BABY WITH THE BEAST

by Naomi West

  I don’t wait for him to get to two. I know he means what he says. Even if it means his own death, he’ll kill me. That’s just the sort of man he is. I crawl out from under the bed, standing up and facing him. I’m so tired I can hardly think. Tears stream down my cheeks, unbidden, but I can’t fight them away. Dad tilts his head at me. The left side of his face is cut and bleeding. Otherwise he’s okay.

  He darts his hand out, grabbing me by the elbow. “Those Viper fucks have us surrounded,” he snaps. “But let’s see them keep shooting when I’ve got their leader’s beloved little hole as my personal shield, eh? I think it’s time you finally did something useful as a daughter instead of leeching off of me. All right?” He drags me into the hallway, gun pointed forward. I want to fight him but it’s as much as I can do to keep up with him. I wish I’d had a full night’s sleep. I wish the tears would stop. I wish I was stronger. I wish, I wish . . . Wishing will get me nowhere. I have to look for an opportunity to do something.

  He kicks through into the bar, ducking low as bullets smash into the wall above our heads. Dead men like all around, stinking of gun smoke and blood and shit. I try not to look at their slack, empty faces.

  “They’re all around us, boss!” Rust says, crouching behind an overturned table and aiming out of the window.

  “I’m taking her through the kitchen!” Dad snaps. “Keep them occupied.”

  “Boss!”

  Dad pulls me into the kitchen, which is a windowless room where the gunfire hasn’t reached yet. The attack started amidst the preparations for breakfast. Pans and pots are scattered all over the floor, milk pooling in one corner, the fridge door swinging back and forth, egg yolks splattered on the table.

  “The whores ran,” he mutters. “The fucking whores ran.”

  “Of course they did,” I say. The next time he tries to pull on my arm, I summon all the strength I have left. The tears stop. I make myself cold. I pull backwards so that we come to a standstill. A painful standstill, since he almost wrenches my shoulder out of its socket. “Why would they stay for a man like you?”

  He grins at me madly. “You don’t want to do this now.” He points the gun at my belly. “I won’t kill you, sweet daughter. I’ll just put a bullet right here and see what happens.”

  He prods the barrel of the gun against my baby. Rage seethes inside of me, rage unlike anything I have ever felt. It’s like all the anger which has built up over the course of my life has culminated in this one moment of anger. I feel far braver than I ever have before. Perhaps it’s because a mother ought to be brave where her child is concerned.

  “If you do that, you die,” I say. “I’ll make sure of that.”

  “You’re living in a dream world. Sure, they’ve hit us, but we’re fighting them back. A few of ours are dead. A few of theirs are dead. You better be careful about what you say. I’m taking you out the back and—”

  It’s a child’s trick, but sometimes the unexpected plan is the only plan that’ll work. There are two doors to the kitchen, the one we came in through which leads to the bar, and the one which leads to the bins and the back of the clubhouse. I look at the door which leads to the bins and scream. I scream loudly, panicky. I scream like there’s a man with the biggest gun I’ve ever seen aiming at us. I scream so convincingly that Dad turns around, swinging his gun to the door. I don’t think as I pick up the biggest pan nearby. I don’t think as I swing it down at his head with all my strength. I just do it.

  It connects with a sickening crack. I’m surprised by how violently the pan bounces off of his head. He stumbles forward. I hit him again, anger fueling me, and again, again. I hit him until he’s on his knees and then hit him one final time, causing him to fall on his face. Then I kneel down and wrench the gun from his hand. It’s heavy and I’ve never shot a gun before, but I feel safer for having it in my hand, safer for no longer being so defenseless.

  Dad rolls over, squinting up at me. Blood seeps down his skull onto the floor.

  “So you have some fight in you.” He smiles. “Maybe you are my daughter after all.”

  “You’re wrong,” I tell him, the sound of gunfire a constant backing track now. “I was never your daughter. Over these past couple of months I’ve learned that family isn’t just biological. You don’t get to be somebody’s father just by having sex with their mother. I’ve got a new family now. Spike is my family. This child in here is my family. And Spike is going to show me what a father really is. Spike is going to be there for me and my baby. You, my father? You’re a joke. That’s all. A pathetic little weasel of a man.”

  I look around the kitchen, go to the corner of the room with my gun still on him, and return with two aprons. Tearing them so that I just have the ties, I secure Dad’s arms to the fixed counter on one wall and his ankles to the fixed island in the center of the room so that he’s trussed up like something ready to be cooked.

  “You’re not going to kill me.” He giggles, sounding oddly young. “You can’t, can you?”

  I answer him by smacking him in the forehead with the butt of the handgun, causing his eyes to fall closed and his body to go slack.

  “Fuck you,” I say. “Fuck you for what you did to Mom and fuck you for what you were going to do to Spike. Fuck you for the man you are.” I press the barrel of the gun against the side of his head, stroking the trigger, willing myself to pull it.

  But he’s right. I can’t. However badly I want to, I just can’t. I want to. I desperately want to.

  I stand up. “I’ll be back for you.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Yazmin

  I crouch low in the kitchen near the door, waiting for the Vipers to push through into the clubhouse. I have my gun trained on the door to the bar, knowing that soon some Scorpion might push through and attack me. Dad is passed out on the floor, his face covered in blood from where I hit him, his chest rising and falling just enough to tell me he’s not dead.

  “The bastards keep coming,” one man says. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Look at these dead, man. They’re too many dead. They’re too many goddamn dead.”

  “We have to keep fighting.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “We all want to go home, but this is what we signed up for when we joined up with Snake. This is the game. So get your fuckin’ act together. You better get some steel in your—”

  A bullet sounds. The man’s voice is cut off. I can only assume what’s happened to him.

  When the back door swings open, I jump to my feet, leveling my gun at the man who barges in. It’s Justin, the mole, holding a rifle and aiming it right at me. I hold the gun at him longer than is necessary, far too long if I don’t want him to know that I know who he is. I ask myself what I would do if I didn’t know he was the mole. I have to be careful here. One misstep and maybe he’ll kill me so that nobody ever knows what he’s done.

  I lower the gun. “Justin!” I cry, my voice full of hysteria I only have to fake a little bit. “Get me out of here, please!”

  He squints at me for a moment, and then looks down at Dad. “He dead?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

  I can tell he’s deciding whether or not to kill him, but he doesn’t know how this is going to play out yet. Maybe he’s thinking that if he kills him and the Scorpions win, he’ll have lost a source of income. He looks far colder and more calculating than I’ve ever seen him look. Normally he looks like a teenager with his ginger hair and freckles. Now he looks like a man coldly considering what to do.

  “I need to get you to Spike,” he says. “That’s the only thing to do right now. Come here.”

  “Oh, thank God!” I cry, skipping over to him. I have to keep up the act. If I let it slip for one second, there’s no telling what he might do.

  He takes me by the wrist—being careful not to hold my hand because I’m Spike’s woman, maybe—and leads me out the back door, down a short hallway, and into the street. “Don’t shoot!” he shouts, hol
ding his free hand up. “It’s me.”

  I recognize the huge man called Knuckles kneeling in a flowerbed with a rifle butt jammed in his shoulder, his eye looking down the sight. He nods brusquely for us to get out of the way and then advances on the kitchens. I feel Justin tense up, his hand going tight around my wrist when he sees Knuckles moving toward the building. It’s like I can hear what he’s thinking. What if they kill Snake? What happens to me then? But there’s nothing he can do but walk away from the men. I’m guessing that Spike is on the other side of the building, near the road, but Justin just keeps walking in a straight line, heading for the woods on the other side.

  “Where are we going?” I ask him, making sure to not let any suspicion enter my voice. He has to believe I’m just a naïve victim, otherwise he might do something stupid.

  “Spike is back at the clubhouse,” he says. “I’m taking you there.” He tries to pull me up a small knoll which leads into the woods. I have no idea what his plan is. I don’t like the frantic look in his face, the way his eyes keep darting left and right. He looks like a man who’s trapped with nowhere to go. He looks like a man who might do something stupid at any moment. He looks like a man who is working himself up to hurt somebody he doesn’t want to hurt. Me, Spike, both?

  “Isn’t the clubhouse the other way?” I mutter.

  “Is it?” He turns on me, standing close to me, his face inches from mine. “Is it?” he repeats, voice sharp. “Is what there it is? You seem to know everything. Why don’t you tell me where Spike is, since you’ve been in there hiding and I’ve been out here? Hmm? You seem to know everything.”

  “You’re scaring me,” I say, glad not to have to lie. “Justin, you’re really frightening me.”

  “Justin!” Spike’s voice is like the swelling at the end of a classical piece of music, causing goose bumps to prick all over my skin. Invisible warm fingers stroke down my back, my spine. A smile which makes all the pain and the anxiety seem petty lifts my lips. Spike, my Spike . . . “What’s going on?”

  Spike jogs to us, looking down at Justin’s hand gripping my wrist. Behind Spike, five men stand, all with weapons in their hands. Justin looks to Spike, then to the men, then down at his hand. After a moment he lets me go and takes a step back, laughing awkwardly. “I thought you were back at the clubhouse,” he says.

  “The clubhouse is the other way,” the new officer retorts. I think his name is Kieran. He hefts a rifle.

  “Spike.” I collapse into him, savoring the scent of his leathers, the feeling of his hand in my hair. “I’m so sorry for leaving. It was a mistake. It was a huge mistake.”

  “Hush.” He kisses me on the forehead, gives me a squeeze, and then releases me, becoming the leader again. “We’ve got the last few pinned down in the dormitory. The raid is gonna be a success real soon. And you’re dragging my woman into the woods, away from the clubhouse? The fuck is this, Justin?”

  “He’s a mole, Spike,” I say, watching the gun in Justin’s hand and wondering if he’ll do something stupid. But he sees the guns trained on him. Six of them, including Spike’s. He doesn’t stand a chance. I quickly tell Spike about what Dad revealed to me, how Justin warned them him about the first raid. “That was why I made that sign. Justin has been feeding them information for a long time. I’m not sure how long, exactly.”

  “Is this true?” Spike steps close to Justin, wrenching the gun from his hand and tossing it to the ground. “Is this fuckin’ true?” His voice trembles. His fists tremble. I imagine his heart is trembling, too. “You’ve been betraying me every step of the way? Speak, Justin. Speak!”

  He speaks for a long time, maybe five minutes, making excuses about his mother, telling Spike how he needed extra cash to pay for her treatments, telling Spike how he never meant to betray him. In the end it comes down to what it often comes down to: a man who needs more money than he has, doing things he’d never normally do to get it.

  “You know I never meant to hurt you,” he says.

  Spike sighs. I can tell he’s hurt just by looking at him. He’s not going to cry—he’s too keyed up and full of battle adrenalin for that—but his face is twisted. He grinds his teeth, staring into his VP’s eyes. Behind us, the gunfire has stopped. The Vipers are emerging from the clubhouse, Dad propped up between two men, his feet dragging along the floor. “You helped the Scorpions kill good men,” Spike says. “I ought to kill you. I ought to string you the fuck up.” He sighs again, heavier. Then he shoots Justin in the knee, a loud bang which makes me jump back. The bullet bites into his trousers, smoke and blood rising into the air. “Limp to your mother and take her somewhere far away. If you’re ever seen in Sunnyside again, you’re a dead man.”

  Spike turns away as though that’s the end of matters. There are tears in Justin’s eyes as he turns and limps up the hill into the woods. It’s only when he’s deep in the woods that he lets himself roar. He roars like a man who hates himself, like a man who wishes he could go back and change each of the small decisions which led to the biggest moment of his life. He roars in a way that makes me sorry for him before I remember Danny and the other men, all their deaths assisted by his intel.

  Soon all the Vipers are turning away from the woods, forming a circle around Snake. If there was pity in their eyes for Justin, it evaporates when they see Snake. There’s nothing there but hate.

  Dad manages to lift his head as Spike approaches. “So,” he says. “This is it, is it?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Spike

  I have to push Justin to the back of my head. I have to let it go. I have to be the president and think about all that shit later. Yazmin is safe. I can feel her behind me, watching as I stand toe to toe with her old man. My kid is safe. That’s all that matters. But as I stare down at the bastard, a thousand memories of Justin flit across my mind, a thousand times I had his back and I thought he had mine.

  Part of me wishes I’d shot him in the head instead of the knee, but then his mother would be screwed. Maybe I’m getting too soft since I’ve fallen for Yazmin. But this man, I tell myself, this weasel-looking fuck . . . There’s no getting soft on him. Justin may’ve fed him the intel, but this man was the one who carried it through. This man is the one who killed my men, held my woman hostage, killed my woman’s mother.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “This is it. But before we end your miserable life, I wanna show you something.” I nod to Knuckles, who grins and backs away. I grab Snake by the throat and turn him around so that he’s looking at the clubhouse. I wonder if Yazmin will come forward and tell me to be merciful. She doesn’t, probably because we both know there’s no being merciful when it comes to a man like Snake. He’s raped, killed, tortured, abused for far too long.

  “What’s this—dramatics?” His voice is croaky as I clamp down on his throat. “Is that it, Spike? You a fucking theater man now or something?”

  “You recruited an army of sadists,” I say. “I looked into your men once upon a time, Snake. You recruited pedophiles and rapists and murderers—murderers of innocents, civilians. You recruited an army and you twisted them to make them more evil, and then you sent them after my men. You tried to tear down my club. Now I’m gonna tear yours down.”

  Knuckles emerges from the back door trailing a line of gasoline. He tosses the container away and approaches me, offering me a box of matches. “Boss. I checked for women or kids, like you said. There ain’t any.”

  I shove Snake at him and take the matches. Knuckles catches the man that was once the bane of our lives, holding him up. I strike a match and toss it through the air at the gasoline. It spins end over end, seeming to catch the morning sunlight, seeming to move in slow motion. When it lands in the gasoline, there’s a moment when it just sits there, and then—whoosh—the flames flicker into life and spread into the clubhouse.

  All of us step back, Knuckles dragging Snake, making sure his face is turned toward the clubhouse as the fire licks out of the windows, shattering the glass, as th
e building moans and rafters snap, the roof caving in, as this hellhole is turned into a wreck that will never bother Sunnyside again.

  I go to Yazmin and wrap my arm around her shoulders as we watch the clubhouse burn. “You can decide what’s done with him,” I say quietly, so only she can hear me. “It’s up to you, Yazmin. Kill him, cut him free, whatever you want.”

  “If we cut him free, he’ll only come back. He’ll never give up, Spike. He’ll wait until my child is born and then hurt him or her. He’ll never leave me in peace.” She swallows audibly. “I want him dead. He killed Mom and he killed your men and he’s done a million other unforgivable things. I want him dead, Spike.” When she says her next words, she sounds fierce. “And I want to be the one to do it.”

  Several heads turn at this. They’ve heard her.

  “Let her!” Snake calls, craning his neck around. “Let her be the one! Yes, that’s how it should be! Listen to me, you stupid slut—” He gasps when Knuckles’ massive fist catches him in the jaw. “Listen!” he goes on, spitting blood. “I killed your mother, but do you want to know something? I fucked her first. I came around with some flowers and then I fucked her. She moaned and begged for it, and when she was lying there with all her pillow talk, that was when I did it!”