CRASH: An Evil Dead MC Story (The Outlaw Series) (19 page)

Crash
toyed with the curls of her hair as she sipped on her tea.

“No,
ma’am. I’m a Georgia boy. Jake’s from Mississippi. North Carolina’s where our
base was. Ft. Bragg.”

“I
see. Well, you still have time to head back over to the bar. See if your girls
are still there.”

Jake’s
brows rose, and he gave a short laugh. “Not likely.”

“They
were pretty hot. I’m sure they’ve already replaced us,” Shane replied.

“Now
I really feel bad.”

“Darlin’,
how hard-up do you think we are?” Shane grinned. “Hell, we’ve been back for a
couple of months. It’s not like we haven’t gotten some.”

Shannon
grinned. “Right.”

“Now
you’re embarrassing her,” Jake said.

“Me?
You were the one cussing.”

“Are
you two always like this?” Crash asked, indicating their tendency to banter
back and forth at each other.

Shane
grinned. “Pretty much.”

Crash
nodded. “You’ll fit right in.”

Shannon
set her empty mug on the table, yawning. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, gentleman,
I think I’m going to get some sleep.” She made a move to rise, and both Jake
and Shane stood.

“Yes,
ma’am,” Jake responded.

“Good
night.” Shane winked at her.

“Do
you have pillows and blankets for them?” Shannon asked Crash.

He
stood and smiled down at her. “I’ll probably have to swipe a few off the bed.
I’ll take care of them. You go on to bed, Princess.” He cupped the back of her
head and pressed his lips to her forehead.

After
she disappeared into the bathroom, Crash turned to the two men. “Let’s take
this outside so we don’t disturb her.” He nodded his head toward the door to
the rooftop. Shane and Jake nodded and followed him out.

Crash
took a seat, set his beer down and pulled out his stashed pack of smokes,
shaking one out. Jake took the other seat, and Shane sat on the crate, his
elbows on his knees, beer bottle in his hands.

“So,
you guys enlisted after 9/11?” Crash asked after he lit up.

Shane
nodded. “We met in basic. But, yeah, we had both just graduated. I wasn’t sure
what I was going to do, then 9/11 happened, and I just felt I had to join up.”

Jake
nodded in agreement. “
I volunteered for the army on my birthday. Same as my daddy. And his
daddy before him.
When
I first joined up, I used to dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing
over him with my boot on his throat as I spit in his face and plunged my Bowie
knife through his fucking frontal lobe.”

“That’s
vivid,” Crash acknowledged.

“Hell,
I’m a romantic.”

Crash
chuckled. “So you’ve been in a long time now.”

“Re-upped
twice,” Shane replied.

“Multiple
tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.” Jake took a sip of beer.
“I joined up to
fight, and I’m good at it.”

“Well, maybe we could use those talents you’re so good at,” Crash
replied with a grin.

He
studied Crash a moment, and then continued, “Loved your brother like he was my
own.”

At
the mention of his brother, Crash’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, I…ah…” he broke off
taking a drag off his cigarette. “I don’t talk about him.”

Jake
nodded, looking off at the horizon.

“I
appreciate you’re coming, though. It’s just…it’s still hard.”

“I
understand, man. I really do,” Jake reassured him. “Your brother mentioned a
sister, too.”

Crash
grinned. “Yeah. She’s back in Alabama with my Grandmother who raised us all.”

Jake
nodded. “Yeah, he told us about growing up there. He really looked up to you,
man. I guess you kind of filled the father figure position for him.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Crash was uncomfortable with the topic, so he changed
it. “What was Afghanistan like?”

Shane, sensing Crash’s need to talk about something else, tried to
lighten the mood and replied with a laugh, “That country blows, man. If you can
even call it a country. There are no roads, no infrastructure, basically no
government to speak of.”

Jake was a little more emphatic. “It’s an inhospitable, rock-pit shit-hole
ruled by eleventh century warring tribes.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And there are no jobs there. At least, not like we know jobs,”
Shane replied, taking a pull off his beer.

Jake nodded. “Yeah. In Afghanistan a man’s got two ways to support his
family: join the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your
options.”

“Or live in one of those Godforsaken camps,” Shane reminded him.

 
“Good God, those places stink. Tent
cities of the walking dead,” Jake put in and then elaborated. “The smell alone
of those shit-holes is enough to send them running into the poppy fields to
happily scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day, and who can blame them.”
Jake lite up a smoke. Taking a long drag,
he explained, “It is modern day tribal warfare. These guys, all of 'em, they
live
to fight… It's what they do. It's
all
they do. Roaming packs of barbaric
savages. Cavemen with AK-47's.” He studied his smoke. “Then again, maybe I'm
just cranky.”

“Don’t get him started on the Taliban,” Shane grinned at Crash.

“Why is that?” Crash had to ask.

“The fucking media keeps calling them smart. They are not smart. They
are sneaky and ruthless, and when confronted, cowardly. They are parasites who
create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart? Yeah, they're real smart.”

Shane gave Crash a look that said, told you so. Crash took a drag off
his smoke, smiling.

“They consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil.
They're still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban
warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how
to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye
with it.”

Crash chuckled. “No wonder you’re cranky.”

Shane, seeing it was time to lighten the mood, looked at Jake and
started the joke, knowing Jake would finish it. “You may be Taliban if…”

Jake immediately fired back, “You refine heroin for a living, but you
have a moral objection to beer.”

Shane grinned and countered with, “You think vests come in two styles,
bullet-proof and suicide.”

Crash was shaking with laughter. “Okay, enough with the stupid jokes.”

“But, wait. You haven’t heard my best one yet,” Shane insisted.
“I was so depressed last night I called
the Suicide Lifeline. I got a call center in Pakistan, and when I told them I
was suicidal, they got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.”

Crash shook his head, laughing.

“Seriously, though, we happened to be in some pretty badass situations.
We were in the shit a lot. Back-to-back deployments. I’m not lying or
exaggerating to say it was fun. I had the time of my life being Airborne. We
gave each other hell, but we had a lot of fun, and we always knew we had each
other’s back,” Jake explained.

“It’s an honorable life,” Crash remarked.

“Your brother was a good man. I always knew he had my back. Even the day
he died, the mission that day…he was protecting our six. Making sure we weren’t
attacked from the rear,” Jake went on.

Crash nodded, not really wanting to talk about it. He took a sip of his
beer. “I guess that’s what the military is about, having each other’s backs.”

Shane rolled the beer bottle between his palms. “Yeah, it is. It’s also
about being a man. I grew up in a small town where people still believe in
family, patriotism and looking out for each other. I had a great father, my
best buddy when I was little, but there was also a good dose of discipline.
There was a line, and believe me, I never fucking wanted to cross it. When I
told him I was signing up, he told me, ‘Go get some fuckin’ payback, boy.’
That’s just his way.

“And you?” Crash asked Jake. “Why’d you join up?”

“I’ve always loved guns, always loved hunting. My father was good at
what he did, but he hated his job. Hated being stuck in an office, wearing a
suit and the fucking office politics that went with it all. He told me, ‘Don’t
matter how much money you make, if you hate your job, you’ll be miserable. It’s
not worth it if you’re not happy.’ Most valuable piece of advice he ever gave
me. Do what you want in life.” Jake shrugged. “I wanted to carry a gun and
shoot bad guys.”

“So, now that you’re back, why not law enforcement?” Crash thought it
was a fair question.

“Fuck that,” Jake replied unequivocally.

“And now you think you want to join an MC?”

They both nodded.

“Ironic, huh?” Shane asked.

“Not really,” Crash shrugged.

“It’s the brotherhood thing we talked about,” Jake clarified.

“Yeah, there is brotherhood. But go into this with your eyes open. We
are not the Boy Scouts. And another thing you ought to know about the club:
when you’re new to an MC, you get hazed. The Evil Dead is no different. The
Dead is a very tight-knit group. Prospects are treated like hell until they
prove they belong. That usually doesn’t happen until well into the first year,
if then. Prospects get the shit jobs. They’re constantly tested. They’re always
beat on.”

“Sounds like the military. New guys are always given hell.” Shane
laughed.

“Prospecting is kind of an extended hazing that takes many forms.”

“Such as?” Jake asked.

“My first experience, I heard the gavel slam down through the closed
door of the meeting room. The door burst open, and the next thing I knew, I was
pummeled. That summer, end of every Church, that gavel slamming down meant it
was open season on the new guys. I came out of my first one with two broken
ribs and a black eye, maybe two. I must have gotten my lip busted a dozen times
during prospecting.”

Jake and Shane nodded.

“Bar fights, another staple of the Dead. We’re pretty notorious for
getting into bar scrapes, and you’ll be no exception.”

“That happens often?” Shane asked.

Crash nodded. “Pent-up aggression. Invincible bad-asses with no problem
taking care of business, even if that comes down to killing someone, when it’s
deserved. That’s a pretty potent combination. When you go into a bar, you’ll
always have someone who will poke a shoulder into you or otherwise imply you
should fuck off. Happens in every bar across the world. Most people just ignore
things like that.” Crash shrugged. “If you do that to an Evil Dead member, the
whole club is going to turn and knock you out. You mess with one, you mess with
us all.”

Again they nodded.

Crash continued, “But at the same time, I have to say that while the MC
ends a lot of fights, we usually don’t start many. In a lot of cases, the
fights are the result of some sort of stupid jealousy or the need for a dumbass
to test his own manhood and earn bragging rights for fighting a member. When we
go into bars, we don’t just cower down in the corner or lie low. We go in
extremely fucking confident. Maybe we’re loud. And, by the way, one of the
requirements of being a member is staying in top physical shape. Mack demands
it. You may have noticed that we’re not a bunch of beer-bellied slouches. So,
with us being mostly young and in great shape, people take notice. Girls
gravitate toward a group of Evil Dead, and maybe that makes their boyfriends
jealous. Or guys want to prove something for some other reason, either way,
things escalate and fights happen.”

“Sounds right up our fucking alley,” Jake admitted with a grin as he
finished off his beer.

“Just
think about it.” Crash advised. “You do this, you need to go into it with your
eyes open. This ain’t no social club. It’s not just paying dues and showing up
when you can. Dedication is expected and required. Attendance to everything is
mandatory. It’s a commitment to your brothers that has to come first above
everything else. It’s about dedication and trust. The chapter members have to
trust that no matter what, you’re going to have their backs. 100% of the
membership have to vote you in. That means every single member has to trust you
implicitly. Part of that trust is you don’t lie to your brothers. Ever.”

They
both nodded.

Crash
stood up, observing, “Looks like you’re ready for a refill.” He headed inside to
get a few more beers, giving them time to discuss it among themselves. He
believed they had what it took, but he wanted them to be sure they understood
what they were getting into. When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he heard
Shannon call to him softly.

“Crash?”

Looking
over, he saw that the light on the bedside table was still on. He paused in the
doorway to the bedroom. She was sitting up in his bed, the covers around her
waist. She had on that sexy silk camisole set again. His eyes slid down to the
pillows she held out to him. Smiling, he crossed to take them out of her hands.
“Thanks. Night, Shannon.” As he turned to leave she grabbed his arm stopping
him. He looked back at her with a questioning look on his face.