Chrome & Leather - The Novel (Adriana Ness ♯1) (Motorcycle Club Romance) (9 page)

Her saviour and the only man she ever loved replied over the walkie: “Death to them all.”

Clive Barrow held his breath and pulled his elbows in tight to his sides as he levelled the rifle at the red squirrel, just as his uncle had taught him. He could hear his heart beating in his ears as he concentrated. The forest was all quiet around him. His best friend of three weeks stood rigid and still behind him, holding his breath in anticipation of the shot.
 

The squirrel sat perched on a branch its nose twitching as it smelled the air. Clive held his sight steady and pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked against his shoulder as the sound of the shot reverberated around the hot close forest. A thin wisp of smoke snaked out of the barrel.

“Mother fucker, he bolted just as I shot” said Clive in an affected tough guy drawl. His new best friend, Grant Best was a big kid for his age and Clive feared that he would see who Clive really was and would stop hanging around with him. He didn't want Grant to know about the boy who sobbed in bed every night at the sound of the floor boards creaking as his father ambled up the stairs trailing a yellow fog of stale booze behind him. Around Grant he was something else, he acted tough and Grant seemed to believe it, or just didn't care.

“I can see a piece of bark blown off from the bullet, it was right were that little red shit was sitting. You had him alright. Now its my turn,” said Grant reaching for the rifle.

Clive stood with his head slightly raised and the rifle slung across his back, sun dappled across his face, that would soon be spotted with the first splash of teenage acne. He sniffed deeply his movements closely mimicking those of his escaped prey.

“Can you smell that?” he asked.

“Smell this!” Grant said raising his leg and farting loudly.

Clive spun around breathing in great lungfuls of the fragrant forest air. He stopped and pointed off towards a break In the woods.

“Look over there, smoke. Lets go and check it out,” he said, heading in the direction of the thin trail of black smoke.

They pushed through the undergrowth swatting flies from their faces as they marched on. The trees began to thin out and Clive raised his fist and drew it down in a quick motion.

“Commando style,” he said, laying down on his belly and crawling through the thick undergrowth.

“Fuck that shit, I’m walking,” said Grant as he bulldozed through the undergrowth.

Clive felt stupid and childish laying on the ground crawling like a worm. He stood up and brushed himself off and hung back as his red face returned to a normal colour.

“Check this out,” bellowed Grant from up ahead, his voice was already breaking and would switch in and out of a scratchy baritone and a schoolboy squeak.

The two boys stood in poorly kept back yard behind a small rundown shack. In the middle of a patch of freshly dug earth a pipe stuck up and a thin wisp of black smoke trailed from the mouth of it.

“What do you think it is?” Grant asked.

Clive's eyes went wide as he realised what he was seeing, “It’s an underground meth lab,” he said, unable to hide the fear in his voice. He had seen the end of a news program about these labs. The image of the roof being ripped off and dirty bedraggled men spilling out into the sunlight amidst a ring of cops had given him nightmares for weeks.

Grant turned to him and could see he was afraid, that only bolstered his own bravado as he marched over to the metal pipe.

“Don’t be a pussy all your life,” he said laughing cruelly.

Not wanting to look totally cowardly in front of his new friend Clive slowly moved towards the pipe.

“Anybody home?” Grant shouted into the opening of the pipe.

“Are there any toothless meth heads down there?”

“See nothing to be afraid of” Grant said mockingly.

As soon as the words left his mouth his jaw dropped agape and his face went pale. One knee slightly buckled under him and he half stumbled and half fell away from the pipe. He landed hard on his ass in the dirt as he tried to scramble away backwards.

Clive surprised himself and instead of running back into the woods he ran towards his friend to try and help him.

“What is it, what is it?”

“I heard a voice coming from below,” he stammered the words barely escaping his lips. “It said help me.”

Clive approached the pipe slowly and peered into the dark maw sticking out of the earth. A sickly sweet smell filled his nostrils as he tried to see as far down into the gleaming metal pipe as possible. He angled his head back and forth to allow as much sunlight in. Something moved at the bottom, a slight shift in the darkness was the only thing he could make out.

Clive felt kind of stupid and was hoping that Grant wasn't setting him up to look like a fool, he whispered into the pipe “Hello is anyone there?”.

Very faintly came a voice sounding like the burnt pages of a book rustling in the wind.

“Help me. Dig me out” came the voice from the bowels of hell.

The two boys began to dig.

The air was filled with the metallic twinge of freshly spilled blood, a smell that Darian Pickard dreamt about in his sleep. He sat on the edge of a stained and yellowing mattress with his legs sticking stiffly ahead of him. His head was down as he scribbled in a small leather bound notebook, lank greasy strands of black hair hung across his face as he concentrated deeply on the contents of his book. A small bald patch was on the side of his head were minutes ago a man had ripped out a handful of his hair, the sound of it coming away from his skull sounding like grass being pulled from fresh damp earth. The skin was red and raw but the pain didn't seem to bother him.
 

He flipped through his notebook and smiled at the memories that the pages contained. Each page contained a list of ten names in neat square writing and each name had a line drawn through it in bright red ink. Darian added three more red lines to his notebook. Every name in the neat rows had been crossed out, page upon page of bright red lines. A record of all he had achieved since the day ten years ago that Darian called his rebirth. The day that changed the course of his life and through his voyage to hell and back formed him into the man he is today. He flicked to the last page in the notebook which only contained one name that was carefully written in large block letters. The name filled his vision almost flickering and bending in his view as he ran his finger back and forth across it imagining he could feel a texture to the letters under his skin. As with every name on the list Darian said this name out loud believing that uttering what had once broken him would now allow him to take away any power it held over him. He stood up stiffly and in his thin and reedy voice said, “Blackjack. Blackjack. You’re next.”

As if on cue sparks of pain shot through his knee and his thigh throbbed painfully. The pins holding both legs together seemed to have a life of their own, if he began to think about Blackjack his legs would begin to cramp and his skin would feel too tight over his injured limbs. In the days following his rebirth while he lay in the hospital bed hooked up to a machine that beeped and whirred and administered pain meds at the press of a button, he whispered the name Blackjack incessantly. Every time he uttered the name his broken legs would spasm as shards of white hot pain dug into his wrecked flesh. Through the searing torture he kept on mumbling the name, only stopping when he noticed a nurse staring at him. For weeks on end the name shone inside his mind like a neon sign blinking in the dead of night. Each spasm of pain made him stronger and in the hospital bed as he lay broken he plotted his revenge. Blackjack and all involved would pay.

With a snap he closed his notebook and placed it in his inside pocket, the notebook felt lighter to him as if crossing off the names somehow affected its weight. He wondered to himself if the notebook might float away as if it was nothing more than a dust mote once he crossed the last name off the list. He relished the day when he would get to draw his red line through the name, the scarlet ink soaking into the page like blood blossoms on a crisp linen sheet.
 

Darian Pickard continued repeating the mantra of Blackjack over and over in his head, the huge neon sign building in brightness and intensity with each mental utterance of the final name. While he repeated the last name over and over Darian surveyed the room around him. Crumpled in the corner was a large man wearing the worn and weather beaten leathers of a motorcycle gang member. “Not so scary now,” said Darian his voice echoing off the damp and mouldy walls of the room. He couldn't help himself and chuckled aloud as he stood over the body, making sure not to stand in the pool of blood. The bikers throat had been slit from ear to ear with the curved thai blades Darian liked to use. He wore two of the blades in a sheath pressed into the base of his spine. The blades had curved handles and Durian had perfected a fluid and almost balletic move where he reached back, withdrew the blades and then drew both quickly across a victims neck as he spun to the side to avoid the spray of arterial blood. Most of the time his intended target didn't realise what had happened to him until the blood shot from his throat in a warm red gush. Durian always savoured the panicked look in their eyes as they clutched at the open wound, foolishly trying to stem the flow.
 

The dead man on the floor held a clump of Darians hair in his stiffening fist. His hand had shoot out as the blades opened his windpipe and clutched with a vice like grip onto Durians hair. Darian had spun away from the man and his hair came out with a wrench as the dying man slid to the floor gurgling.

Darian kicked the dead mans foot and it flopped to the side loosely. Everything about the man was meant to invoke fear in the squares, the normal everyday folk that most bikers saw as nothing but sheep to the system. The leather jacket with a large swastika on the back, the shaved head with tattoos creeping up from the neck and the big bushy beard. Most people walked the other way when they saw somebody like this dead man walking about, his whole look was nothing but cultural shorthand for trouble Durian thought to himself.
 

Well, look at you now Durian thought, you've gotten taken down by a cripple. People like Mr dead biker always underestimated people like Darian, they where all alpha male swagger while he was seen as nothing but a weakling and a non threat. Oh how wrong he had shown the names on his list, each and every red line in his notebook was another man who had underestimated him. He would make sure that the last thought running through Blackjacks head was one of utter confusion about how such an insignificant man as Darian could best a swaggering alpha male fool like the mighty Blackjack. He would make him pay. Slowly and for a long time.

Darian barely glanced at the body slumped on the stairs as he passed its lumpen form. He had slashed his throat from behind while he stood at the bottom step and the man had fallen forward and pulled himself halfway up the stairs as his life force drained from his body. Darian had stood at the bottom marvelling at the mans determination to move forward as if he was somehow going to get to safety. Darian always marvelled at the drive for self preservation even when there was no escape. He had seen it all but ultimately it didn't matter. If you were in his book then he was going to come a calling sometime and then his blade would reduce your life down to the last futile minute of struggle as he stood victorious above you.

The front door to the house stood open and a weak yellow light fringed into the hall. The house was derelict with parts of the walls crumbling and all fixtures and anything of value stripped from it a long time ago. It was a flophouse that some of the Tri-Staff gang members used when they wanted to check out and get fucked up for a few days. A fitting final resting place for these men Darian thought to himself. As he left the house he barely glanced at the man lying on his back with his dead eyes pointed towards the heavens.
 

It had almost been too easy to take him out. By chance or universal alignment of the entries on the list, something Darian believed that was akin to some giant insidious clockwork mechanism positioning each of his marked men in a predetermined arch of death, the next name on his list was standing at the front door of the house smoking a joint. Darian had hobbled across the trash strewn lawn towards the smoking man.

The house was surrounded by other houses of similar disrepair, some had begun to collapse in on themselves because of rot and decay. Darian did not need to be afraid of witnesses, the kinds of people who hung around here did not want the police snooping around. He limped stiffly towards the smoking man on the porch who lifted his head and looked in his direction with a slight smile on his face as he limped slowly towards him. He had seen this look before, a smile playing across someones lips as they witnessed this pathetic creature shamble towards them. They will always underestimate you.

“Hey, fuck off this is private…” the smoking man said, never getting to finish his sentence.

The curved blades sliced through the air and with a slice and a deft spin away the victims throat was cut and Darian stood over him as he died. That was his first kill and as the cosmic clockwork machine tightened the second kill was the next name on the list until finally he killed the last man. Darian knew that this could not be some sort of coincidence, it could only mean that everything was aligning perfectly for him and that Blackjack would feel the full effect of his wraith.

Darian limped down the street, as each step brought him further away from the three corpses he had left behind, he could feel the pain in his knee and thighs ease up. When he reached the intersection where he had parked his bike his limping had lessened and the usual pain subsided. Durian always felt better when he struck a name off his list. He began to imagine how he would feel once the last name was removed, maybe his limp would disappear completely he thought to himself.