Edge of Chaos

by Brynn O'Connor

  After a few minutes, Kayla is aware of the heat cooling and fading as she is pulled back into the real world where her love is being marched from her lawn into the waiting van. Even though they hadn’t touched physically, and despite their not saying a single word to each other, they connected on a deeper level and there’s nothing Luke’s father can do to take that from them.

  Kayla turns to go. She steps across the threshold of her door when a single shot rings out. The bullet strikes her in the head, just above her right eye and spins her around. She is unconscious before her body hits her hallway floor, so she can’t hear the screams of anguish from Luke as he struggles to break free of his captors and go to Kayla. His grief and rage give him super-human strength and he manages to pull free from the men holding him. He reaches her front door in three great bounds and slams it behind him. It takes a full two seconds before Luke’s father and his men recover and open fire on the door. By the time they charge the door and kick it in, no one is waiting on the other side. Kayla is still lying there in a pool of blood, but Luke is gone. A quick search of the house fails to produce him as well. They’re about to spread out to search the neighborhood when sirens rip through the night. Luke’s father gives the signal to clear out and seconds later they vanish into the night.

  Part One Epilogue…

  After Luke flees Kayla’s house, he is forced to stay hidden. He avoids any place he has previously frequented which means his club, his house, and just about every restaurant and bar in town. He has to stay away from friends, including his old military buddies. He knows his father is out there looking for him and probably so are the police. They may even think he is responsible for Kayla’s death. If his father is smart, he’ll have gone and figured out some way to manipulate the crime scene, or do something to cast suspicion his way. He is innocent but he can’t let himself get picked up. His association as the Vice President of the Suicide Kings would land him in jail for months while they try to pin as many unsolved crimes on him as they can find. So Luke goes from one flea bag motel to the next, always staying one step ahead of the law, his father, his brothers and his friends.

  Sleep doesn’t come easy for Luke. Most nights it doesn’t come at all. Whenever he closes his eyes, he sees Kayla’s unmoving form and the widening pool of blood around her head. All he hears is the lone gunshot that killed her.

  Once in a while he’s able to find the right mixture of sleeping pills and alcohol to knock him out. At least then he doesn’t dream at all. Thoughts of suicide plague him night and day. In fact, when he decides that he still wants to live, he has to quit carrying a gun for fear that in a moment of weakness he will just blow his own head off.

  Six months on the run and Luke has gone from a muscular athlete to a chubby, pathetic couch potato because that’s all he does, eat and watch TV.

  Nine months later, Luke wakes one morning to find that someone has shoved a note underneath his door. Figuring it’s from the hotel manager, he ignores it for a couple of days. Then one afternoon, while he’s watching TV, he wants to write something down and the only available paper is that note from the manager. He spreads it out on his lap and gasps. There are only four words, but they mean everything to him.

  “Take heart, she lives.”

  Part Two

  Out of Control

  One Year Later

  Prologue: Down and Definitely Out!

  The sour smell of unwashed bodies, sweat, cheap perfume, and even cheaper alcohol permeates everything in the tiny motel room. The floor is littered with empty bottles of bargain-basement wine and other spirits. Everywhere you look there are crumpled cigarette packages and overflowing ash trays. The carpet is dotted with cigarette burns and it’s a wonder the place hasn’t caught fire.

  In the bathroom a lone figure sits on the toilet, fumbling with her rig. Her hands shake so badly she can barely work the zipper of her little leather pouch. Twice it spills from her hands onto the filthy tile floor. Each time she picks it back up her stomach rebels and dry heaves wrack her emaciated frame.

  Finally she gets the zipper open but the contents just spill back out onto the floor. Oblivious to the filth she picks up the syringe, spoon, and lighter.

  “What the fuck?”

  She looks around, but can’t seem to locate the cotton ball.

  “Luke, bring me some cotton!” She yells from the bathroom.

  The lone biker still passed out in bed is in no shape to answer her. Instead he just groans in his sleep and rolls over.

  “Luke!”

  The woman on the toilet looks around the tiny bathroom until she finally locates a dirty off white cotton ball resting on top of a dried pile of vomit. She retrieves it and sets it in her lap. The desperate woman takes a deep breath to steady her hands before unwrapping the dark brown substance her body craves. She empties the tiny bag into an old spoon, and then dribbles a little water over the top until the utensil is nearly overflowing. As she gets closer to the fix her body begins to react. It’s a bit like salivating when your favourite meal is set in front of you. She begins to salivate as the substance in her spoon begins to bubble as she waves the tiny flame back and forth underneath. The chills, the waves of nausea and the shakes are all beginning to fade. She lets out a sigh as she drops the cotton into the mixture and begins to suck the bubbly brown fluid up through the fibre and into the syringe.

  The desperate junkie pulls the rubber tubing even tighter as she clenches and unclenches her right hand. With her other hand she begins the search for a useable vein. Most of the good spots have turned into ulcerous sores and are completely useless. She continues tapping her veins until she finds one full enough to accept a needle. She doesn’t even mind the sharp stick of a dull needle. In fact it feels kinda good. She watches with baited breath as she pulls back the plunger. This will tell her if she’s still in the vein or if she’s blown through the other side. She catches her breath when she sees a surge of bright red blood shooting up into the syringe. A long delicious sigh escapes her lips as she pushes down on the plunger and the reddish brown liquid disappears into her bony arm.

  An epic burst of delicious warmth suddenly suffuses her entire body and once more the world is all right again. The fact that she has spent the last of her rent money on the drug doesn’t even register. Her cupboards are empty and she has no food for her only child to eat when he wakes up, but that all takes a back seat to her need for heroin. The fact that she should be home with him right now instead of in some fleabag motel with some stranger doesn’t even give her pause.

  Her eyes grow heavy and her head lolls forwards. Her hand relinquishes its grip on the syringe and falls to her side leaving the needle sticking out of her arm. Her breathing slows and then appears to stop all together.

  “Breathe…” She reminds herself. “Just breathe…”

  Slowly the young woman on the toilet leans farther and farther forward until her backside is barely still touching the toilet seat. She takes one more shallow breath before she pitches forward and falls face first in a pool of vomit on the dirty bathroom floor.

  Six hours later…

  Bright sunlight streaming in through the front door lands on the grizzled face of the man on the bed. The loud revving of a truck’s engine is not quite enough to wake the sleeping man. It’s not until the overflowing dumpster is emptied into the back of the sanitation truck that the man in room 212 finally stirs.

  He rolls over and puts a dirty finger in each ear until he thinks it’s safe enough to remove them. When he does the sounds of the truck are replaced with the normal yelling and carrying on that he’s become accustomed to the last few months he’s been camped out here. He scratches the painful sores from bed bug bites as his eyes scan the room for something to drink. He looks back to the door.

  Who the hell left that open? He thinks to himself.

  Then he notices the light from the bathroom.

  “Hey…uh…girl. You got anything to drink?” He calls out.

  When h
e fails to get a reply he rolls back over and closes his eyes, but sleep just doesn’t come. He’s hungry and his head is pounding. He looks around again. There has to be something somewhere to drink! Slowly, so as not to make his head pound any more than it already is, he gets up, hobbles over to the door and shuts it. There’s a bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum lying partway behind the TV stand. He retrieves it and proceeds to drain what’s left. It’s only about three swallows, but it makes a world of difference. His head begins to clear just a little as the fiery liquid reaches his gut. He walks over to the bathroom.

  “Hey uh… I really gotta drain the lizard so if you could—"

  Luke stops mid-sentence. Lying in a pool of vomit is the hooker whose name he cannot recall. He nudges her leg with his foot but gets no response.

  “Fine sleep, but I still gotta use the can.”

  Luke straddles her legs and opens the fly to his boxers. As he empties his bladder he catches sight of her rig and wonders if she has anything left for him. Luke shakes twice, tucks his dick back in his shorts and decides to see if the whore has any more heroin left over. He gives her another nudge with his foot; but not so gentle this time.

  “Hey woman, wake up!”

  He prods her with a finger then steps back. She’s cold. Luke leans over and looks at her face. Her eyes are closed and her lips are tinged with blue. He stumbles back away from her.

  “That can’t be good,” he mutters to himself.

  He decides he has to make sure either way if she’s alive or…or dead. This time he bends over and grabs her shoulders and gives her a vigorous shake. She’s even beginning to get stiff. Luke let’s go and charges out of the bathroom. He locates his backpack and begins throwing dirty clothes into it. He searches around till he finds his clothes and dresses in record time. Luke grabs his helmet and keys and shuts the door behind him. He sits on his bike and fires it up. His watch tells him its 9:30 Sunday morning.

  Chapter Twenty

  Prelude to the Show

  Kayla wakes with a start. Instantly she knows something is wrong. She listens intently as she feels around her nightstand for her handgun. When she locates it she flicks off the thumb safety and sits up in bed, pointing her weapon at the closed door to her room. All she can hear is her own breathing and her heart pounding annoyingly loud against her rib cage.

  She remains frozen in that position for what seems like forever to her and still she doesn’t hear a thing. Taking a deep breath Kayla exhales with relief and slumps back down in her bed. She sets the gun on her night stand and closes her eyes; what a relief that was.

  Moments later an explosion literally blows her bedroom door clean off its hinges! Her eyes fly open just in time to be blinded by 1100 piercingly bright lumens from the tactical flashlight just feet from her terrified face. Had she been able to see, she would have seen she's facing the business end of an ever popular Glock 17 9mm, suppressed handgun.

  Instinctively her left arm covers her eyes while her right hand reaches for her weapon. She nearly has it when a booted foot kicks her nightstand over, spilling the gun to the floor. All she has left is her voice so she unleashes one hellishly long, loud scream right before a rolled up sock is stuffed in her open mouth. She begins kicking but her covers render her legs useless.

  Strong hands from her attackers seal the sock by wrapping duct tape around her head just before a dark stale smelling hood goes down over her head. The claws come out. She scratches in every direction just trying to find a fleshy target, but she is just not strong enough to fend off her larger, stronger, well prepared assailants.

  Her hands are quickly bound behind her back and her legs are similarly fastened together at her ankles. Kayla continues to thrash about as rough hands pick her up and carry her out of her house. The whole time not a word is spoken by her kidnappers. The whole affair seems to last only a couple minutes leading Kayla to believe these men are professionals and not just some random drug crazed hoodlums.

  She tries to concentrate on her kidnappers' every move. She has seen movies where the victim was able to lead police to her attackers by memorizing turns, stops and starts, and the amount of time that elapses from when she was snatched to the time the abductors reach their destination. Just as she is feeling a sliver of hope a nasty smelling rag is pressed against her nose. She tries not to inhale, but when a fist slams into her soft stomach she automatically gulps the foul smelling air in through her nose. She passes out almost immediately. So much for her plan to memorize her assailant’s route.

  When Kayla begins to come around it takes her a minute to orient herself. For a second she thinks it’s just a bad dream; that is until she opens her eyes. She is sitting in a hard wood chair in the middle of a large warehouse of some sort. All around her are wooden crates varying in size and shape. She looks around for any clue that would identify her attackers or where she is, but none of the crates bear any markings.

  The stale air around her leads her to believe that this building is probably not used very often. If she had to guess, she figures the building to be about 60 or so feet long and about half that wide. There’s a single staircase going up along the far wall so the building is at least two stories high. The only windows she can see have been sealed off to keep any sunlight from entering the building. She is grateful they at least left the lights on for her.

  It’s not long before sitting in the same position without being able to move becomes an issue. At first she is not concerned. After all, they could have tied her in a standing position like she has seen before in movies. But after a couple hours every place on her body that the chair touches begins to ache. Try as she might, she just can’t seem to relieve the discomfort by wiggling around. An hour later the discomfort becomes something for more than that. It is just downright painful! Before today she never would have thought that sitting in a chair could be considered torture. The fact that they have removed her sock gag tells her that she must in a fairly secluded area and they are not concerned at all about her making any commotion.

  Along with the pain comes panic. She remains as calm as she can manage but superwoman she is not, and pretty soon her mind begins to get the best of her. She begins to imagine all manner of awful things that her captors might end up doing to her. To make matters worse, she can’t imagine what anyone could even want from her. She has no money and no family to pay a ransom. She doesn’t know anything about…anything so what could anyone want with her. Sure they could torture her but she won’t have any information to give about anything. This just does not make any sense to her at all. And that’s how she tortures herself over the next several hours before her kidnappers finally decide to show themselves.

  Kayla has just decided to tip herself over in hopes of relieving some of the pain from sitting so long in one position when with a loud screech a door behind her opens. From the sound of the footsteps approaching her she guesses there must be two or three people coming up from behind her. As she waits she finds herself in an awful dilemma. Should she keep her eyes closed, or should she try to see her kidnappers. If she keeps her eyes closed they may actually release her someday. Of course then she’ll never be much help to the police. If she sees them and escapes she’ll be able to help the police. Of course…according to any movie she’s ever seen about kidnapping, if she sees their faces she has basically sealed her own doom; they’ll have no choice but to kill her. She shuts her eyes tightly as they walk around in front of her.

  “You can open your eyes Miss Underwood,” says a gruff voice.

  “Oh no…then you’ll have to kill me,” she replies. “Unless you have masks on…do you have masks on?” She asks as a glimmer of hope begins to blossom in her heart.

  “Just open your damn eyes girl!” Another voice demands of her.

  Reluctantly she obeys. Standing around her in a semi- circle are five members of the Suicide Kings motorcycle club. They are the most powerful outlaw biker club in all of central California, and rivalled only by the Harbingers anoth
er club spanning central and northern California. While the Harbingers claim more territory, they are not nearly so numerous and they are not tolerated by the other lesser clubs. The Suicide Kings on the other hand have alliances with several of those lesser clubs like the Devil Dogs and the Crazy 8’s. Both those clubs are located in northern California and are at constant odds with the Harbingers.

  Kayla recognizes three of the men standing before her though she doesn’t know their names. A fourth she has never seen before and the fifth man she knows all too well. He is the Kings president Gunnar Madsen, a violent sociopath who nearly killed her the night Luke left her dying in her own house. Of course it clicks the second she sees him. He thinks that she and Luke are still an item and wants her to tell him where he can find his son. Well, he’s about to be in for a nasty surprise. She hasn’t seen Luke in nearly a year and hopes to not see him ever again.

  “Comfortable?” He asks, seeing her fidget as she tries to gain some measure of relief.

  Kayla laughs. “And here I thought my nice warm bed was comfortable. Give me another night sitting here and I’ll never be able to sleep in a bed again.”

  “Ah a sense of humour, that’s good,” he replies. “Too bad we’ll have to beat it out of you.” He signals to one of his men who produce a backpack full of all sorts of fun utensils. He lays them out on the dirty floor so she can see what he has in store for her.

  Kayla promises to herself that she will be brave. She will keep her mouth shut and only scream inside. But oh those tools. One look and her mind is running a thousand miles an hour. The evil man lays out a pair of pruning shears first; it’s quite obvious what they’re used for. Next to them he sets a small drill and a half dozen drill bits of varying, terrifying sizes. Kayla begins to shake and despite her earlier promise, a soft moan escapes her tight set lips. Without missing a beat the man puts two razor sharp knives next to the drill bits and for a grand finale, he puts a small belt sander next to the knives.