James Hunt - Broken Roads

Silently, she slid out of bed. The bedroom door creaked when she opened it, sounding loud in the quiet of the cabin. She stood frozen making sure no one had heard her. After a few moments of waiting she didn’t see anyone come out, so she headed for the basement.

She kept the door shut and almost slipped down the stairs in the darkness. She didn’t want to turn the lantern on until she was all the way at the bottom, afraid that someone would see the light through the crack in the door.

She took the lids off the boxes in the far corner of the room. She rummaged through them, looking for a spare key she knew was somewhere amidst the junk.

“C’mon, where are you?”

The floor of the basement was lined with sheets, gauze, and winter clothes from pulling the materials out of their containers. She kicked one of the coats across the floor in frustration.

She let out a sigh and started packing up what she’d torn apart until a small black box caught her eye. She snatched it up. The insides were lined with spare batteries, ammo, and a ring of keys.

She took the keys and they jingled in a lock on a safe against the wall. Kalen pulled the safe door open and a row of guns lined the inside. Rifles, shotguns, and handguns organized neatly together. She picked up a 9mm Glock. She felt the plastic composite around her hand. She gripped the pistol in her hand, remembering what her dad had told her when shooting.

Keep your right hand high on the handle. Thumbs over thumbs. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until your ready to squeeze.

She brought the pistol up to her eye and pointed it at different objects around the basement. She kept her finger hovering over the trigger, never letting it touch. She ejected the magazine. It was fully loaded. She shoved it back in and racked a bullet into the chamber. She tucked the pistol behind her back and headed upstairs.

She snuck back to her room down the hallway when a whisper caused her to turn around. Mary was leaning out of her room into the hallway watching her.

“What are you doing?” Mary asked.

“Nothing. Go back to bed.”

Mary stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind her. She tiptoed to Kalen who kept waiving her to go back into her room. When Kalen finally determined that Mary wouldn’t go she pulled her into her room and shut the door.

“Why are you up this late?” Mary asked.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Kalen wasn’t sure how Mary would react to the gun, so she kept it tucked behind her back. Mary walked over to the bed and sat herself on the edge.

“I don’t sleep much anymore,” Mary said.

Should she tell her? Should she let her in on what she was planning to do? Kalen figured that Mary had just as much right as she did to hurt the people in town, but she wasn’t sure if she would go through with it.

“It’s because of them isn’t it?” Kalen said, gesturing in the direction of the town.

“Yeah. I keep seeing my mom’s face, or my dad’s lifeless eyes just staring back at me. It doesn’t scare me anymore it’s just… I don’t know.”

“You want to do something about it.”

It was the way Kalen said it that made Mary look up at her. The faint moonlight coming through the window cast pale shadows along Kalen’s figure.

“Do what?” Mary asked.

“Make them feel what you felt. Make them suffer like you suffered.”

Kalen watched Mary’s face carefully.

“How? They have guns. They have more people. They don’t care what they do. They have no conscious. They’re-”

“Animals.”

Kalen wasn’t sure if that was the word that Mary was going to use, but looking at Mary’s face she knew it was the right one.

“You have to hate them as much as they hated you, because that’s what made them do it. They didn’t do it because they were bored. They didn’t do it because they were forced to. They did it because they liked it,” Kalen said.

Mary’s answer came out like a whisper. A realization of what Kalen spoke of.

“Yes,” Mary said.

Kalen pulled the pistol from behind her back. The black metal glowed from the reflection of the moonlight. Mary took the pistol from Kalen’s hand. She laid it across her palm, flat.

“I can get you one,” Kalen said.

Mary looked up at her. She placed the gun down next to her on the bed and got up quickly. She started shaking her head and moved toward the door.

“No, I can’t do this,” Mary said.

Kalen rushed up behind her and grabbed Mary’s arm. She spun her around. Her fingers dug into Mary’s arm, hard.

“Stop it. Let me go,” Mary whispered.

“You want to just hide out here for the rest of your life? If you don’t do something now you’ll die here. Those bikers in town may not be the ones who do it, but someone like them will. They’ll come through here and rape your sisters, then kill them in front of you, and just before they put a bullet in your head they’ll have their way with you too.”

Kalen had Mary’s face less than an inch from her own. Kalen’s teeth gritted together. She could feel the harshness of her words. The sting they sent with each syllable.

Mary stopped resisting, but it wasn’t from Kalen’s words, it was from something she was looking at past her. Kalen could see a faint orange light in the reflection of Mary’s eyes and she turned around.

Through the trees out of the window there was small twinkling of a fire. Kalen moved closer to the window to get a better look. The flames were in the distance, dancing into the night air.

Jake walked along the line of his men standing in front of him. The sun was sinking in the west, sending a golden glow across the town that gave it a false beauty with the pile of bodies circled around a post where Hannah was tied and bound.

A red metal container of gasoline sat on the ground next to Frankie, who looked up at Hannah, blew a kiss, and smiled.

The blood from Hannah’s lip dripped onto the pile of bodies below her. She looked at the faces of, not the bikers around her, but of the blank stares of the rotting corpses. Some eyes were closed; some were open, while flies and maggots picked at the flesh on their faces. She could taste the stench of the bodies.

“Our club has been around for over fifty years. In those fifty years we have never let anyone walk over us. Not the cops, other clubs, no one,” Jake said.

The rope wrapped around her wrists and ankles was rough and tight. Her hands and feet had gone numb. She listened to Jake’s calm, even tone.

“We never let anyone walk on us because the only thing that matters in this world is strength, and we are strong.”

As the bikers clapped and nodded she could feel her muscles tightening.

“The Diablos have never lost a fight. We beat the Warriors, the Rebels, the Suns, anyone who’s come up against us has lost, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone beat us now. Those bitches that killed Garrett will come back. They’ll come back for her,” Jake said pointing at Hannah.

Hannah felt her body start to shake when the cheers from the bikers exploded. Strands of her hair covered her face, but she could see Jake pick up the red container of gasoline.

When the gas made contact with the open cuts along her body she cried out. Her skin burned. The taste of the dead below her was replaced by the taste of gas. It burned her mouth, her eyes, everything.

Jake pulled out a box of matches in his pocket and lit one. He pinched the match in between his fingers. The sun had disappeared below the horizon and glow of the fire in his hands accentuated the encroaching night sky.

Hannah thought of her children. She thought of her husband. She could see each of them as clear as if they were in front of her now. Their smiling faces looking up at her, letting her know that she would see them soon.