by James Hunt
“You provide the ammo for the hunts, along with an extra five boxes each of nine millimeter, two twenty-three, and forty-five shells each month,” Ken said.
Mike extended his hand.
“Done.”
Ken flashed another yellow-stained smile. He squeezed Mike’s hand and laughed.
“Well, okay then. I’ll take this month’s supply up front,” Ken said.
“What?” Fay asked.
“Hey, you came here looking for my help remember? Unless you think you’ll be able to find the game around here by yourself?” Ken asked.
All of those extra mouths handicapped Mike. It was like he was wearing a pair of cement shoes and then was asked to run a marathon. He didn’t have a choice but to give Ken what he wanted.
“It’s fine. We’ll bring the ammo back first thing in the morning,” Mike said.
“No, I’ll come and collect the ammo now,” Ken said. “Besides, it’ll be nice to know where you are in case we need to stop by for some… sugar.”
Ken looked at Fay when he said it. She took a step forward, but Mike stepped in between them.
“The cabin’s a few hours away. We better get going,” Mike said.
Ken brought Billy with him to help carry the gear back. On the way back Mike didn’t want to show him the entrance from the main road, so he just cut through the forest.
Mike and Ken were up front, while Fay and Billy walked behind them. There wasn’t much talk on the way up. Fay kept her eyes on Ken, while Billy kept his eyes on Fay.
“Your dad always like that?” Fay finally asked.
“Yeah, most of the time. It’s been worse over the past couple weeks. He pretends that what’s happened doesn’t affect us, but it does, especially since the town’s been taken over by those bikers.”
“I heard your grandfather was there when they came in. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“Were you guys close?”
“Not really. My dad and he never really saw eye to eye. They always butted heads. The only time I got to see him was when I went into town alone. I don’t know why my dad always hated him.”
“Well, you know what they say; you can’t choose your family.”
Fay noticed that Billy kept looking away when she would look at him. She smiled.
“So, you have a girlfriend, Bill?”
“Um, no, I… uh… well, not that I haven’t wanted one it’s just, I, um… you know helping out with the farm, and… hey, how much longer till we get to the cabin?”
***
Mike spent most of the walk trying to figure out who Ken was, but the man was a closed book. He wouldn’t budge on anything. He wouldn’t say how long he’d lived here, or who he knew in town, and when Mike brought up the fact that it’d be good to get to know each other a bit, Ken simply popped another piece of chew in his mouth and laughed.
So Mike focused most of his brain power on how much food they’d need to ration moving forward. Just because he’d set the agreement up with Ken didn’t mean they’d get food whenever they wanted. They still had to hunt for it.
The only game Mike had seen were a few birds. If they could get a deer they’d be able to cure it and it could last them a few weeks. If he could pull down a deer every other week they’d be in good shape.
“When’s the next time you’re heading out hunting?” Mike asked.
“Mornin’.”
“What time?”
“I’ll let you know when I get my ammo.”
“Look, Ken, if this is going to work we’re going to need a little trust. It’s not like I’m asking for your social security number.”
“You wanna know why the rest of the country’s gone to shit and I’m still alive? It’s because of that trust. Except my trust isn’t with other people it’s with me. I know how to stay alive. I know how to keep moving forward. It’s no skin off my back if no one else knows how to do that.”
There wasn’t any doubt in Mike’s mind that Ken was right about being able to survive, about not needing to depend on others to make it through, but Mike wondered if that’s what he would have to become. Would he have to push everything out of him except his own stubborn will to survive? And if he did, then what did that mean for his family?
“You’re pretty cynical for a man with all those crosses in your house,” Mike said.
“Ha! That’s all of the wife’s shit. She’s the one who dragged our boys to church every Sunday. The only thing I miss from before the power went out was having those Sunday mornings to myself while the rest of them were gone. What about you? Have you found solace in the fact that God will save us?”
The last sentence came out in a sarcastic plea. Mike listened to the stillness of the forest. It was midafternoon now, and there wasn’t even the rustle of leaves, just the sound of their boots crunching on the forest floor and the periodic spit of the man next to him.
“No. Whatever saving happens comes from us.”
Day 13 (Biker Gang)
The bags under Jake’s eyes told the story of his night. It told the story for most of his nights over the past few weeks. The cold concrete of the fountain he leaned against was uncomfortable, but he was too numb to move. The sky was gray, struggling to turn blue with the morning’s rising sun.
Jake took another swig of the nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels and finally succumbed to the heaviness of his eyelids.
Find the bitches. Make them suffer. Kill them. Burn them.
He opened his eyes and saw the charred corpses on the ground and the woman tied to the pole. She was the mother of the three girls he believed killed one of his brothers. He ran his hand over the president’s patch on his cut, feeling the outline of the raised letters against the leather.
That patch was his life. The club was his life. Everything he did was for the prosperity of his brothers, the advancement of the club… the amelioration of his own survival.
He walked back to his room at the motel. He passed the open doors of his brothers asleep in their beds, snoring, slumbering from restless dreams.
When he made it to his room, he felt his body collapse onto the dirty sheets of his bed. They were stained with sweat and dirt from the past week. The room was starting to smell. He was starting to smell. The whole goddamn town reeked of death. It was a death that he brought, a death that he would always bring.
Jake tore the sheets off the bed, balled them up, and threw them in the trash. He picked up the pieces of garbage, collecting the empty wrappers and half-eaten sandwiches from the floor. As he bent over, he felt dizzy and collapsed.
The room was spinning. He looked at the whiskey still clutched in his hand. The brown liquid sloshed back and forth. He smiled, laughed.
Jake steadied himself, rose, then began chugging the rest of the bottle in defiance. He wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of him finishing the things he wanted, no matter what the cost.
The last few drops were drained from the bottle and he threw it against the wall violently. The bottle burst into jagged shards that rained to the carpet.
Jake fell onto the nightstand behind him. The lamp crashed to the bed and the blank clock slid into the space between the wall and the stand.
The edges of the smashed glass were sharp when he picked them up. The pieces dug into his skin, drawing blood as he pinched them between his fingers.
When the bottle was whole, the glass was harmless. He could run his fingers along the edges without hurting himself. The bottle only became a weapon when he made it one. The bottle only became dangerous because of him.
Jake liked that. He liked the violence in him. That violence propelled him to lead the storied Diablo Motorcycle Club. Everyone knew who he was back in Cleveland. Everyone feared him there, just as he had made everyone fear him here in Carrollton.
That fear gave him strength. It gave him purpose.
***
Kalen waited for her mother to head outside with the rest of the group to start work on the garden. Th
ey’d taken what they needed from the basement, but Kalen wanted to make sure she could get the other pistol out of the safe quickly, so she did a few practice runs.
The safe downstairs had been relocked. Kalen searched the boxes for the key but couldn’t find it. She figured her dad must have it. She knew he had a spare, but she wasn’t sure where he kept it.
When she came back up from the basement, her mom was coming back inside.
“Mom,” Kalen said.
“Yeah.”
“Do you know where the key to the gun safe is?”
“What?”
“I wanted to show Mary how to handle a weapon.”
“Kalen, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“We won’t be shooting. I just want to make sure she feels comfortable with it. She’s still pretty spooked about what happened to her parents. I think having some knowledge of how to protect herself will help her feel safer.”
There was some truth to that. Mary was still having trouble dealing with her parents. Kalen just chose to leave out her own motives.
“Okay,” Anne said.
Kalen followed her mom down to her bedroom. Anne pulled the key out of the top dresser drawer and dropped it into Kalen’s hand.
“Just put everything back when you’re done. And make sure the pistols aren’t loaded.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Kalen rushed back downstairs to the basement. Some of the rifles were gone, since her dad left this morning, but there was still a large assortment to choose from.
The .223 Remington with a lever action, the 12-gauge shotguns, and a number of AR-15s were all organized in the safe. There were also 9mm and .45, .22, and .40-caliber pistols lining the inside of the safe.
Kalen grabbed two AR-15 rifles along with several boxes of ammunition and four spare magazines. She placed the rifles, ammunition, and magazines into a duffel bag. She also grabbed one of the 9mm Smith and Wesson pistols and tucked it behind her waistband.
When Kalen found Mary she was outside helping with the garden. She brought her around to the front of the house and pulled out the 9mm.
“It’s not loaded,” Kalen said. “See how it feels. You want it to be comfortable.”
“It’s heavy.”
Mary aimed at one of the trees, peering through the three-white-dot alignment sight. After a few moments, the gun began to shake in her hands. Mary’s face twitched, the corners of her mouth folded downward. Finally she lowered the gun.
“I can’t do this,” Mary said.
“What?”
“Whatever it is you think we can do, Kalen. We’re not soldiers. I don’t know how to fight.”
Mary extended the pistol back to Kalen. It lingered in the air between the two of them. Kalen finally placed her hands on top of Mary’s, stepped directly behind her, and guided the pistol’s sight back up to eye level.
“Those men down there will come for you again. They’ll make you hurt long before they decide to put a bullet in your brain and end you,” Kalen said.
Kalen kept Mary’s hand steady. She continued to whisper in her ear.
“They won’t care about the type of person you are. They’ll only care what they can do to you, every terrible thing imaginable and worse. All of your fears, whatever they are, won’t be as bad as their reality.”
Kalen guided Mary’s finger to the trigger.
“Remember what they did to your parents?” Kalen asked.
Mary’s body tensed up. She could see her father lying on the ground, blood pouring from his stomach, and the biker with the smile across his face. She saw her mother lying on the bed naked with the biker on top of her. She could feel the rocking of the bed as her mother was being raped.
“Once they kill you they’ll find your sisters, then they’ll hurt them,” Kalen said.
She could see her sisters crying, begging for help. When she saw their faces in her mind she could feel a shift.
“Pull the trigger, Mary,” Kalen said.
Whatever fear she was feeling had to be put aside. She couldn’t let her sisters suffer the same fate as their parents.
“Pull it!” Kalen said.
The click of the firing pin went off. Kalen let Mary go and the pistol dropped to the ground. Kalen picked the pistol up, dusting some of the dirt and leaves from the side. She tucked it back into her waistband.
Mary looked down at her hand. It was shaking. She closed her eyes, focusing her energy on forming a fist, trying to squeeze the adrenaline out of her body.
“Are we going to die?” Mary asked.
“Only if we want to.”
***
Frankie pulled a state map of Ohio from behind the lobby counter. He spread it out on the desk, and his finger ran along the paper creases from Cleveland to Carrollton. He snatched a pen from a jar and picked up a ruler from the desk.
He placed the end of the ruler on the center of Carrollton and marked a small line a few inches out. He made similar marks of equal length around the entire town. Then he drew a circle, connecting each mark on the map, which encompassed an area around Carrollton.
Frankie tossed the pen and ruler back behind the counter and stormed out of the lobby, grabbing a bag of chips from the food pile on his way out.
When Frankie made it to Jake’s room he was on the bed, cleaning his pistol. Frankie stopped at the doorway before he entered. Scanning the room he saw that the bed was made and the trash from their week’s stay had been picked from the floor.
“Housekeeping come by?” Frankie asked.
“What’d you find?” Jake asked.
Frankie spread the map out on the bed adjacent from where Jake was sitting.
“Carrollton’s the only town for at least twenty miles in any direction. It’s just highways and woods until you get anywhere,” Frankie said.
“What’d Spence find with tracks?”
“Nothing. We think they went through the grass fields.”
Jake slid the rag along the barrel of the gun. He dropped a few bits of lubricant on the barrel’s rim, then wiped the excess clean.
“If they had transportation, we would have heard them. They must have gone on foot,” Jake said.
“Jake, whoever killed Garrett isn’t coming back. They’re long gone. The chances of us finding them are… aren’t there.”
Jake set the barrel of the gun down next to the other pieces on the bed. He tossed the dirty rag in the trash and picked up the different pieces of the pistol, examining each of them individually in his hand.
“Each part of this gun serves a purpose. They all work in an understanding that each element will do its job. The gun needs all of its parts to work properly, and when they do the outcome is exactly what the shooter intends it to be… deadly,” Jake said.
The pieces of the gun clicked into place as Jake reassembled the weapon. When he put the slide back on and slid the magazine inside, he racked a bullet into the chamber, clicking the safety off.
“This club works the same way. If we don’t follow through with our commitment of avenging our brother’s death, then we become as useless as a gun with no trigger. We lose our direction and our bond,” Jake said.
Jake pointed the pistol at Frankie. Frankie took a step back, folding the map in his hands.
“I’ll check the public records. See if there’s any property registered in the woods around the town.”
Jake holstered his pistol.
“Good.”
***
The two AR-15s were on Kalen’s bed. She shoved the last bullet the spare magazine would hold, and threw it in the duffel bag. The rest of the magazines were full with thirty bullets apiece. Counting the bullets already loaded into the both rifles, it gave her a total of one hundred eighty shots.
From Mary’s and Ulysses’s description there were no more than twenty bikers in town. Nine bullets apiece, she figured that would be enough.
Kalen stuffed the empty bullet boxes in the bag she brought up from the basement and shov
ed it under her bed to hide it. The door to her room opened, and Mary entered, holding the pistol at her side.
“When do we leave?
Kalen smiled. She picked up one of the AR-15s and handed it to Mary.
“Now.”
Mary slipped the rifle strap over her shoulder and Kalen did the same. The two headed outside, and before they reached the forest Ulysses stopped them.
