by Paula Cox
I duck low under a collapsed doorframe, covering my face with the leather of my sleeve, and jump over a crumbled portion of the ceiling. Through the hole above me, I can see the corner of a crate which is halfway falling out of the hole. I listen, try and hear something that might help, but all I can hear is the hiss-hiss of the sprinklers and the spit-spit of the fire and, occasionally, the dying screams of a Wraith. And they are dying. You don’t outlaw for as long as I have without knowing what a dying scream sounds like. All the screams are coming from the same place. Finally, after a minute or so of running, I see why: they’ve been locked into a room together. It looks like a small communications room, with panels everywhere, and dials, and screens. The cameras have cut out; there is only static. And the men are dead, or dying, hair and eyebrows singed away, consumed in the fire.
I press on.
Eventually, I woke up strapped down to a table. The worm-fingered man leaned over me. I was young, twenty, nineteen. I can’t remember exactly but I was too young to be strapped to a table with some old man staring down at me. His face was carved with wrinkles, like somebody had taken the tip of a sharp knife and sliced and cut and then set the cuts with cement, deep crevices in his skin. He patted me on the hand, and I flinched away from him. I was sobbing. Dammit, I was sobbing and that’s the truth. But it sounded faraway, like the sobs of somebody else. I remember thinking: Get a grip, Dante, get a goddamn grip. But though I had been in a few scraps, I had never been in a situation like this.
I round a corner, another, another, smoke thick in front of me, thinking of the girl trapped somewhere in this building. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to give her up. That’s not something I want to do, but fire and smoke and death don’t care about any man’s wants. Then I hear her, dim, so dim I’m not sure if I really hear her over the crackle and hiss of flames and water or if I imagine it.
The man told me that he was a business man who specialized in procuring young handsome men for work overseas. That was how he said it. Work overseas. But I could tell by looking into his creviced face that he knew I knew; he knew by the way I clenched my fists as he said the words. He wanted to sell me for sex. Me, a fighter, a scrapper, a biker, though not the leader of the War Riders at that point. Still, I couldn’t stand for this. I strained against the bindings. The man just chuckled, and told me that there was no use in fighting. He told me he’d been through this before. He told me that one day I’m come to enjoy my work. When I think of that old bastard, I wish I could kill him all over again.
Another corner, and the voice grows louder. Still quiet, but louder. I think I hear words: “Let me the hell out of here! Please! Somebody! Anybody!” A high-pitched voice, a woman’s voice.
I push down the hallway. When I see the camera, toppled on its tripod onto its side, I know I am heading in the right direction. I jump over collapsed, smoldering portions of the building, coughing away the smoke, and then duck low and push through to the wall of glass.
The man had tightened my bindings well, but not well enough. When I tugged with my right hand, I could feel how the bindings tugged at the bed frame. The bindings were zip-ties, cutting into my wrists, and secure, but they were secured to the slats of an old bed. When I tugged, I felt the slats give a little, and then I tugged again, and I felt them give a little more, and on and on, until by the time the old man returned from grabbing a couple of burgers, I was standing beside the door, zip-ties still digging into my wrists, but no longer tied to the bed. I’ll always remember the look of surprise on his face, almost funny, and the anger which gripped me. I fell on him, fists smashing his deep-lined face into deeper, bloodier lines, over and over, roaring with animalistic fury that he was a sick old fuck and he’d never get the chance to sell another man again. I had never killed before, but I felt no compunction about killing this man. I beat him until his face was a bloody imprint on the carpet, and then I found some scissors and cut my wrists free. The only thing I felt as I left the room was relief that the ties had stopped digging into my wrists. It was only later, once I was back home, that it hit me. I was a killer now; I had almost been sold; I had escaped. From that day on, any fucker tried to hurt me, he was dead. No question. No hesitation. No compunction.
The girl stands before me, partially obscured by smoky glass, but visible. She looks young, around twenty, and she’s wearing a grey T-shirt which shows the outline of perky breasts underneath. Her bra and her hoodie are on the floor, I notice, next a thorn-stemmed flower. The flower looks out of place here, amidst the mayhem and the grime. Her hair is brown-red and jagged, as though she cut it herself, and her eyes are huge, seeming to take up half her head. Hell, half the room. She is lithe, athletic-looking. And she is panicking.
“Please tell me you’re here to help me!” she shouts, voice strained. “Please tell me you’re not one of them.”
Behind us, another part of the ceiling crumbles.
“I’m here to help!” I call through the glass and smoke. “Stand back!”
“It’s reinforced glass!”
“We’ll see about that! Stand back!”
She doesn’t look like she believes me, but she does as I say. I take my Desert Eagle from my pocket and aim at the corner of the glass. The Eagle is more of a hand-cannon than a pistol. When I fire it, my ears ring like crazy, but the glass shatters. The woman has been biting her lip. Now she releases it.
“Thank God for that,” she says. “I thought you’d have to find the switch.”
The glass crunches underfoot as I approach her. “We need to get out of here.”
“Who are you?”
She looks at me warily.
“We don’t have time for suspicion, girl,” I say. I call her girl even though she must be at least twenty; she looks young and vulnerable.
“Fine, okay. Lead the way.”
“Fuck that. Come here.”
I offer her my arms, making to pick her up. She looks at me a moment longer. Standing in a burning building, and here she is looking at her savior like she doesn’t know whether to trust me. Maybe most folks wouldn’t understand that, but I do. I understand it fine.
“I ain’t them,” I tell her. “They’re all dead. I’m somebody else. Now get in my fuckin’ arms before I pick you up and carry you out kicking and screaming.”
She hesitates a moment longer, and then the fire eats through a nearby wall, another part of the ceiling collapsing, a crateful of supplies dropping onto our floor. That seems to do it for her, and she steps forward into my arms.
When I pick her up, I feel like I’m picking up a winged bird, tiny and breakable.
“What is your name?” she asks.
I tell her, and then ask hers.
“Kayla Pearson,” she says.
I heft her. “Okay, Kayla Pearson. Let’s get you the fuck out of here.”
Chapter Five
Kayla
As I climb into Dante’s arms, I wonder how old he is. At least thirty, I guess. He has thick black hair and eyes just as black. They must be brown, or dark blue, but they look pitch-black. In the pocket of his leather jacket, a box of toothpicks sticks out. His face is strong, square in places and sharp in others, a handsome, capable face, the sort of face I can imagine running my fingers along. Though not now, with hell crashing down around us. His jaw is covered with a black peppering of beard, perhaps a couple of day’s growth. On his jacket, a sigil of a skull grins below the words War Riders. So he’s in a club, then, but not the same club as the men who kidnapped me, I hope.
I hold on tight around his shoulders, gripping onto his neck. He is heavily-muscled. I can tell that just from his neck. It is ridged with muscle, and his chest and arms bulge even through his leather. His skin is slippery with sweat and yet dry with smoke and spitting embers. The sprinklers rain down on us, soaking me; I feel my breasts stick to my T-shirt and wish I’d put on the hoodie. Dante jogs with me in his arms, being careful not to run too fast lest he fall on one of the collapsed rafters or burning wall s
ections.
“Dammit.” He squints through the smoke.
“What is it?” I ask, as an interior window down the hallway shatters and flames surge outward.
“The way I came is blocked. Fuck.”
He turns, and heads in the opposite direction, bouncing me up and down as he runs. I do not trust men, and even as he runs down the hallways with me, I’m wondering if this is some kind of trick. Men will always find a way to trick you. Sandra told me that on one of the rare nights when she’d drank too much whisky and let her tongue wag. She told me that men will sometimes appear to be doing you good but then, when you finally let your defenses down, they’ll come in with the haymaker and leave you reeling. As I bury my face in Dante’s leather jacket to stop the smoke from stinging my eyes and going down my throat, I wonder if he has a trick in store for me, some twist to this act of heroism. But right now I don’t have the luxury of choosing, so I just keep my face buried in his jacket and hope he can get us out of here.
He runs up and down, around the building, seemingly without direction. I want to ask him if he knows where he is going, but the smoke is so thick now I am scared to open my mouth. I imagine opening it, and hands of smoke reaching down my throat and plunging into my insides, choking me. Dante is strong, but I feel him slowing, hear his strained breaths. I look up briefly and through stinging eyes see that he has wrapped a piece of fabric around his mouth, what looks like a torn bit of his shirt. His pitch-black eyes glance around for a way out. Each time he sees that the way is blocked, he clenches his jaw, and his temples pulse.
“Fuck.”
He tries each hallway, and each hallway is blocked, so that he is forced to carry me up a flight of stairs to the second floor. I want to ask him what he’s doing, but speech is impossible for me. Even Dante’s, “Fuck,” was clothed in smoke, coughed more than said. He runs down the hallway until he comes to a tall window which looks down at the parking lot. It’s only when I twist around and look out at the setting spring sun, the sunlit trees which border the road, the yellow-lit parking lot, that I realize how smoky it is in here.
Dante leans down and says into my ear: “I’m jumping down, and then you’re going to jump and I’m going to catch you, alright?”
I’m about to tell him that jumping from a second story is absurd when I hear the hallway behind us being eaten by the fire, tearing walls and crumbling floors and collapsing ceilings and snapping rafters. He sets me down and I stand on the edge of the window as Dante brushes away broken glass with his sleeve. Then he looks down at the parking lot. A few men in leather jackets like Dante’s are sprinting over, but they won’t be here before the fire reaches us. The ground is only around eight to ten feet below us, but it looks much farther away. Dante grits his teeth, spits, and then turns to face me and backs out of the window.
“What the hell—” I say, or try to say. I cough, chest racking.
Then I see that he is lowering himself from the window-frame, gripping the edge and ignoring the glass which cuts into his hands, extending his body so that his feet are only around four feet from the ground. He drops, and then calls up to me: “Come on, Kayla.”
I look down at him, a complete stranger with his arms open, more leather-jacket men crowding around now.
“Come on!” he snaps, gesturing with his arms.
I have no desire to put my life in the hands of these men. For all I know, these are the men who kidnapped me. But then I look into the parking lot and see way too many bikes. Perhaps this really is a different club? Still, if one group of men just tried to hurt me, surely another will do the same. I want to jump over their heads, sprout wings, and fly to a different State. I want to be gone. I want to turn into fire and flicker across a forest and then turn back into Kayla and hike into hiding. But then I feel the heat of the fire at my back, and I have no choice but to leap.
I feel like a drop through the air for a long time. I feel heavy, too, with the water weighing me down, tugging on my shirt and my pants, my hair. I know that if I were to land on the ground like this, a heavy wet dropping stone, my knees would buckle and I would collapse onto my front, maybe break my nose, maybe do more damage. My mind is keyed for survival and already I am thinking about what I would do in that situation. I would have to try and persuade one of the men to pay a doctor to come out to me, under a fake name. A fake name! Even as I drop, I realize what a fool I was, telling Dante my real name.
And then he catches me smoothly, turns, and jogs away from the warehouse, the other men jogging around him. He carries me past the bikes in the parking lot and to another set of bikes on the other side of the road. The sun has almost set completely now, the sky orange-tinged, Kansas City a winking gilt hand in the background, each tall building a finger.
Dante lays me on the seat of his bike. I look around, eyes still stinging, at the men. Immediately, I suspect the worse. Now they will all start talking about how they want to take turns on me, how they want to hurt me. I wonder what I can do to defend myself. My body is tired to the point where even the idea of running makes my eyes heavy. But I will run if I have to.
Then a squat, ginger-haired man with a soft-featured face says: “Are you okay, miss?”
It takes me a moment to realize he is addressing me. I nod briefly, and then look down at the bike. It’s always best not to draw attention to yourself.
I glance up when Dante says: “Give her your jacket. She’s soaked through.”
I wonder who he is talking to, and then the big man steps forward and I can’t help but look up at him. He is huge, easily the biggest man I have ever laid eyes on, almost seven feet, and wide, with a squashed-featured face and emotionless eyes. His head is bald, covered with a sheen of sweat.
“Boss?” he says.
Dante stands opposite him, shorter, but almost as broad. He shows no fear of the larger man.
“I said give her your goddamn jacket.” There’s a bite in Dante’s voice.
I make to tell him that it’s okay, I don’t want to cause any trouble, but Dante just holds his hand up for me to be quiet.
“This is my jacket, Boss.”
“Do as you’re fuckin’ told or I am going to fuckin’ rip your throat out,” Dante says, a low growl in his throat. I can’t tell if it’s from the smoke, or if it’s from rage. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you killed that guard without my say-so. Jacket, now, or do we have a problem?”
So Dante must be the leader of these men, I reflect, if he can talk to this big man like that.
The man slowly removes his jacket, muttering something under his breath. Underneath, he is wearing a checkered shirt which stretches at the seams. Dante hands the jacket to the ginger-haired man, who drapes it over my shoulders. I tug it around me, thankful for the warmth, and to be able to hide my breasts; some of the men were looking.
Then the big man flashes his teeth at me in a grimace. “She’ll get more than my jacket, if she’s not careful.”
I shrink away from him. I’ve been around men enough to know that I’d stand little chance around a big man like this.
“And you’ll get more than this, if you’re not careful,” Dante says.
“More than what—”
Dante punches the big man in the stomach so hard that the big man keels over, gasping.
“Let’s roll out, boys,” Dante says. “And Ogre, if you ever fuckin’ disobey me again, you’re a dead man.”
Chapter Six
Kayla
Dante takes me back to his clubhouse in Missouri, and for the next week I live there, in a small one-bed room with an en-suite shower and sink, a luxury I rarely enjoy. For the first day, I just sit in my room and rest, take a shower, feeling sweat and smoke and heat wash away from me, and then rest some more; and then, when a woman a couple of years older than me brings me a plate of food, I devour it.
I learn things by listening, at my door, at the walls, at the window. I learn that War Riders is a motorcycle club based here in Missouri, that Dante i
s the leader, that the men who kidnapped me and tried to sell me were called the Wraiths. I learn that the man who scared me is called Ogre and he is an efficient part of the War Riders, but a wildcard. I learn that the ginger man is called Dogma.
The clubhouse is split into two sections. One is the dormitory, where some of the men live, and all of the club women. As far as I can tell, the club women are mostly in their twenties, all attractive, and all here for the express purpose of cleaning and cooking and sleeping with the War Riders. Most of them are loud and sassy. I hear them sometimes outside the dormitory wing, talking loudly, giggling louder. Their leader is a woman named Angelica, a curvy, tall woman covered with spider tattoos: one on each elbow; one on each shoulder; one on each hand. She is older than most of the girls, around thirty, and she sneers at me when I pass her in the hallway. And I am forced to pass her in the hallway after the second day, because Dante visits me in my room.