Ironside

by Alexis Abbott

  A pack of bikers at least five strong at a glance is roaring our way, and as I veer to the right between a couple of businesses, I hear more bullets rip across the darkening skies. It’s twilight, and the faces are harder to make out--that’s good for me, but it won’t stop a gunshot.

  “Help!” she tries to shout at them, her voice still slurring and clouded by brain fog. But I squeeze her hands and glance over her shoulder enough for my glare to reach her, and it seems to stun her to silence.

  “Those are the bastards who had you!” I bark. “I’m getting you out of here, so listen--I need you to hold onto my waist tight, and do not let go for anything. Anything. Do you hear me? I need you to say Yes, can you do that for me?”

  My voice is authoritative and clear, giving her a strong, simple instruction to follow. I’d used that voice with civilians plenty of times before before my discharge. If you start barking out orders with force, people usually pay attention--especially if they’re already drugged up and fighting that off.

  “I-I…” she stammers, confused but no longer trying to jump out of a moving vehicle.

  The sound of the other engines gets closer behind us, and two gunshots ring out that ricochet off concrete walls, and I feel her hug me tight, pressing her face to my shoulder. That’s as close to a Yes as I’m going to get, so it’ll have to do.

  With one hand now free, I pull around a corner and swing around the building, hugging the side so that I can stay out of sight while I take my gun out. Moments later, the rival bikers fly past the intersection, and I fire two quick shots at their tires. They’re moving fast, so I’m surprised when even one of the bullets hits someones leg, and they lay down the bike in the road while the rest of the pack swerves to avoid him.

  As they topple, I’m barreling off down the road again.

  We need to get out of town, and fast. I know of an old gas station that isn’t far from here past the other side of town--I passed it on the way in. But I can’t have these fuckers on my tail while I head there. Just then, I hear the sounds of police sirens not far from where I left the pack, and I smile.

  “HELP!” the girl shouts when she hears them too, and my heart jumps again as I put my gun away and grab her wrists again.

  This time, she jerks and struggles more, and my bike wobbles under the shifting weight. “You’re going to kill us both if you keep doing that,” I snap. “We’ve almost lost them, hang on!”

  Her heart is pounding so hard as I rocket out of the town that I worry she’s going to pass out again, and I can tell how terrified she is. She has every right to be, I suppose, but we don’t have time to stop and talk things out yet. I don’t know how long I’ve got until the other bikers are able to shake the cops, or even whether the cops are on their side. Diesel has deep pockets, after all.

  I ride up to the gas station, whose gas price sign has long since decayed and been broken into tattered pieces by the wind. Weeds grow through cracks in the concrete, and the sides of the walls would be covered in graffiti if there were more than maybe a couple of teenagers in this tiny town.

  The girl quiets down as we approach, surprisingly so. I don’t question it. I pull the bike around the back and find that the rusty back doors are closed and locked, and the place looks like it hasn’t been occupied by squatters.

  “This’ll do for now,” I say, still holding her wrists as I cut the engine next to the doors and climb off and help the girl do the same.

  Her body starts shaking immediately once we’ve stopped, and her face looks ghostly pale. She looks up at me in utter terror, and I know how this must look. I’m a man with at least a head in height over her, and she just woke up to a nightmare guided by yours truly. But I need her to bear with me a little longer.

  With no time to chat, I open the bike’s storage and pull out the tire iron I keep on hand and carry it over to the nearest window that looks climbable, with the girl in tow. I hold her back before smashing the window in, making her jump and yelp, but I ignore it and move forward to shine my phone light inside. I glance down at the girl to make sure she’s wearing shoes, then nod to the window. She looks horrified, but we don’t have a choice.

  A moment later, I’m helping her up into the building, and I hear her land safely on the other side. I join her seconds later, landing with a heavy thump in front of her. I see the whites of her wide eyes staring up at me in fear as I walk past her to get the back doors unlocked. As soon as they creak open, I wheel my bike into the back room and shut the door, where I can finally breathe.

  “There,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief. “We’ll be safer here for now than we will anywhere else in t-”

  I turn around to look into the front of the store...where I see that not only has the front door been unlocked in the ten seconds it took me to get my bike in, but the doped-up girl I just saved is high-tailing it out toward the road at full sprint, screaming for help as loud as she can.

  “Fuck!” I snap, and I give chase.

  I’m a tall guy who spends a lot of time on his body, and most people don’t believe me when they hear I’m fast. Most people haven’t been taught how to really make their bodies hustle, but I’ve had to put my body through hell before, and I know how to move. I’m also a somewhat intimidating sight to see approaching at full tilt, because as soon as the girl glances over her shoulder to make sure I’m not following her, her face goes sheet white.

  She cowers down on reflex and freezes like a deer in the headlights as I close the distance between her and scoop her into my arms, slinging her over my shoulder while she kicks and screams, trying to fight me off.

  “Get off me!” she gasps, more afraid than angry as she kicks blindly.

  Lucky for us, she’s easier to get under control than an actual deer in actual headlights. I hear bike engines and spot faint headlights coming from the long stretch of road leading out of town, and I hurry back to the building with her. She grabs onto the door to keep from behind taken back in, but I’m not waiting, and she loses her grip with a terrified yelp.

  “Please-” she says as I set her down, but instead of replying, I spin her around, pin her back to the front of my body, and clap her mouth shut as I press myself against the wall. I sink to the ground and hold her trembling form to me as I silently put my hand on my gun and listen.

  As the engines get closer, the girl against me stays still, but I can’t read her mind. She’s quicker than she seems, clearly, and apparently knows how to act fast when she needs to, but the simple fact is that she’s been through a lot already. Her body is soft and warm against mine, and the faint perfume still clinging to her hair fills my nostrils as I wait. I close my eyes and clench my jaw, controlling my body’s desires. They’re an annoying distraction I’ll have to handle later.

  The engines get close enough that if she were to break free again, we’d be spotted. I gaze down at her while she watches the door, eyes wide. Finally, she looks up to me, and she shrinks away when she realizes I’ve been watching her. There was some debate in those eyes. I can’t trust her, not yet.

  But the bikes pass, and when the dust has cleared, we’re alone.

  “I’m going to let you go now,” I tell her. “If you run, you lose that privilege. Understood? Nod.”

  Her eyes are easy to read, and I see a kind of innocence in them that’s used to being trusting. She nods softly, and I’m willing to believe her to show her I want to work together. My hands release her both at once, and she stands up, rubbing the dust from her mouth before wobbling.

  I stand up and steady her, but she draws back from me immediately.

  “We can’t do this all night,” I say with a frown, but just then, I hear motors on the road again. The bikers must be coming back into town for the night. Shit!

  The girl seems to have picked up on this too, and she looks to me as if sizing up her odds of making a break for it. Where she’s standing, she has a pretty good chance of making it to one of the doors, too. She’d at least get far enough to get their a
ttention.

  “Listen,” I say slowly. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m a friend. I used to be a soldier. I’m here to help you, but you need to believe me when I say those guys out there are not your friends.”

  “The police are,” she counters in a thin voice, surprising me with her courage.

  “Maybe,” I admit. “But I don’t know that in this town. Those bikers are bad news, and they’ve got connections.”

  She seems to understand vaguely what that means, but I can tell by the look of her she hasn’t grown up around bikers. Her body is soft, and she looks like she’s had a rough few days, but she looks like she takes care of herself. She isn’t the kind of person used to this life. It fits Diesel’s MO to a tee. There’s probably nobody in the great state of Wyoming who even knows who she is or that she’s missing from...somewhere. But that makes for a panicked person, and that’s dangerous.

  “We’re going to lay low here until those bikers aren’t a threat anymore,” I explain, taking a few slow steps toward her. “If you want to live, you need to follow my orders exactly. I don’t know how you got here, and you’ve probably been kidnapped, but not by me. I can get you through this, but I need you to believe me first.”

  With every step I take toward her, her suspicious eyes only look more concerned, and she backs up toward the icee machines that still have some now-brown sludge in the tanks. She swallows as her butt touches the counter and she realizes she’s cornered.

  When I’m an arm’s length away, she blindly reaches behind her and grabs the first thing her fingers wrap around. “Stay back!” she hisses, brandishing a flimsy plastic spoon at me threateningly.

  I raise an eyebrow and smile softly, and she notices her weapon of choice. “Crap,” she whispers, tossing the spoon aside.

  I’m amused for a moment, but then I see the tears forming in her eyes. This poor woman really does think she’s at the end of her rope with me, and she’s too shaken to do anything about it. But she needs my help, and I have to build that trust.

  I take a step forward, and she puts her hands out to stop me, but I catch them. Holding her firmly yet gently, I look down into her eyes and let her stare back up into mine in awe. I want to let her search me, to know she doesn’t have to cower.

  After a silent, tense moment, the red washes over her face, and she lets herself slowly rest against my broad, heavy chest. I wrap my arms around her and holder comfortingly, shushing her as I feel the sobs start to wrack her body.

  “What’s your name?” I ask quietly.

  “Justine,” she manages to get out.

  “I like that name,” my dark voice rumbles. “Call me Ironside.”

  She looks up at me, apparently not comforted in the least by the name I ride by.

  “I know it’s hard,” I say in a husky growl. “But you need to stay by my side right now, because if you go back out those doors again...your life is over.”

  Justine

  My blood runs cold. My chest rises and falls rapidly, my heart pounding like it might just pop out from between my ribs and drop to the floor. I can feel every cell in my body shifting into sheer panic, all the pent-up terror and dread I have been fighting back comes pouring back into me. I feel like someone has taken the moon and tipped its crescent peak to let its shivery glow fill me with light from within. It is an electrical feeling, a full-body impulse I feel almost powerless to resist. The world around me filters from bright colors to muted hues, all movement frozen in space like I’m standing in the sketch box of a comic strip. All is still, all is empty. There is nowhere for my eyes to look than at him.

  Him.

  Even through the shifting and blurring clouds over my vision, no doubt a side effect of adrenaline and not much else in my body, I can see the man who claims to be my savior. He is every piece and bit the prince I used to daydream about on those long afternoons in the mahogany pews, my mind wandering toward more earthly pleasures as the preacher pontificated about heaven. I used to think I was bound for that heaven, for that particular brand of paradise. The purest kind, reserved for the best-behaved girls, the prettiest ones with the soft tongue and nodding head. The girls who do as they are told without a hint of reluctance, no stirrings of a self-created destiny. I am meant to be among those chosen few, the brightest white and fullest of the flock. There was a time when I thought I was pure enough. I did what my father asked of me and I thought that was proof enough of my piety and my good intentions. Even when I wanted to cry no, turn away, refuse the smile beckoned for from the cruel curling lip of a man passing me by on the sidewalk--I knew better than to let myself slip. The mask I wore, clean and blank and empty, has slipped.

  I see around it now, just a little bit. In my muddled mind, he is the center-point. He is the focus around which the rest of reality spins. It all hinges on him. It all depends on what he wants to do to me. I have long since abandoned the hope that a man could want nothing from me. They will always demand something. My time, my attention, my purity, my total servitude.

  And this man is a god among mortals. He is larger than life. In the blurry, muted world he still burns like a white-hot brand in the middle of the quiet chaos. Those black eyes fixated patiently on me. There is a predatory tilt to the way he stands in front of me, arms outstretched, one of them still holding my arm while the other beckons peace. His palm is turned to face me, which whispers of a truce. Maybe he does not want to kill me just yet. Maybe he is taking his time. Maybe this one likes to toy with his food before he devours it. My thoughts are slurring from one neuron to the next, incomplete beats and pauses, a Morse code binary I can’t quite tap out at the moment. Someone must have drugged me.

  “I don’t feel like myself,” I murmur, accidentally out loud. The coarseness of my own voice startles me. “I don’t sound like myself either,” I add, coughing.

  “Someone did a real number on you,” he growls.

  I try to summon the muscles needed to nod my head. It feels like gravel rolling in between the folds of my brain, so I stop. I just stare at him stupidly, mouth slightly agape. I hope he will understand me. I hope he can see the truth behind my vacant gaze. Every part of me wants to scream, this is not who I am! This is not what I’m like! Help me! But whatever poison is pumping alongside my blood in my veins has rendered me dumb. Still, I can feel my senses starting to trickle back to me through the deep haze. Smell comes first, even before touch. My nostrils burn with the acrid scent of gasoline pooling on pavement. The sickly-sweet syrup of a grape soda staining the floor inside the convenience store. The familiar chalky sensation of breathing in old dust. Who could tell what kinds of tiny parasites and bacteria make their home here, and now I am just breathing them in. My eyes flick over to the white plastic spoon on the sticky linoleum. Embarrassment hits me like a fly swatter to the eye.

  Why did I even try to fight him off? Why did I think I even could? The man before me looks like he could be an angel come to lift me to paradise or a devil sent to drag me further into hell. Either way, lift or drag, one thing is for certain: my time on earth as I have known it is over. I do not belong to myself. I do not belong to my father. And I certainly do not belong to the old man who planned to call me his bride, bought and paid for. But I cannot be a free agent. My daddy always taught me to mind my elders, mind my betters, listen to what the man has to say. If I am no longer my father’s property, then to whom do I belong?

  He regards me with a hint of concern, like he knows I’ve got the same panicked impulse as a cornered rabbit in a dark forest. It’s fight or flight, but I cannot fight this man and he has already proven that I cannot flee from him. What else is there to do, in this situation, but freeze?

  “How did I end up here?”

  The words come choking, rasping from my dry throat before I can think better of it. The man’s eyes soften, just ever so slightly, and only for a moment. But I see it. I understand it. Something wild inside of me lets itself be tamed. Only for a moment. But long enough. He isn’t going to hurt me
. Not now, at least. It’s less of a conscious assessment, more like a long-dormant instinct lifting its head to tell me this man is my only chance of safety. He is the life raft tossed to me through the storm. I would be a fool not to grab hold of him and hang on for dear life. Finally, I am grateful for his fingers wrapped around my upper arm.

  I drag in a slow, deep breath. I close my eyes and listen to my own heartbeat, isolating the thudding sound in the midst of the blaring silence. The scattered pieces of my mind start to come together, mending seams and breathing back to life. I am so deeply confused about how I got to this point, to this abandoned gas station with this dark-eyed stranger with the shiny machine and the roaring engine. But I’m drifting back to earth again. It’s starting to become clearer, more real. But with reality comes pain, and I feel a painful lurch in my gut. Hunger, twisted up with thirst and adrenaline. It’s awful, but at least it reminds me that I am alive. Maybe that’s too low of a standard for what I need to scrape by, but all we can be are the sums of our experiences, and lately my experience of life has been pretty darn traumatic.

  The man makes a move to reach for the napkins and I freeze up, tensing my body for… what? For pain? He clocks the split-second look of terror on my face and he adjusts his body language to better suit me. He straightens up his posture and relaxes his shoulders, letting his arm drop to his side. His black eyes watch me closely, almost like he’s studying me, measuring my response. I swallow down the lump in my throat and give him a subtle nod. A flex of my slim bicep to give him a go-ahead.

  Slowly, he reaches for the napkins again. This time, he grabs a handful of them and turns to offer them to me, arm outstretched. With only a moment’s hesitation, I extend my own trembling hand to accept them. I dab at my face awkwardly, my movements stiff and jerky. My whole body is so exhausted and overdrawn. My reflexes feel like they’ve rusted over. The man watches me swipe at my face half-effectively with the napkin, but to his credit, he doesn’t look at me with pity. It’s only understanding. He sees me, but he does not look down on me from above. He’s trying to do this the right way, it occurs to me. I ought to at least try and meet him halfway.