Chapter Twenty-Six
Jarrett
“Prospects, clean this fucking mess up. Get rid of these bodies. The rest of you, back to the clubhouse,” Gunney barks. “It’s time for church. It’s time to figure this shitstorm out.”
It’s baleful glares all around as we prepare to leave the smoking site of cinders that used to be a cabin. There is so much anger and violence simmering below the surface, and, the stark realization that no matter how hard we hit whoever attacked us — no matter how many of these sons of bitches we kill — we’ll be fighting each other after.
But me? I’m hardly here. I’m hardly seeing anything — I’m seven thousand miles away, in a blood-soaked canyon outside that dusty hell-on-earth, Kandahar. That day, the bloodiest day in a string of bloody days, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Something smooth and soft wraps around my hand and leads me to the bike. I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Something’s constricting my throat, something’s kicking my heart into overdrive and flooding my system with adrenaline. I’m surrounded by friends and grim silence; I’m in the middle of a war zone.
“Come on, hun,” Sam whispers to me as she guides me back to my bike. She squeezes my hand hard enough to make me blink away some of the nightmares consuming my vision. “I know you’re hurting right now, but you need to ride. You need to go back to the clubhouse, ok?”
I incline my head and manage a grunt.
She takes hold of me by the chin, pulls my eyes to look into hers. They’re cold as steel and lit with fury.
“This is no time for bullshit. This is not the time to go on some fucking flight of fancy or wherever the hell you are in your head,” she growls. “Something is happening that could put us all in the fucking ground. So I don’t give a damn what you need to do, but you pull it together and you get your ass to the clubhouse.”
Then, hard enough to make my eyes spin in their sockets and to split my lower lip, she slaps me square in the jaw. Pain hurls me back to earth and I spit a thick gob of blood on the ground. Chill air fills my lungs, resuscitating me, and I blink until my eyes focus on the world around me.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The club thunders down the road, bikes roaring like beasts and war set in our eyes. My heart and mind are still in chaos, but I will myself onto the bike. Every turn, every straightaway, takes all the effort I have. My body is on full alert for a threat I can’t see, expecting death around every corner.
One by one, we reach the clubhouse.
A column of soldiers ready for war against an unknown enemy that’s already stolen one of our own from us.
The lot is empty, the approaching night is full of heavy, portentous quiet. The air reeks of pine and exhaust.
There’s a crate sitting in front of the door. Crafted of thick board, maybe five feet long, and three feet wide by three feet tall, it sits right on the doorstep. Waiting for us.
Nobody moves.
That collection of nails and lumber sits there, daring us to open it. Taunting us.
Gunney goes forward, each step steady and deliberate. The lid to the crate comes off without much effort — a hard pull, the creak of wood disgorging nails, the clatter of the wood to the pavement as he hurls the lid aside.
Silence.
An unmistakable smell emanates from the wooden box. Coppery and rancid. The day-old stench of a body in the beginnings of decay.
We’ve found grease.
He sways and puts his hand down on the crate to steady himself. The color drains from his complexion, and creases carve lines in his brow. Then, carefully, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. A stroke of his finger brings flame, and the tip of the cigarette turns to a glowing red ember.
He turns to face us, a ring of smoke puffs from his mouth.
“We’re going to kill them all. Every single one of these ratfucking bastards. I want each of you to come forward and look in this crate. And I want you to remember what you see. I want you to burn it into your memory, in that place alongside your first fuck, your first kiss, your first love, and whatever other sentimental bullshit you have buried inside you. I want you to remember so that when you come across one of the pigshit sons of bitches that did this, you know exactly what to do to them.”
One by one, we take our turns approaching the grim show. Bear first, his face a mask of rage. Ozzy, eyes downcast and a solemn frown on his face. Rog, who mutters what might be a prayer. Preacher, who spends the longest time of all staring into that crate.
Then, it’s my turn.
I step forward and I look inside.
Amidst the grisly collection of limbs, of innards, of congealed blood and exposed bones that bear the marks of a crude hack-job amputation, a familiar face stares back at me. He’s missing half his lower jaw, the lid to his left eye, and an ear. What’s left has been carved into a crude approximation of a smile.
It’s sick. What remains is hardly human. But there is no mistaking who gazes back at me from that pile of gore inside the box.
Grease.