The Brotherhood of the Wheel

by R. S. Belcher

  “Like the horoscope?” Paul asked

  “Like the killer,” Jimmie said. “There was a serial killer in San Francisco in the sixties and seventies called the Zodiac. He killed a lot of people, claimed to have killed even more. He was never caught. There have been copycats, too, lots of them.”

  “Dad?” Ira said, starting to look a little scared.

  Jimmie kept going. Myrtle, the waitress, was headed back to the table now with a tray of water glasses. “The reason Zodiac was never caught,” Jimmie said, looking from one frightened, confused face to another, “was because Zodiac wasn’t a ‘he.’ Zodiac was a group of people, a club of murderers. They use the highways as their hunting grounds, their bone yard. They are very well organized, and they are not the only club like that out on the Road.”

  “Sir.” Paul locked eyes with Jimmie. “That’s enough. I need you to go, right now, or I’m having someone call 911.”

  “I wish you could,” Jimmie said. “They have cell-phone jammers going in here. That symbol on the sign out front—the circle with the cross overlapping it—it’s not for a compass, it’s crosshairs, it’s the Zodiac’s symbol. This place is a hunting lodge for serial killers, and you, your family, and me are up the creek without a paddle if we don’t get out of here right now.”

  Stacy was silent, holding the baby. Both the kids were silent, too. They all looked at Paul.

  “If I’m a nut, then you walk out that door right now,” Jimmie said, looking from one member of the Waclaw family to the next. He was starting to sweat a little. “No harm done to anyone, right? But if I’m telling you the truth … and I am…” Jimmie looked into Paul’s eyes. “You saw how they looked at your wife, your baby? What’s your gut telling you right now?”

  “This fella bothering you folks, hon?” Myrtle drawled, looking at Paul. “’Cause I can get a few of the cooks and busboys to get him out of here if he is.”

  Paul looked at Myrtle, with her dead, red eyes—like a rat’s eyes. Then he looked back at Jimmie. The realization came to Paul that, besides his wife and kids, this trucker was the only person in the whole restaurant with eyes that had anything resembling human life behind them.

  Jimmie nodded slightly to Paul. “Let me get y’all out of here,” he said softly. “Please.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Paul said, looking up at Myrtle and forcing a polite smile. “This nice fella just told us about a little antiques place up the road, and we’re going to head up there now. The kids weren’t hungry, anyway. Thanks, though. I’ll drop you a tip for your trouble.”

  There was silence. Every other patron in the Compass Point had stopped talking, as if their conversations had only been window dressing. Every single one of them heard what Paul had said, softly, to the waitress.

  “Well sheeeeee-it,” Myrtle said, her eyes slitting like a reptile’s. “We were gonna give you a decent last meal with a little something extra in it to make you and the bitch and rug rats easier to handle, but noooo—have to go the hard way.” She let the tray of glasses hit the floor without batting an eye. Paul, Stacy, and the kids jumped at the clatter. “Bunch of fuckin’ snobs with your fancy-ass clothes and your laughing like you’re better’n regular folks.” Myrtle glared at Stacy and the kids. “I’m gonna flay your fucking little ankle-biters, you stuck-up bitch, you hear me? Skin ’em alive!”

  In her hand, which had been holding the tray, Myrtle gripped a small, silver-plated pistol. She pointed it at the baby in Stacy’s arms, and her eyes came to life. Jimmie was on his feet, between the family and the waitress and the patrons, his pistol in one hand and the 12-gauge, pointed toward the ceiling, in the other. He aimed the pistol at Myrtle’s head and cocked the trigger.

  “You point that gun away from that little girl, or I swear to God I’ll blow a hole in that evil head of yours,” Jimmie said through gritted teeth. “Back off!”

  Myrtle sneered at Jimmie, and then her rat eyes flicked to his raised shotgun, and she saw the Crusaders’ cross on the grip. Her eyes widened. She stepped back toward the center of the room. The gun moved from the baby to Jimmie. “Templar!” she hissed, “Templar! He’s a fucking Templar!”

  Paul had no idea what a Templar was, but the waitress’s call galvanized the other patrons and the staff of the Compass Point to action. “Templar…” the patrons hissed. “Temmmmplaaaaarrrr…”

  Weapons appeared, almost out of thin air—knives, retractable metal batons, guns. Two men who looked as if they were some type of utility workers, in coveralls, took out a hand ax and what looked like a battery-powered, circular surgical saw from their toolboxes, respectively. A couple—a normal-looking man and woman a moment ago, holding hands and snuggling—now brandished a terrifying hypodermic needle full of an unknown substance and a chemical-soaked cloth that the man retrieved from a plastic baggie. Rough-looking men in dirty white shirts and aprons, hairnets covering their heads, exited from the kitchen. Some of them brandished baseball bats; others had shotguns of their own. One busboy had a samurai sword, the kind you might buy at a pawnshop or on the Home Shopping Network at three in the morning. He also wore a belt adorned with small, mummified human heads. The other waitress on duty—a slightly younger, stockier blond iteration of Myrtle—had a large butcher knife that she brandished as she cracked her gum and blew a pink bubble. The blonde moved to the door of the restaurant, flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED with her free hand, locked the door, and lowered the blinds, covering the glass door’s view of outside.

  The patrons and the staff began to form a circle around the Waclaws and Jimmie. Jimmie took a step forward, bringing the shotgun down to cover the killers to his left—between them and the door—and kept his pistol centered on Myrtle.

  “Everyone up,” Jimmie said to the family. “Stay behind me. Stay together. We’re getting out of here.”

  “The hell you are, Templar!” Myrtle spat. “You’re all alone, fat man, and you’re sweating. You scared? You could still run. Give us the sweet meat and you can go on your way.”

  Jimmie risked a look back at Paul and his family. They were up, out of the booth, huddled behind him. They all took a step to the left, toward the door. The pack of killers slid left with them and moved forward a step in the process.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jimmie said, evenly. “I’m scared. I’m pissing my pants at you jackals. I’m swooning so much, my hand might twitch a little when I shoot you and only blow a hole through your throat instead of your head, lady, so keep talking. We’re all walking out that door, all of us.”

  “No,” a deep, muffled voice said above the thud of heavy boots. The pack of killers parted as a final figure appeared out of the kitchen. “You’re not.” The voice came from behind a thick black hood, almost square in shape, like a grocery bag. The hood had large eye slits, and behind them were polarized sunglasses. The man in the hood was huge, well over six feet, and he moved with a fluid, confident power. He was wearing dirty jeans and black combat boots. His muscled arms were bare save for black leather gloves and the full-sleeve tattoos of neo-Nazi symbols and slogans. His massive gut and barrel chest were covered with a black T-shirt, and a black tabard—a sleeveless jerkin, like the ones knights of old wore over their armor. The tabard fell below his knees. It was banded by a belt that held a military-style pistol holster, a sheathed hunting knife, and a coil of what looked to be clothesline. On the chest of the tabard, the Black Knight bore his grisly coat of arms in red—the crosshair circle that was on the Compass Point’s sign—the Zodiac’s mark.

  Jimmie’s nostrils flared at the bitter stench of hot urine. One of the Waclaws had peed himself, probably the kids. He didn’t blame them. The idea crossed his mind for a bit, too. He swallowed and moved the pistol to aim at the Black Knight’s chest. He tried to muster a dry chuckle. “What are you dolled up for? You the restaurant’s mascot? Like the guy in the rat costume?”

  “You can’t kill all of us, Templar,” the Black Knight rumbled. “You will get off a few shots, if you’re lucky, and you kn
ow that. You knew that coming in here. Then we will devour you, crush you, break you. You will die on this floor alone and for nothing, and then we will play with your charges for a long, long time.”

  Some of the killers laughed. Others clapped with glee or whistled and hooted as if their driver had just won at Indy. One of the cooks punched the jukebox buttons. The box hummed and clicked.

  “I swear, on all that’s holy, you will go down first,” Jimmie said to the Black Knight. His palm was wet on the grip of the .380. Sweat burned his eyes. To his left, he saw the pack moving forward. He fanned the sawed-off shotgun back and forth, and they stopped.

  “Of course you do,” the Black Knight said, his voice even and calm behind the hood. “I am a Lodge Master, my victims are legion, Templar. In the afterlife, each one of them will be my slave in paradise. I have no fear of death. Can you say the same?”

  Jimmie thought of Layla, Peyton, and the baby and he was dizzy with fear for a moment, just a moment. He thought of running; any sane person would run, beg, plead for his life right now. But he knew these things that hid behind people masks would never, ever let him go. Then he heard the sniffle of one of the Waclaw children, making the same sound Peyton made when she was sick or scared, and the fear was put away, far away. He felt a flush of anger settle over him like a mantle of fever. The jukebox began to play “The Old Man Down the Road,” by John Fogerty.

  Jimmie glanced over his shoulder at the Waclaws, then back at the Black Knight. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said, his voice strong and unafraid. “I’m going to shoot up that door with the shotgun. If we’re lucky, those dumbasses will keep standing between it and this twelve-gauge. You and your family run like hell and don’t look back, y’hear me?” Paul nodded, but the trucker these maniacs called Templar couldn’t see it. “And, you, asshole,” Jimmie said to the Black Knight as he began to squeeze the trigger, “git your ass ready for paradise.”

  The door to the Compass Point exploded. Parts of the wall on either side of the door evaporated as well in the explosion. Glass and debris flew everywhere. Jimmie was as shocked as everyone else. He hadn’t fired the shotgun yet. Was that a grenade? The killers in front of the door were tossed everywhere, screaming, bleeding, some expiring. There was the gravel-throated roar of an engine, a motorcycle, and through the smoke and the heady gasoline-oil smell, through explosive residue and the dying screams of evil men, a rider drove his bike, a T5 Blackie, into the Compass Point. The rider was dressed in jeans and boots, with a black leather riding jacket and an MC cut over it. He wore an open-faced helmet and a steel mask that bore the grinning face of a Japanese demon. The rider stopped a few feet in, resting his foot on the glass-and-blood-soaked floor. He released the left handlebar and fanned the assembled killers with a clattering MP9 machine gun. The squat little gun was slung over his shoulder and close to his chest. Jimmie swore he heard laughter behind the steel demon’s face above the bark of the MP, the music, and the shouting.

  Jimmie pumped a few rounds from the pistol into the Black Knight, who was going for his own gun. The hulking nightmare jerked backward and fell. Jimmie was almost a hundred percent sure the Lodge Master had on Kevlar, but he was down for a second.

  “Go, go, go!” Jimmie shouted to Paul and his family. The Waclaws stayed low and ran for the demolished front of the Compass Point. Jimmie moved with them, covering them as best he could. One of the cooks was aiming a shotgun at the kid on the bike. Jimmie fired his shotgun first, and the cook and several other killers went down, bellowing in pain from the buckshot. A bullet whined past Jimmie and hit the cash register on the shredded counter by the nonexistent door.

  The biker, who Jimmie could now see was with the Blue Jocks, Ale’s club, had emptied the MP and was replacing the magazine when the Lodge Master rose and fired at him with his pistol at nearly point-blank range. Without missing a beat, the kid let go of the MP, which slapped against his chest, and revved the bike. He drove a kick into the Black Knight’s balls and then swerved the bike to avoid hitting the lunch counter, as he stopped again. The Black Knight made a very satisfying gurgle and fell to his knees, dropping his gun in the process. A swarm of killers moved like a wave of rage to crash against the rider. Jimmie chambered a fresh shell and fired the shotgun again at the front of the mob. Buckshot ripped through the killers and many fell, while others dived for cover, shouting. The rider produced another grenade and lobbed it toward the back of the restaurant. A stray round sparked off the rider’s handlebar, ricocheting and howling as it passed.

  “Are you kidding me?” Jimmie shouted, and tried to hide behind the wrecked counter by the door. The grenade went off, and there were more screams and cries of pain. Part of the building groaned to stay standing from the shuddering blast, and gray dust and debris rained down. Several twisted and warped HVAC ducts jutted through the ragged remains of the grid ceiling, like a compound fracture puncturing skin.

  Jimmie stepped out of the demolished front and saw the Waclaws in their clean little minivan, headlights on. Paul was behind the wheel. He nodded to Jimmie, mouthed the words “Thank you,” and then tore out of the lot, gravel flying, as they got back on U.S.150. The family sped away into the darkness.

  More gunfire, almost a conversation of sporadic pops from pistols, responded with burps of automatic fire from the MP. Jimmie figured they had ten minutes, tops, before cops and state troopers responded to this little war. He put the .380 back in his jacket and chambered another shell into the shotgun and carefully peeked inside.

  The few surviving killers were hiding behind overturned tables or under the tables in booths. Bodies were everywhere. The rider was scanning the room with the MP9. He nodded toward Jimmie. “You ready to go?” he said through his steel demon face.

  “The Lodge Master,” Jimmie shouted back from the cover of the side of the ragged hole where the door to the Compass Point had been not so long ago. “You get him?”

  “He scuttled into the kitchen,” Demon Mask said. “No worries, I’ll get him.” He pulled out another grenade.

  “Hold it! No!” Jimmie shouted, but it was too late. The rider pulled the pin and tossed it into the kitchen through the serving window behind the lunch counter. A plate of gravy fries, an order someone never got the chance to eat, still sat on the windowsill. The grenade flew by and bounced around the kitchen floor and then settled by the stainless-steel base of the grill and the ovens. The rider revved his T5 and shot toward the open hole he’d made in the front. Jimmie was running, diving behind one of the parked cars, as the rider cleared the interior of the Compass Point an instant before the grenade went off.

  The whole back of the building erupted into a fireball as the gas lines in the kitchen caught. The roof flew skyward, then tumbled down, devoured by the flames. A second explosion, then a third, and the Compass Point was lost in ravenous fire and thick plumes of black smoke that poured skyward. Jimmie waited by the hole where the door had been, leaning against a filthy sedan, shotgun ready. The rider shut off his bike, climbed off, and stood beside Jimmie, MP9 leveled. No one else came through the hole, only thick smoke, as if the killers’ rotted souls were trying to flee into the cold night.

  “Thanks,” Jimmie said to the Demon Mask. “I was a goner—that family, too. I wish we could have done this with a little less”—there was a series of small pops, and then a rumble from another explosion in the ruins of the restaurant—“of that,” Jimmie said as hot debris thudded down on several of the nearby cars. “But you saved my skin, regardless.”

  “No worries, man,” the rider said. He pulled off his helmet, revealing a mane of bright red hair, and balanced it on the handlebar of his bike. He began to worry at the straps of his face mask. “Uh, who were those guys, anyway?”

  Jimmie’s face conveyed his shock and some of the horror that hit him at the rider’s remark. “You … you didn’t know they were Zodiac Lodge? You … just … rode in and started killing people?”

  “Yeah,” the rider said, a slight
Scottish accent in his voice as he pulled the mask up over his face. “I knew they were bad guys when I heard them threatening you and the tots. Like I said, no worries, man.” The rider was a boy—well, a young man, to be more specific, in his twenties—with bright green eyes, wild, red hair, sideburns, and sharp features: almost pointed ears, nose, and chin. He had a grin on his face that Jimmie suspected seldom went away, even when he was machine-gunning a diner full of people.

  Somewhere off in the distance there were sirens, still far off but coming closer and from several directions. Jimmie was weary of that sound. “That,” Jimmie said, as the rider heard the sirens, too, “is a worry … man. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Wait,” the rider said, grabbing Jimmie’s arm, “I’ve been looking all over for you, and I need your help.”

  “Looking for me?” Jimmie said.

  “Yeah, the redhead said.” I missed you at your house, and Layla said you—”

  Jimmie felt something twist in him when he heard his wife’s name spoken in this unholy place, by this strange kid who seemed to embody innocence and violence in equal measure. He lost it for a second—all that adrenaline he had been pumping surged back again. He grabbed the boy by the MC cut and slammed him back against the dirty car.

  “You went to my house!” he bellowed, slamming the kid again. “You talked to my wife?” Again, smashing him against the car. “You brought this crazy shit to my door?” To his credit, the rider took the abuse for as long as he could. He drove a knee into Jimmie’s gut, and the trucker groaned as the air whooshed out of him. Jimmie staggered back and let go of him, then surged forward with a powerful cross to the kid’s face, sending the rider flying across the hood of the car. Jimmie leaned over to grab the fallen shotgun. When he popped back up, leveling the 12-gauge, the rider was up on the other side of the car and facing him down with the MP9. The sirens were getting louder, closer. The fire was a storm of smoke and unbearable heat. From behind the Compass Point came the rumble of a car engine. The Lodge Master, still in his hood, pealed out of the parking lot and sped away in the opposite direction the Waclaws had. He was driving an old Pontiac Safari station wagon with fake wooden paneling on the sides.