by Chuck Rogers
Not smart assholes.
I peered in through some not quite closed shutters.
I counted six assholes plus a guest.
Very ugly feelings surfaced in me.
All six wore cuts. That's a denim or leather vest with the clubs colors on it to you, citizen.
A Filipino looking guy who was all pecs and biceps sporting a military high-and-tight haircut sat on overstuffed chair like he was king. A fat-ass with a ratty ponytail and even shittier beard took up most of a sofa. A skinny guy with thick glasses and equally poor hair sat next to him.
There was a girl.
Lanky, leather pants, her leather jacket was fringed and she was inked to hell and gone. Bob-with-bangs of the apocalypse dark hair. She was a b-movie stereotype of a hot biker chick. Only she wasn't someone's old lady. She was wearing colors and she had a .45 strapped to one thigh and the biggest Bowie knife I'd ever seen strapped to the other.
The other two were almost bookends. One was a big bald white guy and the other was a big bald black guy. The only real difference between them besides skin color was the white guy had the traditional biker Van Dyke beard and the black guy had a chinstrap going. You might as well start singing Ebony and Ivory.
I'll give them credit.
This club was inclusive.
Of course human fucking evil knew no race or gender boundaries.
The music pounded.
They were all drinking, smoking and having fun.
The guest of honor was a girl. She looked to be in her twenties. Pretty brunette with big blue eyes. She was naked save for the contusions, abrasions, lacerations and the dog collar around her neck. The evening's entertainment was blind man's bluff.
Only the girl wasn't wearing a blindfold.
She was sobbing. Her hands reaching out sightlessly before her while what I assumed were the True Sons and Daughters of Ged laughed.
She was blind.
I remembered what Ted had told me about anyone who saw the beam had gotten their retinas burned out. Ebony and Ivory both had cigars. The girl recoiled as Ebony blew smoke in her face. As she backed up Ivory took a couple of quick puffs to the get the cigar's cherry going and he goosed her with it way down low. The girl screamed and fell.
This was good for whoops and laughs and all around.
Speaking of being burned, I noted she had been branded on her left shoulder with the letters VAE.
This would bear later investigation.
Ebony kicked her and told her to get up.
She sobbed and begged.
They laughed and burned her back to her feet. The game started again.
You don't want to know the kind of thoughts that rose up in me.
This is your idea of a hot Saturday night, kids?
Let me show you mine.
In a minute . . .
I kept my shit under control and finished my walk around the perimeter. Two more sentries and a car blocked the Lodge's front gate. Four motorcycles, two were hogs, two dirt bikes, and a 2018 Ford F-150 Raptor pick-up in poor-man's paint store camouflage sat parked in the lot. I decided I wanted the truck.
I dropped to my heels in the dark.
I lurked.
I asked myself questions.
Was this a good idea? There would be the repercussions. They were stripping entire neighborhoods and sending the spoils back by the truckload. Alice was right. That implied organization, and a large one. Lake Malibu was the last pocket before they hit the hill and after that it was all Malibu until they reached the Pacific. There was every reason to believe this was Ged's March to the Sea. So it was going to be war anyways. Were these assholes expanding out of LA? There was rumor that Los Angeles was a free fire zone with possible renegade units of soldiers being the biggest bulls of the woods.
Maybe these assholes had been pushed out? Maybe the little towns of the Santa Monica Mountains were the greener pastures. These assholes weren't soldiers. Maybe a few short, savage guerilla actions on the Malibu Lake line would make them keep their predations north.
Did any of that matter?
I thought about the blind girl.
I thought about some helpless people I'd known in the past.
One of which had been me.
Fuck yes.
This was going down.
Turn the music up Gedheads.
Let the bodies hit the floor.
I swapped out the dual-purpose grenade for an anti-personnel round.
I made a tactical decision to kill the members in the Lodge first. It'd take me about fifteen minutes to stalk and secure all three sentry points. I had no idea when or if they had a check-in schedule. If any of them missed a check in the alarm would go up.
But they didn't have radios, and I had a feeling they only checked in if there was something to report.
And the death metal at ear-damage decibels in the Lodge was sound cover beyond price.
I went around to the kitchen door. It took the small Puukko knife and ten seconds to breech security. I ran a sweep through the Lodge room by room. Alice had told me there were a couple of suites. Someone might be getting some rack time and I didn't want any surprises.
Everyone in residence was enjoying the Viking-invader fun and games in the ballroom.
I couldn't afford a firefight. I really couldn't afford to let any of them get off a shot. This was going to have to be done up close and personal at 6:1 odds, but they were at zero situational awareness and the music was blaring.
I flicked the selector to full auto and walked in shooting.
I shot Ebony and Ivory first because they were standing. Ebony was facing me and managed an eye-bug before I put three rounds in his chest. Ivory was facing the other way and he got a burst between the shoulder blades. Their leader started to rise and sat back down with three in the back of the head.
Then it got dicey.
The girl rose and drew her .45 faster than any woman I've ever seen. Faster than any man I'd ever seen. Fastest draw I'd ever seen period. If I'd blinked I would have died in the dark, but I had the drop on her. My burst sent her pistol and a couple of her fingers spinning away and her head snapped back. Skinny guy made it to his feet but his rifle was leaned against a table. He got one hand on it. My first burst spun him and my second put him down.
Fat-ass was not proficient at vaulting out of low couches. My first burst hit him in the back. He managed to put a hand on the back of the couch and draw a pistol as my second burst hit him in the chest and shoulder. That slowed him way down and my third burst put two in his chest and a flyer hit him the throat.
My carbine racked open on a smoking, empty chamber.
Fat-ass collapsed.
Miss Quickdraw M'Geddon was on her feet. Her right forefinger and most of her middle were gone. Blood poured down the right side of her face. She drew that great big Bowie knife. With her left hand. Like she did it every day. The knife had a wickedly clipped point and saw-teeth on the spine that raked backwards like a row of shark fins. I've only met two ambidextrous people in my life, and a girl who shot with her right and drew blades with her left walked with some pretty big medicine. Up close and despite the blood she looked a bit tribal.
I shook my head. "Drop it."
I never like killing women.
Plus, I had questions.
She was full-patch Gedhead.
She had answers.
"Shot your clip, fuckface." The great big blade glittered in the work lights. "Now we're gonna Armageddon it."
Armageddon it . . .
Okay, Sons of Ged, Armageddon it, got it.
I shook my head a final time. "I'll let you live. Last chance."
Maybe she believed that theory about a knife beating a gun within twenty-one feet. I don't know. I told you. I hate knife fights and I didn't have time to reload. There was the PPK she didn't know about.
A second gun is always faster than reloading.
She moved snake-strike fast.
I shot her in the face
with the 40mm. She took all twenty #4 buckshot in a pattern that would fit in a tea saucer.
Everything above the lower lip went flying back in a wet cloud.
She flopped back with a thud. Her heart's last disconnected beats gushed and spurted all over the floor. I stared down at her corpse. I watched the spreading pool.
I'd killed women.
Call me sexist, but it always left me queasy.
The death metal pounded on.
Except for a few strings and bits I'd erased her from the limbic region up. I reloaded the M-4. I shucked a fresh grenade into the launcher. I looked at the mostly headless True Daughter of Ged and couldn't help seeing Line laying naked on my bathroom tiles with the top of her skull open to the recessed lighting.
I threw up.
I threw up until every last bit of undigested possum was gone and then I threw up bile.
Hadn't done that in a long time.
I straightened up shaking like a dog.
There was a bottle of shitty tequila close to hand and I took a big swig. I took a deep breath around it and swished it between my teeth until it burned out the taste of puke. I spat that out and followed that with a big slug and swallowed.
Suck on that Benedict Arnold belly.
I had shit to attend to.
There were still six sentries.
The girl whimpered on the floor awaiting whatever new horror was about to befall her. "Please . . ."
I took a knee beside her. "Hey."
She flinched. "Who's there?"
"Me. I'm on your side. They're all dead."
"All of them?"
"Yeah."
"Including the girl?"
I was glad she couldn't see the look on my face. "Yeah."
"She was the worst," It was terrifying to see the thousand yard stare on blind person. "And her sister."
I didn't want to imagine.
"They like cutting."
I changed the subject. "Are you local?"
"I don't know." She shook her head helplessly. "Where am I now?"
"You're in Agoura Hills. By the lake."
"I'm from Oak Park. They brought me along for . . ." She broke into fresh tears.
Oak Park was north of Agoura Hills. I was getting a feeling the Ventura corridor through the Santa Monica Mountains was the biker Happy Hunting Grounds.
"What's your name?"
"Penny."
"Penny, my name is Frame. I need you to be quiet like a mouse. I'm going to go take care of the sentries. Then you and me are out of here. I'll take you to my friend Alice." I removed Penny's dog collar. The flesh of her throat was raw and torn underneath. She'd been yanked around a lot. "Who are these assholes again?"
She spat the words. "The Sons of Ged."
I found Penny's clothes piled in the corner and stashed her in one of the suites.
I went and killed the sentries.
Six lookouts.
Six bursts.
1-2, 1-2, 1-2.
They were looking the wrong way and I crept right up behind them. They never heard me coming and the gate, the access road and the bridge were too far away from each other for the Sons of Ged to hear each other die. I stood over the dead bridge sentries and stared up into the lightshow.
The sun would be rising soon.
The sun always rose too soon and night always fell too fast these days.
My nice quiet recon had turned into a massacre.
You got invested again, Frame-o.
And what does that ever get you?
Fucked.
Oh, well. The ramifications would come. Right now I had a lot of work to do.
I put Penny in the Raptor and drove her to Alice's.
The sun was already starting to come up as I got back to the Lodge and got busy. Alice put Penny in a bed and insisted on coming along. The extra hands helped. She threw up at what she saw in the ballroom, but it didn't make me feel any better about myself.
We stripped the bodies. I examined the girl's vest. Alice frowned. "What are you doing?"
"A club member's patches can tell you a lot about them, kind of like a Russian gangster's tattoos tell a story."
We peered at the back. The top patch or 'rocker' was the name of the club.
SONS OF GED
Kinda ripping off everyone's favorite FX original series, but I liked it.
The center patch was the club's logo. The Sons of Ged flew planet Earth being split apart by a giant thunderbolt.
It was a good logo.
The bottom rocker was usually your chapter or what location your chapter hailed from. This one read:
QUOD RELIQUUM EST NOSTRA
Alice squinted at it. "You don't happen to read Latin do you?"
I didn't, but just about every major unit and ship in the Navy had a Latin motto, Semper fi, 'Always faithful' for us Marines, and my Spanish had expanded exponentially under Lalli's hand, literally and figuratively.
"What remains is ours."
"Jesus."
I knew what Penny's brand meant. VAE was Latin. From the ancient Roman phrase Vae victis .
Woe to the conquered.
I flipped the vest over and read the front.
Things got a little non-standard but I put on my detective hat and got to deciphering.
What? I didn't tell you I was a licensed private detective in the state of California? Or that after I had failed to make officer and got WIA'ed (Wounded In Action) out of RECON ended up an MP?
That was the path that took me to Leavenworth.
That's a story for another day.
She had a "13" patch on the right shoulder. That was for the letter M, thirteenth letter in the alphabet. It could stand for marijuana, meth or sometimes just motorcycle. Sometimes it stood for mother, and that meant you were an original member from the club's actual founding.
That was pretty big wampum to be riding with.
She had a 1% patch on the left shoulder but it was odd. The patch was a big blue letter 'T' with a smaller red 'D' over it and a smaller black 1% superimposed over that. I was thinking the 'T' was true blue from that "True Sons" stuff the bridge sentries were talking about. The 'D' was daughter and 1% was from the old statement that 99% of all motorcycle riders were honest, god-fearing citizens. That had inspired all real club members and a lot of wannabes to put 1% patches on their vests.
Her road name patch read DEL.
Probably Delilah?
A lot of clubs also have title or office patches.
Del's read KILLER.
That wasn't good.
Her single year patch was 01A
First year of the Apocalypse.
I ran a quick check of the other vests. They all read to type. The skinny guy with glasses had an office patch that read HUNTER. Fat-ass had an ENFORCER patch. The Filipino guy's road name was CHIMPY. Chimpy wore sergeant's stripes, that meant a club chapter's sergeant-at-arms, and beneath that he had ENFORCER, KILLER and SCOUT patches.
I'd killed someone important.
The other thing they all had in common now they were naked was each one had a simplified world-being-broken-by-lighting symbol branded onto their right arms.
These assholes were serious.
We loaded the serious, dead assholes into one of the SUV's.
Alice followed in the truck as I drove to the top of the lake and sent it over the dam with the windows open. It pained me but I drove both hogs up to the dam and sent them over the side. The other two SUV's went in as well. They'd probably show in summer when the lake level lowered, but I expected this war to be finished one way or the other before then.
The sun was over the yardarm.
I started getting paranoid with very good reason. The Sons of Ged had no com gear and didn't seem to have mastered smoke signals. The Saratoga Hills and Agoura Hills proper beyond were only a few miles apart. If I were in charge I'd be sending someone on a bike every morning and evening to check in. Or if I were HQ I would routinely send people to check up.
Regardless, trucks would be coming soon for the daily looting and burning run.
Speaking of loot.
I parked the truck pointing down slope, made a ramp out of a park bench and managed to roll both dirt bikes up in the bed. I wanted them. The Geds' gasoline, gear, weapons, their six cases of MRE's, liquor, coffee, clothes, cigarettes and anything else useful went into the back of the truck too.
Clock was ticking.
I looked at the bloodbath in the ballroom.
Leave it as a warning?
Naw.
Alice held back tears but she helped me burn the Lodge to the ground.
Let Ged's crown rest upon a troubled brow as he contemplated scorched earth and MIA's.
The Lake was the boundary. You went past it? You entered the Malibu Triangle and you disappeared.
I'd see to it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
If you can't beat them . . .
ALICE AND I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT about extraction.
I lost.
I told Alice to take Penny, the horses and go.
I'd cover their six and follow in the truck. Alice pointed out Penny was blind, wasn't in any shape to ride a horse much less knew how.
I told Alice to take Penny, the truck and go.
Alice said she knew how to manage a string of loaded horses and I didn't. She knew the paths, I didn't, and the truck couldn't go there. She said she knew there was a trail where yahoos went four-wheeling that led to the park, but she'd never been on it and had never driven a 4 x 4 off-road. Even if it was washed out or I snapped an axle I could put Penny over my shoulder and carry her out and she couldn't. Whoever got over the hill first would wait for the other at the ranger station in the park.
You try to be a gentleman . . .
Alice didn't wait for me to agree. She threw a few suitcases of personals into the back of the truck, loaded her horses and rode south up into the hills. Penny seemed a little better for some sleep and some possum hash. She and I drove to the top of the Malibu Lake Overlook. I watched the Malibou Lake Lodge finish smoldering down to the ground through my Steiner 10x50 binoculars. We waited for the SOG response. Penny stretched out in the grass. She didn't seem to want to talk but she seemed to want to listen. So I told her about Face. That made her smile and she wanted to know who would name a dog Face and why.