by Ryan Michele
I blinked up at a flat surface hovering overhead. It took a minute, but I decided it was a ceiling, dotted with tiny flecks of crimson. I watched in idle fascination as a fly crept closer and closer to one of the largest spots. Clearing my throat, I tried to swallow, not finding enough spit in my mouth. A painfully dry click echoed through my head, sounding frighteningly close to the slide of a gun cocking. I squinted as the fly broached the edge of that circle of red, no doubt drinking his buggy fill of my life’s blood.
Another attempt to clear my throat was no more successful than the first, but the resulting pain in my middle was new. My eyes squeezed shut when I choked, having to brutally smother an urge to cough, already dreading whatever my next move needed to be.
My lungs ached with the longing to suck in a big ole breath, but every attempt fell short, slashed into shreds and leaving me panting. That pain slipped away, like the backwash of a wave, and I relaxed into the easy numbness it left behind, forgetting there was always another wave.
It came roaring back with a vengeance, tightening my muscles until I was sure my bones would break. Rolling over me, churning me into pieces, wedging itself between all the bits of me, the pain separated my mind from my body, and I groaned at the release. The echoing sound did more to map my surroundings than my eyes had done.
It was a large and open space. Flat out on the floor, I tried to lift my arm. Heavier than anything I expected, it twitched, a promising movement accompanied by an odd rustling. I tried again and managed to lift my hand from where it had been sprawled next to my body. My palm landed on my belly, and I had a frozen instant of terror when all I felt was fabric, but then I slid my fingers farther across and encountered that familiar stiff resistance that could only be leather.
No matter what else happened, this discovery left me giddy, because if I died right here and now, it’d be in my goddamned cut.
An attempt to lift my head sent me soaring, so dizzy and lightheaded I was floating without a tether. The clunk of my skull hitting the hard floor drove me back into myself, the pain taking up so much room it wasn’t clear how I’d keep it company in my skin. The next try was more successful. Eventually, I had my chin buried against my chest, gaze roaming what I could see of the room.
Alone.
Door open.
Everywhere I looked was draped in plastic, and on that plastic were drying splashes and sheets of red.
Something jutted from my side, and I spider-walked my hand across my body until I could grip whatever it was, wanting to fling it away. That proved impossible, and just the attempt woke the pain monster, so I struggled to simply pull it free. Extending my arm to its limit finally gained my objective, and I stared at the foot-long blade in disbelief before my hand spasmed and the dagger clattered to the floor.
Motors roaring outside abruptly expanded my awareness, and I listened intently, hearing the barest hint of voices over the rumbling of exhaust and engines. Gradually all sounds diminished, moving off into the distance in staggered groups of noise until silence reigned.
I looked at the ceiling, noticing the fly had been joined by dozens of its family and friends.
The muscles in my neck gave way in fits and jerks until my head rested on the cold plastic again.
My eyes closed, and in that comforting darkness, I finally found relief.
The buzzing was louder when I gained consciousness again. Hundreds of clusters of those damn flies were everywhere. Since I was still breathing and determined to vacate this hellhole, I wedged my elbows underneath me and pushed up, gravity nearly winning the battle when my head swung loosely on my neck, dipping backwards towards the floor for long enough to give me an upside-down view of something I hadn’t expected and never wanted to see. Three bodies lay behind me, stacked neatly into a row next to the wall, each rolled in a shroud of clear plastic, faces distorted and gray.
Still I knew them.
My brothers.
Trammer, who’d grown up at my mom’s table, seated side by side with me for most meals. His father was a waste of space, and his mother’d gotten hooked on dope our junior year.
Graceless, the man who’d taught me the full meaning of the saying that accidents wait for audiences. I’d helped him pick his bike up more than anyone else I knew.
Had known. Fuck.
Pizzaboy, who’d so wanted to be called Donatello—and us being the fucktards we were, we hadn’t given him that moniker. Instead, we’d labeled him after his favorite food.
Such was the nature of our lives where names were given, not taken, and being a brother meant so much more than blood.
I flipped to the side, or attempted to, managing a slow roll. My blood-saturated clothing unstuck from the plastic with an obscene sucking sound. My side ached like a bitch, but the crippling pain seemed to have packed its bags and vamoosed. Thank God. If I could just get to my feet, I’d be set.
There was no noise other than the flies and crinkling of the plastic. No voices. No traffic near or in the distance. Just me, and three bodies wrapped for a delivery I was gonna do my damnedest to derail.
I surveyed the room, baffled why I wasn’t in the same shape as them. This much blood meant I lay in what my brothers had spilled, along with what had seeped out of me from that pigsticker.
On hands and knees, I wobbled for a moment, swaying backwards and forwards like a windblown tube man in front of a pop-up pawn store. If anyone came through the door, any fighting I tried would be about as effective as those arm-waving freaks. Finally overbalancing in the direction where I aimed, I rocked back onto my heels, pushing upright. I looked down my torso at the blood and rips in my shirt and realized I’d be lucky if I found only the one hole in me.
With the hilt of the blade in my hand, I considered the length and heft of it, finally taking a moment to slide the tip between the leather of my belt and my jeans, seating the handle snug against my hip. As long as I didn’t fall down and stab myself on it, it’d be good to have a weapon. I could already tell the holster at my back was empty, as was the one under my arm, and my boots were too light to still be hiding my knives. Running bare had never suited me, not since I found the truth behind club wars and desperate assholes unconcerned with family or innocent victims.
I studied the plastic-wrapped bodies, a chill pebbling my skin as I realized they’d been similarly stripped, but while I still wore my vest, theirs were gone.
Music played abruptly, as if it had woken up midsong and was determined to see the tune to its end. I jerked so hard I nearly fell over. It cycled through the few notes again, then fell silent. Somewhere close by was a phone, and if I could find it and it was one of ours, I could make a call that would start the wheels of rescue, recovery, and revenge. Club officers were keyed to all authorized devices, and with the tap of a finger, I’d reach salvation.
The phone helpfully played that damn song again; it was coming through the open door. I hadn’t made it to my feet before the sound died away, and perched wavering on one knee, I could have screamed at the damned silence. Finally vertical, I staggered to the doorway and clung to the wood like a leech, trying to remain upright while the world swung in wide circuits.
The same do-do do-do-do-do music ricocheted through my head, and I zeroed in on the location before turning loose of the doorframe. A saddlebag lay on the floor, propped next to a battered dining room table in the center of the room. Black leather poked out of it. After a year of staggering through the open space between me and it, I stumbled to a stop next to the table. I kept my hand flat on the wooden surface in an attempt to stay upright, unsure I’d make it back on my feet if I went down again. Digging through the vests, I did my best to ignore the patches and names, titles and regions—each a memory shared with one of the bodies growing cold in the other room—until I found the device.
The music started again. The screen said Kate Calling, and my eyes closed. That was Trammer’s ole lady. I declined the call, used my thumbprint to unlock the phone, and dialed from memory.
Until Rampage answered, I hadn’t realized the pounding in my head was from holding my breath. “Tram,” he said, his voice free and easy, ready to joke and shoot the shit with a brother. “What the fuck you need, man? I got a case’a suds and a screen, and there’s a damn game on, which means I got my feet up while I swear at the TV.”
“Ram.” I startled, pain blooming in my side. I didn’t recognize my own voice, rough and hoarse, like death had camped out in my throat. “Ram.”
“The fuck?” Background sound on his end of the call muted, and he asked, “Tram? What’s up, brother?” I didn’t answer him. Couldn’t while the eagerness—the raw need in his voice to help, however it was needed, throttled my words. “Trammer, where the fuck are you, man?”
“Tram—” I swallowed and tried again. “Trammer’s dead. Graceless and Pizzaboy, too. Ram, I been stabbed. I don’t—” The room swung in a slow circle, and when I closed my eyes, it sped up, with me as a focal point while it whirled. “I’m not—”
“Where?” He was begging, and I knew all I had to do was give him a direction, tell him a location, suss out an address, and he’d be here. No questions asked. That’s what true brothers did. When I stayed silent, he tried again. “What’s happened?” I struggled to answer, my mouth dry as dust, tongue stuck to the back of my teeth. “Who’s this? Who’s got Tram’s phone?”
“Hitch.” I finally named myself, and that settled me in a weird way. If I could say my own name, if I could speak that truth, I could do the rest that he needed. “Hitch. Ram, we’re… I don’t know. It’s a house or something. In the—” I was about to say woods, but I didn’t know anything other than the room where I’d woken and this table. I stared at the windows across the front of the building, seeing green globes of trees, but not woods. “In a grove. I can’t hear anything.”
“Where’s Tram?”
I wished my voice would fail again. Wished my words would dry up and drift away, because to speak it aloud would make it true. “Dead.”
“Fuck.”
Even if he couldn’t see me, I nodded in agreement, gagging when the movement set the room to swaying again.
“Look at the map on Tram’s phone, see if you can figure out where you are.” The sound quality had grown an echo. “You’re on speaker, my old lady’s walking out now. You can say what you need. I’m gonna rally the boys, and we’ll come, Hitch. Swear on my grave, we’ll come.”
With that inauspicious phrasing ringing in my ears, I fumbled the device, fingers determined to send it plunging to the hard floor until I wrestled them into submission, dropping it only an inch onto the table. The clatter must have been louder to Rampage, and he yelled, “What’s happening?”
“Nothing,” I tried to say, but the absurdity rolled over me, and I chunked out a laugh, carving it into pieces until it fell apart on the air. “Dropped the phone. I’m—” I poked the screen with a fingertip, putting Rampage on speaker and then opening the correct app on only the second try. A big green dot pulsed in the center of a swath of darker green, and I maneuvered the map until it pulled back, showing more green, finally broken on the north edge by a red line. “Highway…uh. State highway. A road. Meridian. I’m—” I made the map slide from side to side until I found a wide blue line. “I’m west of the interstate, just south of Meridian.” Frustrated, I poked around until the map finally gave up the most useful information. “I’m here. We’re here at Stone McCauley Groves.” The place was smack in the middle of unclaimed territory, and we’d always called it “No Man’s Land.”
“On our way.” Rampage must have realized how reluctant I was to sever this lifeline. “I got the boys, and we’re comin’, Hitch. We’re comin’.”
“Hurry.” Voice roughened with anger and pain, I tried to urge him, only I was speaking to dead air.
I’d first become aware of the Incoherent Motorcycle Club when Trammer and I were in high school. We’d been hanging around the local drive-in, ogling the flirty waitresses flitting around on roller skates, when the ground under our feet literally began to shake. Within moments, it was as if a mob of motorcycles had swarmed the parking lot, unmitigated chaos to my eyes. The men had parked their bikes, dismounted, and slung arms around the women who’d ridden in with them. While my mind had insisted there’d been hundreds of bikes, only ten men sauntered underneath the overhang and claimed two of the picnic tables.
Trammer, named after a suburb in faraway Michigan where he’d lived as a child, leaned across our table, only three down from the black-leather-clad bikers, and hissed excitedly. “Did you see?” He rolled his eyes towards the bikers, then back to me. “So cool, man.”
I lifted my chin and grunted, my disinterest entirely affected. Someone sat heavily beside me, and I turned to see Karen crowding close, her long legs folded awkwardly underneath the table. A girl who I sometimes dated, she rolled the wheels on her skates back and forth, and nervously laughed.
“Mikey, would you take their order for me?”
Michael Hitchcock was me, Mike to my friends, Mikey to Karen and only allowed because I’d boned her. I’d not yet earned Hitch as a nickname but had tried it out on mirror-me once or twice. I liked it so far.
“Mr. Thomas said I’ve got to wait on them ’cause it was my turn when they came in.”
“Why don’t you?” Trammer curled his lip at Karen. “Too good for ’em?”
“No.” She huffed. “I just… They scare me, okay?”
I cut a glance over to the tables and caught the eye of one of the men. He nodded at me, and smiled, then turned back to give the red-headed woman perched on his knee a different kind of smile.
“Sure, I’ll do it.” I pushed up from the table and snagged her ticket book. “You sit here and try not to kill anybody.”
Trammer and Karen weren’t each other’s biggest fans, Trammer certain she was trying to get between us and being all “bros before hos” about it. Karen said Trammer wanted in her pants, which was certainly true. He’d fuck anything standing still. “Be right back.”
As I neared the tables, I became acutely aware of the differences between me—high school cool in my half-laced sneaks and tight, ripped jeans, a faded graphic-tee sagging around my too-thin shoulders—and the men seated on the table and benches. Each wore what was undoubtedly a uniform of sorts. They were dressed in dark jeans made of thick fabric for hard use, scuffed black leather boots, shirts of varying colors, most with a distinctive shield proclaiming their devotion to a brand of motorcycle, and a black leather vest. Whether snapped in the front, held together with swinging chains, or draping along their sides, each proudly bore a fabric patch in the center of their back.
“Hey,” I offered, coming to a stop about three feet away. “Do you know what you want?”
One man at the far table—the only one without a woman on his knee—scoffed far back in his throat. “Wanted that pretty chickie to come be my sidepiece for the day.” The men around him laughed, women ducking their chins and tittering. Others took up the idea, and I heard other, more indecent suggestions about how Karen could service them.
The third time I heard, “She could suck my cock, too,” Karen’s ticket book crumpled in my fist.
The man seated nearest where I stood never took his eyes off me as he barked out, “Shut it.” I tried to hold his gaze, but the weight of it was massive, as if there was a repellant force causing my eyes to dip. “Boy, she means something to you, ain’t no shame in steppin’ up and dealin’ with assholes disrespecting your girl.” The other men had stopped talking when he ordered them, and silence was thick around the tables now. “She don’t, and you’re just painfully unaware of the ways of men and women, that’s a different kind of lesson I ain’t up for teachin’ today.”
I cut my eyes up and found his face. Not smiling, not scowling, he looked open and somehow confused.
“She’s my girlfriend.” I shrugged. “I’m here because you scared her, without her even talking to you. Now…” I tried to mimic the
scoff the other man made, the sound coming out weak and frightened. I winced. “Now I understand why.”
“She suck your cock?” The original speaker opened his mouth wide, waggling his tongue obscenely. “I could teach her if she don’t.”
The leader—I took him to be that with how they’d quieted a moment ago—looked at me with a “what now” expression. Tearing my gaze from him, I fixed the other one with a stare I hoped could pierce through his ignorance, and told him clearly, “Shut up. What happens between me and her isn’t your business. Now, do you want food or not?”
“Oh, boy’s got some nads, Twisted.” The instigator hadn’t taken offense at my declaration and seemed somehow pleased. “Might wanna get his name, see if he grows into ’em over the next couple of years.”
Twisted, evidently the leader, grinned broadly. “Might do that, Catfish. Might do.” He angled his body and looked at the men around him, getting a nod from each before he turned back to face me. “What’s your name, boy?”
I stared at him, my brain considering and discarding all options before I told him the truth. “I’m Hitch.”
That had been ten years ago. I’d been a member of the Incoherent MC for eight, an officer for four.
Engines and voices startled me awake, and I grunted as my back arched against the hard surface I was lying on. I was immediately convinced that whoever had started this tango was back to end the dance. I’d pulled the sticker from my belt when I’d assumed this position on the table, and the handle was clasped in my grip as I fought through the pain to sit.
Facing the door, I stayed where I was, mostly because I wasn’t certain my legs would bear my weight. Those half breaths had my ribs gnawing at my sides, begging to be stretched and strained, promising to make me buckle with pain. Woozy, I pulled my hand from around my middle where it was holding me together and thudded it against the table to keep from falling on my face.
Words and sounds buzzed as unintelligibly as the flies until I heard one voice clearly and knew who spoke.