The Black Goat Motorcycle Club

by Murphy, Jason

  "He’s coming," Castle whispered. "The thin one is Harlan. And the woman goes by Panzer."

  "Panzer?" Hank asked.

  "Yeah," Castle said, his voice breaking. "We're dead."

  He scurried over to the crate, which still sat out in the middle of the floor. It had escaped the hail of bullets relatively unharmed. Castle tore his black suit coat off, cast it aside, and threw his weight into the crate, attempting to slide it across the floor. It barely budged. He groaned against it.

  Hank looked up. The bikers were halfway to the ER, chatting casually and laughing, as if they'd just gone for coffee.

  Bullet appeared at the end of the hall and rushed over to Castle and helped him push. She was lithe, but strong. The crate began to slide. "Where?" she asked, the muscles in her neck straining.

  "There," Castle nodded to a tipped over bed in the dark corner.

  They pushed. The crate inched along.

  "Rudy!" Elena shouted.

  The boy sprinted across the room to help. Fighting for every inch, the three of them pushed it behind the bed. Hank looked back to the barrier. Gideon stood on the other side, smiling at him. He motioned to the haphazard wall of junk and took a puff of his cigarillo.

  "What's all this now?"

  They weren't even carrying their guns. Hank stood and raised his hands in surrender anyway. "Whatever you want, it's yours. We just want this over with."

  Panzer stepped forward and blocked out the sun. She raised her massive boot and planted it hard on the fallen medicine cabinet. With a burst of crunching metal, it slid a good ten feet out of the way, clearing a path for them. The cabinet must have weighed five hundred pounds. Hank couldn't move in time. It clipped him at the knee and sent him tumbling to the side. Bullet was there to catch him. Rudy stayed behind her. Castle was farther back and out of the way, glock trained on Gideon. Gideon looked around at everyone, still smiling. He noticed Castle and pointed at him, his finger like a gun.

  "There's our thieving little operative."

  Hank could see the piece in Castle's hand tremble, could see the sweat on his brow cut through the caked on plaster dust and leave a path of pale skin.

  "I have to commend you. What you pulled, Agent, took a substantial amount of bravery. Or fathomless ignorance. Maybe both. I suspect that your partner, were he still in once piece, would wager that it was ignorance. Or hubris. All three?"

  Gideon spoke with a flourish, gesticulating with his long fingers as if conducting a symphony. He wrapped his cane on the floor for emphasis. "And I believe you're also in possession of an associate of ours? Sawed Off? You here with us, amigo?"

  He didn’t raise his voice. He just lowered his head as he spoke and then listened.

  The mysterious patient called out from his room, "Right here, boss. Having a glorious time!"

  Hank’s tenuous grasp on the situation unraveled. The man who Whitey had brought in dead couldn’t have heard Gideon speak. He was across the hospital. It didn’t make sense. A few feet away, Bullet realized it, too. She inhaled quickly, then stifled her surprise.

  Gideon nodded. Harlan began to prowl around the room, poking at destroyed gurneys and kicking shredded curtains out of the way. He was searching. Elena stepped away when he got close, putting the bed between the two of them. He eyed her, grinning. She glared back. He lurched across the bed and snapped at her face like dog. She squealed as Harlan laughed.

  Nurse Otero hesitantly emerged from the west wing. "Dr. Renard?"

  Hank didn't turn to look at her. "Stay back, Simone."

  "What's going on?"

  Hands still in the air, Hank took another step towards Gideon. "Take your friend and whatever else you want. We won't stop you."

  Panzer laughed a deep bellow, as if genuinely surprised.

  "Oh, I know that," Gideon said. He turned to Castle. "Agent? Where is the crate?"

  Castle didn't answer. He just swallowed and tightened his already white-knuckle grip on the nine-millimeter. Rudy stepped around him to face Gideon. "You can't have it, motherfucker."

  Thrusting his chest out, Gideon howled with laughter and strolled right into the middle of them. He lowered his glasses and studied the boy. The man’s eyes were as pale as a winter sky. Hank felt a lump thicken in his throat and began to sweat. Gideon's hand lashed out. The kid's head whipped back and the blow lifted him off the ground. His body twisted around all ragdoll and in mid-arc, Hank felt vomit surge up to the back of his throat. The boy hit the floor and slid to a stop and was then motionless.

  Elena snapped. She screamed and ran at Gideon, arms flailing. Hank couldn't speak, couldn't stop her. Her words were an unintelligible slur of rage. Panzer caught her by the throat just as she reached Gideon. Elena’s yell stopped with a gurgle. Panzer forced Elena to her knees, squeezing tighter. Blood vessels erupted in Elena's eyes. The giant biker looked down at the woman, her own face alight with frenzy.

  "Wait. . . " Hank said.

  Gideon waved a finger at Hank. "No," he said.

  Elena's lips were purple. Her fingers pulled at Panzer's grip around her throat. Hank heard Elena's trachea pop. Blood dribbled from her lips. Her body went slack.

  Bullet moved out of the shadows like a wraith. She slammed a fire extinguisher into Panzer's temple. Panzer dropped Elena and threw her hands to her head to meet the gout of blood that erupted. The meat and bone of her forehead was lumpy and wet. But she didn’t go down. Her eyes locked on Bullet and a feral growl clawed its way out of her throat, building as blood flowed down her face and her massive legs coiled to leap. She launched herself at Bullet. All three hundred pounds flew, faster than Hank could grasp.

  A gun blast tore through the ER. In mid leap, Panzer's left arm shredded below the elbow. She hit the floor, moaning, as more blood sprayed across the white tile. The smile on Gideon's face faltered. He dropped his cigarillo as another gun-blast erupted and a hole burst open in the center of his chest. Blood and meat detonated. His arms flailed. He fell back into the barricade. Near the nurse's station, Whitey ejected the shells from his shotgun and fumbled to reload it. His hands shook. He dropped the fresh ammo.

  Harlan ran towards them like a mad demon. Castle cut loose with the Glock. The bullets ripped into the lanky, shambling man, jerking him about. He stopped short and slumped over, his bizarrely long torso curved into a hump. Impossibly, Panzer stood. Her face was pale and the blood ran freely from where her arm ended in mangled meat. She growled, all pain, fear, and fury, and sprinted towards Gideon. Harlan stumbled to his feet and followed her. In spite of her size and the injury, Panzer was fast. With her remaining hand, she grabbed Gideon by the collar and jumped. The barrier was roughly five feet high. Chair legs and IV poles jutted out in every direction. But Panzer nearly took flight. Even with Gideon’s weight, the jump was stupefying. She cleared the crude blockade and landed on her feet in the parking lot. Riddled with nine millimeter bullet holes, Harlan did the same. Like some gangly antelope, the man threw himself over the barrier, just completely hurdled it. Hank froze, jaw slack, not quite believing what he saw. He'd heard of PCP giving people impossible strength and pain tolerance, but . . . it was nothing like this.

  "Mom?" Rudy said.

  He rubbed his eyes as he sat up and tried to get his bearings. Bullet took one look at Elena, her face purple, her neck unnaturally distended, and rushed across the room to block Rudy from seeing it. She crouched next to him. "Hank," she said, getting the doctor's attention.

  She nodded to Elena's body. Red smears cut vibrant swaths across the once-pristine floor. Blood met plaster, slowed, and thickened into a soup. In the center was the broken mass of Elena. Hank snatched a torn curtain from the floor and wrapped up the body. He dragged it to a dark corner of the ER hoping the boy hadn't already seen it. The path was a long, sanguine trail into the shadows.

  Whitey rushed past him, moving as fast as his big frame would allow. His shotgun was ready. "Whitey?" Hank asked.

  "Hang on."

  The old man ran
to the wall next to the automatic doors near the barricade. With the butt of his gun, he smashed the plaster of the wall. Again and again, he battered it, making a hole. Outside, the engines began to roar again, as if they'd angered the monster. A few gunshots. The bullets zipped through the ER. Hank yelled, "Whitey!? What the hell are you doing?"

  Whitey reached into the hole he'd dug in the plaster, elbow deep. He felt around for a moment, and pulled. There was a grinding of metal, a groan of rusty machinery. From a slot above the automatic doors, a wall of corrugated iron descended. It plummeted, unfurling from the ceiling like a garage door. With a boom louder than any of the gunshots, it hit the floor, sealing off the ER from parking lot. Whitey scurried through the barricade. He gripped a handle at the bottom of the metal wall and pulled it, putting his weight into it. A lock slid into place.

  Red faced and wheezing, Whitey looked up. "Close the storm doors, you dumbasses."

  Nathan popped up from behind the nurse's station. His hair was speckled with chunks of plaster. "I'll get the east wing. Doc?"

  "Where are they?" Hank asked.

  "Right by the door. West wing, front door, gift shop, and every window. All of them." Nathan began to run into the east wing, calling over his shoulder. "Just an old lever right by the door."

  Hank turned to see Agent Castle standing there, staring at his empty Glock. "Agent Castle, help me."

  The gunshots outside escalated. They cracked against the metal door, ricocheting off. The Goats beat their fists against it. The rattle was deafening, a car crash with every blow.

  "It won't matter . . . " Castle said.

  Hank grabbed him by the tie and yelled, "Now!"

  The agent clumsily plugged another clip into place and seemed to come at least halfway out of the fog. Hank looked to Bullet, who was cradling a watery-eyed and bloody Rudy and holding a cold compress to the back of his head. "Bullet?"

  "I got him. Go."

  Hank ran past the nurse's station. Nurse Otero stood there against the wall, shell-shocked. Her lips moved, but she said nothing, as if sending quiet prayers out into the ether. Her severe demeanor, more drill sergeant than caregiver, had shattered. Her clothes were askew. The lines in her face cut through the makeup. eyes unfocused. Hank didn't bother her. He cut right into the western hallway. It was a straight shot. He sprinted for the end, where the hallway ended in a glass door. Hopefully, they'd try this door before any of the eight other windows in the rooms up and down the hall.

  Just before the hospital was erected, a category 4 tornado had laid waste to Huachuca, a small town just up Highway 50. While Tribes wasn't in the tornado belt of the country, it was still a very real fear, not to mention the constant nuclear threat of the Cold War. Plans for a two story hospital - which would have been the only two story building in the county - were scuttled. The quasi-Art Deco design remained, but a flatter building blueprint was adopted, one that wasn't prone to topple in high winds. With the money saved from the second story, the storm doors were installed over every opening – a thick metal sheet that could withstand winds of up to 200 mph and, in the duck-and-cover mentality of the era, a nuclear blast. (When Whitey heard that last part, he’d laughed his ass off.) They'd been used liberally up until the 1980's. Any time the sky darkened, or whenever chubasco season rolled through, the nurses of Tribes Memorial dutifully unrolled the protective doors. They'd never been needed. Not once. Since then, for aesthetic reasons, the handles near some of the doors had been covered over with drywall. Over the years, they were slowly forgotten. But Whitey had been there since forever. He remembered.

  Hank considered this and his empty hands, wholly unprepared to dig into a wall, but ran forward anyway. And then Hank saw him. On the other side of the glass, some forty yards away, was one of the Goats. Perched atop a small hill on the west lawn, he sat astride his bike. It was pointed directly at the glass doors, making Hank feel like he was staring down the barrel of a gun. His legs went wobbly beneath him, but he pushed. The biker revved his engine. A challenge. Suddenly Hank was in high school track again. He was already moving, but he felt the sick anticipation of being crouched in the starter block, waiting for the pistol to fire. Atop the hill, the Black Goat smiled, adjusted the large, dusty aviator goggles over his eyes, and aligned the bike with the glass doors.

  Hank slid to a stop and looked around the threshold. He'd been through this door hundreds of times, but never really noticed the green, metal lever sticking out of the wall. His heart leapt. It was there. It wasn’t covered. It wasn’t buried in drywall. He grabbed it and gave it a jerk hard enough that a jolt of pain shot up to his shoulder. And nothing budged. It was stuck. Outside, the roar of the engine. A spray of gravel and dirt. The Black Goat howled. The bike shot down the hill, a bullet from the barrel.

  Focusing on the lever, Hank put his weight into it as it squealed in protest. His hands throbbed. The old metal dug into the flesh of his palms. He felt the latch give a little. In his peripheral vision, the Goat got closer, gaining speed. The biker grinned wildly at him. Hank gripped tighter and hung from the lever, raising his feet from the floor. He planted them on the wall. It moved. He felt the pulley system inside the wall catch and heard its gears grind. The lever fell, dropping Hank with it. He landed on his back. Looking between his splayed legs, he saw the biker fly, a filthy, grey streak across the lawn. And Hank froze in his path. The storm door fell like a guillotine. It caught the grinning biker in the chest, stopping him dead. The bike kept going, tearing out from beneath him like a cartoon. It shot under the storm shutter and burst through the glass door. A thousand shards exploded inward. The concussion shocked Hank into action. He scrambled out of the way, narrowly dodging the bike as it hurtled into the hallway and tumbled wheel over wheel. It slammed into the wall next to him then ricocheted off the opposite side before finally coming to rest on its side on the marble floor. The engine sputtered and died. Hank looked over at the metal door and rushed to throw the lock into place. Outside, the biker clutched his shattered skull and whimpered.

  ***

  Nathan crossed himself and whispered a quick prayer as he ran down the corridor. Eight doors - no, nine - nine doors and they'd be safe. For a moment. God willing, he was fast enough. And he was fast. He was in shape. There wasn't much else for him to do in Tribes. So he ran. Every morning and every day after work, he ran. It wasn't anything he particularly liked. In fact, most days it kind of sucked. He was pushing thirty and his knees were starting to ache. His back would get sore more quickly. And the heat during the summer? It was a furnace. But it gave him time to think. While running his usual circuit from one end of the town and back, he would plan. How to get out of Tribes. How to spend the money he'd been socking away for years. How to convince his wife, Erica, that they really did need to leave, family be damned.

  The old men at the diner would ask, "Why you running? You being chased?"

  Yeah, that one never got old. Everyone else around here was content to gorge themselves on fried food and watch American Idol (if the reception was good that day). Or barbecue. Or drink beer. And that was fine, because these were good, kind people. He just didn't have much in common with them, so he didn't talk much. Didn't open up. He just ran.

  He pulled the lever at the end of the hall, and it crashed down with a clatter. He locked it and moved on to the next. One down. Now for the windows in the rooms. Eight in each wing. He popped in, one by one. The rooms were mostly disused. They smelled of dust and moth balls. Not many overnighters in Tribes. Each lever closed with varying degrees of difficulty. None of them had been used in years and they were stubborn from neglect. After today, he thought, he'd WD40 them every morning.

  Five down.

  He threw the door open to the sixth room. The window shattered as a brick sailed through it. A Black Goat with a shaved head and Nordic runes tattooed across his scalp stuck his arm in to turn the latch on the window. Nathan rushed forward and vaulted over the bed. He grabbed the lever and yanked. The storm door unleashe
d. It roared as it crashed down, the warped metal rattling. The Goat pulled his hand back at the last second, narrowly missing losing a few fingers. Nathan locked it.

  Shit. Next room. Next room!

  He barreled into the seventh room just in time to see the Goat appear in the window. He grinned at Nathan, all rotted teeth and gleeful malice. Nathan dove over the empty bed, reaching for the handle.

  The thunder of a gunshot. The window exploded.

  Nathan gripped the handle and pulled. It stuck.

  Fingerless gloves appeared at the sill, trying to find purchase among the broken glass.

  The storm door groaned, then rattled down into place with a crash.

  “Fuck!” The Goat screamed outside.

  Nathan slammed the lock into place and stepped away from the shutter as if it might explode inward. The next one. He spun, but his feet couldn’t keep up with his panic. He slipped and stumbled into the hallway, trying to maintain his balance. The slick marble offered no traction. Nathan hit the floor face-first just as another shot rang out. Shattering glass. He scrambled to his feet, pulling himself up as he jerked open the door to the next room.

  The biker was already hoisting himself up through the window. Halfway in, he looked up at Nathan. They locked eyes again and stopped. On the floor in front of the Goat, and just out of his reach, was a revolver. Nathan moved first. He sprinted forward and kicked the gun aside. His scrubs shirt went tight around his throat as the man grabbed a fistful, trying to reel Nathan in. Nathan turned and drove his elbow down across the greasy man’s cheek, but the Goat kept his grip. With his free hand he clawed at Nathan’s face, trying to push Nathan away while pulling himself inside. They fumbled, fighting like children on a playground, shoving, pulling, and scratching. Nate unleashed a flurry of awkward punches into the man's back.

  God, he reeked of body odor and gasoline.

  The man growled at him as he slid back and forth on the sill. Nathan drove an elbow down into the biker's spine. He felt it connect, bone on bone. The biker howled and arched his back. He wobbled, about to slide all the way out, but caught himself. Nathan kicked off the wall. His shirt ripped loose, leaving a blue scrap in the man’s hand. Nathan grabbed the lever. Metal on metal squealed, but it gave. The storm door dropped. Heavy, it caught the man in the small of the back, pinning him. The biker screamed again and tried to push the door back up, but couldn’t get leverage. He squirmed beneath it, frantic. Nathan planted his shoe on the man's shoulder and kicked. The biker tumbled backward out the window. With him out of the way, the door crashed into place. Nathan threw the lock and fell to his knees.