by Kyla Stone
When he wasn’t drunk. He felt the alcohol in his blood, buzzing in his veins. Dulling his senses, his thoughts coming slow and sluggish.
He forced himself to roll up his sleeve and look down at the barbed wire tattoo on his forearm, at the elegant cursive letters of the Latin inscription: et facti sunt ne unum.
Lest you become one.
He’d inked it one month before that fateful night, five months before the arrest, the sentencing, the barred door slamming shut on his cell.
It was a warning, a last-ditch effort to hold himself back from the abyss.
It had failed.
He knew well his own darkness, no matter how deep down he shoved it. He knew his own tendency to push past the line, to unleash that thing inside him that craved bloodshed at any cost—and enjoyed it.
He stared down at the pistol still in his hands, at his scarred knuckles, the tattoos rippling up his muscled arms.
That was his old life. His street life. His prison life. He’d put it all far behind him.
It was the only way he could live with himself. No matter how far he’d fallen, he still kept that one promise.
She was going to make him break it.
“Damn it, girl,” he muttered.
Adrenaline spiked through him, anticipation thrumming through his veins. It wasn’t enough to burn off the dullness of the booze still sloshing through him. His senses felt blunted. He cursed himself for those last several beers.
But there was no helping things now.
He was a fighter. He would fight.
He flexed his hands, willing himself to shake off the haze. He tightened his grip on the pistol and stepped back to hide most of his body behind the protective wall of the coffee shop.
Dakota halted about thirty feet from the frenzied hostiles, the carbine aimed at the closest one. “Stop right now!”
Most of them spun to face her.
The Latino guy in the red bandanna didn’t. Instead, he jabbed the short male responder in the chest with the pointed end of the length of rebar. The man stumbled.
Before he could recover, Bandanna twisted, cocked his arms back, and swung the rebar at the man’s skull.
The man cringed and flung his arm up defensively.
Instead of striking his head, the metal club slammed into his forearm. A terrible, resounding thwack echoed in the still air.
The responder gave a wet scream, staggered, and fell against the pole. The back of his head cracked against metal. His body sagged to the asphalt.
The female responder fell to her knees next to him with a strangled cry. “What did you do?”
Bandanna pushed her out of the way. He laughed as he jerked off the man’s respirator mask and held it aloft.
The male responder crumpled in on himself, clutching his mangled right arm. The forearm was bent at a strange, unnatural angle, the hand hanging limply.
Just who did these asshats think they were? They were victims themselves—until they’d chosen to prey on someone else.
Indignation sparked through Logan, sank its black claws into his brain.
He couldn’t help it. The rage was in him now. The desire to fight, to hurt.
They would pay for it. Logan would make them pay.
24
Logan
Instead of following Dakota out into the open, Logan stayed low and skirted the rear of the coffee shop, taking the side alley, avoiding piles of debris and a dumpster turned on its side.
The stench of rotting food mingled with a scorched plastic smell fermented in the heat. Nausea roiled in his gut. He blinked to clear his head.
He crouched behind the dumpster for cover, tension humming through him. Slow and silent, he adjusted his grip on the Glock and slivered back the slide to check the brass in the chamber.
Three out of seven 9mm rounds left.
His stomach sank, sour acid climbing up his throat. He cursed himself for forgetting the three spare magazines tucked in the glove compartment of his ‘98 Honda Civic—still parked in the Beer Shack’s parking lot.
That was the downside to the compact Glock 43: fewer bullets.
Still, he had no desire to shoot anyone. He’d already done that today. Once he showed himself, things would escalate quickly. If there was any way to avoid bloodshed, he would take it.
He stayed hidden and scoped out the scene. He had a clear view between the dumpster and the faux brick wall of the coffee shop.
The blonde chic, Hawaiian shirt guy, and the one in the suit didn’t look like experienced fighters or marksmen as far as Logan could tell. Tank knew how to handle the gun. And Bandanna hadn’t even hesitated before he’d attacked the male responder. He was no stranger to violence.
Tank and Bandanna were both Latino and heavily tattooed.
Three non-factors, two experienced fighters. Logan should be able to take them if he had to, inebriated or not. Hopefully, Dakota could handle this on her own.
“Leave them alone!” Dakota shouted from ten yards away. “Get lost!”
She stood tall and defiant, her feet shoulder-width apart, her long auburn hair swinging behind her, looking like a crazy badass with that carbine jammed against her shoulder, the business end aimed at the chest of the burly hostile with the gun.
“Just walk away now,” she warned them. “Walk away and I won’t blast a dozen holes in your sorry asses like you deserve.”
The guy in the tank top holding the pistol, Hawaiian shirt with the butcher knife, Bandanna with the rebar spear, and Pinstripe with the double tire irons all turned as one to face her.
Their eyes widened in surprise and fear when they saw the wicked-looking M4. Behind them, Blondie let out a startled gasp. Pinstripe and Hawaii both took a step back, their arms lifting, though they didn’t drop their weapons.
Only Tank didn’t flinch.
“Hey, now,” Pinstripe said uneasily. “There’s no need for that. Why don’t you put that thing down?”
“We weren’t causing no trouble,” Blondie said and spat blood out of the corner of her mouth. She moved in front of the male responder, still groaning on the ground, as if Dakota hadn’t seen it all.
“Lower your weapons,” Dakota said.
Blondie and Pinstripe both started to obey. Hawaii wavered. Bandanna gave Tank a questioning glance. Like they knew each other.
Tank gave a hard shake of his head. He didn’t lower his pistol. If anything, he raised it a little, so it was aimed at her legs.
Hawaii followed his cue and kept his own weapon. So did Bandanna. Tank was clearly the man in charge.
“That’s a big rifle for such a little girl,” Tank growled. He had twitchy eyes and a hard, slippery smile. Logan didn’t like the look of him, not at all.
“Big enough to get the job done,” Dakota snapped.
“Where’d you even get that?” Hawaii asked. “You steal that off the body of some poor soldier?”
Hawaii acted as tough as Tank, but Logan noted that he took a slow, careful step to the side, out of the path of the M4’s muzzle.
Tank, on the other hand, did not. His smile only broadened. “How shameful.”
“That rifle look familiar to you?” Bandanna asked Tank with a scowl.
“Sure does.” Tank’s gaze lowered to the M4. “You didn’t take that from one of our boys, did you, little girl?”
Logan stiffened. So they were Blood Outlaws. At least, Tank and Bandanna were. The other three just seemed to be random people who’d fallen in with them after the chaos of the blast.
To her credit, Dakota didn’t take the bait. She shifted, tracking the muzzle between Bandanna, Hawaii, and Tank. “Get out of here, all of you.”
“Nah, I don’t think we will,” Tank said.
“You even know how to use that thing?” Hawaii asked.
“I doubt it,” Bandanna said with a sly grin.
“I guarantee you don’t want to find out,” Dakota said.
“You and I both know you don’t have a clue how to handle
a weapon like that,” Tank said. “Why don’t you give it to someone who does?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t—” Pinstripe started hesitantly, but Tank shot him a vicious look. Pinstripe fell silent.
“You don’t have the balls to fire that thing, in more ways than one,” Tank said with a hard chuckle.
Hawaii laughed. There was a hint of unease in his voice, but it was fading fast. With every passing second that she didn’t pull the trigger, they gained more confidence.
They were underestimating Dakota. In most situations, she could work that to her advantage. But now, when bluffing was her only play, it hurt her big time.
Logan cursed under his breath. If it were him brandishing the assault rifle—a tall, imposing Colombian covered in tattoos—things would be playing out very differently.
Dakota refused to be cowed. She took another step toward them. “I said back off!”
Tank only sneered. “Why don’t you let a real man handle that for you? We’re happy to take that beauty off your hands.”
Bandanna followed his lead. Emboldened by Tank’s scornful dismissiveness toward the potential threat, he took a step toward Dakota and brandished his rebar, slapping the metal against the palm of his hand as if challenging her to come at him.
“Stop right there or I shoot!” Dakota ordered.
Tank flashed a dangerous smile. “We just want the gun. We’ll let you go.” He paused. “I promise.”
“Speak for yourself,” Hawaii said, scowling. “What else you got hiding around here? You’re too clean and untouched. You been hiding out somewhere watching the rest of us suffer?”
“No—”
“You keeping it all to yourself, is that it?” He licked his cracked lips. “You got untainted food? Medical supplies? A working cellphone?”
“No!”
“No,” Bandanna said as he took another step toward her, his features contorting in pain and rage. “She says no. I say we find out for ourselves. And we’ll start with that gun.”
Logan took a steadying breath and refocused his aim. These scumbags were beyond reason. They were desperate to enact vengeance for their suffering, for what they’d lost.
And if they couldn’t find the people to blame, they’d scapegoat someone else.
Blondie remained beneath the sagging gas station roof beside their victims, guarding them. But the others spread out across the glass-littered parking lot, Pinstripe hobbling toward Dakota from the left, Hawaii stalking her from the right, Bandanna facing her straight on while Tank circled to get behind her.
Dakota swung the carbine back and forth, trying to keep the nearest threat in her sights, but there were too many of them. “I said don’t move!”
“Like I said, you’re not gonna shoot that thing,” Tank said from three yards behind her, his pistol—a Sig Sauer 226—aimed at her head.
“Try me.” Dakota started to whirl to face him, correctly surmising he was the greatest threat, even though Bandanna had attacked the responders first. They were both dangerous.
Tank fired a warning shot over her head. The crack echoed impossibly loud.
Dakota froze, still facing away from Tank.
“Next one will tunnel right through your skull, understand?”
Dakota lifted her chin. “Go ahead, but I’ll take out a few of you first.”
“Doubt it,” Tank said dismissively. “Now lower the gun, nice and slow, and give it to me.”
“And if I don’t?”
Tank fingered the trigger. “Haven’t I already warned you once?”
This situation was going downhill fast.
Logan gritted his teeth so hard his head hurt. Two days ago, these were just regular people like everyone else, survivors of a horror none of them could comprehend.
But they’d let their fear overtake them and twist them into something else—something grotesque and monstrous. They were unleashing their terror on the very people who’d risked so much to help them.
Or maybe they had always been monsters, kept caged by society until the bombing. Now they were unleashed, free to prey on others.
He’d bet everything he owned that Tank and Bandanna were natural-born predators. Maybe Blood Outlaws, maybe not. It didn’t matter.
Their eyes were bright, their mouths twisted into hard smiles. He recognized that look on their faces. They were enjoying this. They took pleasure in inciting fear and pain in others.
Logan knew how to be a predator, too.
He inched out from behind the dumpster, readying himself. He rose onto one knee, rested his forearms on his thigh to steady his hands, and aimed through his sights at Tank’s skull.
The gun wavered slightly. His vision blurred. Sour acid stung the back of his throat. He blinked fiercely, forcing himself to focus.
Pinstripe was blocking his view.
If he took Pinstripe out first, he’d lose a precious second, enough time for Tank to pull the trigger and kill Dakota.
The alcohol had slowed his reaction time. He knew that with dead certainty. But the question was, how much? Did he dare risk it?
Pinstripe slowly lowered his tire irons. “I don’t know. She’s just a girl. Maybe this is too much. Let’s just go, man.”
“She was trying to kill you,” Bandanna snarled. “She’d kill all of us. After we survived the bomb? Hell, no.”
“Let those people go,” Dakota said, her voice firm and steady. “Then you can all walk away.”
She looked tense but not terrified. She wasn’t panicking. That was good.
“Leave us alone!” The female responder hunched over her fallen partner, cradling his head on her lap. “Just stop!”
The wounded male responder only moaned.
“They didn’t do this to you,” Dakota said to Pinstripe, the only one who seemed capable of backing down. “They were trying to help you, not hurt you.”
Pinstripe only shook his head, reluctant but unwilling to stop the others. He was still just as culpable in Logan’s book.
“Shut the hell up!” Bandanna said.
“Everyone out there, they’ve abandoned us to our fate,” Tank said bitterly. “No one cares what happens to us. Why should we care what happens to you?”
Tank strode closer to Dakota. Finally, Logan’s view was clear, but now Tank’s muzzle was inches from the back of Dakota’s skull.
Logan couldn’t risk the shot.
“Don’t think I need to tell you again, do I?” Tank said. “Drop it like a good little girl.”
Slowly, Dakota lifted the strap of the M4 over her head and lowered the carbine to the pavement. The muzzle of Tank’s Sig moved with her.
“Go to hell,” Dakota spat.
“I think you know we’re already there.” Tank gave a twisted smile. “And if we’re in hell anyway, who says we can’t have a bit of fun while we’re here?”
Tank struck Dakota on the side of the head with the butt of the gun.
Dakota let out a harsh, startled breath. She fell hard to her hands and knees.
Tank smiled as he lifted the gun, his finger on the trigger.
25
Logan
A ferocious anger slammed through Logan.
He didn’t believe in much, cared about even less.
The waitress was stubborn, arrogant, infuriating. But she had balls of steel. And she was a hell of a lot braver than he was.
Seeing her like that—down on the ground, hurt, humiliated, and vulnerable—it flipped a switch inside him.
Something dark and brutal and remorseless clawed its way out.
He wanted to hurt and be hurt, to do damage with his hands, his fists, his whole body.
The world sharpened and blurred and sharpened again. Sound faded away but for the rush of blood in his ears. He tensed, teeth clenched, lips bared.
He let the outrage flow over him, into him, through him.
Then he moved.
One second, he was hanging back, still taking in the lay of the land, watching Dakota rece
ive the brunt of the hostiles’ aggression.
In the next instant, he was up and charging, already among them before they were even aware of his presence, a hurricane of savage fury.
He fired two shots into Pinstripe’s non-wounded leg as he ran past. It wasn’t a kill shot, but the man screamed with a high, animal sound, his arms windmilling backward, the tire irons slipping from his limp fingers.
He collapsed, his ruined leg twitching convulsively.
One down.
Logan aimed and fired at Tank’s forehead as he ran. It was a difficult shot to nail on the move, especially with his senses dulled, his reactions blunted.
A shot he would’ve made if his head was clear.
He knew even as he pulled the trigger that the round would miss its target, but Logan needed to make himself the greater threat immediately.
As he expected, the shot went wide, whistling past the left side of Tank’s neck and drilling into the stucco façade of an apartment building thirty feet behind him.
Tank whirled, surprised but already raising his Sig as he swiveled his thick, muscular body to face Logan.
Instinctively, Logan ducked and pulled back as the muzzle arced toward him.
The loud crack exploded in his ears. A zinging sting slashed across the top of his right ear.
The bullet missed his skull by a hair’s breadth.
He stayed low and rushed toward Tank, who came at him with a sadistic growl. They collided in a crash of heavy bodies, grappling for each other’s guns, each trying to jam their weapons into soft, viable flesh.
Tank managed to elbow Logan hard in the face, jabbing at him with the pistol’s muzzle, attempting to aim and shoot, but Logan was too fast.
The man missed again.
The blast of the shot was so close it made his ears ring.
Logan pummeled the man with a flurry of vicious blows, but Tank hammered right back.
Pain exploded in Logan’s ribs, his shoulder. He feinted high and dodged in low. He was a fraction of a second slower than he needed to be.
Still, the blow landed.
He slammed his fist in a brutal uppercut, the punch catching Tank beneath the chin, snapping his head back and toppling him over in one swift movement.
