Truck Stopped: Satan's Devils MC #11

by Manda Mellett

  We were all surprised that Heart popped the question, he’d always been so adamant he’d only ever have one wife. But he’d changed his mind after visiting Crystal’s grave for the first time three years after her death. It had given him closure.

  He’d asked, and apparently Marcia had told him she was pregnant with yet another miracle baby at the same time.

  Today’s the day they’re tying the knot, and all the club members are going to be there for him. It will only be a reminder that my husband is not.

  “I thought you could come with me. I’m hardly dressed to go on the back of Viper’s bike.”

  “You look lovely,” I remark, sincerely. She does. “I was going to go with a prospect…”

  “Come with me,” she says quickly. “I know you’ll be missing Truck. Stick with me and Viper, we’ll keep you company.”

  I’m not certain, we’re not exactly bosom buddies.

  She suddenly grins widely. “We owe you.”

  What?

  “For your advice. I’ve found I like mint.”

  She’s totally lost me. My brow furrows, then, I howl with laughter remembering the advice I’d given her. Guess Viper’s getting his blow jobs now. That would explain why he’s grateful.

  The wedding goes smoothly for a bunch of raucous bikers. Amy looks beautiful as a bridesmaid, and little Isabel takes her role as a flower girl seriously. Jacob’s a ringbearer and Sam, as matron of honour, stands to the side holding Alexis. Marcia looks so happy and beautiful it makes me tearful, but as Sandy sniffs too and hands me a tissue, I realise everyone will think I’m just being sentimental, while the truth is I’m missing my man so much I’m hurting.

  Twenty years in the future – Drummer

  “You say Truck and Allie were the darkest days, Drum. I think you’re wrong.”

  “Dragged the club down for well over a year, Peg. Lived everyday seeing that girl go through shit that would drag anyone down. As for Truck, we didn’t know what the fuck was going on, it was hard to get word in or out of that prison.”

  “I hear you, but what about Heart?”

  I think back for a moment. Heart’s ended up with four good kids and a wife he adores, and who makes a fucking good old lady. Tend to forget she was once a cop, and that we weren’t always as fond of her as we are now.

  “You’re right,” I tell him, after a moment, as I dredge up memories of Heart not always being as happy as he is today. “Crystal, his first wife, was killed. He’d been in a coma himself and missed the funeral.”

  “We were planning his at the time.”

  Again, I nod. That he’d come around was the best fucking news we’d heard. Trouble was, he’d come back a different man. A man who hadn’t wanted to live.

  “He’d tried to get us to take him out.”

  He had. Done something so bad we couldn’t have him in the club. “I sent him out on the road for six months.”

  “He nearly didn’t return.”

  “Marcia was his lifeline.”

  “I worried about him all the time, Drum. We’d had no contact for months until Marcia told us he was in danger. Do you remember going to LA to rescue him?”

  Do I. Fuck. I bark a laugh. “Marcia shouldn’t have come with us, but remember that rat bike she had?”

  Peg snorts. “Fuckin’ bike looked like something dragged out of a scrapyard. But it went like a bomb, I’ll give it that.”

  “Marcia brought Heart back to us.”

  “Remember the wedding? Took three years for him to get his head out of his ass and marry her.”

  “Yeah.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Truck…

  There’s barely enough room in my cell to stretch, but I do push ups, well, mainly using my right arm, but taking the opportunity to keep building up the strength in my left. Won’t be any help to my baby if I can’t hold her. I do sit ups, a hundred and more at a time. I exercise until my body is screaming and I’m exhausted.

  I try to tune out the sound of people crying out from other cells around me, repeating the mantra in my head. My woman and baby need me. I can’t give up.

  I’ve always been a man of action, playing any sport where I was invited onto a team, shooting balls if there was no one around but myself, joining the Army, then the fire service. Until I was injured, I’d never sat around and been lazy.

  Maybe if I hadn’t met Allie, if she hadn’t drawn me back to the club, if I hadn’t had rediscovered the delights of riding, I’d be better placed to handle this shit. But she had. If she hadn’t, I’d probably not be in prison at all. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have her and a baby.

  Solitary is bad. A small cell, and hour out each day, that’s all, and even then with only uncommunicative guards around me. I use my free time to exercise my legs, my goal not to lose any of my hard-fought-for mobility.

  It would have been dreadful enough were I not haunted by the fact I’d failed the woman I’d promised to be there for, knowing how ill she was, and all because she was growing my baby inside her.

  As the days pass and the weeks go by, hope fades that I’ll ever get out of this cell. I hadn’t wanted to come to prison at all, but the thought of being in the general population now is far more welcome than I’d ever have thought. Playing chess with Hawker or talking bikes with Cap, those seem like freedoms far beyond me.

  A guard let slip something one day when he sneered at me about being a hero firefighter. Seems they don’t like a public servant gone bad, I’d crossed a line and become a criminal. That, as well as the protection of my remaining sight, a reason to keep me incarcerated within a prison.

  There’s always a light on. Always guards checking you’ve not managed to slit your own throat, days and nights pale into insignificance. It would be hard to count days even if I was inclined to. At first I try, scratching marks on a wall, but even then, losing count.

  My gut feel it was far too long, but also, far too soon, before Allie had the baby, the girl she’d decided to call Hope. Yeah, well, she has faith, where I’ve got nothing.

  The prison got the news to me, and I was allowed the privilege of a phone call. They’d been scant after that. One I’d used to call Drummer and warn him to watch out for her.

  I’ve nothing to do but sit here and ruminate on what’s going on in the outside world, a place I can barely imagine any more. My whole existence is these four walls which seem to close in more every day.

  My mind conjures up images to haunt me. Allie being unable to cope with Hope, or of her feeling like her mother and resenting her. I don’t even know if she’s breastfeeding or not, whether she’s taking care of herself, let alone the baby. Worst of all, I wonder whether now she’s not pregnant any longer, whether her past needs have returned to her, and, unable to wait for me, she’s warming someone else’s bed. I’m only too well aware of prison rights. No one at the compound would probably think any the worse of her…

  “Stop that!”

  The command roared as the door opens and guards enter. I hadn’t been aware I’ve been beating my head against the wall until they pull me away and I see the bloody imprint left by my forehead. For that I’ve earned four hours in a straitjacket until I come back to my senses. As if being unable to move will help me do that.

  I’m going slowly mad, I know it. Even if the guards speak to me, I’m no longer able to respond in anything other than grunts.

  Some sense of self-preservation, the knowledge I’ll eventually get out, even though my brain can’t process the notion, keeps me going. Keeps me putting that insufficient and tasteless food into my mouth, and drinking the water given to me even though I feel my humanity has been lost.

  Days pass, though I barely notice, spending my time curled on the mattress or huddled in the corner with my knees drawn up and my head bowed. My will to exercise gone.

  Punishment within punishment without reprieve and no contact with the outside world. My head-banging attack had lost me that privilege, and they refused to give it
back. Speaking to my wife had apparently upset me.

  It’s not talking to her that’s doing that.

  Days turn into weeks and weeks into months, the monotony driving me crazy. The thoughts in my head, envisioning Allie or Hope dying or dead. Surely they would have told me?

  All I can picture is the last time I saw her, life leeching out of her as she struggled with a pregnancy I wish she’d ended. I wouldn’t be here if she had.

  She’s had my baby. I’m a father.

  But here, in this cell, I don’t feel like a dad. A true father wouldn’t have abandoned the mother of his baby and left her to face everything alone. A real dad wouldn’t have lost his temper and ended up here. A man who deserved a wife and child wouldn’t slowly be going mad, wouldn’t dread picking up those responsibilities, when he’s lost the will to live.

  When they eventually come to get me, I walk like an automaton out of that hell called solitary.

  The noises of prison life startle me. The sounds of inmates calling out and rattling the bars of their cells, doors clanging loudly overwhelm me.

  I’ve learned to hide what’s inside me, so when my body shakes I make an effort to control it.

  The elation I should be feeling is missing, fear of what’s waiting outside the prison gates terrifies me.

  The sunlight’s so bright it hurts my eyes. I stand, blinking, feeling a warm breeze blowing around me, fresh air that doesn’t carry the stale sweat of men and the scent of disinfectant. I breathe in deeply, and then again.

  I’m free, but I don’t know what to make of it.

  “Truck.”

  I startle at the sound of my name and at the voice, and turn my head to the left. I hadn’t seen the men and bikes waiting.

  I don’t move toward him, I let him come to me, unsure of my reaction. Pleasure at seeing my brothers? I grasp inside trying to come up with the right emotion. Back in my cell I’d seriously thought I’d made the decision to leave the club. If I hadn’t been flying their colours that day, I wouldn’t have been incarcerated the way that I had. It was my association with them that had made the judge look at me so unfavourably and sent me to the penitentiary rather than the county lock up.

  But they’re my family. They’re all I’ve got.

  If I left, I’d have to make a home for me and Allie.

  How the fuck would I do that? For a start, who would employ an ex-felon? If I’d had access to a computer inside I could at least have tried to set myself up with a job, but I hadn’t. Now, it seems, the club is the only option I’ve got.

  Doesn’t have to be forever. Treat it as a place to lay my head until I can set up somewhere else.

  Drummer is in front of me. “Brother.”

  I reply with a nod, and when he pulls me in for a man hug, slapping my back, I can do nothing but accept it though I stiffen.

  He pulls back, and hands me the item he’s holding. My cut.

  It looks strange, alien and unfamiliar. A memory seeps in of how I used to yearn to feel its weight again, now it seems more like it’s a trap that’s going to snap its jaws shut on me.

  We both stand, the sun blazing down on us. Drummer holding out the leather, me looking at it like a snake that’s going to strike.

  I look into his eyes and see them brimming with sympathy.

  Don’t need your pity.

  What does wearing a garment matter? I all but snatch it from his hands and slip it on. It sits heavy on my shoulders, feeling foreign.

  “Come, Truck,” he says gently.

  I remember belatedly to ask, “How’s Allie doing? How’s Hope?” My wife and my kid, though I feel nothing like husband or father.

  “Good brother, time to see for yourself.”

  Time? I suppose it is. But the thought terrifies me. How can I pick up and become a husband again, much less a dad? How can I be anything to anyone when I have to remind myself to keep breathing?

  I follow Drummer to my bike, the one that had been modified with an electric gear change, idly noting they must have brought it in the crash truck which is still waiting by the dozen bikes that are there. I keep my head down, not wanting to acknowledge anyone as they might try and engage me in conversation.

  I pause before mounting it, half fearing I’ve forgotten how to ride, but when I swing my leg over the saddle, my hands automatically go to the handlebars, and I get the bike upright and kick the stand up without it being a conscious thought in my head.

  Drummer’s murmuring to Peg, then he comes up to me.

  “You ride alongside me, Truck. At the head of the pack.”

  I shrug. His unusual offer strikes me as odd, but I’m glad I won’t be in the middle of the bikes, I’m not sure how well I’ll handle the ride after all this time.

  He gets on his own Harley, then circles his hand above his head. The thunderous roar of all the bikes firing up goes right through me, causing a pain behind my eyelids. But I add to the noise when I start mine as well.

  Then we’re off, Drummer positioning himself on my right side where I can see him.

  The vibration seems strange yet familiar. My gear changes are automatic as if my hands are controlled by an auto-pilot in my brain. Likewise my balance as I lean when cornering, not having to consciously remember how to ride as we travel roads I recognise.

  Until, finally but all too soon, we arrive at the compound.

  Where I’m expected to greet my wife.

  Wife? She feels more like a stranger. We’ve been parted longer than we were together, and I’m no longer the man she married.

  Twenty years in the future – Drummer

  “Fuck, Peg. Do you remember when Truck left the penitentiary?”

  “Do I? Prez. Who could forget that.”

  I gaze into the sunset, watching the golden orb slowly disappearing behind the mountains. “He was about as broken as any man I’ve ever seen.”

  “You got that right.” Peg’s also staring into the distance. “We’d taken his bike with us, but when he walked out, I had doubts he’d be able to ride it.”

  “Hunched over, a shadow of his former self.”

  “He’d let his hair grow, and he had a beard. They either didn’t allow razors in solitary, or he’d given up caring.”

  I grin slightly at the memory. “Trouble was, he had so many bald patches, his hair was all tufts.”

  Peg lifts his chin. “Allie shaved it right off. She left the beard though.”

  I notice him finger his own, now so mottled with grey, it’s hard to remember what colour his hair originally was.

  My hands brush through the scruff covering my own chin. “Girls like beards.” Well, Sam certainly does.

  “Girls?” he huffs. “No longer that. They’ve grown old alongside us, Drum.”

  “Time’s aged us all, Peg.”

  “It moves on whether we want it to or not, and that’s what Truck needed. Time to remember how to live again.”

  I slam my hand down on the side of my chair. “What they did to him was barbaric.” I don’t need to tell the sergeant-at-arms, he already knows, but I do anyway. “They gave him the maximum sentence for a first offence, and then kept him caged as if he was an animal. That’s what they turned him into when he came out.”

  “When you handed him his cut, he didn’t know what to do with it.”

  Chapter Forty

  Allie…

  I thought this day would never come. Now it has, I’m filled with a mixture of dread and excitement. My man is coming home, and I’m terrified. What if I’m not the woman he left? Certainly I’m not physically. I’ve regained my weight and added more on top, my stomach has not gone back to being flat, and it’s criss-crossed with silvery stretch marks.

  Mentally? I’ve been through hell and back, but with the support of my therapist and the Devil’s—both men and women—I’ve come out the other side. I’ll always need to be wary. Some things come out of the blue to trigger a panic attack, but at least I know the signs and how to deal with it.

&n
bsp; And I’ve got Hope, my… our… baby, who’s yet to meet her dad.

  I’ve gone through all manner of feelings over the past months, from sadness Truck hasn’t yet seen her, to resentment he’d left me to deal with everything alone.

  What’s it going to be like when he meets Hope? I’m worried about her reaction. She’s going through a phase where she doesn’t like strangers. Is she going to cry?

  Christ, I hope not. That would upset him, wouldn’t it? But he can’t be expecting her to greet him as her father, not when she sees him for the first time. She has to learn to trust him. Will he resent me for the relationship I have built with her?

  For months I’d anticipated this day with longing, thinking I’d feel nothing but happiness I was going to see my man, but now all I can think about are the problems which lie in wait for me. To pretend everything will be rosy will just be putting my head in the sand.

  My dream is that Truck will walk in, throw his arms around me, tell me he’s never going to leave me again. We’ll play with Hope, put her to bed, then make love. I’ve almost forgotten the feeling of him inside me.

  I’ve got the implant now, and will make him wear a condom, at least until he has that promised vasectomy. No more kids for me, I shudder. Never again. The thought of falling pregnant is enough to trigger a panic attack, the trauma too great for me to ever put myself through that again.

  My dream won’t come true, I already know that. It’s not just Truck who has things he needs to work through. What if Truck wants it too soon?

  I look at Hope, playing with a toy that makes sounds when she presses the buttons. My little girl is so precious to me. I don’t need her to have a sibling. After all, she’s got cousins all around. My mom hated me. I may have had those thoughts to start with, but now I can’t understand how they can last a lifetime. Hope is a miracle to me—a beautiful, healthy baby, worth everything I went through. I just can’t put myself through that again.

  Yeah, I was thinking about Truck. My mind circles back to how I hope he’ll greet me, but after last night’s conversation with Drummer, I know I have to wind my expectations down.