Matt Hilton - Blood and Ashes

I looked towards the front gate. My glass got broken a long time ago. Under my breath, I muttered, ‘There are no guarantees… but I’ll be damned if I’m going to make it easy for the bastards.’

Gant was pulled bleeding from the wreckage of the SUV. He was hurt, but alive. His breathing was steady enough, and there was nothing to indicate that beyond the cuts and bruises there was anything life-threatening. He just wasn’t ready to wake up yet.

The three able-bodied men carried him away from the smouldering crash scene and lay him across the back seat of one of the undamaged cars. One of them, a small, wiry man who moved with the jerkiness of a bird or someone high on amphetamine, left Gant in the care of his friends and went to check on Vince. He could see the young hillbilly standing alongside the Ford, his hands scrubbing at his hair. Messing with his goddamn pompadour, the man thought, like it mattered a fuck what he looked like.

‘What’re you doin’ fuckin’ about over here, Vinnie?’

Vince turned to him, a dazed expression on his face, still sculpting his hair. No, that wasn’t it, the bird-like man saw; Vinnie was picking bits of broken glass and splinters of wood out of his scalp. He’d also been looking down on the still form of his girlfriend who was twisted in a way that wasn’t normal.

‘Is she dead, Vinnie?’

Vince blinked again at the jumble of clothing and oddly angled limbs. ‘I sure as hell hope so, Darley. Would you want to live, lookin’ all screwed up like that?’

Vince bent down and extended a finger to touch Sonya’s face. It felt like putty, the rain wiping any trace of warmth from her skin. Absurdly, Vince hooked her chain with his finger, tried unsuccessfully to insert it back into the ruin of her nose. The silver links immediately slid away and pooled alongside her ear, along with a slow trickle of blood.

Vince gave a dull groan as he stood up. But that was as far as his show of grief could go. Maybe he should have been more vocal; Sonya had meant an awful lot to him — as far as any one ever could to someone with Vince Everett’s twisted sense of attachment to other human beings. But the single moan was all he had. This was, after all, the response expected of a man who’d blasted his grandfather’s head off when the old man caught him with his hands in the cash register. Vince hadn’t missed the old fart after he was gone, and certainly hadn’t cried for him as Gramps had been lowered into the ground.

‘You OK, Vinnie?’

‘But for one thing,’ Vince said. ‘Wish I’d pulled over on the road like she wanted.’

Darley didn’t get it. He searched for wounds on the young man’s frame. Apart from some scratches on his face Vince looked unhurt. The scratches weren’t even bleeding, and Darley wondered when Vince had picked them up. The bird-like head jerked, staring back at the Ford. The front right fender was bashed in, but that was about all. He looked back at the torn body of the woman like things just didn’t correlate.

Vince said, ‘She was hanging out the window trying to shoot Griffiths when we hit. Goddamn fool’s trick, but there was no tellin’ her.’

‘Ain’t women all the same?’ Darley said.

‘Nah,’ Vince said. ‘Not many like Sonya. She was a free spirit, that one. I’ll miss her.’

There was no emotion in his voice, like he was just going through the motions, saying what was expected, so it surprised Darley when the young man bent down and rearranged the woman’s limbs. It took him a moment to realise that Vince wasn’t ceremoniously laying her out; he was searching for something beneath her corpse. Vince finally stood up, clutching the Glock that had been wedged under her hip. The gun was smeared with dirt and also some of the woman’s blood. Vince wiped it clean on her tartan miniskirt.

Even Darley, who didn’t care for anyone who wasn’t in their immediate clique — and he counted both Vince and Sonya outside of that description — frowned at Vince’s coldness.

‘Might need this piece before we’re finished,’ Vince told him. ‘In fact, this was Sonya’s gun. I intend using it when I put a hole in Don Griffiths’ skull.’

‘You think we’re still going through with it? I mean, it’s been a goddamn shambles up till now. Gant’s hurt an’-’

‘Gant’s a goddamn fool. He shoulda handled this differently than the fuckin’ ridiculous way he has.’

Darley’s head jerked, almost like he expected their unconscious boss-man to hear them from all the way across here. ‘Vinnie, man, you shouldn’t be talkin’ like that. If he hears you…’

‘I don’t give a motherfucking hoot what that Nazi hears.’

‘He’s the one that’s paying you,’ Darley reminded him.

Vince looked down on Sonya. ‘This ain’t about the money no more. It’s about the freakin’ waste of a good gal. That won’t sit too well with Adolf over there, but that’s the way it’s gonna be.’

‘Gant’s the boss, man. You know he’s the voice of Carswell Hicks out here.’

Vince brought up the Glock sharply, but it was a command for silence, not a threat. ‘Don’t give me any of that fuckin’ Hicks is God bullshit, Darley. Gant’s a goddamn maniac an’ you know it. Only reason he’s in charge is that none of you pricks had the good sense to grab the reins when you had the opportunity.’

‘What you sayin’, Vinnie?’

‘I’m sayin’ there’s gonna be a few changes round here, Darley. You with me or against me?’

The relative closeness of the Glock to Darley’s groin had a lot to do with his reply. ‘Right now Gant’s not in the best frame of mind for decision-making.’

‘The way I see it,’ Vince added, ‘Gant’s had his shot at handling things, and now it’s time someone with a little sense put things right. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘You don’t sound convinced. Hicks has promised a big pay day for us all, an’ I sure as hell ain’t letting Gant fuck that up for me.’

‘You know the money doesn’t mean anything to Gant or the rest of us.’ Darley squinted at Sonya. ‘And you said it wasn’t about the money for you.’

‘I’m gonna kill the ones who did this to her, but I don’t mind gettin’ paid good cash for my time. What about you, Darley? Do you want to go home scratching your ass, or holding a thick wad of Ben Franklins? Won’t Hicks’ mission be all the sweeter if you’re a rich man at the end of it?’

Darley, like the other neo-Nazis he’d gathered to his side, was a staunch supporter of Carswell Hicks’ hate doctrine. By that very token he was a loyal follower of his right-hand man, Gant, but it seemed wealth was a greater motivator to him than any creed. ‘What about the others?’

Vince looked over at Tom Sweeney and Mike Dillman, the two bootboys fussing over their leader. He was certain that he could sway them to his way of thinking. Rick Wilkes and Duane Holland, the two assholes sent back with the black van to see to the disposal of the bodies at the Reynolds house, would join them soon, but once the balance of power had shifted to Vince, they wouldn’t be in a position to argue. Rooster and Cabe wouldn’t be a problem. He’d guessed that their no-show meant one of two things: they’d gotten themselves in trouble with the law like he’d first thought, or in some other trouble that they’d been unable to handle. They’d been tasked with advance recon on Griffiths’ house. Maybe they’d made it there after all but they hadn’t recognised the stranger’s killer eyes when they looked into them. Whatever the reason for their absence, Vince didn’t think that Rooster or Cabe would be joining them soon.

Vince hiked his jeans over his lean hips, tucking Sonya’s Glock in his waistband alongside his own. He checked his pockets, feeling the makeshift garrotte, but not what he was looking for. If he was going to be the leader, he supposed he’d better look the part. ‘Hey, Darley, do you have a comb I can use?’