by Jackson Kane
The door swung shut as the women and kids left behind me. The resulting slam from the heavy swinging door stopped me in place. I cursed under my breath, knowing someone must’ve heard that.
“Hey!” another man called from a room past the card players.
I crouched against the wall and raised my gun for when he rushed out to see what was going on. No one came.
“Grab me a beer on the way in.”
I exhaled, slightly lowering my piece. Okay, that was one man up ahead and one in the card room plus the dead man outside made three. There were still four bikes out front.
Where the hell was the last Knight?
Realizing there was no back door into the card room, I holstered my pistol and strolled in like I belonged there.
“Hey,” I said, walking up and taking a seat across from him at the table.
The one biker in the room sat in the chair next to the small room’s window, facing the door, and was shuffling cards when he saw me. There was a look of uncertainty on his face as to who the hell I was. He knew I wasn’t a Knight because I wasn’t wearing my vest, but I looked like one of them and moved with such easy confidence that there was probably no cause for alarm yet.
I was sure he was wondering if the Steel Veins had sent the Knights backup and nobody told him.
“What are we playing?” I asked, stretching my arms then cracking my neck. I sighed at the long day we’d all had and motioned for him to deal me in.
“Texas hold ’em,” the Knight began cautiously. As he started dealing to me, his eyes slowly trailed down to the fresh blood on my shirt. He abruptly tried to stand and go for one of the assault rifles leaning against the wall a few feet away. I shoved the card table into him as hard as I could, catching him in the stomach and knocking the wind out of him. I leaned in and drove the table further, pinning him against the back wall before he could reach the AK. Chairs fell over and cards flew everywhere.
There was no hiding the noise now.
We both went for our pistols, but I beat him by a hair. He dropped it and put his hands up in surrender. The look of recognition dawned on him as I flipped the table on its end to act as a shield between us and the room’s only door.
“Poet—” the Knight began, but I punched him in the face, cutting the word off. He knew who I was or had heard about me enough to guess. When his bloodied head snapped back, I put up a finger and made the shhhh sound.
“What the fuck’s going on back there?” called the biker in the front-most room. His foot falls grew louder as he reluctantly walked toward us.
I recognized his voice as the man who’d asked for a beer earlier.
“You assholes better not be fucking any of these bitches. If we don’t hit our deadline—” The biker stepped into the threshold wearing the smirk of a man hopeful to see a little action despite his warning.
I put a round through his forehead, dropping him immediately.
Two other kids in a nearby room screamed at the sound of the gunshot. They'd need counseling after this, but they'd survive as long as I got to the last biker in time before Bones showed up.
“Where’s the last one?” I pushed my hostage out of the card room, then scanned the area. No one behind us. We crept toward the front room, which was originally a retail counter where people paid for stamps and dropped off their packages.
“It’s just the two of us. I swear!” the Knight lied.
I had no time for subtlety. I put a bullet through the back of his knee. Bone fragments and ligaments ripped through the front of his jeans. He screamed, and his body threatened to collapse, but I jerked him back up.
Not yet, I thought. You don’t fall until I say so.
“You’ve only got one knee left. I don’t recommend fucking around.” The faint, yet ever-growing rumble in the distance reminded me that I was running out of time. “WHERE IS HE?”
“I don’t fucking know! I swear! I fucking swear! Last I saw him he was in the kitchen with the girls, I swear! Don’t fucking kill me.”
I stripped him of his gun, then put another round through his other knee. This time I let him fall. He screamed and writhed on the ground, but he’d survive. He was of no more use to me, but I didn’t want him running off either. I stepped in and kicked him in the face, knocking him out cold in case he had any ideas of grabbing those AKs.
I’d keep this asshole alive for Bones to deal with. I was sure the Lobos prez was going to have some questions as to why they were cooking on their turf. Being from a sister club, this Knight wouldn’t know any more about the ins and outs of the Veins’ operations than the Lobos mole already did.
I had to get the kids out now, or they weren’t going to make it. Everyone recoiled as I barged into their room. There was a kid, probably six or seven years old, and a two-year-old. They were both crying, huddled against their mothers, terrified of what was going to happen next.
What a shitty situation. It made me even more furious at the assholes who ran this place. I wished I had more time to torture those fucks, but getting the innocents out before the Lobos showed up was more important.
“Anyone speak English?” I asked, drawing only blank stares. Shit. “Español?”
One of the ladies nodded hesitantly.
Thank fuck!
“Toma, estoy estacionado a una milla al este de aquí.” I tossed one of the girls my key and told them where the car was. I’d wanted to get the car back to the church, but it wasn’t in the cards. I was sure Father Jameson would understand. God’s plan and all that. “¡Anda!”
I had just started walking them out toward the back exit, which was a straight shot down the short hallway through the cook room where I came from. Just before we all reached the exit, the door was suddenly kicked open, and a figure frantically rushed in.
“We got company! Strap up—” It was the last biker, and he was visibly shaken by the arrival of the Lobos. His words cut off when he saw us.
That’s why I couldn’t find him because he was outside! I berated myself for the oversight. That was a fucking newbie prospect kind of mistake.
You’re getting rusty, Remy.
From where he was standing, the last Knight could see the bodies in both the card room and at the end of the hallway. His eyes narrowed at me as he snapped the AK he had slung over his shoulder.
“¡Abajo!” I yelled. I was half a second faster and got a round off just before he opened up on us, but I missed the mark.
A half second more to aim, and the biker would’ve had a hole drilled into his face. My pistol was no match for an assault rifle, so I threw myself into the girl and her kid, and we tumbled behind some cabinets out of the Knight’s sight line.
The cover didn’t matter.
Bottles shattered, cans fell, burners fizzled and popped as a dozen rounds blasted through the thin wood like it was made of paper. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet those bullets punched through every wall in the building. The sound of screaming buzzed all around me.
I slid out of cover enough to lick off several more shots at him. I clipped him, but it was nothing but a flesh wound. With no reason to stick around, the last biker slipped back out the door he’d just came in through and headed around the side to get to his bike.
It was up to Star to stop him from leaving now. If he got away, word would get out that not only was I alive, but that I was helping the Lobos. The whole plan would be fucked.
I had to trust in Star, in the woman that she’d become. It wasn’t the first time I had to place my fate in her hands, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the last. I fought the binding feeling in my gut and trusted her to pull my sorry ass out of the fire.
The kids were sobbing in a pile. When I got to my feet, I saw why. The woman I hadn’t pushed to the ground had taken three assault rifle rounds and didn’t look like she was going to make it.
I did what I could.
It was hard to look at. I shook my head and told myself that it was unavoidable in a war. I felt for them, b
ut sometimes really bad shit happened. If the rest were going to have any chance of making it out alive, then they needed to leave right then.
That’s when bad became worse.
The dying woman was rolled over by her friend. The woman had tried to shelter the small boy she was holding when she was hit. The bullets tore right through the both of them. Half of the poor kid’s head was gone.
“Jesus... Fuck!” A crushing feeling descended on me with weight I’d never felt before. It staggered me against the wall like someone kicked me. I struggled to stay on my feet. Of all the terrible things I’d witnessed, I’d never seen a kid die. I turned away and closed my eyes, but that horrible sight wouldn’t leave my mind. A vicious wave of despair rolled over me, punching holes in all my justifications.
My life felt like a carnival house of mirrors, everything was so familiar but suddenly so wrong on every level. Past and present events played in my head like a tattered, poorly edited film reel. The sound of bikes closing in should have been Veins, not Lobos. This doxa lab in New Mexico should have been our guns warehouse in Oklahoma. The illegal labor should have been paid and alone, not enslaved with their fucking kids present.
What the fuck was I doing here? How did everything get so fucked up? This wasn't part of the plan.
I didn’t kill him directly, but I might as well have. I couldn’t shake how damn responsible I felt for it. I’d heard about kids killed in drive-bys, and even seen a few crime photos. Being that removed from it, I could rationalize it all. I could weigh the cost of collateral damage against the gain of the bigger picture, but being here in person when it all went down was something else.
That kid’s lifeless body, his brains splattered across the floor.... There was no defense for that.
It was all too much.
I set this up, called in the big guns, leveraged their lives in this chess match against the Lobos. I was no better than the fucks that brought them here. I slid down the wall. The last remaining little girl was inconsolable as her mother hugged her.
They needed to leave this place. I weakly told them to go. Then begged them. Finally, I screamed it, shoving the woman and her daughter roughly toward the door.
The woman recoiled. Her frightened gaze peered through the mask I wore to see the demon I really was hiding beneath. In their faces, I could read the terror plainly. To them, I was no different than anyone else who’d taken advantage of them, seen them as an expendable workforce, subhuman. The honesty of it shook me.
“Por favor, vete,” I asked them as calmly as I could. I swallowed ebbs of rising nausea and heartache. Just go... please.
The woman looked down, refusing to meet my eyes. She pulled off a ratty, stained sheet that was on one of the doxa cooking stations and covered the dead boy to conceal all the horror. All that was visible now was the dying woman’s head and legs. The fabric around the boy’s head quickly stained red. The image was so horrible, I’d only be able to remove it from my brain with a sharp knife.
The woman’s strength of will was enough to usher her daughter out through the back door. They disappeared into the safety of the all-enveloping darkness. I prayed to any bastard gods that might be listening to let them escape unscathed.
If they wouldn’t give me peace, at least let them have some.
The gun in my hand became a lead weight. It was so much harder to hold than it had ever been before. The woman beside me was fixed with terror as she struggled for air. She had a sucking chest wound, so there was no hope for her. She was alone out in the middle of the desert, surrounded by monsters. It was a horrible way to die.
I sat next to her and took her hand in mine. I wanted to tell her it would be all right, but my lips betrayed me. I couldn’t get the words out. It was too much of a lie even for me.
A motorcycle engine in front of the post office turned over and revved. I could tell by the sound of the bike it was the fleeing Knight. Gunshots rang out right afterward. My heart froze as I listened for retaliatory assault rifle fire. Fortunately, none came. Star was all right. I breathed a little easier, at least for the moment.
Star had done what I asked her. She’d killed someone for me.
So much death surrounded me....
The dying woman squeezed my hand with all the strength she’d had left.
“Lo agarramos. Matamos a los hijos de puta que te hicieron esto,” I told the woman that justice had been dealt.
She looked at me, gasping. Her eyes were puffy with sorrow and fear. She was in so much pain. Streams of blood-tinged tears ran down her sun-worn cheeks. It was written plainly across her face she didn’t care about vengeance. Vengeance wasn’t going to keep her alive. And the killing of some guy didn’t save her son.
Through sobbing, hyperventilating fits, the woman whispered two words to me that shook me to my very core. The last few threads of goodness within me snapped away. I was a man free falling through the infinite blackness of a cold, uncaring void.
I closed her brownish-green eyes, apologized, and kissed her forehead.
Then I shot her in the heart.
When her hand went limp, the grief crushed me like the big metal cylinder of a street paver. My eyes welled with tears. I wanted to cry. Near-indiscriminate death was the only thing I was ever good at. What had I been forced to do?
What had I done?
“I am cancer. I am death’s handshake. In my wake, I leave only ruin.” The words I’d told Star so long ago echoed in whatever was left of my blackened heart. Everyone around me died sooner or later.
“In my wake, I leave only ruin,” I repeated the words over and over, each time they cut unimaginably deeper. The deafening echoes in my soul eclipsed everything else, the sounds of Star coming in the front door quietly calling my name, the bikes pulling in, all of it.
All I heard was the thunderous sound of my defeat, and only one thing made any sense in the maelstrom of despair.
Without any hesitation, I pressed the barrel of the gun into the bottom of my chin and squeezed the trigger.
Chapter Forty-Four
Remy
Click!
I was out of bullets. I exhaled, and all the screaming in my head mercifully ceased. The gun slipped from my hand to rap sharply against the wood planking between my legs. I hadn’t realized it, but I’d used my last bullet on the dying woman.
God, I wish I had at least known her name. Or her son’s name.
The tears dried up. The grief drained into the vast caverns of my charred heart, which beat strictly out of habit. It was too stupid to give up the ghost and relax into oblivion. Blankly, but with shaking hands, I reached for a cigarette and lit it.
I was again, just an empty cup. Hollow, fragile, yet somehow not shattered.
Star’s pace was fast and reckless as she ran through the building looking for me. I couldn’t call out to her at all. The cascading trauma of my whole life had finally caught up with me. I was paralyzed and couldn’t make any noise at all.
“Oh my god!” Star gasped, taking in the horror when she saw the dead woman under the filthy sheet. Star cautiously leaned a little farther behind the shredded cabinetry we’d all been hiding behind.
“Remy!” She rushed up to hug me. “What happened? Is there anyone else alive? Are you okay?”
Her warmth brought me back from the brink, but even still, I couldn’t find the strength to answer her. I couldn’t even look at her. At that moment, everything was fuzzy. I only loosely remembered where I was and why I was here.
Star was the only reason to continue on. In the briefest moment of absolute weakness, I’d somehow forgotten that. A nauseating cocktail of relief—that the gun was empty, duty to my brothers, and even more so to the woman I’d held above all else, and finally shame that I’d have left her alone at the mercy of the Lobos had all replaced the grief.
Now I felt shitty for all new reasons.
The more smoke I pulled into my lungs, the more dissipated the haze in my head became, but it wasn’t nearly
fast enough. The front door slammed open loudly. Heavy, rubber-clad footfalls fanned out as they searched the building. The Lobos tried to question the only man I’d left alive but quickly gave up when he didn’t wake up right away.
“Remy! Snap out of it. The Lobos are here. Please! I don’t know what to say to them.” Star’s voice was urgent, fear creeping into her hushed pleas.
The Lobos were relaying calls back and forth, to and from Bones, as the men came across the bodies I’d left inside and out. They had us surrounded, coming in multiple exits.
She shouldn’t have come in here. It was too late for her to escape now. My mouth and throat were cast in lead as I looked at her. It felt like I was wading through a muddy, waist-high marsh to get back to her. Still… no words came to my lips.
The first Lobo, who walked within eyeshot of the dead woman, looking extremely out of place against the aged browns and dusty grays of the post offices antiquity, was Spyder. He walked tentatively toward the chaos of exploded cooking equipment and violent shocks of vibrant red spray.
“Jesus fucking Christ, gringo! You! You are a difficult man to kill.” Spyder lowered his gun in awe, fully taking in all the carnage. His tone took on a ragged edge as if his words were fragile slips of paper torn out of a much larger book. “Damn, you killed the girl too? Shit... you know how to fuckin’ party.”
My eyes flashed to him, hardening.
Spyder didn’t raise his gun or step back in fear, but the discomfort he felt around me was apparent in how much firmer he grasped his gun.
That won’t save you. My eyes twitched at him.
“Bones, I found our Santa Claus!” Spyder turned and hollered for everyone else to come over.
I closed my eyes, feeling all the boot steps approach through the thin wooden flooring.
“Poet?” I could hear the surprise in Bones’s voice. No one would’ve expected to see me alive after what he’d done to me. “I’ll be damned….”
That made two of us.
“How was death, amigo?” he asked with an air of skepticism as if not fully believing what he was seeing.