Compass Call: Survival & Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 3) (32 page)

“Not just here, but yes. You met them once,” replied Sarrif.

“Is he alive?” billowed Raul.

The nearest biker put two fingers to John’s neck, and after a moment he said, “He’s alive, chief.”

“Then someone wake him up!”

John watched as someone threw a bucket of yellow water into John’s face. He knew it was urine without the benefit of the smell. His body flinched with the assault but didn’t waken, much to the discontent of the bikers standing around him. John felt his body call for him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to return to it, especially now that he was covered in piss. “I did? When?” asked John.

“Last night,” said Sarrif.

“What? The man and woman at the white farmhouse?”

“Yes.”

“The man that gave me the compass?” asked John, still surprised, but also very thrilled.

“Yes,” replied Sarrif. “They are old spirits from the beginning. Look there, it is time for you to return to your body. They are bored with your lack of responsiveness and will begin to torture you for sport.”

“Yes, I see that, but I thought I was here to eliminate these people?” asked John.

“That is true, but not at this moment. The leader will leave you here under guard. That is when you will separate and dispatch the remaining enemy. I will be waiting for you, and we will work together,” replied Sarrif.

John turned and saw one of the bikers approach his body with a long, thin knife. “Time for me to go. I’ll see you soon. Thanks Sarrif,” said John, and he quickly entered his body, groaned loudly, and opened his eyes. A biker had the knife blade to his ear and was preparing to cut it off, so John knew better than to make any sudden movements. The man pulled the knife away, grabbed John by the hair, and while lifting his head he yelled, “He’s awake now!”

“Get out of the way!” growled Raul, as he rose from his seat and walked up to John.

CHAPTER 10

J
ohn shook his head to clear the offensive liquid from his face and smiled at Raul. Raul flinched at the smile, stepped forward with a raised fist as if to hit John, but for some reason he stopped. Maybe it was the fact that rank urine covered his face, and for the first time John actually appreciated the repugnant liquid, but he knew it was something more, maybe the look in his eyes. John knew they weren’t smiling, that they reflected power and destruction. In fact, if John could see his own eyes he would have been shocked, but the thought of the urine persisted. John considered it biker repellant, and he started to laugh.

Raul wasn’t quite sure how to respond to John’s apparent insanity, so he contemplatively stroked his braided, black beard and watched him shrewdly. To John, the man’s beard looked like two oily snakes hanging from his chin. It was a ridiculous effort to look intimidating, and John stared up at him unafraid. Raul’s brown eyes revealed a lot about his life, they were soulless and empty, like the man himself. Someone yelled, “Kick his ass, chief!” And from another, “Avenge Darrel!” But Raul continued to stare at John as if uncertain how to proceed. It was as if he saw something in John he didn’t understand.

John knew what he saw, or at least thought he knew what he saw. John’s light was confusing him. John also knew Raul was little more than a pawn in a bigger game of chess between the forces of good versus evil, and that he was nothing compared to the evil he had faced in hell. Raul did not scare John, and that seemed to confuse the big man.
“You’re a dead man!” boomed Raul. “Knock that smile off your face or I’ll knock it off for you!”

John dropped his head and laughed again, but this time much louder and longer than before. The man had no idea how true his statement was, for what else do you call a man who can leave his body on a whim? When he stopped laughing, John raised his head and locked eyes with Raul. Something in that stare seemed to unsettle Raul, for he took an involuntary step back.

The large roadhouse barroom grew immediately silent, but it returned to its riotous routine when Raul gathered himself up, stepped forward, and delivered a powerful kick to John’s chest. John went flying and crashed to the ground with the chair still attached. He saw the attack coming, but there was nothing he could do to prepare for it except brace for a rough landing. He hit the floor with a crash and gasped for breath with the wind knocked out of him.

His mind drifted back to Jump School, where one of the hardest lessons he had to learn was to keep his chin pinned to his chest when he did a proper rear Parachute Landing Fall, or PLF. The Black Hat, his airborne instructor, punished him on the PLF trainer until he got it right. Finally, after his fifth attempt, and a screaming headache, John managed to keep his chin pinned to his chest, and he was permitted to move on to the next station. Hitting the ground at twelve miles an hour to the side or front was one thing, but doing the same backwards, while suspended in the air by a harness, was something entirely unpleasant. Falling back in the chair brought that memory back in a flash, and John was glad for it because his body acted instinctively, and most definitely saved him from a serious concussion.

Everyone in the room cheered as two bikers walked over and picked John up in the chair. They sat him back where he had started, but this time John decided not to taunt the big gang leader again. He couldn’t afford any broken bones, so his humor left him, but not his resolve to show no fear. John stared at Raul with contempt and Raul said, “Aren’t you a cocky one. Laughing and smiling at me when any
one of my boys would gladly cut your throat on my command. I see now why Tony wants you dead.”

“Tony’s an idiot,” gasped John between painful breaths as he tried to force his diaphragm to function normally. He squeezed and released his abdomen in an effort to return his breathing to normal. “He actually thinks you’re going to let him keep his little kingdom,” added John.

“So he told you his plan, did he? Well, you’re only part right, smart guy. He can think whatever he wants, but he’ll . . . no, everyone in that stupid little neighborhood of yours will be working for me soon enough,” said Raul, as he walked to the wall and removed a pool cue from the rack. He walked back to John and poked him hard in the chest with the narrow end of the long wooden stick. “And I hear you have a nice little stockpile of food and water just waiting for us to collect,” growled Raul.

“Yeah, well, I hope you’re not too disappointed then. I don’t know what you heard from Tony, but I don’t have any food. And you might think to stay away from my family,” said John, as he offered a counter threat with equal sternness.

“Or what? You’re going to kill me . . . kill all of us?” mocked Raul. “I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do with your family. We’re going to ride to your house and tell them to come out. If they don’t come out then we’ll burn it down around them. But they’ll come out because they’ll think they can save you.” He took a knee in front of John, and using the pool cue as a rest for one arm, he added, “And when the women come out, I’ll let my boys rape them . . . all of them, even that young one of yours . . . your daughter, right?”

Raul laughed when he saw John pull at the bonds around his wrists. But for John, it was all for show. He wanted Raul to think he was getting into his head. With that, Raul continued by saying, “Then we’ll take all your supplies, kill the men, burn your house down, and add the women to our gang . . . make them our sex slaves. What do you think about that? Huh, tough guy?” yelled Raul. Wild cheers
and vulgar comments filled the room in response to Raul’s barbaric proposal. The leader then rose to his feet and drew his machete. He mocked an attack on John, and stopped short of his swing at John’s neck. John didn’t flinch, and Raul motioned another swing with the machete before saying, “I’ll deal with you later.” After sheathing his machete, Raul turned to face the gang and yelled, “Mount up, boys! We’ve got work to do!”

John watched as all but a handful of men left the roadhouse to follow Raul’s command. As he was walking out the big man stopped one of the bikers, the one who had carried Luanne on his bike when the gang fire-bombed the house, and told him he was to stay and guard the roadhouse. The man was clearly upset, and pointed to John while saying, “You’ve got five guys watching him already. I want to be there when you take the women.”

“Steve isn’t a brother, so that’s four Desperado’s guarding him. You make five. You have a problem with that?” said Raul, as he looked down at the man. The biker shook his head, but he remained defiant. Raul noticed and said, “You’ll do exactly what I say, or you’ll join him,” as he nodded toward John.

The man turned without another word and went to sit at a table near Luanne. The other men, those who had already been designated as guards, assumed various reclined positions around the barroom. None of them seemed to be the least bit interested in John, and that suited him just fine.

Not long after Raul left the room, the sound of many motorcycle engines filled the air. The obnoxious sound blasted in through the open door at the back of the bar, and filled the interior of the roadhouse with a deafening roar. One of the guards, with a girly magazine in hand, walked over to close the door. When he walked by, John asked the man, “Why is he waiting to kill me?”

“Shut up!” said the man with a sneer, and he smacked John on the head with the rolled up magazine. “Why? Are you in a hurry to die?”

“We all die at our appointed time,” said John.

The man stopped and said, “Yeah, well, your appointed time will be in about an hour, so shut up and enjoy your last few minutes of life!” He hacked and spat a loogie on the barroom floor at John’s feet before returning to his seat to open a girly magazine.

“Are you sure about that?” asked John.

“Yeah wise guy, I am. Raul wants you alive in case we run into problems at your house. He said something about killing you in front of your family if they don’t cooperate. If I don’t hear from him in an hour I’m supposed to take you there,” said the man, as he raised the magazine between him and John.

“Can I have a drink of water?” asked John.

“No! Now shut up before I shut you up.”

John was about to drop his head and separate from his body when he saw Luanne stand and approach. She walked right up to John and slapped him on the face. Her blow was sharp and it left a ringing in his ears for several seconds. John turned an eye to her and calmly said, “Hello, Luanne. Fancy meeting you here.”

She leaned close to John, rested her hands on his knees, and in a whispered voice she said, “I didn’t want this to happen. I’m sorry.”

John didn’t reply, but he understood why she slapped him. She used it as a way to get close without raising suspicion. “Can you help me?” John whispered in reply.

“I can’t. I can’t stand up to one guy, let alone six, even if I had a gun,” she said.

A rough voice from across the room bellowed, “Luanne, get your ass away from the prisoner!”

Luanne stood and said, “Screw you. I was just wishing him dead for what he did to Darrel.”

The man stood up and said, “No one talks to me like that you . . .”

“Shut up, Ronnie. I’m in charge and I’ll give the orders. Luanne, get your ass away from the prisoner.” The other men laughed and Luanne walked over to the bar. She poured clean water into a glass from a plastic milk carton, and walked back to John. She stopped short
of handing him the water and said, “Here’s your water!” and threw it in his face. John would have preferred to drink the water, but he was grateful that it rinsed some of the rank urine from his face. He wasn’t sure if that was Luanne’s intent, but he appreciated her gesture nonetheless.

“Are you done now, Luanne?” hissed her man. Without a word she went and placed the glass on the bar and returned to her seat.

John watched her walk away and knew he couldn’t take her life. She had earned a reprieve by showing him compassion even though it was guarded and limited. John realized he wouldn’t be getting free of the chair without help, so he prepared to leave his body. He wasn’t sure why he felt the sudden burst of compassion for Luanne. She had been nothing but trouble for him since they first met, but he knew he had to give her a second chance, that it was the right thing to do.

John wasn’t able to see two of the guards from where he sat bound to the chair, but he knew they were preoccupied. He quickly bowed his head and separated from his body to greet Sarrif. “Well, that was fun,” said John.

Sarrif chuckled and said, “An interesting choice of words. Are you ready?”

“Yes. What do I do?” asked John.

“You can use your hand. Just thrust it straight into a man’s chest, like this,” said Sarrif, as he demonstrated the move. It was similar to the palm strike John performed earlier on Steve, only that Sarrif’s fingers were straight and extended like a spearhead. “Or you can use your sword,” replied Sarrif.

John said, “I don’t have a . . . oh, I have a sword,” as he looked down at his side. Sarrif nodded and John pulled the sword from the scabbard. It was a bright sword that looked to be made of light, though not like something from a Star Wars movie. His sword looked more like a real sword forged out of some light based metal. The blade was at least three feet long, smooth and flat to a point, with a fuller-grove and a fine guard. The grip and pommel was made of a different but
equally fine white metal. Inside the grove was an inscription of light that John could not read because it was written in an unknown script. He held the sword aloft and felt the power of it flow through his body. It seemed to sing to him. “Is it mine?” he asked.