by Steph Post
“Saturday night. When I left with Sherwood and Levi and came back Sunday morning talking about money.”
Ramey nodded.
“It was a holdup. Typical Sherwood style. Found somebody else with a score and decided that it was his. The take was a hundred and fifty thousand. The mark was a motorcycle club outside of Kentsville. The Scorpions. We ambushed them on the road and took it all. Everything. I wasn’t kidding about that fifty grand.”
“No shit.”
Judah leaned back in his chair.
“But it was stupid to think it wouldn’t come back on us. Benji didn’t flip a vehicle. He got dragged behind one. Rooter from Limey’s told me that he saw the skid mark where they dumped him. It was bike tread. Those assholes went after Benji as payback for us taking their money.”
Ramey raised her hand to her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
Judah tossed the pack of cigarettes down and then spun it around on the table.
“Yeah.”
Ramey blinked a few times as she began putting it all together.
“And what does Sherriff Dodger think happened?”
Judah laughed.
“Dodger thinks whatever Sherwood’s pocket wants him to think. You remember how this all works.”
“Well then. What about last night?”
“I guess Sherwood was worried I was gonna start talking. Must have Burke up at The Ace on his payroll and he called in when I started running my mouth. I’m so damn stupid I don’t even know how I survive sometimes.”
Ramey leaned back in her chair and cocked her head.
“And the beating in the parking lot?”
Judah grinned bitterly.
“Just a warning. To keep my mouth shut, for one.”
Judah took a deep breath and then exhaled quickly. He winced from the pain in his chest.
“And then two, not to have no stupid ideas about wanting to go after the Scorpions.”
“Seriously?”
Judah stared at the table in front of him.
“They don’t want to do nothing about it. Nothing. Lay low. Wait it out. Think about the cash at stake.”
Judah slapped his palm down on the table.
“Think about the cash? What about thinking of Benji lying in a hospital bed with half his face missing? What about that? They knocked him out, tied him up and dragged him down the highway. Benji, for Christ’s sake. Wasn’t even there when we took the money. Didn’t even know about it. Didn’t know a damn thing. And now he’s in the hospital and I’m just waiting for a phone call to tell me that he’s dead. And Sherwood wants me to shut up and think about the cash.”
Ramey nodded slowly. She waited, but it was clear that Judah had said his piece. He was sitting with his back hunched against the chair, staring intently down at the table before him. She reached over and this time Judah took her hand.
“What’d you want to do about it?”
Judah shook his head.
“I want blood. I want to make them pay. And I want them to know that they can’t do nothing like this ever again. Because if we let them, they will. Then it’ll be someone else. It could be you. And I can’t let that happen. I can’t let this happen again.”
Ramey squeezed Judah’s hand and he looked up at her. Her mouth was twisted in worry, but her eyes were hard and determined.
“And you’re gonna go against Sherwood?”
Judah released her hand and slumped back in his chair. He considered her question for a moment and all the weight that it carried, all that it meant. He made a decision.
“I’m gonna try.”
“Take one more step and I’ll blow your brains all over the windshield of that clown car you got the balls to park in my driveway.”
Judah paused halfway out of the passenger side of the Cutlass and slowly raised his hands. He looked over his shoulder at Ramey, who shook her head and killed the engine. She wrenched open the driver’s side door and got out.
“You stupid or something? I ain’t kidding, and I ain’t averse to shooting no woman neither, so don’t think you can use her as some kinda decoy to…”
“Relax, Hiram, it’s me. It’s Ramey.”
The old man with the long, stringy gray hair, matching mustache and red Hawaiian print shirt didn’t lower the M16 he had trained on Judah’s head, but his bloodshot eyes shifted over to Ramey. Judah’s leg was starting to cramp from the half-standing position he was frozen in and he hoped that Ramey knew what she was doing.
During the long drive up to Union County, Ramey had tried to explain Hiram to Judah. It had been Ramey’s idea to visit him and, realizing that they had no better leads, Judah had agreed. Hiram was a second cousin, or something along those lines, Ramey wasn’t entirely sure, of Lyle’s. She hadn’t offered more when he had pressed her about the connection and Judah had left it at that.
The man shifted the rifle on his bony shoulder and twitched his head to the left.
“Ramey? Ramey. Not sure it’s ringing a bell, sister.”
Ramey walked around the front of the car, her palms lowered and her steps light, as if approaching a wounded animal with a sharp set of teeth.
“I met you at a cookout a few years back. Over in Silas. Out on Dilly West’s spread. We played a few mean games of horseshoes.”
Hiram seemed to relax his grip on the barrel of the rifle slightly, but his mouth was still puckered in a suspicious grimace.
“We kin or something?”
Judah slowly stood up straighter, trying not to make any sudden moves. His eyes darted back and forth between Ramey’s slender back and the barrel of the illegal automatic assault rifle that was pointed straight at her chest. He was beginning to think this wasn’t such a good idea. Ramey had mentioned that Hiram could come off as crazy, but not bat-shit crazy. His .45 was underneath the passenger seat of the Cutlass and he tried to calculate how quickly he could swivel around and grab it. Ramey just kept walking toward Hiram, steadily.
“No. I was there with Lyle. Lyle Dryven. I met you a few times in his company. That’s how I knew where to find you. He mentioned visiting you out here once.”
Hiram narrowed his eyes.
“You Lyle’s old lady?”
“Lyle’s dead.”
Ramey said it matter-of-factly, without a trace of emotion in her voice. Judah reckoned he could have his gun in his hand in less than five seconds. He bent his knees, ready to spring.
Hiram gave Ramey one last good, hard look and then quickly pointed the rifle at the ground.
“Guess that’s why you’re with this winner here, huh?”
Judah was too relieved to respond to Hiram’s sarcastic tone. Hiram motioned over his shoulder for them to follow him and Judah and Ramey began trudging through the thick, tangled grass to the singlewide set back away from the rocky driveway, in the middle of the empty, cleared piece of land. Judah caught up with Ramey and took her hand. He squeezed it and whispered.
“Next time you decide to scare the shit outta me, think maybe you could give me a heads up?”
Ramey raised her eyebrows and let go of his hand.
“I wouldn’t be scaring the shit outta you then, would I? Come on, we need to keep up. This field’s supposed to be full of booby-traps and we need to follow in Hiram’s footsteps or we could get blown up. Or skewered.”
Apparently, Hiram’s mood was apt to change on a dime, because now Hiram was in tour-guide mode, listing off the various traps and security systems he had installed across the ten acre field. He wasn’t exactly pointing them out, though, so Judah followed Ramey’s advice and watched Hiram’s tracks closely.
Hiram gestured vaguely around himself as he spoke, ticking off security measures that ranged from the latest high tech military surveillance equipment to homemade setups made out of trip wire and sharpened sticks.
“Some guy tries to be sneaky and come across that ditch over yonder, he trips a line and wham, a pallet rises up and he’s got so many spikes sticking outta him he loo
ks like your Grandma Effie’s pin cushion. Then, he tries coming at me from the south, I got a damn near minefield set up in one quadrant. Set off by lasers. He crosses past one of those beams and boom, I’ve got enough C-4 buried that when the smoke clears there won’t be pieces of him left big enough to find.”
Judah glanced around the open field, surrounded by pine forest on all sides.
“Who exactly are you worried about trespassing?”
Hiram stopped short and whipped around to face Judah.
“You serious, brother? You one of them deluded zombie citizens walking around in an unsuspecting daze believing every lie the government spoon feeds you? Lulling you to sleep so they can take away your rights, your freedom, your very humanity?”
“Uh?”
Judah looked to Ramey, but she just widened her eyes and shook her head in warning. Hiram stepped closer to Judah and waved his arms over his head.
“The Man, brother! That’s who I’m worried about. The Man! But that’s okay. All you dumb sheep will just walk blindly over the cliff and I’ll be the one sitting here in my fortress, with all the water and food and weapons I need. I’ll be surviving, brother. And you’ll be wishing you had the foresight that your friend Hiram here had.”
Judah looked over Hiram’s shoulder at the singlewide they had almost reached. The windows were painted black and a dozen spikey antennas were perched at odd angles across the narrow roof. Strings of razor wire wound their way around the aluminum siding, reminding Judah of a strange sea urchin he had once seen in a tank at Marineland. Judah wasn’t sure what good the wire was going to do in case of an attack, but he was pretty sure Ramey was going to kick him in the shins if he asked any more questions, so he acquiesced and nodded to Hiram.
“Well, it’s sure as hell that no one’s getting through here if you ain’t want em too.”
Hiram hefted the assault rifle over his shoulder and nodded back.
“Damn right!”
Hiram turned on his heel and finished leading the way to his fortress.
Once inside, Judah and Ramey squeezed next to a pile of gas masks and hoses and sat on the edge of a moldy pullout couch. While Hiram was banging around in the refrigerator hunting for beers, Judah tried to get his bearings in the cluttered trailer. If he had thought the trek across the field was odd, he was completely unprepared for some of the sights accosting him in the claustrophobic singlewide.
The guns leaning in every corner weren’t unusual. This was the country, after all. Most every house, trailer, barn and garage had at least one rifle hanging on the wall over the TV or stuffed behind the couch. Judah’s Aunt Imogene, who had stepped in and helped raise the Cannon boys after Rebecca’s death, always slept with a loaded shotgun on the dusty floor underneath her bed. Judah remembered getting the tar whipped out of him by Imogene when he dragged it out once to inspect it. She hadn’t been mad that he was playing with guns so much as she was concerned that he would have forgotten to put it back.
Judah had expected the piles of survival gear as well. Hiram had stacks of canned goods and MREs piled up underneath the blackened windows in addition to the water filtration kits, flashlights, gutted radios, computer parts and twisted lengths of wire. Three alien looking contraptions that Judah thought might be Geiger counters were carefully laid out on top of a waist-high pile of instruction manuals from the 1970s.
What Judah wasn’t prepared for, however, were the stuffed squirrels. Every which way he looked tiny glass eyes were staring back at him. The trailer was filled with stuffed squirrels in various poses and costumes. One, balanced on top of the television set in the corner, was dressed as a crusader; it held a tiny banner emblazoned with a red and gold cross. Another squirrel on one of the shelves of a teetering bookcase wore a civil war uniform, rebel gray of course, and another was dressed as a World War II paratrooper. A tiny deflated parachute was strung out behind it on the mounting board. The most unsettling of all was the animal posed in the middle of the coffee table amid scattered stacks of Soldier of Fortune magazines. The squirrel seemed to be staring directly at Judah, a bandolier slung across its chest and a tiny AR glued to its outstretched paws. The squirrel’s head had been fixed so that its jaws were pried open with its tiny yellow teeth on display. The rodent appeared to be in a rage, an angry squirrel warrior in the process of gunning down its enemies. Judah couldn’t look away.
“I see you like my collection, huh?”
Hiram slammed the refrigerator door and secured it closed with a bungee cord around the handle. He came stomping out of the kitchen with three cans of Schlitz under his arm.
“That one you’re looking at there’s my favorite.”
Hiram pointed to the squirrel on the coffee table as he handed around the beers.
“I call him Rambo.”
Judah cracked open his beer.
“Oh.”
Hiram settled into the ragged armchair across from Judah and Ramey.
“Yeah, I used to have dogs. Raised coonhounds nearly all my life, but with the end times approaching it seemed like they was just too much trouble. I didn’t want to be starving and have to resort to eating Bo or Sam. Didn’t want to be tempted. So I set em loose and started on these little guys. They make a helluva lot better pets and help to pass the time, too. I learned how to sew their outfits on YouTube.”
Judah couldn’t even begin to think of an appropriate response, so he was relieved when Ramey set her unopened beer on the coffee table and took control of the conversation.
“As much as we admire your handiwork, that’s not why we came out here.”
Hiram crossed his leg over his knee and leaned back in his chair.
“Suppose maybe we get to the point and you tell me what you want then.”
Judah was unnerved by the ease with which this man went from casual to confrontational, but Ramey didn’t flinch. She clasped her hands on her knees and leaned closer.
“We need information on a motorcycle club that runs up near Kentsville.”
Hiram slurped his beer but didn’t respond.
“Lyle mentioned a few times that you used to ride with the Jackals over in this part of the county. I figured you must have known all the clubs in the area.”
“Maybe.”
“And we need to know more about this one. It’s important. Anything you could tell us about them would be appreciated.”
Hiram raised his eyebrows.
“You drove all the way out here to ask me that? You telling me there ain’t nobody up in your neck of the woods you coulda asked? It wouldn’t of taken you too long to find somebody knows the Scorpions.”
Judah and Ramey exchanged glances.
“It’s important and it’s also a tricky situation.”
Hiram grinned sourly.
“Meaning you ain’t want nobody to know you’re looking into em. That about right?”
Ramey nodded.
“That’s about right.”
“And why exactly you want to know bout them? Your friend here looking to grow a pair and try to prospect?”
Judah gritted his teeth and leaned forward.
“If I were you, I’d keep my mind off my balls. And this club we’re talking about almost killed my little brother. Strung him up and dragged him down the highway. He’s in the hospital and we don’t know if he’s gonna wake up. That answer your question?”
Ramey touched her hand to Judah’s knee but kept her eyes on Hiram. Judah crossed his arms and leaned back into the mashed couch cushions.
“He’s telling the truth, Hiram. We don’t want to involve you in anyway. But this kid who got hurt is the last person on earth who deserved it. We just need any information you can give us and then we’ll be gone.”
Hiram tapped the lip of his beer can against his brown teeth and squinted his eyes at Ramey. They sat in tense silence for a moment until Hiram abruptly slammed his can down onto the coffee table. Beer flew over the pile of magazines and Rambo wobbled slightly.
“Fine
. I’ll help you out. But it’s not cause I like the look of this loser sitting over here.”
Judah started to lean forward, but Ramey elbowed him sharply.
“It’s cause I don’t like the new guy they got running that club. Pansy ass kid who probably has to whistle when he takes a shit so he knows which end to use.”
“So the Scorpions’ leader ain’t as tough as he might seem?”
Hiram scoffed.
“Jack, they call him Jack O’ Lantern or something stupid like that. I guess cause he’s got a big old pumpkin head. He’s not exactly a bad guy, I don’t think, just ain’t his uncle Oren. Back when I was riding with the Jackals, for they got torn apart by the Mongols and I had the good sense to get out while I could, the two clubs used to meet up for runs. The Scorpions weren’t never no big club. I don’t think they even had more than the one charter outside of Kentsville, but Oren, man, he was something else.”
Judah drummed his fingers on his knee.
“So, he used to be the Scorpions’ president?”
“He used to be mightier than Thor.”
Hiram laughed.
“He had a reputation for cold-heartedness that could freeze the tits off a witch at midnight. Chill guy, usually. Funny as hell when he was wasted. He’d get lit to the gills and then start walking up and down a line of bikes, pissing on em. Just pissing. Said he was christening em. Like he was the pope or something. But when it came to getting something done he was all business.”
Hiram picked at the loose threads on the arm of his chair.
“Oren had no qualms about offing somebody got in his way. Even one of his own members. Bikers ain’t generous, but we take care of our own. Oren didn’t give a shit. Take em to The Pit, he’d say, and that was that.”
Ramey cocked her head.
“The Pit?”
“This place not too far from their clubhouse. Weren’t really a pit, but that’s just what the Scorpions called it. It was just this old abandoned limestone quarry at the end of Devil’s Beggar Road. Maybe that’s why they called it The Pit. Some kinda Biblical nonsense. The Scorpions always got off on being dramatic. But they all knew that if they were taken to The Pit it was lights out forever.”
