Bad to the Bones

by Layla Wolfe

  “Baldy Avery’s teenaged son was busted with some,” said Tuzigoot, stone-faced.

  Knoxie nodded. “And so was mine, if you all didn’t know that already. These ‘simple farmers’ have already poisoned our elected officials. Who knows what they plan to do with this shitstorm of poisons they’ve got brewing in that whacky lab?”

  “I agree,” said Ford, “it’s got to fucking stop. I guess I kept hoping they’d just sit up there meditating and vibrating and mind their own business, but every time I turn around, they’re infringing in our backyard, stepping on our toes.”

  Knoxie said, “We can’t sneeze without stumbling over one of those weirdoes selling flowers like some fucking Moonies—not that there’s anything wrong with that. With these vortexes around P&E, we’ve all seen some loonies in our time.”

  Everyone chuckled. Faux Pas said, “Yesterday I saw a purple selling pacifiers. You know, those things babies suck on? I guess they think it soothes some primal urge.”

  “Where’d you see that?” asked Duji. “Because I saw the exact same scene over by Bed, Bath, Beyond. Pacifiers. They weren’t even made out of candy. They were the serious rubber baby kind.”

  “Bed, Bath, Beyond.” Turk chuckled behind his hand.

  Duji turned on him. “What the fuck, Blackburn? I was there buying new bath towels, if you really need to know.”

  Knoxie almost rolled his eyes. He spoke louder. “My point is, we’ve got to act now. My old lady’s up there trying to save her sister. I think you all know my motivation, but it goes beyond that. It encompasses saving this town. We don’t have any intel what exactly they plan to do with these pathogens, but just being in possession of them indicates they don’t plan to run around healing anyone’s chakras.”

  “Right,” said Lytton. “I looked it up—naturally, their lab is far from being registered to work with select agents, if they even had a building permit for it at all. I’m sure the vials weren’t even in a locked freezer. There are all kinds of things we can get them on. Just being in possession is the biggest offense. We can easily tie the batch of salmonella to the judge’s poisoning. I’ll bring Maddy’s test results directly to Judge Rizzoli. He can issue a warrant immediately, and nothing can stop them from searching the lab. I understand if it’s not quick or far-reaching enough for you, Flip. But we’ve got nothing to lose if you want to make a run for your old lady and sister. I’m in.”

  “I’m in,” said Turk. “Just make sure we know her location. Those guys are bristling with Russian ladies.”

  That was the thing. Knoxie didn’t know Bellamy’s location. He knew that Ginny worked at a composting plant, and that she’d been booted from the swami’s abode to sleep in a barracks. But there were dozens of those barracks dotting the canyons up there. It was mortifying to admit, but Bellamy hadn’t returned a single one of his phone calls since she’d busted in on him humping Misty. Lytton knew. Lytton had been the one dragging Bellamy out of his ink studio. That probably accounted for the dark, accusatory look in his eyes when he talked about the lab.

  So Knoxie poked the table with his forefinger. “All I know is I’m going directly to that swami’s fucking house. If we disable the guards at the service entrance I can get up there easily within three, four minutes. He stupidly built his palace so the access road goes down to the delivery door, so I can easily cut my engine and coast quietly. If we get to the guard shack before three this afternoon, according to my informant, we can jack that load of cheese, reroute it, and prevent it from reaching any teenagers.”

  “Also take out Riker,” mentioned Ford.

  Everyone snorted ironically. Riker had been down in the desert near Nogales when Ford’s father Cropper had met a bitter end a couple years back. It was widely rumored it had been Ford who had done the icing, and Knoxie respected that Ford had his own reasons for doing so. Riker had vanished, had never paid for his part in that drama. Ford had understandably tried to pry the name of Knoxie’s informant from him. To show trust, Knoxie had given Ford the address of the Nogales trap house—where Riker was now being called “Alcatraz” by the Presención clan—so he could do what he wanted, but Ford was chomping at the bit.

  Knoxie now said, “My snitch told me Riker started suspecting him of having flipped so Riker took the wheel himself when they started up this morning. Theoretically we won’t even see Riker, if the undercover agents get him at the truck stop, which is the plan.”

  “It’s decided,” said Ford with finality. “Either way I’m with you. I’ll create an explosive distraction over by the main gate to buy some time. I can throw together an IED in a flash, nothing anti-personnel that fragments. Put some C-4 in the rocks with a wireless detonator. Lytton, Turk, Tuzigoot, Ziggy. You secure the delivery gate, disable the guards so they can’t warn the swami.” He pounded his gavel. “Meeting closed.”

  Everyone took their cells from a bucket near the chapel door as they filed out into the airplane hangar. “Fuck,” Knoxie muttered when he saw a text from June Illuminati that also went to her husband Lytton and his brother Ford.

  “Fuck,” Ford and Lytton echoed as they also read the text.

  Emma just told me what those fucking douchemonkeys did last night. They tried to torch Paul Goodhue’s office. Luckily they’re so incompetent they only succeeded in burning a couple of computers and some files, but man is Paul pissed. When are you doing something about them?

  Following a few brothers outside, Knoxie punched Ginny’s number for the hundredth time. He didn’t expect much to be different this time, and sprang to attention when Ginny answered.

  At first it sounded like she was laughing. Knoxie assumed she was goofing around with Bella. But once she started talking, it became obvious she was really sobbing her heart out. “Knoxie! You’ve got to come! They’ve taken me to the bath house! I’m in a changing room or something and they’re preparing me for surgery.”

  “Okay, calm down,” Knoxie lamely said. He was really at a loss. “We’re on our way, but don’t let any of them know that, of course.” He didn’t know how bright Ginny was. “Try to hide that phone somewhere where you can get it later. Tell me, where is the bath house?”

  Ginny gave him instructions to the torture chamber. She was blubbering and confused, but Knoxie thought he got the general picture, especially when she told him the word SAUNA was written in big purple letters on the outside of the building.

  “Where’s Bellamy?”

  “She was in my bunk house when they took me. I don’t know if they’ve found her. Oh God, you’ve got to come!”

  Ginny’s voice faded away as someone apparently snatched the phone from her. He thought he could hear a woman saying, “There’s no help for you now,” before the phone went dead.

  Knoxie murmured, “Hang tight, little girl. We’re coming to get you.”

  He had to sprint across the parking lot to another building where Ford was preparing his IED. Ford kept a bunch of different ones on hand depending on his predicament. Ford’s eyes darkened with rage when Knoxie told him about the Nurse Ratcheds practicing Nazi surgery on Bellamy’s sister.

  “Listen,” said Ford. “Do me a solid and leave Riker to me. I’ll cover you so you can get to your old lady and her sister. But if Riker makes it to the gate, I want to be there.”

  Knoxie nodded. He had an aerial map of the compound permanently embedded in his head. With his current level of fury and loathing of the ashramites, he could make it to Wang Cho House before anyone went on the alert.

  The men flowed on their rides down the winding mesa road, away from the Citadel hangar. For the first time rolling together with his brothers, Knoxie felt the power and muscle of the club resonating within himself. His whole life he’d done things alone. Even in the SEALs, a member of a powerful unit of men, he’d been a lone wolf going on solo ops. Now, he had the horsepower of his entire brotherhood at his side, and he knew failure was not in the picture.

  Why was he altering his life so massively to save one girl from
certain doom? Knoxie wasn’t normally the knight in shining armor type. His outlook was usually more in line with “you got yourself into that mess, you can get yourself out of it.” But something in Bellamy had stung him. Maybe it was his twisted youth, being smothered and warped by the hypocrisies of his father’s religion. He saw a different but equally hypocritical pseudo-religion take hold of poor Bellamy, that was it. It was too late to stop the same thing from happening to Bellamy, but he could cut it off at the pass.

  He had blown it with Nicole. A woman had the right to expect more than a 1940s bachelor’s quarters house. That little dive in the worst part of P&E had only two bedrooms, so his kids had been forced to share one. Rats were so abundant in that neighborhood it sounded like his attic crawlspace was a bowling alley. His next-door neighbor was habitually brawling in the middle of the street. Finally, a pounding had left him brain-dead so he sat there staring on a bench in front, barbecuing on a Weber, a spatula in his hand.

  Nicole had every right to want more, and so did Bellamy. Knoxie thought he was sticking to his artistic guns by committing to his tattoo art, but the fact was, it didn’t generate enough income for a family. Thanks to the sadistic medical practices of the cult, Knoxie couldn’t expect to start over again with Bella, but a family didn’t need children. A couple was still a family, even without a dog. But through working for The Bare Bones, he sure could find a nicer house for her.

  The sky was azure after a series of storms, and Knoxie could smell sunshine on chrome as the club roared up to the delivery gate. Knoxie’s skin crawled to be nearing the guard house that was the site of memories he had hoped to repress. The knot of five bikes paused at the top of the rise and checked their cells.

  Four-thirteen PM. Knoxie looked at a vulture that wheeled soundlessly over the guard shack, a creepy omen. Tuzigoot spat a stream of chewing tobacco onto the red sand. Turk hummed tunelessly. It sounded like a One Direction song, and normally Knoxie would’ve made a crack about it. But the tension was so thick you could cut it with a two by four. All five men jumped a little when their phones chimed simultaneously.

  DONE, read the text from Ford, just as a little puff of smoke appeared on the western horizon, accompanied by a delayed boom. Knoxie knew from his SEAL days how to estimate the size and distance of Ford’s explosion, and he felt confident as he scooted down the hill that it would be a large enough distraction.

  Sure enough, the explosion had flushed three daimyo out of the guard shack. The three purple soldiers ran openmouthed up the rise on the other side of the road to view the explosion as Knoxie breezed on through the gate. One of them took a half-hearted shot at him, but they were probably more concerned with the explosion, or even the approaching motorcycle gang, than with a lone rider.

  Knoxie became almost serene as he continued unimpeded into the compound with Ziggy flanking him. He became more confident the more space he put between himself and that disgusting guard shack. He passed by an outdoor shooting range where a dozen daimyos lined up like good little zombies, shooting at paper targets that looked suspiciously like the swami. He and Ziggy grinned at each other, like they were just on a poker run.

  It might make sense to go get Ginny first, since he knew where she was. If he busted in on the middle of surgery or they’d already put her under anesthesia—or not, if they didn’t have any—either way he couldn’t deal with dead weight on his pussy pad. It made more sense to go directly to the source of everyone’s current troubles.

  Shakti.

  Swami Shakti and his Wang Cho House of Therapy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  BELLAMY

  He had a kielbasa tied to his thigh with surgical tubing.

  The whole time Shakti held me captive, handcuffed to his headboard, he had a fucking sausage, I’m not kidding, tied to his thigh.

  I guess I never thought of him as being truly insane before. Not having much insight into my own mental state hardly qualified me to see into the psychoses of others. But man, was this some whacked-out, bizarre shit in the middle of a vast mental institution to see some guy I used to worship pacing back and forth in front of a picture window waving a crystal wand wearing swami diapers. When he took them off triumphantly to display his manhood, he must’ve forgotten that he had this thing strapped to his thigh. He coughed and sputtered—not something you see often in someone so supremely self-assured—but he continued ranting as though nothing had occurred. The nearly foot-long kielbasa was tied so tightly the skin around it seemed purplish. Maybe he just wants it to match his ensemble, I thought bitterly.

  Shakti had a white gauze patch over half his remaining eye, and I wondered if Knoxie had had anything to do with it. Had they run into each other? Had my two lovers actually fought over me? I felt defiant as I pointlessly squirmed against the headboard, naked except for the purple top I’d borrowed from Maddy. Two weeks ago? I would’ve felt defeated, weak, like it was pointless to struggle.

  Now, having met Knoxie, having known the backing of The Bare Bones club, with the powerful friendship of Maddy, June, and Emma, now I felt stronger. I knew much more about myself than I had two weeks before.

  I did not blame my father for my shitty childhood. We had had a good conversation a couple days before, and he made a date to fly out from Los Angeles to see me. I felt good about it, and no one could tell me any different!

  “We celebrate life and laughter, not scorn and judgment!” Shakti cried, waving his wand as though he were skywriting with it. He was trying to ingrain in me the damage my father had done to me, damage that could only be reversed by communing with him, Shakti, my master, the Outlaw Prophet, the Enlightened One. “Your father scorned you. By moving to another state, he was in essence saying you weren’t worth sticking around for. He ingrained a deep sense of shame in you, a sense of worthlessness, that you were a piece of shit, and so you acted accordingly.”

  I rattled my handcuffs. “Yes, Shakti. I used to think I was a piece of shit. Only by being away from you do I now see that I’m worth a damn! It wasn’t through any damned help from you that I had my consciousness raised. It took a bunch of bikers to help me see that I’m worth something!”

  He pointed the wand straight at my brain as though zapping me. “That is how the bikers are brainwashing you, Asanga! You are looking for someone to replace your father, so you look to the big rough, tough father figure to guide you.”

  I smirked. “Rather I should look to a baby for guidance?”

  I meant the fact that until recently he’d been wearing diapers. But he had no sense of humor, so he ranted on.

  I mean, I could see where I had fallen for his shtick. Even with a kielbasa taped to his thigh, he was a brilliant, hypnotic speaker. I always used to have the feeling that more than words had passed between us, that his spirit had moved inside mine, or some such new age garbage. Still, I had recently felt a similar thing with Knoxie, only that time, it had been way more physical. It had been when he was fucking me. I had definitely felt his spirit move in me then. And I’m not just talking his long, fat cock.

  Swami Shakti was a charismatic figure, a genius at manipulating his followers. He promised us total freedom within the confines of an orderly society, and that appealed to a lot of people. He was brilliant at mashing together a lot of rhetoric from other religions. Some of it wound up not making any sense, and our brains filled in the rest. We interpreted it in a way that comforted us.

  But where it seemed that Shakti used to focus on love, freedom, and fun, suddenly he was becoming very fixated on sex. It was as though he’d lost his far-seeing ability to rise above everything, and now was being anchored on earth, lusting like an ordinary human. I wasn’t disheartened because I was already through with him. But I was beginning to get scared. I had changed. But he had changed too.

  I guess he thought I meant Knoxie when I said “baby.” He jumped on the bed, bouncing on his knees, crying, “Do you know what that emotional baby of yours needs in order to redeem the childhood damage done by tho
se priests? He needs a good fucking. Yes, a good fucking!”

  Horrified, I stopped struggling against my bonds and just stared at my old master, wide-eyed. I mean, I had heard loony talk about how rape victims needed fucking, and let’s not even get started on what Shakti thought of Catholic priests. I had just started to look into embracing Judaism again, now I was realizing it hadn’t harmed me.

  “You’re talking about Knoxie? My boyfriend?” I purposefully said “boyfriend” to rile him, I guess. To let him know he hadn’t beaten me down, hadn’t buried me.

  Shakti was on a roll now. He didn’t seem to have heard me, just ripped the gauze bandage from his injured eyebrow and cried, “A good fucking! That glorious, rounded ass is crying out to be penetrated by a superior tool like mine! He doesn’t need any whiny, pale woman. He needs the penetration of a real, virile, potent man like me.”

  As he said that, he gripped the sausage tied to his leg. Normally that would’ve been ironic and funny if I wasn’t chained to a headboard. So experimentally—having never done anything slightly like this before—I coiled one leg back and kicked him.

  Yes, I kicked him! I kicked The Blessed One right in the stomach!

  It wasn’t a hard kick, but it got to him. His eye opened wider, flashing with anger. My kick opened the floodgates. He brandished his crystal wand like a hammer and snarled, “He who beats the master when down is only looking to be dominated!”