by Jackson Kane
I could only guess as to how he’d gotten that.
Remy had used up all his willpower just to stay awake out on the street. Whether it was the pain or the concussion, he was barely intelligible when he’d gotten into the car then he just passed out.
If I weren’t touching him, I wouldn’t be convinced that he was actually real. Even after stealing the vehicle, I never really expected to see him again. The city was very small, but it wasn’t that small. He could’ve fled in any other direction, and I would have missed him. I had been incredibly lucky that he raced by me on my way to the motel.
It was almost like I was meant to find him.
My car – my stolen car – maneuvered long S-curves in between the sparse islands of traffic. The otherwise open road was hypnotic, just wheel vibrations and wide-open expanses on either side. It gave me far too much time to think.
I had killed a man.
My skin crawled as I relived the event over and over in my mind. It wasn’t that he was dead that bothered me. He’d just shot a man in the neck in front of a school bus full of children! Not to mention him trying to kill Remy.
That man was no saint.
It was the sound and feel when it happened. Another sharp shiver tore through me, and I clenched the steering wheel harder. I was going so fast that the initial impact barely slowed the car down. He was immediately sucked underneath the car’s front fender, followed immediately by a sharp crack – his head connecting with the pavement. After that, it wasn’t unlike driving over a shopping mall speed hump too quickly. The main difference was how much the human speed bump gave under my wheels – at least several bounces to the man as I drove over him.
I felt him die.
His body impacted under my feet through the floor. His bones crackled like a burning wood in a fireplace. The weight of the car shattered everything. When we pulled away, I couldn’t help but check my rear view mirror. All that was left was a red smear. He was a popped ketchup packet on the blacktop.
His corpse reminded me of a mangled, broken marionette with all its strings severed.
I had hit a deer once in New Hampshire. It went right onto my car’s hood and smashed my windshield. Then it limped away with what looked like a fractured leg. I think I cried for a full hour until my parents came and picked me up. I was terrified at the time, and I felt so horrible for the deer. And that was all over an animal. This – this was a human life.
Why didn’t I feel worse now?
I glanced over at Remy, hoping to get some kind of reassurance that the biker deserved to die, but he was still passed out. I grasped Remy’s unconscious hand just to feel the warmth and focused back at the road.
A word echoed in my mind before dropping into my heart like a stone into a well. It was the sound of my own voice – the one I’d heard in my dream.
“Finally.”
Oh, God. What was I becoming?
“Slow down,” Remy groaned, waking back up. “...need to be more inconspicuous.”
He didn’t need to check the speedometer to know that we were driving way too fast.
I had been racing my own beating heart, and even at around a hundred miles per hour, I wasn’t sure I was winning.
“Star!” Remy shouted.
“Fuck!” My heart in my teeth, I stomped on the brakes. A minor accident up ahead had everyone stopped, but I was too lost in the long hallway of my dream to realize it until the last possible second. I swerved, then careened completely off the road. Fortunately, there was just brush, dirt, and flat land in every direction. The brakes and shocks got a hell of a work out, but I was pretty sure the car itself was okay.
“Ohmygodohmygod! I’m so sorry!” I was hyperventilating on the verge of passing out myself. People laid on their horns behind me. My whole body was shaking to the point that I needed to grip the steering wheel tight to stay steady.
Remy’s hand grabbed my knee.
It startled me even further. Then he squeezed it. Something about the gesture was calming. With deep, deliberate breaths, I was able to force my lungs to work and drag my heart back into my chest. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt but had grabbed the Oh-Shit-handle above the door just in time to keep himself from being thrown around inside the car.
“Are you alive?” He wore a weak grin that reached his eyes as he gazed at me.
“Y-y-yes.” My breath came in short bursts.
“Then you have nothing to apologize for.”
“Oh God...” I rolled my head backwards and closed my eyes for a moment. I peeled my white fingers from the steering wheel. How I hadn’t snapped it in half would be a mystery for the ages.
“Can you still drive?” he asked with obvious effort.
“Yes. Yes, I think so. I just need a – just gimmie a sec.” The air flowed a little easier through me with each passing breath.
“Then drive. Can’t stay here by the side of the road.”
I nodded, exhaling, and placed my hands back on the wheel. The car was still on and idling with my foot stomping the brake.
“Drive along the dirt. Go around this mess. No one will hassle you.” Despite the pain in his voice, Remy’s calm was incredible.
I put it in drive and went around all the traffic. A few daring cars behind me even followed. Soon enough, we were back on the road and the traffic was long behind us.
“Slowly this time.” Levity crept into his voice.
“Heh, shut it.” I managed a frail smile back at him.
“Stop at the first rest stop that has a store.” A stubborn coherence began to return to him as he slowly righted himself in the seat. “Where did you get this car?”
“It was in the parking lot of the police station. I found the keys in one of the officer’s desks.” I flashed him an embarrassed grin. I was sure he could see that I was a little proud of myself for it, though.
“You stole a cop’s car?” Remy laughed loudly before immediately doubling over in pain.
“Are you okay?” Concern raised my pitch an octave.
“Eyes on the road,” he warned through short, labored bursts. The intense grimace on his face diffused after he calmed himself. “Just a few cracked ribs. Try not to make me laugh.”
“I was just as surprised as you. I didn’t think you knew how to laugh.”
“Oh, you’ve got jokes today, huh?” He reclined back and pointed to a rest stop that was coming up.
The highway pull-off area was pretty big with a gas station, food court, maintenance shop, and even a little knick-knack store attached. It was also empty enough that no one would bother us. I parked at the back of the parking lot near the tractor trailer rigs.
“Pop the trunk. Let’s see what we have.” Remy pushed his door open with his foot and carefully exited the car.
Aside from some clutter, a bottle of antifreeze, and trash, the truck was mostly empty. Remy and I both hoped for a first aid kit, but we weren’t that lucky. Remy had me pull up the floor where the spare tire and jack were usually kept on cars like this.
“Not a bad consolation prize.” Remy reached in and uncovered a blanket-wrapped shotgun. Next to it were a few boxes of shells.
I hoped we wouldn’t need them.
Before I went into the building to use the bathroom, Remy handed me some money for lunch and a few things. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any first aid kits, but they did have his other request – duct tape. I also brought some clean shirts and a small tool kit.
When I came back, Remy had just finished cleaning the blood and…other gunk off the car with the antifreeze and some rags.
Remy made an effort to not let on how sore he actually was as he tossed the rags in a nearby dumpster, but he slightly favored his right leg and one of his shoulders was raised up a bit. I didn’t see him get thrown into the vehicle when I arrived to rescue him, but it was fairly obvious from his placement on the ground and the damage to the bus.
He peeled off his motel staff shirt and tossed that in the trunk. His lean, corded
muscle frame was already starting to bruise. It was hard to believe he could function after a beating like that, and I could see how his many tattoos hid so many other scars.
It was easy to see that Remy had extensive practice dealing with pain.
I helped him wrap his ribs with the duct tape. It looked horrible, but he told me it’d be fine enough for now. Remy had me drive behind the maintenance shop and park next to a shitbox car with similar plate numbers as ours, then he switched our plates for theirs.
He pulled the other biker’s gun from his waistband and with effort, laid on the asphalt and slid underneath our car. “Hand me the tape.”
“Is that a rainy day gun?” I asked before hearing the distant boom of thunder that travelled so far in this flat terrain. It was something I could never get used to. I stared at the ominous charcoal clouds off on the horizon.
“Something like that,” he grunted with the exertion. Remy carefully slid further up behind driver’s door and taped Rock’s handgun to the frame behind the side wheel well. “In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine.”
Why did I get the feeling that we were going to be driving into a fire fight rather than a thunderstorm?
We talked a little in the hours after the rest stop, mostly light stuff like pop culture that we enjoyed. Remy hadn’t seen many movies or TV shows since he was a kid but was alarmingly knowledgeable about classic literature. He even recited me some of his favorite Shakespeare passages from memory.
“That was amazing.” I was blown away by how eloquent he could be when he wanted to.
Remy’s only reply to my praise was a soft, vulnerable smile. The wind from the slightly open window rustled his hair as he looked back at me with those deep, brown eyes.
Soda bubbles flitting through my ribs.
“Pull over,” he said, insisting on driving when it was apparent that I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.
I watched him in contented silence for a while as he drove. It was crazy that I felt safer with Remy in that car than I did at the police station. Soon enough, all my adrenaline wore off, and I didn’t stay awake for long.
It was a worried, restless sleep, but at least it was sleep. The same dream returned again, but this time the dark version of me didn’t frighten me as much. The acceptance at the end came much sooner than it had before.
The distant echo of a car horn woke me with a start.
My eyes were greeted with the blue hues of early evening twilight that flooded through the spacious, concrete walls of the parking garage. Flickering overhead lights were turned on for the night, scattering uneven shadows around long concrete corners.
“Oh,” I groaned, shifting in my seat. I had a nasty cramp in my thigh from hours of pressure against the arm rest. “Where are we?” I yawned, looking around at what was clearly a multi-level garage. It was dark outside, and we were in a parking space on an almost completely empty level.
“Santa Fe,” Remy replied in a groggy, recently woken voice, his seat reclined all the way back. His eyes were covered with the crook of his elbow to block out the harsh parking lot lights, and he looked and sounded exhausted.
How long had we been here? How long had we been asleep?
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Still alive last I checked,” he grumbled in response.
I wasn’t at all surprised that was the best kind of answer I’d get out of him. Tough to a fault. “Are we okay to stay in this car? Shouldn’t we abandon it somewhere?” It was a stolen car after all…
He finally lowered his arm to look at me. “They have at least a half a dozen bodies to sort, bag, and tag at that motel. Maybe the owner of this car is in one of those bags.” Remy saw the concern on my face. “Either way, LVPD has a lot more going on than to care about one car-jacking, so we should be good for a little while.”
The image of the Vasquez family in their gaudy Christmas sweaters came to mind. The thought of them being robbed of their husband and father struck me in a very painful way. I know that gunfight wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t help but feel shitty about making their lives potentially worse by stealing this car. Everything that happened lately seemed to have these rippling repercussions like a stone dropped into a still pond. We had no say as to when the stone would drop and who would be affected by the waves.
Did the man I killed have a family? Did he have children and pets in ugly sweaters? Probably not. And if the kill teams were as bad as Remy says, then he definitely deserved what happened. I guess it just reminded me how suddenly and unapologetically the end comes.
It just happens.
Then you’re gone.
“Did you know that man? The one that I—”
“Yeah,” Remy interjected, hearing that I was having trouble saying that word out loud.
If I said it, would it make what I did feel more real?
“His name was Rocks. Can’t remember his civilian name.” Remy’s arm covered his eyes again.
“Who are these men that are coming after you – us?”
“Criminals and ex-cons mostly.” Remy frowned. Those gears inside his head no doubt ran through the connotations of the word “us” in this situation. “They’re the most loyal members in each chapter. Men we pay a lot of money to do things in a very violent way. Hitmen, arsonists, occasionally rapists.” Remy’s frown deepened, and his voice took on a bitter edge.
“Jesus.” I swallowed hard. That was horrible. “You said that you used to be involved with these guys?”
“Each team did its own thing. Our deal was mostly demolitions. If another club stepped up and needed to be dropped down a peg, the SV would send us. We’d pop a weapons cache or an entire clubhouse, whatever it took to send a message. We killed when we had to, but that wasn’t the main goal. Lorenzo’s team... that’s a different story altogether.”
“Is that the team Rocks was in?”
“Yeah. Lorenzo and his guys specialize in murder. We did it because we had to. Those sadistic fucks reveled in it. That was one of the many reasons we never got along.”
“Oh...” If a man like Remy is wary of guys like these, then they really must be bad news. “Do you still do that?”
“No. Maria convinced me to stop.”
That woman again. I bit the corner of my lip. Why did hearing about her make me feel so apprehensive? Who was she? What happened to her? “Do you have a plan?”
“My plan is to put you on a plane back home tonight.”
“What?” I shot up reflexively. “No!”
“This isn’t a game, Star.” Remy raised his elbow just enough to peer at me with intense eyes drained of all exhaustion. “They will kill you. And it’ll be an ugly death. Maybe after it all shakes out, we can—”
I hit him and punched him in the shoulder. Then I hit him once again. “No!” My eyes went wide as I pushed back the tears at the thought of being abandoned again, especially after what I did to save him. “I rescued you. You don’t get to get rid of me!”
Remy grabbed my wrists eventually, forcing them down.
I started crying but stifled it. I needed to be strong.
“Listen,” he spoke with hard edges. “When you get inundated with this kind of violence, it doesn’t just wash off. It becomes you. You can’t walk this dark path with me without paying for it. Even if you survive… the things you’ll see and do will be battery acid on your soul.”
I turned away.
“Look at me.” Remy shook me, forcing my gaze to meet his. “You need to understand this.”
“The way I see it…” I set my jaw, pushed through the flood of emotions, and spat defiantly, “I’ve already killed one of them. I can do it again.” My words and even my voice had the dark edge of the voice in my dream. I should’ve been horrified by what I said, but I wasn’t. The resolve I suddenly felt admitting that out loud was reaffirming. I didn’t feel like crying anymore.
Was this darkness always inside me?
“It’s not just them, goddammit!”
I shrank a little at Remy’s raised tone.
After a moment, the anger dissipated and sadness crept into his voice as he spoke, “I don’t want you to see the kind of man I truly am. I… care about you Star, and these hands—” Remy let me go and held up his strong, calloused palms. “—have taken everything from people. Most of them deserved it, but some of them… All those people! That’s all on me,” Remy growled softly to himself, struggling to get the words out. “I’m afraid, Star. Too, fucking terrified that maybe they’ll take everything from you, too.”
“You don’t get to make that decision,” I returned resolutely. “I’ve seen you and what you’re capable of. What you did to Rio...” Remy grimaced and pulled away, but I caught his hands and pressed them to my chest. “I want you, Remy. Scars, dirt, blood, tattoos, brooding stares — all of it.”
“Star...” He looked back at me with softened features.
“You’re the reason I’m alive. I owe you everything. You saved me.”
“Star, I had my guys search the back of the garage when I saw that fuck with you. I didn’t save shit. I dragged you into all this.”
“When I said you saved me... I didn’t mean from the bikers, but from my old life. You saved me from becoming a person I didn’t like.”
The confusion in him was apparent so I continued, “I was sent out to live with my aunt and uncle, not just because of college, but also to get me away from New Hampshire. There was a professor at my old school. Professor Jonathan Baker. He was handsome, smart and kind. I would stay after class to talk with him. Eventually, he invited me to a bar, and we kissed. We started secretly seeing each other. He was adamant about keeping it quiet because he was my teacher and could get in trouble. One night I texted him, he said he was feeling under the weather and wanted to cancel on a movie we’d made plans to check out. I picked up some soup and went by his place just to make sure he was okay. Before I walked in, I heard noises and peeked through his door window. Jonathan was fucking a classmate of mine on his couch. That’s when it all started clicking. The excessive secrecy, even at his house, the occasional evasiveness, his weirdly random after-school tutoring sessions.”