Jinx: Kings of Carnage MC

by Chelsea Camaron

  “Master Jinx,” he greets, standing and extending a hand. “I’ve been expecting you. Apollo has been on top of collections.”

  I don’t return the gesture and only give a nod in acknowledgement. I know Apollo has been on top of collections because I’ve been in touch with him. There isn’t a single player in the line of associates pushing our product that I don’t know about. I’m thorough with my job.

  He moves to the safe and retrieves the envelope I’m here for and hands it to me. “The money is all here.”

  I nod as I take the package and secure it in my back pocket. On my way to the exit, I give a subtle nod to Bouncer who has been here waiting at the bar, so he knows to follow. It was his bike I parked beside when I arrived.

  Bouncer is a Nomad in the Kings of Carnage MC. I called him to be my backup tonight because I wanted the ride from Uprising to Bama to be one I took alone. With my movement to the exit, he stands and makes his way deeper into the facility. He is off the clock, so to speak, in watching my back, so now he can indulge in his own delights for the evening.

  Bouncer and I have similar sexual desires in control and dominance. He’s the one who found this place as a perfect hideaway to move some product through. It’s been a profitable avenue for the Kings of Carnage MC for sure.

  Release.

  I’ve had it.

  Revenue.

  I’ve got it.

  Ride.

  Now I get right back to it.

  The open road under the night’s sky on my way back to Uprising and my life as a King.

  Damn, I’m one lucky son-of-a-bitch.

  One

  Jinx

  “Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.” CS Lewis – I do what is right by my code and not anyone else’s. Watch away motherfuckers, Jinx

  The night air is crisp with a slight chill as I sit out on the back deck of my house. After leaving the clubhouse, I’m still restless. Something inside me is off. I can’t explain it. I simply don’t fucking like it.

  Kings of Carnage Motorcycle Club is my life.

  Typically, I’m at the clubhouse balls deep in club ass until two or three in the morning. Only tonight, it’s midnight, and I’m already home. The appeal of sex for the sake of sex isn’t what it used to be.

  I look up to the stars, “Is this what you meant about growing up, Momma?”

  The stars don’t reply. The wind blows a gentle breeze, surrounding me with a hint of jasmine in the air reminding me of her perfume. The days pass on and the loss doesn’t get any easier. There aren’t many people who can bring me to my knees, but my mom could with one look. She’s been dead five years now, and not a single day goes by where she doesn’t cross my mind.

  With a longneck bottle in my hand, I lift the cold glass to my lips and take a long pull of my beer. Left alone in my thoughts, I can’t shake the ominous feeling that something big is on the horizon. I don’t get this wound up inside often. The unpleasant feeling is unwelcomed, and I don’t know how to shake it.

  Uprising, Georgia is a dot on a map that very few people even care to know about. My house lies on the outskirts with my property line literally up against the train station. Not a public train system but a private freight corporation. I bought this house four years ago specifically for this location. The three-bedroom, two-bathroom farmhouse with a full wraparound porch only lacks one thing … a garage.

  I plan to build one eventually, but it’s one of those things I want to do myself and I haven’t found the time. Sitting on fifteen acres settled at the back of a long dirt road, I’m all alone with only the train station behind me. No one wants to live by an active freight station, so I got the house cheap, and I like the privacy. This is a win-win for me. I’ve even considered buying the other acreage around me.

  In the quiet of the night, the only thing breaking up my thoughts is them. The party the hobos are having is obviously just beginning for the night. Apparently, they hitched their ride in on this last load and how long they will stay is undetermined. I hate this shit. People who aren’t in my circle being anywhere near me simply pisses me off. Frankly, I hate people that aren’t my people, meaning Kings. Unless it’s my Pops or a King, I don’t like them. There is no winning me over. Fuck, I barely tolerate the prospects. Until they earn those rockers, they are shit to me just like everyone else.

  My annoyance grows.

  Gazing over to the railcar closest to my yard, I see the glimmer of the lock under the starry sky. Taking another pull of my beer, I let out a sigh of relief; at least, the bastards haven’t touched my shit.

  That is their death sentence— the moment they cross the line into my world.

  The single railcar on the far track never moves. It’s a decoy. The stuff inside is only a portion of what moves through these tracks and my property. Sure, the quantities found inside are felony levels but nothing like what we really move through this town and many others. The guns are in pieces where nothing works together. Only a King knows where the other parts are hidden. This is how we like it. The drugs inside might feed the fix of a teen trying shit out, but nothing hard for the meth-heads and crackheads. Weed, acid, and supplies for the cook to make the meth, sure, but again, nothing in the mass amounts we have been running through Uprising.

  “Rail Wreckers,” a voice yells out into the quiet of the night. “We wreck the shit in our way.” My annoyance grows. Cocky motherfucker is nothing more than a wannabe badass without the balls to actually do shit.

  I shake my head thinking what a fucking stupid tag line for a bunch of immature punks. Hell, half the fuckers aren’t even legal. Acne covered teens with chips on their shoulders thinking they know life, and they don’t know shit. Running away from home, running from the problems instead of facing it and finding the right way out. To me, they’re nothing but cowards.

  “Drifter shut the fuck up,” another male calls out. Well, at least someone has enough sense to shut the dipshit from before up.

  Drifter, I think, how fucking cute. These wannabe thugs piss me off. Little nicknames they think give them some kind of street cred don’t mean shit. Definitely, someone should have used a condom the night they were conceived. Hell, at least if their dad’s would have pulled out, the DNA in these fuckers never would have been strong enough to find the egg in the precum.

  The Rail Wreckers, as they call themselves, are nothing but a bunch of modern-day hobos pretending they are badass motherfuckers, who really don’t know shit about shit.

  Sure, to live that life they’re either bat-shit crazy, stupid, or on the run. None of that makes them the tough-nuts they think they are. Cocky bastards hop train cars from one stop to the next. They tag shit with their crappy graffiti, making a mark of their territory—so they call it. Destruction of personal property is what the law calls it. Either way, it’s a waste of energy, but again, as long as the Wreckers keep to themselves, I’ll let them be. They claim to be above society’s rules. It’s just words to feed their fragile little egos. The way I see it, as an outlaw, there is a difference between conforming and defying.

  They want to defy.

  I refuse to conform.

  The difference is, I don’t purposely go out to break the law for the sake of doing something unruly. I choose to live my life by my own code, my own standards, and my own morals.

  Yes, fucking morals.

  I don’t need a cop to tell me what’s right or wrong, I know what my head and my heart believe in.

  An eye for an eye, fuck yes. Let one fucker come near what I hold dear, and I’ll end them. But beating on women, raping, selling people into any form of slavery, those lines I don’t fuck with.

  I don’t bother with petty shit like tagging bridges with spray paint or stealing food from a restaurant in the name of freedom. I work for my food, my house, my ride. See, that’s the American way, earn that shit. And I earn it … even if the lines I cross for that money don’t follow the laws of my country. I don’t steal, I work a busine
ss, albeit an illegal one, but I still have a job to do. I’m not simply breathing air and moving around from day-to-day.

  The kind of shit that will scar my soul, nope. I don’t fuck with shit that will keep me up at night haunting me. Touching anything innocent isn’t for me. I’ll kill a motherfucker and not skip a beat, but I promise anyone I kill brought that shit on. Maybe it’s my roots that prevent me from stooping to those levels in the name of a dollar. I simply refuse to ruin an innocent life for my personal gain.

  Cross me and yes, earn my wrath. There’s nothing I won’t do to avenge a wrong. To kill a man who has fucked me is earned, not done for some level of street cred like these Rail Wreckers with their bullshit initiations.

  It almost makes me laugh out loud. Back when I prospected for the Kings, things were different. Prospecting is our initiation, and it’s no walk in the park. When prospecting, one is a bitch, basically. There isn’t one single task that earns the cut. It’s a time in and time out dedication and loyalty to the brotherhood. There is no beat in, rape in, or fuck a brother’s woman way in. Every rocker is earned over a period of time, and only the officers at the table know when the prospect’s vote will come to pass. And that vote is an all-in. If one brother says no; it’s over. That’s all she wrote.

  The president at the time I prospected was Chaos’ dad, Vic. At first, he seemed to have his head on straight. Then again, hindsight is twenty-twenty, and maybe it was all a façade. I can’t go back and change it, not that I would. Every moment, the good, the bad, and the oh-so-very-ugly have brought us to where we are today.

  For me, I was a lost soul seeking a bond. The family I had was gone, not that they were blood anyway. Life had me by the balls. I had previously experienced another club but never made it beyond hang-around. They had too much internal conflict for me. I’m no-nonsense. Politics never outweigh brotherhood. Money never outweighs brotherhood. We ride together, we die together. The Kings of Carnage MC offered me a place where I am accepted as I am— both a broken man and the complete badass that I can be. The lost boy inside me felt found.

  I have my place here. It’s even better than it was when I earned those first rockers. See, shit got ugly for a while. Vic lost his mind, and the direction wasn’t right. I didn’t say much because I’m not that kind of guy. But I have to admit, back then, I was worried maybe I had made a wrong decision to patch in. Thank fuck, it didn’t last. Chaos stepped up, and I’ll never look back. Not after knowing where we could have been and seeing where we are now is so much better.

  Today, Chaos has a handle on things, and as Road Captain, I find honor amongst the brotherhood that I never imagined possible.

  That’s what these Rail Wreckers lack: honor.

  I can see the flicker through the weeds of the fire they camp around tonight. In the summer nights, they will quiet down, the Georgia humidity no doubt keeping them uncomfortable. A night like tonight, though, they want to party loud. Mother nature gives these little fuckers some comfort tonight.

  Deciding not to deal with a bunch of drunk and high fuckers, I go inside my house to shut out the world. Tomorrow, it’s time to address the issue with the conductor. He knows I don’t like any uncalculated risks. These modern-day hobos can bring unwanted attention to our set up.

  This is unacceptable.

  Pulling up to the train station, I head to the spot. A small office that runs as the hub to the freight station. Each week, I make my way here to deliver an envelope of cash to the train conductor, who then gives me the rail number and car of my goods for this shipment. Every week his payments are the same, and my boxcar is different and always in a separate location from the last. Never let the shit move the same route twice. It’s a logistical nightmare for an outsider to sort out where the shit is coming from and where it’s going after it’s offloaded. I do this shit on purpose.

  The conductor sits in his chair eating a sandwich as I walk into the office building. Four cream walls with a phone plugged into the wall with a table in the middle of the room. The back wall has a single desk with an old desktop computer that I swear is from the eighties. Whatever keeps this place off the radar works for me.

  This particular train station is freight only. Seclusion is optimal in my business. With the tracks running through Uprising, well, this is perfect for the businesses in Atlanta to get their products in a cost-effective manner. For me, this is the best way to move my merchandise without any suspicion into what could be in the cars. There are less stops for each route, and no weigh checks at the state lines like when running shit in trucks. The DEA and law enforcement agencies have checks, of course, but since the trains run on a schedule, the agencies tend to follow a pattern in their investigations. Plus, Sly being the man he is, he secured us the intel to know when and where each check of a train will happen.

  I pull the envelope from my cut and lay it on the table in front of the man wearing blue coveralls and a soot on his face. He retrieves a paper from his front pocket and slides it to me.

  Without a word spoken between us, I snag the paper, taking a look at the information, but remaining in place, when I would normally already be on my way out of the door.

  Efficient.

  Effective.

  This is how I like it. I don’t need to have some bullshit conversation where he asks me how I’m doing when I know he doesn’t give a shit, just as much as I don’t give a fuck about his day. Business is business. This is a transaction, and then we move on. Typically, I would walk right back out the door without the need for a conversation.

  Except today, there is no simple exchange. We have a problem.

  I shoot the information in a text to Sly who waits on the property with North in a full size blacked out van so we can load up.

  “Chuck,” I say his name and watch as he lifts his head, no doubt to meet my stare. With my sunglasses on, he can’t read my expression.

  “Jinx,” he replies with a crack in his voice. “Is there a problem?”

  I shake my head, “Not yet, but there could be.”

  He drops his half-eaten sandwich to his plate as his face pales. “What is it?”

  “Rail Wreckers are back. Told you last time, that shit doesn’t touch my shit.”

  He’s the one to shake his head now. “Jinx, I can’t control those kids. They got nowhere to go. Most ain’t got no family. They don’t get into the boxcars that are yours, I make sure before I pull out those are loaded and locked up tight. No one touches Kings merch.”

  Aw, isn’t he fucking cute feeling sorry for the assholes. I don’t give a fuck about their lack of a home or a job, that’s not my problem, that’s on them. My sympathy simply doesn’t exist. “I want them gone.”

  “It’s not that simple, Jinx.”

  I don’t repeat myself. Frankly, having to restate anything pisses me off almost as much as a case of blue balls. “You got twenty-four hours, Chuck. It’s them or you.”

  I don’t wait for him to respond or try to negotiate. I leave the office and get back to business because in the end, everything is about the Kings for me.

  Making my way to the cargo car, I mentally start breaking down the order. One pallet is cocaine. A brick is one kilo, a kilo earns roughly twenty-thousand dollars on the street. A pallet is worth about ten million if we just sold it. But the power in supplying it to rivals and gangs gives us an upper-hand at all times. So, not only is the white powder our biggest profit, it’s also our easiest item to trade. Once someone snorts, smokes, or shoots the shit, it’s gone. They don’t pay, then it’s an easy marker to the Kings. Sometimes those markers are worth more than any amount of cash.

  The pallet of guns in this car, well, all AR-15s. While we will strip the guns and keep half for our armory, the other portion gets sold to the street. There is also a pallet of ammunition. A pallet of batteries, a half-pallet of pharmaceutical supplies that will be used to manufacture meth, and the final pallet of non-perishable food will be distributed to the food bank in the upper east side wh
ere the people line up each week for a paper bag of food that will hold them over for another week, but only if they are one of the precious few to get the goods. Since finding out about the shortage in supplies, the Kings have been dropping these off anonymously every week to help serve more people in our community.

  There isn’t a single item in this order that doesn’t have a value of some sort. As I approach the train car, I pull my gloves from my back pocket and put them on. At the doors, I retrieve the key to the lock and get the doors open. North immediately jumps up and begins to cut into the shrink wrap as Sly makes his way into the fold. We have a system, the three of us, and it’s something I swear we could do in our sleep.

  If Sly or North can’t make it to help me, Bash or Chaos step in. Bash is the club VP, and while he and I work a lot of deals together, I prefer he stay close to the Prez. We’re all better together than alone. Safety in numbers and all that bullshit.

  Getting the shit offloaded into the van, we work quietly. Sly will get the items distributed appropriately. The coke will go out to the dealers Bash and I work with, so we can earn our money back, the guns to the armory until Chaos strikes whatever deal comes next to sell them or trade them. The shit for the meth will go to the cooks, the food to the community, and within a few hours, I’ll be sitting in the clubhouse with some club ass on my lap and a beer in my hand.

  I live a damn good life. Even in the chaos, it somehow gives me a calm inside.

  After all, I’m a motherfucking King.

  Two

  Talia

  “One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” Billboard sign – I don’t want to relive my life even in memories, Talia