn't believe how Benny was coming unraveled by this situation with Leo, whatever it was. He never used to speak unless it was in an even and rational tone, and he'd almost never used foul language. But now...
Good, Stef thought with a twinge of cruel satisfaction. Whatever's going on, maybe it'll give him ulcers and he'll die from them.
Still, she was sick to her stomach from all of it. Sick of the gangsters and the shady deals and the killings and the secrecy and the careful double-speak from fear of wiretapping. Sick of the whole wretched thing.
There was a knock at the fr
ont door, and Stef heard her father run to it, flinging it open. “Silvio! What is it?”
“Leo reached out, Don Altamura. He said he'd like to speak with you. It seemed fairly urgent.”
“Why? What's going on?”
“I don't know, sir. But whatever it is, he sounds quite unhappy about it.”
