Delicate Rain

by Mitch Goth

  Several days went by before the sit down between Vin and the KC Devils was made to go down. This wait made the day all the more tense. Three large SUVs drove out of the city and to the location the Devils had picked out. Joe drove the middle truck while Vin sat in the passenger seat. Ben sat in the middle row next to Rain. They both were careful not to catch a look at one another. In the far back were a few lower level men in Vin's operation.

  As the location drew closer and closer, Vin turned back to address Rain. He held out a small pistol in her direction.

  "Use this," he explained. "It'll be easy to control, and there's more bullets in there than you'll get in any other pistol out in the world today."

  "Thank you," she said dryly, taking the weapon and hiding it poorly on her person. She was far too nervous to speak much.

  "Jesus Christ," Ben mumbled.

  "There's no time to be worried, Benjamin," Vin called back to him. "We've got work of an importance level that far exceeds your stresses."

  Ben didn't reply. He only aimed his gaze out the window and away from everyone in the truck.

  "Vin-" Joe began. But Vin lifted his hand swiftly, ending his comment a syllable in.

  "She's only gonna be a liability," one of the men in the far back spoke up.

  "Excuse me?" Rain spun around, fire in her eyes.

  "People, people," Vin calmed, "I made the choice to allow her to accompany us, she agreed to it. Your boss has spoken and her stance has been noted. That's all that's needed. If I hear another word about it I will waste a perfectly useful bullet. We can address any concerns after we're done tonight."

  The sun was barely hanging onto the horizon when the trio of trucks rolled onto a thin dirt road and stopped in front of a long abandoned cow barn. Any ounce of red the barn once held had faded away long ago, and the roof had partially collapsed as well. It seemed like the perfect place for illicit activities, but also seemed like it couldn't even hold the weight of its own age for much longer.

  A small army of motorcycles were parked on the side of the barn. They knew what they were up against now. The sheer number of the bikes tensed Rain up. She made sure to keep her hand near the pistol at all times.

  There were roughly twenty people in Vin's entourage for the sit down. Each of them was concealing some sort of powerful weapon. Rain tried to hide her gun as well as they all did, but all attempts were in vain.

  Nobody spoke as the group entered the dim, musty barn. An equally large group of Devils stood across the massive, open main room of the barn. Vin stopped his group a few dozen feet away from the bikers, creating a sizeable no man's land between them.

  "Vin Reese," a burly, hairy man took a step out from the group of the bikers, asserting himself as the leader, "never thought I'd see the day you'd try and make peace."

  "Well," Vin shrugged, "here I am."

  "Here you all are," the hairy man pointed out. "That's quite the group you've got there. All just to watch a peace negotiation, huh?"

  "Speak for yourself," Vin noticed the army of Devils, "you've got quite the following now, don't you?"

  "Hard work has paid off," the hairy man admitted. "I've spent a lot of time building this gang up."

  "I know how that feels. I've spent years on mine. So I suppose we're at a point of mutual difficulty. I guess now I'm forced to wonder why you're looking to erase me if you understand my hard work?"

  "Your hard work has paid off plenty, Vin. Its time for the KC Devils to get what they want, what they deserve," this brought hoots and hollers from the biker crowd. "We've been the bottom of the barrel for too long. We gotta expand someplace. You're just next on the chopping block. Nothin' personal. Besides, you're winding down anyhow, I mean, look at your backup to this thing," the man aimed a fat finger in Rain's direction. "What are you? Fourteen?" he didn't even give Rain time to retort before he had to voice a new observation. "Wait just a minute, I know you. You're that girl that's all over the news. You're that runaway kid," he laughed uproariously. "You ran away from home and joined up with these people? How the fuck does somethin' like that happen?"

  "A chance encounter," Vin answered for her. "Now, can we get back to the matter at hand?"

  "Somebody's pushy," the fat man chuckled. "Alright, Vin, what are ya lookin' for? You lookin' for some cease fire or somethin'? Some peace treaty?" the man laughed loudly once more, this time being joined by his league of followers.

  "Judging by that response, I'm going to guess peace is off the table?" Vin figured, not seeming all that saddened or surprised.

  "You're damn right it is," the man retorted. "It never was on the table."

  "So what is on the table then?"

  "Jack shit, Vin, jack shit," the man cackled.

  "Well why don't I try putting something on the table, and maybe we can see how that goes?" Vin offered.

  "Well, whatta you wanna put on the table then?" the fat man asked condescendingly.

  "Blood," Vin replied as a thin, lever-action sawn-off shotgun slid down his sleeve and into his hand. Before anyone could blink in response, Vin raised the weapon and fired a round of buckshot into the hairy man's head. As soon as the headless corpse hit the floor, the whole room was shushed in stunned silence.

  For an endless second, everyone stared at the first casualty of the impending massacre. The stiff soundlessness was broken by the sound of Vin levering another shell into his gun. In a flash, everyone whipped out their weapons and scattered across the barn.

  Rain leapt to the first slice of cover she could find, an old cow pen. She jumped into the tall pen, drawing her weapon as she did. She was ready to jump up and start fighting as soon as she landed. The barn had other intentions unfortunately. As soon as Rain landed, the long rotted wood floor of the pen gave away and she tumbled into the dark expanse of the barn basement.

  It was in her recollection moment that she absorbed all that was occurring above her. Thundering booms and cracks filled her head at every moment. Even in the darkness she could see spent casings and shells from a multitude of guns falling through the holes and creases in the floor above and piling on the tough basement floor.

  Her weapon drawn and at the ready, Rain worked her way through the thick, musty blackness. She couldn't see, she couldn't hear over the massive blasts from guns above her, and the thick dust clouded her nose. The only sense she had left was touch. And so she felt her way cautiously.

  As she moved, Rain noticed something else coming through the ceiling. At first it felt like a raindrop hit her head, then one hit her hand. It seemed like water in the darkness. But as she felt it she knew just what it was. It wasn't water, it was thicker.

  Now horrified nearly to the point of sickness, Rain felt her way faster and faster. She needed to get out of the basement, out of the barn, away from all of this. But still progress was painfully slow, and the thick rain came heavier and heavier as the moments went by.

  After nearly five minutes of feeling around, Rain got a small reprieve from her terror. She'd felt her way to a staircase. It was unstable and cracking, but led her back above ground and into the dim dusky light all the same. Now she moved with even more caution.

  The shooting had slowed, the movement did as well. She'd entered into a small corner of the barn. A maze of corridors and tiny rooms. All she was doing was waiting for the point where she'd turn a corner and find a hiding Devil meeting her gaze. Even in the new-found light, she was doubtful she could manage to outgun any of the bikers.

  Just then, the sound of shuffling came from an intersection ahead of her. A short, bald, shotgun wielding biker entered into her hallway. He was wounded in the gut, and paid more mind to himself than to Rain, which gave her all the time she needed.

  She aimed her weapon at the wounded man and cocked it, which finally got the man's attention. He looked up at her. Rain expected to see hate and untamable anger in him when their eyes met. But his eyes held no spite, no fury. Instead they were filled to the top with fear, crippling fear.


  They stood and stared at each other for a moment. Rain didn't want to shoot him, it was the last thing she wanted to do. She wished she had some Delicate Rain, it'd give her the fervor to do what she needed to do. But she didn't have any, and she didn't want to shoot this man. The biker clearly saw this in her. Still, neither moved.

  Then, a gun report in the distance shook them out of their collective stupor. The bald man raised up his shotgun as much as his injured structure would allow. Before he could raise it all the way, Rain pulled the trigger. The bullet stuck the man right in the forehead. As the man fell, his shotgun went off, tearing through the ancient wood of the wall beside her.

  She shrieked loud enough to overpower the boom of the shotgun. In her fright, Rain didn't even realize she'd dropped her weapon. It didn't take her long to realize she'd let it slip her grasp, but this realization wasn't due to her own recollection.

  Another biker came running into the intersection. This man was much larger than the bald man, and was weaponless, having lost it somewhere in the fray. He had two large wounds in his abdomen, but still moved with odd ease. And, unlike the bald man, he saw Rain immediately and didn't hesitate to charge.

  It was in this moment that Rain finally discovered she'd dropped her weapon. By the time she'd grabbed it off the ground, the man was in the middle of lunging at her. The pistol instantly fell out of her hands as the massive man tackled her.

  Before she knew what'd happened, the man had both his great, hairy hands wrapped around her throat. She gasped for air, any ounce of musty oxygen she could get, she got none. Rain tried in obvious vain to pry the man's grip away from her neck, but ended up only wasting valuable energy.

  As she gasped and gasped, Rain's vision quickly went out of focus and a ring of darkness showed up in her peripheral vision. She could see this darkness creeping ever further in, reducing her vision to blurry pinholes. Rain found she was envious of the vision she could manage in the lightless basement.

  But, she found herself counting her lucky stars that her sight faded as much as it did when a bullet whizzed through the large man's scull. All she could see were thin sprays of red before the body rolled off of her and the grip on her neck disappeared.

  Rain immediately inhaled the disgusting, bitter barn air and coughed uncontrollably. But with every cough came an inhalation of oxygen, which brought her unbelievable relief. In no time her vision returned, but the coughing continued.

  Ben appeared by her side, smoking revolver in his hand. As soon as he kneeled beside her, she embraced him in a vice-like strength. Rain couldn't stop herself from breaking down and weeping.

  "Thank you," she gave out a wheezy cry. "Oh, God. Oh, God."

  "Come on," Ben helped her up, "let's get you out of here."

  She only nodded, taking a few slow, shaking steps forward. It took a few moments for her to stabilize enough to walk. Despite this necessary time to relearn walking, running came back the instant Rain entered the main room of the barn.

  Bodies were strewn across both sides. The bikers were eradicated, but so were a fair share Vin's men. Now she'd seen exactly where all those droplets had come from. As she saw Vin and Joe standing triumphantly over the field of corpses, her breakdown reached a peak and she sprinted unevenly out of the barn.

  Ben was quick to make chase, but she got a fair share ahead of him before she finally collapsed just short of the trucks. It was all too much. It was all finally too much for Rain Phillipa to bear.

  "Jesus, Ben, Jesus," she wailed as wrapped his arms around her, trying his best to comfort her. "I wanna go home."

  "Really?" he asked shocked.

  "I just wanna go home," she repeated through her sobs. "I need to go home."

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