Honestly?

Last night was like a blur. I couldn’t remember much of what happened, quite frankly. I had a little too much to drink that I quickly fell asleep as soon as we settled in our room. I completely blanked out after that.

I knew I had another episode. Shit. I had many of those since my stint in Cairo. I had no control over them. Like thieves in the night, they just come without warning. I wished it didn’t happen last evening, but it did. It was what it was, though, and it’s a damn shame that she was there to witness it.

So yeah, I was aware that I had another fucking breakdown. But the details were hazy. Did I cry like a child like I always did? That would’ve been very embarrassing. I didn’t want her to see me like that. I didn’t want anyone to see me like that. I’m a broken man. Cairo destroyed me. That place almost took away my sanity. The things that happened there... they’re just too fucked up for words. I never wanted to go back to those days... but they just keep haunting me. It’s my curse, a punishment for my sin, something I would have to suffer for the rest of my life.

I couldn’t remember much of what happened last night, yeah.

But the sex?

I remember the sex. I remember the sex very well.

The taste of her supple skin as my tongue coursed through every inch of her sacred body. The shape of her beautiful tits inside my hands, and inside my mouth. The sight of her wetness trickling from the pinkish core of her cunt dripping down her velvety thighs. Her legs hooked around my waist. Her ankles locked together to push me deeper inside her. The sweet, flapping sound that her pussy made as I thrusted my cock in and out of her body.

The crescendo of her wails as she came.

The satisfying shivers she had as she came again.

And again after that.

I remember the sex. It was marvelous. It was glorious. It was amazing.

It was beautiful.

As we drove by the arch that welcomed us to Searles Valley, I turned my head to look at her. She was still peering out the window, distant once more, just like yesterday. She hasn’t said a word since we left Cartago. She hasn’t said a word since last night.

Was she in that kind of mood again, I wondered? Aloof? Uncaring? Detached? Just like yesterday when we left San Mateo?

Or was she silent because she was angry? Angry because she allowed herself to give in to the needs of the flesh? Angry because, for a fleeting moment, she lost control and that led to something she never intended to happen? Angry because she made love to someone she didn’t really care about?

Why did she fuck me in the first place?

Was it because she saw me at my worst and she pitied me? Because she wanted to comfort me as best as she could? Because she couldn’t bear the sight of someone having to endure that kind of misery?

Was it just out of sympathy?

A mercy fuck?

Shit! I don’t need her pity. I don’t need anyone’s pity. I’m not some sorry idiot who spends his fucking time waiting for others to show him the slightest bit of compassion.

I wanted to talk to her about it. I wanted to clear things up with her, to let her know that what happened last night wasn’t really special... if she didn’t want it to be special. I didn’t want her feeling bad, specially if last night was meaningless for her.

But how could I? She wouldn’t even talk to me. I tried to start a conversation a number of times. The most I got from her was a nod and a shrug.

We were at Ridgecrest when we almost got into an accident. A speeding car tried to overtake us, only to find itself on a collision course with an incoming truck. It immediately swerved to its right, dangerously cutting our path. We would’ve rammed into it if I wasn’t able to step on the brakes. The sudden stop made her fall forward. She almost hit her head on the dashboard.

“What the hell?!” she screamed, shocked by the near fatal mishap that befell us.

“Fucking dumbass!” I yelled in fury. I wanted to give chase but the car sped off quickly while we were on full stop.

“You almost got us killed!” she had the gall to blame me for what just happened.

“Me? Holy fuck, girl! Get your mind straight. I’m not the one who cut us off.”

“If you were maintaining a safe three car distance like you were supposed to, we could’ve easily avoided that!”

“But we did avoid it,” I reminded her. “We’re safe, aren’t we?”

“Whatever!” she remarked with displeasure, knowing that the argument was going nowhere.”

I just laughed.

“What’s so funny?” she angrily asked.

“Well, at least that shit got you talking,” I said while sniggering.

“Ha ha! I’m glad to bring you some amusement,” she scoffed with overflowing sarcasm.

I restarted the engine and continued our drive. My grin never left my face. A few minutes later and she noticed it.

“Christ! Please stop smiling!” she ordered, still incensed.

“Stop being a control freak,” I joked.

“I’m not a control freak!” she yelled back. She didn’t appreciate that tag.

“Then let me smile if I wanna smile.”

“You can’t smile when nothing’s funny.”

“Who said that I’m smiling because something’s funny?”

“Then why are you smiling?”

“My business, not yours,” I casually answered before whistling a happy tune that I just made up. I actually found it entertaining to rile her up like that, specially when she was getting miffed over nothing.

She tried to block out the sound of my skirling. She was doing a good job at it... until she lost her patience after five minutes or so.

“Stop! Just stop!” she pleaded with rage and desperation. It felt like she wanted to pull out her hair, something which I found kinda cute.

“Hey, I’m happy... can’t a guy celebrate his happiness?” I remarked in an effort to antagonize her. Her being mad was better than her being quiet, after all. The day’s drive was taking its toll on me, and her tantrum was a much needed diversion.

“Why... Why are you happy?” she asked with overflowing indignation.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” I returned her question.

She let out a furious sigh before tilting her body to face me. “If this is about last night,” she began to say as she pointed a finger towards my face, “then you have nothing to be happy about. It was just sex... as well as a mistake! There’s nothing more to it! It’s something that shouldn’t have happened and it’s something that will never happen again!”

“Well, it happened, so there,” I fired back with a jolly grin, though deep inside, I felt a pinch of sadness.

“Don’t you ever think that I wanted that to happen!” she continued her tirade.

“Oh, you didn’t?” I tried to fish for more of her elusive thoughts, hoping that I’d discover what she really felt for me.

“No!”

“Then why did you...”

“Why did I what?”

“Start kissing me?”

She turned her body once more until she was facing the road ahead of us. She looked straight into the path, firm on her refusal to meet my gaze.

“I didn’t kiss you!” she countered with fury.

“Okay... you didn’t start it. I did. But you kissed me back.”

“I didn’t want to kiss you,” she said, angrily still. “And I’ll never want to kiss you. It’s just... last night... I thought you were having a stroke or something.”

“So, that kiss... it was your version of a CPR?” I chuckled.

“No,” she answered. “It was my version of please be okay because I don’t want to deal with the crap of having to call an ambulance and accompany you to the hospital when you’re the one who’s supposed to bring me somewhere safe.”

“Fucking someone is your way of making them feel okay?” I maintained my flippant tone. The last thing I needed was for her to think that the sex we had transformed me into a fucking lovesick puppy.

“I was panicking, alright?” she defended her action. “I was just desperate to make sure that you were fine... that you were alive...”

“Heh. So, I guess the quickest way into your pants is to pretend that I’m having a heart attack, huh?”

“Shut up!” she expressed her exasperation. “I told you, I just wanted you to make sure that you were alright... that you’ll be alright. I may have gone a bit overboard. That’s a mistake and it most certainly won’t happen again. Specially not with someone like you.”

“That sounds like a lot of bullshit,” I told her with all honesty before I went back to the part of her statement which bothered me the most. “Someone like me? What do you mean?”

“You’re a biker.”

“And?”

“I don’t date bikers.”

“Oh. You don’t?” I asked as I suppressed the tinge of disappointment I felt. “Is that a matter of preference?”

“Nope. I’ve met a lot of really gorgeous bikers... and I mean really gorgeous, as in drop dead gorgeous, as in melt-your-panties kind of gorgeous -” She paused and bit her lip as she realized that she wasn’t talking to one of her girl friends. She was actually talking to a guy she fucked last night.

I smirked. “Well, thank you,” I said. “I didn’t know you thought that highly of me.”

“Don’t be absurd!” she practically screamed. “You’re not one of them. Far from it, even.”

“Well, why don’t you date bikers then?” I brought her back to the original subject of our conversation.

“My dad doesn’t want me to,” was her brusque reply.

“How come?”

“I dunno. Maybe there’s still a shell of a father in that charred soul of his. Maybe he doesn’t want his own daughter to be with someone like him.”

“Or maybe he just wants a better life for you,” I pointed out.

She didn’t reply after that. She went back to her self-imposed reticence, refusing to respond to the attempts at small talks I tried to initiate thereafter.

It took us another four hours to reach Essex from Ridgecrest. It could’ve been faster, but we had to take another detour to avoid Barstow, taking the eastern route and some backstreets at Cima just to remain safe and undetected.

It was along Route 40, just as we exited Needles, when I saw a Harley parked by the roadside. It caused some alarm at first, until I saw the man who was standing beside it as well as the colors he wore. He was one of ours.

I stopped the van in front of his bike. He ran towards my side of the vehicle.

“Yo!” he greeted as he inspected my kutte before turning his attention on the girl at the passenger seat. He was quite young, twenty-five or twenty-six summers old by my approximation. His long hair was tied with a topknot. He wore a beard but a mustache was absent. He actually looked like a New Age rabbi, a thought which almost caused me to chuckle. “The prospect, I presume?” he wanted to know.

“Yep,” I replied. “You the welcoming committee?”

“Yeah. Nicker, at your service. Our clubhouse ain’t easy to find. I’m here to lead the way.”

Prez most probably requested for assistance from their chapter. I wasn’t familiar with the place. I haven’t been here before. And if their clubhouse was as secluded as he implied, then indeed, I would need help in reaching it.

“Alright, that’ll be cool,” I said.

“Roger. The brothers were actually expecting you this morning. Hope you didn’t run into some trouble?”

“Nah, we didn’t. Just some detours here and there.”

“That’s understandable. Better the long route than the dangerous one.”

“Exactly!”

“Okay then, I’ll lead the way. Just follow me.”

“Got it.”

He rode his bike and went ahead, driving at a slow 40 to ensure that we kept pace.

“You sure you can trust him?” she suddenly spoke. She was keenly eyeing the patch as he was riding in front of us.

“He seems like a nice lad,” I answered.

“Lemme guess... you’re a good judge of character?” she sneeringly asked. What’s up with this girl? I knew women were moody creatures, but she was bordering on being bipolar.

“I’d like to believe that I am,” I replied with an intentionally wide smile to show that her words weren’t affecting me.

“Well, I don’t trust him,” she muttered as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“He’s wearing the club’s colors, so relax,” I tried to assure her.

Essex was an expansive town that, at first, seemed deserted. Aside from two refineries that we passed by along the way, we only saw a few buildings that populated the place. The rest was an endless sea of cornfields. Further into the territory, however, we encountered a sputtering of residential areas as well as a commercial district that was like an oasis in the middle of nowhere. It made me wonder, how could I get lost in a place as empty as this?

Nicker rode past the railroad and up the hills. The van, being a mere 2x2, found it difficult to climb the steep road. The path that we took branched out to several directions. Nicker turned left and right so many times that I lost count. We eventually reached a gas station that looked like it has been abandoned for years. It was situated at the base of another hill, making the building look like the mouth of a giant’s ugly mugger. If this was their clubhouse, it was both a bad and good choice for their headquarters. Bad because the place looked so decrepit and dirty, seemingly unsuitable even for people of our kind. Good because no one, in their right mind, would ever think that the place was habitable, hence, keeping it away from unwanted scrutiny.

“We’re here!” Nicker shouted just loud enough for me to hear, confirming what I thought.

I parked the van right in front of what I thought was once the gas station’s convenience store. I went out of the vehicle and opened the door for little miss grumpy princess. She went out with a scowl.

“I’m supposed to stay here?” she asked begrudgingly as she tied her hair into a ponytail.

“It ain’t that bad,” I lied just to make her feel a bit better.

“Yeah, you’d be surprised,” Nicker commented as he walked past us. He overheard Samantha’s grumbling. “Don’t mind the facade. It’s meant to look like shit. Wait ‘til you see the interiors.”

We discovered what Nicker was talking about a few second after we entered the station. Though the lobby that greeted us was expectedly as run-down as what we’ve seen from the outside, the surprise that awaited us didn’t reveal itself until we reached a door at the farthest end of the building, one that I thought was a backdoor to the garage or the dirty kitchen.

It wasn’t.

It led to an ornately designed hallway, the walls of which were filled with photos and memorabilia from the chapter’s glorious past. Group shots and studio solos of the club’s previous presidents as well as hilariously mundane items like speeding tickets, search and arrest warrants, court summons, collages of mug shots, newspaper clippings of their exploits and female underwear were displayed in neat rows and columns. At the end of the hall was an equally lavish wooden door, and carved on its surface were the words: Welcome To The Pound. It was then when it struck me.

Their clubhouse was inside the fucking hill.

“This place is fucking cool!” I expressed my amazement.

“Yeah,” Nicker agreed with a proud smile. “Our prez, Pancho... his son’s an architect. He had his kid build this joint in 2008 or 2009, if I remember correctly. We didn’t get any contractors for this project. Prez’s kid was the foreman and the brothers were his carpenters, masons and plumbers. Everything was in-house. So it took a while before we finished it. In fact, we just moved in a couple of months ago.”

“See, Sam? Their clubhouse is like a 5-star hotel compared to ours,” I told her.

She just curled her lips into a pout. She didn’t look impressed. Maybe it was just a show, though. I was beginning to think that she’s some kind of a schizo chick.

Nicker excitedly held the knob, looking at us one last time before we entered, wanting to determine if we were just as thrilled as he was.

But he didn’t open the door.

The smile on his face vanished immediately as soon as his hand touched the handle. His eyes left us and scampered towards what he was holding.

Then he reached for the gun hidden inside his kutte.

“Something’s wrong,” he tensely blared. “Step back.”

I grabbed Samantha’s arm and pulled her behind me.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him. I focused on his hand which just left the knob.

He was examining the rest of his fingers with his thumb like he was ungluing something sticky that he inadvertently picked up. I didn’t have to inquire further. What I saw was enough to make me pull out my own handgun.

Blood.

Samantha saw it too. He held on to my arm. I could feel her shaking with fear.

“Lenny... I’m scared...” she whispered. It was the first time she called me by my real name. Her usual spunk wasn’t there. It was clear that the girl’s terrified.

“Stay close and stay behind me,” I ordered. I felt her head bobble against my back. She was nodding. “I’m here to protect you. That’s my job, remember?”

Nicker glanced at me as he cocked his beretta. I took that as a cue to raise my Glock parallel to my face. It was easier to fire if my hand was to pull downwards than upwards. I had to be ready for the worst.

He tipped his head, his way of telling me that he was about to open the door. I bobbed my own head to tell him that I was ready.

Nicker knew he had to open the door fast as soon as he turned the knob. We didn’t know what we were up against, but no one has attacked us yet so we most probably had the advantage of a surprise attack. So, Nicker did what he had to do. He kicked the door so hard that it almost flew out of its hinges.

He was the first to enter, pointing his gun at every angle, waiting to catch sight of anything that moved.

He didn’t fire, which meant that there was no one inside the chamber.

But I heard a thud. I instructed Samantha to stay where she was. Then I walked, slowly, towards the newly revealed area.

The stench was undeniable. There’s no doubt that it was blood. I peeked to the left before I entered. I saw Nicker, still holding his gun as he was kneeling on the floor. No one made him do that. It seemed like he just collapsed, drained of his strength and with weakened legs, he buckled under his own weight. He was breathing hard and fast while making some incomprehensible sounds... mumbling curses or so I thought.

A couple of seconds more and I realized that he wasn’t cursing at all. He was praying.

My eyes darted from him towards the corner he was staring at. Then I understood the reason for the horror in Nicker’s breath.

There, eight dead bodies lined up the corner, seated on the floor with their backs resting against the wall. All of them had bullet holes on their foreheads. Blood... their blood... was splattered all over the surface. It was clear that they were executed.

But that’s not all.

All eight of them had their right hands ripped off from their torsos. They were still wearing their kuttes - kuttes which displayed our colors - as they were roosted on the floor. Pools of crimson formed beneath their carcasses.

But the puddle was still expanding.

They were still bleeding.

Their deaths were fresh.

“Stay back!” I reminded Samantha as I readied my gun. “Nicker, get up! Get up, now!” I tried to yank him out of his ill-timed torpor.

I surveyed the entire room. The area was spacious and uncluttered. A bar, a billiard table, some tables, some chairs, a few stools and nothing else. No one could possibly hide there. A lone door was at the right side of the hall. I didn’t have to guess where it led to. A clubhouse isn’t complete without a chapel.

Panting with rage and sniffing in despair, Nicker joined me in looking for the animals who wiped out his entire crew.

“I... I was gone for only... only four hours...” he said with a lot of difficulty, still stunned, still in disbelief that the massacre happened within that short a period.

“Get yourself back in the game, kid,” I said. I completely disregarded the hierarchy I was supposed to respect. Fuck the fact that he was a patched member and I was just a prospect. That didn’t matter. What was important is that we would survive the shit hole we were in.

I pointed at the unopened door.

“You think the fuckers are there?” he asked as he stepped ahead of me.

“Where else can they be?” I replied, sure that our enemies were hiding in the chapel.

Then I remembered something that completely escaped my mind... something that would prove itself to be a very costly mistake.

The knob when Nicker touched it... it was smeared with blood.

Whoever slaughtered his brothers left the hall and closed the fucking door.

Shit!

They weren’t in the chapel. They were outside the damn chamber!

I quickly turned towards Samantha, to see if she was still safe, to make sure that no harm was coming her way.

“Lenny!” she yelled in panic before my eyes could even meet her.

I was too late.

A gunshot.

A wringing, paralyzing pain in my neck.

I fell on the floor, a heap of inanimate mass incapable of anything.

Blood - my own blood - flooded my nostrils. My vision was consumed by a cascade of black until all I could see was total darkness.

My breathing escalated to a rapid pace before settling to infrequent and labored wheezes... until I couldn’t feel any more air in my lungs.

My consciousness was quickly slipping away... and I knew that I made a big, fucking mistake and that I wouldn’t be alive long enough to wallow in the anguish of my failure.

I knew I was dying. I should’ve died as soon as the bullet struck me. But I tried to resist it. I tried to fight it.

I heard footsteps running towards the hall. I heard voices and jubilant laughs of triumph. I heard expletives hurled at me.

And I heard her screams of utter dread.

I didn’t want to surrender. I had to protect her.

My last thought was that of the heavy, gnawing weight that crushed my heart when I realized that I couldn’t.