by Ryder Dane
“Come on, I don’t know tornados, but that is a big mess coming our way. That rain is so intense it looks like the inside of a wave out there heading towards us.”
He shook off her hand and stomped to the door to see for himself. She could see that he was unzipping his pants, and dropped her head on her raised knees. The sudden sound of a freight train began, about the same time that her ears began to pop from the pressure generated by the storm. The barn rattled overhead and she covered her ears to drown out the screeching of the boards and nails being pulled apart, and that loud train sound just continued to get louder, until it was overhead. Kylie tried to yell for Dutch, but the sound of the barn lifting and several boards overhead being pulled up with the rest of the building began. The crashing noise replaced the train, but lightening and heavy rain kept her where she was protected from the worst of the storm.
She screamed for Dutch, but received no reply, and she was afraid that he might have been sucked up into the funnel cloud. The stray thought that she hoped that he had time to take a leak and zip up before the wind took him away made her giggle in a hysterical kind of way. It would be embarrassing for him to be found with his junk hanging out of his pants. If he was dead, it might not be such a big deal. She chuckled a small squeaky sound, and crawled over her nest, to peek outside and see what the damage was.
The rain was pouring down again and she stayed as far back up in the nest of hay as she could get. The dip in the old straw where she lay cradled her, offering a slight feeling of safety. She fell asleep crying in self-pity.
Kylie woke when a mouse crawled over her arm to reach the discarded sandwich that sat scattered in the straw. She could hear sirens in the distance, but they were not coming towards her. It took everything in her to leave the shelter of the barn, but she had to see if she could find the stubborn biker.
She shouted for Dutch, and walked through the rain looking for any trace of him. The top half of the barn was a pile of scrap wood and giant toothpicks lying fifty feet from the foundation. She approached the mess and yelled Dutch’s name again and again, but if he was under that pile of kindling, he wasn’t awake or in any shape to let her know he was there.
Darkness was overtaking the morning light and she was having a hard time keeping herself together. What would she do now? She wouldn’t get the chance to test out the promise that his eyes sent to her every time he looked her way. She had just gotten used to holding his waist and chest for hours on end. Gotten used to feeding him bites of candy, even as he bitched about her trying to fatten him up. Her heart was hurting and she didn’t know how to handle it. She looked at the cut on her hand that happened when she tried to pull a wide chunk of roofing away from a spot that could have concealed his body.
She finally straightened up from her knees and took several deep breaths. “You can do this Kylie. You know that you can do this. Get up and move your ass before that wind takes you for a ride. He was just another biker. Remember that, just another biker.”
The lightning strikes were frightening, and the damn rain had started to fall hard again. She looked around for any possible inspiration for her predicament, but all she saw was destruction and feeling sorry for herself was right up there with the fear she felt. Dutch might be an asshole, but he was another human being. These past months she’d been so alone and isolated from human contact that there had been times when she doubted her own sanity. It was just her luck that she would get a grumpy ass biker with the temper of a badger, and he’d up and disappear on her.
She slid back down the slope to the shelter, and almost collided with the plank covering Dutch’s dead body. He was crumbled and had blood on his arms. The gash in his head was white from the rain pooling in the crease of the wound. She didn’t scream, but the temptation to act all girly was there. She ran to the basement and yanked the tarp from under the bedding and dragged it back to where his body lay. Rolling his big ass onto the canvas took every bit of muscle that she could use. It didn’t help that she had to keep swallowing back the urge to puke her guts out.
She sat next to his head, but refused to look at him while she decided to try to pull his body under the roof of the barn floor. She would do the best that she could for him, and tried not to wonder what would happen to her before this adventure was finished.
She talked to him while she tugged and pulled him into the driest part of the building. “I swear that I’ve never had so much bad luck as I’ve had in these past six months. First Job and Naomi start shit when I told them I was leaving, a few days later, the cops show up to arrest them, and I get stuck again. I make a plan to leave again, but even that plan was a joke once you pointed out that the bike was fucked up. Yes, I cuss, so it’s a shame that you won’t be around to be surprised to hear the words coming from my mouth. Everyone thinks I’m some kind of dense brained example of arrested development. They are all like you. Admit it, you never thought I was very bright did you? I’m actually very smart.”
She finally got him inside and kept pulling the tarp on the dusty floor, until she had him under a dry spot with a good roof that was still intact. She took the lightest weight blanket from the two that were making up her nest and covered his face and as much of his body as she could. It wasn’t that it was a cold evening, the thought of his dead body lying on the cement floor bothered her, but there was not much she could do but treat him with the respect due to the dead.
She bundled up in the remaining blanket and pulled the hood up on the last dry shirt that she owned before she rested her head on a smooth rock on the wall.
She woke up hearing the moan of the wind, and again the air pressure made her ears pop, and she cringed at the familiar sound of a train going past. She could hear boards and debris banging around outside, and once the tornado moved away, she walked over to where Dutch’s body was still safe under the tarp and blanket.
She hated to do it, but she reached into his pockets to try to find his cell phone. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she needed to call his friends to come and deal with Dutch’s remains and his bike. According to Job, bikers were very clannish, and even if he’d been a shit head to her, he had also helped her and never actually demanded a thing from her in return. Too bad that she hadn’t seen his kindness before, but if she had gotten cozy with him before now, she would be emotional and shit over his death. With her future so up in the air, getting involved with a man would be a huge mistake.
She went back to her nest and was wiggling around to get comfortable for what remained of the night, when she heard a low whimper followed by a moan. She tripped running to where Dutch was still lying in the same spot, but he was not moving.
“Sonofabitch, I thought you were dead you overgrown ass.” His skin was pasty white and his lips were blue, but the moans coming from his mouth were gaining intensity in tone, and she had no idea what he needed from her.
“Look, you need to focus right now, you got into a wrestling match with a tornado, and I have to tell you, I’m scared as hell. Can you move, or at least blink your eyes?” She watched as the eyeballs under his lids shifted back and forth, but they never opened. “Okay, Dutch, this is what I need to do. I will try to pull your big ass over to the back corner where we were before, so the wind and rain will not get to you.”
She pulled the tarp and almost rolled him off of it, but kept digging her heels in, and hauling him back an inch at a time, until he was as close to the pile of straw as she could get him. She pulled the other blanket down from her perch and covered him with both blankets to try to keep him warm. If he couldn’t move on his own then she wasn’t going to try to take his wet shirt off of him. She’d read somewhere not to move people like that.
“As soon as it gets light out, I’ll walk out to the road and try to flag someone down if I can’t get any reception on your phone. I can’t ride your bike because my feet don’t hit the ground when I sit on it, and the handlebars are too high for me to steer, so that’s n
ot a way to get help.”
It turned out to be the longest night of her life. Between the thunder and lightning, the rain slashing overhead, and the howling wind competing with Dutch’s pain filled gasps and moans, she was thankful to see the sky lightening, and the rain was now reduced to a few sprinkles. The sirens that she’d heard last night in the distance were silenced, and the world was peaceful as long as you didn’t look outside as she was doing. The destruction of the barn was bad, but where the porch swing that was lying in the field came from was anyone’s guess.
She slid backwards trying to climb the slope leading to level ground, but the third attempt worked as long as she climbed the incline sideways slowly going up. She checked the phone for tower strength and saw nothing registering, so she walked to the road and looked both ways, hoping to see a farmer or maybe a cop. She checked the phone again and was encouraged to see one half of a bar, so she keyed nine one-one. The busy signal blared in her ears, and she wanted to cry.
She sat down to rest her legs, and scrolled through the numbers on his phone. The word CRIB was listed as the last call he’d made, so she poked the phone icon and put it on speaker so she didn’t have to clutch the thing in her sore hands. Pulling Dutch to safety had taken everything she could manage last night, and she was sore all over.
The man that answered the phone sounded mad, but she gulped and said, “Hello, er, I am Kylie and Dutch is here with me, but he needs help, and I can’t help him, I don’t know how.”
“What are you talking about, what’s stopping Dutch from talking to me?”
The story of the bad weather was all she had to tell him and the questions that he asked were clipped and to the point. She told him where they were, and that Dutch needed medical help “bad, like right now” and she was happy that the voice on the other end of the call couldn’t see her crying as she went over everything that happened in the past twenty four hours.
“Can you just get someone to come and take him to the hospital? He is arrogant and his refusal to listen to me is what got him sucked up by the tornado to begin with. I told him, I tried to pull him away from the door, but no, the dumbass had to stand in the damn doorway and take a piss like he was telling a tornado what he thought of it. He had to challenge Mother Nature and was too damn dumb to understand that she wins every time.”
She took some comfort in the voice telling her to “stay put and do what you can to keep the two of you safe,” it calmed her nerves a little.
“His bike is safe, but it’s too big for me, so someone needs to ride it home for him or pick it up or something. He might not want it left out here where anyone can get to it. After all, he named it Betty Lou.”
War listened to the girl babble on knowing that she was nervous and probably knowing that someone was on the other end of the conversation was helping her keep it together. He muted his end and told Race and River what was going on. Yo Yo and Pinky were there too, so Race called the Juanita chapter to get someone to help as soon as possible, but they had been hit by the storms too, and were dealing with several crisis’s of their own. So he wished them luck and told them to keep in touch and call if they needed help.
His next call was to the nine one one emergency operator, and she gave him shit about calling for an out of area emergency until he told her that there was injuries and the victims of the tornado could not get through to the emergency services in that area. She managed to get through to the Sheriff’s department where Dutch and Kylie were holed up, and he thanked the woman for her kindness. He nodded to War, and War told the girl that help would be coming as soon as the Sheriff could send someone. He hated calling the authorities, but emergencies happened, and no one from the club could help.
They hung up, and Kylie was again on her own. She walked back to see how Dutch was faring, and decided to try to salvage the sandwich that was left from last night. It seemed like weeks instead of hours since the barn had become their only shelter, and she sat outside on a rock while she picked the meat and tomatoes off of the soggy bread and ate them before tossing the pasty portion to the few birds that appeared to be going back to business as usual. “Like everything else, you do what you need to survive.”
Dutch kept making those noises, and she prayed hard for help to arrive soon. Listening to his pain made her understand why some people would be tempted to put him out of their combined misery. It was different when she was pulling the skin from the swamp biker. He had enjoyed hurting her, and probably had enjoyed hurting anyone smaller than he was, too. He deserved what she had done, what Job had taught her to do.
Dutch hadn’t harmed her. His pain made her want to cry for him since he couldn’t cry for himself.
The sound of a lone siren coming closer to them got her on her feet and she waved at the fire rescue truck that drove through the weeds to the foundation.
Chapter 6
The medics wasted no time in running into the barn to check on Dutch. While they worked on him, Kylie began to gather their belongings, and packed them into the saddlebags and backpack.
If the farmer that owned the barn and property hadn’t come along, Kylie didn’t know what she would have done. She could ride to the hospital with the ambulance, but would not be able to carry all of their combined possessions and the bike would be left alone. Farmer Miller and his son Cory stood around while Dutch was being worked on and offered to take the bike back to their homestead.
She wasn’t sure about the offer, even when Cory walked over to the spot where the medics were loading Dutch up on a back board, he got the key to the bike and came back to hand it to Kylie. He wanted to ride the big machine, there was no doubt when she saw the way the boy stared at the shiny scoot. She looked at Farmer Miller, and he grinned and shook his head at her.
“He can ride a motorbike, he can ride anything with wheels. His uncle Frost is a biker out east, and he thinks he wants to live the life. The boy wants the farm, and he wants to join his uncle, too. He can’t have it both ways. If you want, he can ride the bike to my tool shed at the farm, and you can keep the key to settle your mind that no one’s taking it out for joyrides. I know your man wouldn’t want someone riding it, but either Cory rides it to our place, or the tow truck can come get it and it will go to the impound lot in Center City.”
She couldn’t see where she had a choice. She nodded her head cautiously, and thanked him for being so kind. The rescue personnel struggled to carry Dutch’s body up the muddy incline, and she rushed over to try to help, but Cory and Mr. Miller pushed her aside and took a corner each. She took a minute to speak to Dutch as he lay waiting for them to pull the gurney down and arrange the straps.
“I don’t know if you can hear me, I don’t know a damn thing except you need to go to the hospital, so they think we are together, and I let them think that I’m your old lady. Don’t fuck the story up or you’ll be left here on your own and I’ll be long damn gone. The farmer is taking your bike to his place so it will be safe, and I’ll call your club again and let them know what’s going on. First I’ll get the scoot settled, then get me a place to stay and I’ll find you in the hospital. I promise, I’ll find you.”
The kiss that she left on his unmoving lips was mostly for show, at least that is what she told herself. The tears making her eyes swim was due to the dust from the barn. She had his wallet and hated having to look through it to find his insurance card and his driver’s license, but handed them to the medic, and stood watching the ambulance leave her with the Millers.
Cory decided to use two of the widest boards from the pile of lumber left by the tornado. He placed them end to end and rode the chopper straight up the boards to the top of the slope. He was grinning from ear to ear and Kylie wasn’t going to tell his father that from the looks of the boy’s happiness, it wouldn’t be long before they would part ways. There was something about scooter bums that was bred into them before birth. Like any adrenalin junkie, the hum of a powerful motor between your legs as you fly dow
n the road as fast as traffic and road conditions allowed, kept a rider coming back for more. That was how Job explained the biker lifestyle to her.
So far she’d seen nothing to refute that philosophy. The puzzle for her about this particular biker was the wad of cash that she’d lifted from his front pocket just before the medics showed up. She had been pinching pennies and doing her best not to be a burden to the man that had essentially rescued her, and the sonofabitch was loaded. He could have easily paid for gas, a hotel room and food without her contributions.
She loaded their possessions into the bed of the truck and got into the passenger seat with Mr. Miller. Trusting strangers wasn’t something she was used to, but in the space of a few days, she had broken a life time’s worth of taboos. No involvement with bikers, and no trusting strangers.
As they drove to the farmer’s place she stared out of the window and wondered if Dutch had accepted her money because he was a cheap bastard, or if he’d accepted the few dollars so she could feel as if she had paid her own way. Hopefully he would recover with no lasting problems, and she would be able to ream him a new one for not telling her that he was flush with cash.
There was a lot of things he hadn’t told her that she planned to get the answers to. For now, she needed to get through the next few hours. Then she would have a direction for her next move. She wouldn’t abandon a man that didn’t abandon her when she needed help. What kind of scum did that kind of thing and slept good afterwards?
Mr. Miller showed her where Cory parked the bike in the shed, and he gave her a tarp to toss over it to keep the cats and chickens from climbing and perching on the paint and leather seat. She pocketed the key, and declined the offer of a room for the night.
She hadn’t seen a Mrs. Miller, nor had either man mentioned a woman, and she wasn’t going to willingly set herself up for trouble.