Sons of Mayhem 3: War and Vengeance (7 page)

The sun shone down on them, glinting off the chrome of their bikes. Ahead of them the targets fixed to the old oil barrels were full of holes, scattered haphazardly all over the paper. Jase lay in the dirt, squinting forward. To his sides lay Bottle and Lonnie, each of them holding one of the four M-16s that had been delivered earlier. The other was for Gauge.

“You can’t shoot for shit. But at least you can point it in the right direction.”

Jase grinned at the words. Gauge seemed to be in his element as he taught them how to use the weapons. Their first few tries had been poor, but now they were hitting the targets quickly and with decent accuracy. They’d all fired hunting rifles before so it hadn’t been too much of a stretch, no matter how much Gauge criticized their technique.

“Let’s take a break.”

“Hey Doc. Tell us about the rest of that
massage,”
said Bottle.

All eyes turned to the Doctor who had a grin on his face. He was sitting in one of Gauge
’s faded lawn chairs drinking a beer. He wouldn’t be participating in the assault but he’d joined them for their training session anyway. Earlier he’d started to tell them about his encounter with the soapy girl, but Gauge’s training had interrupted the story after the part about the soapy rubdown.

“So I’m on the bed, on all fours, thinking
what the fuck.”

“
Did she have a dick, Doc? Did she fuck you in the ass?” Bottle laughed as he spoke, and Jase couldn’t help but join him.

The Doctor looked annoyed.
“Very funny. Nope, she started to jerk me off and stuck her tongue in my ass.”

“You like things in your ass, Doc?” Bottle teased again.

His smile was broad. “I like little Asian girls tongues in my ass, Bottle.” Everyone was laughing now. It was the first time Jase had seen everyone let their guard down since Brodie. It was almost like old times. Almost.

Lonnie said,
“So did you ever actually
fuck
her, Doc? Or did you just play doctors and nurses?” He laughed at his own joke.

“Oh fuck yeah. I was the horniest I’d ever been. Or since I was thirteen at least.” More laughter. “After getting a tongueful from her I couldn’t take any more. I flipped that bitch over and I just
railed
her. Pussy, ass, mouth, you name it. Horniest little slut I’d ever seen.” The Doctor mimed crudely as the guys listened and watched him act out his story. “Shit, she loved it so much she couldn’t stop bawling.”

Jase laughed along with the others, though less comfortably than before.
Did that sound right? Bawling? I guess some women are more emotional than others. Nicole didn’t bawl.

Gauge walked back over. He had been preparing some of his home made equipment for the upcoming assault. Jase had spent the morning driving Gauge around in the truck. First they went to the hardware store, then the supermarket and finally the gas station. Whenever Jase had asked what something was for Gauge just gave a cryptic smile and shook his head, or whispered in Jase
’s ear, “Killing Mexicans.”

“Alright. The next bit is going to be important. This is how we get the rats out of the cage.” He gave his dark smile. The smile that promised violence. The men quietened down, Doc’s story forgotten, as they got back to getting ready.

They were out on Gauge’s plot of land, far from prying eyes or listening ears. It was lucky they were as the gunfire and smoke would have drawn attention if they’d been nearer civilization.

Jase looked up and saw a buzzard circling high above them.
There’s nothing for you here.
But follow us, little birdie. Follow us, and we’ll give you something to feast on.

Nicole

We didn’t go to the funeral of course. It was a very small affair with only his family and closest friends. That excluded both me and Lucy. I was glad, to be honest. While no one really enjoys going to funerals I think I hate them more than most.

When we arrived at the clubhouse for the wake at around 7:30 it was already busy, and there were far more people than there had been the week before. Lucy and I were dressed much more conservatively than last time, wearing jeans and sneakers and tops that only left our arms bare. It was a wake after all, right?

But when we entered we found that we looked very out of place. Like two preppy college girls in a motorcycle gang’s clubhouse - which is exactly what we were.

To my surprise the wake wasn
’t a quiet, somber affair. We could hear the rock music pumping before we even stepped inside, and when we did get in there I could see why they called themselves the Sons of
Mayhem
.

With their lock-down over it seemed every hang-around, every friend of the club, and every girl with a taste for rough men and big motorcycles were using the wake as an excuse for a raucous party. I later learned that this was how wakes always are for them, but when I first saw it I was shocked.

We went inside and felt nervous. There were so many unfamiliar faces. A teenage girl in a bikini top looked at me in surprise as we entered and wrinkled her nose at me. “Are you lost, college girl?”

Before I could respond she
’d hopped into the lap of a guy sitting in a chair. I looked at him and realized I recognized him from last week. It was the asshole who’d bothered us.

Red saw me and Lucy and grinned at us. He slipped one hand under the bikini top of the giggling girl and then pursed his lips and made a kissing motion at us. We both gave him the finger.

“Come on,” I shouted to Lucy over the roar of the rock music blasting through the room.

She followed me as we headed in the direction of the bar.
Usually she’d be the one leading me. Everything’s upside down now.

We made our way through the throngs of men in jeans and leather and girls and women in skimpy outfits. There were people of all ages here, from some who must still have been in high school to old timers in their sixties or seventies. And all of them seemed to give off the same vibe -
I don’t give a fuck
.

It was a feeling I
’d begun to develop too. I liked it; it represented freedom. The freedom and the courage to be able to say
I’m going to do x because I want to, and I don’t give a fuck what you think.
Fuck your rules and expectations. Fuck your fake personas and false fronts and faces. I am exactly who I want to be and I do exactly what I want to do. I don’t give a fuck and nor should you.

Jase was sitting at the counter talking to someone I didn
’t know. I placed a hand on his shoulder and when he turned to face me I saw a brief look of confusion flash across his face as his eyes ran over my outfit. We were a little further from the speakers here so we could get by speaking in raised voices instead of actively yelling.

“Hi.” I leaned in and we kissed on the lips. He tasted of whisky instead of mint this time.

He reached out an arm and pulled Lucy in towards him and gave her a kiss on the cheek too. She smiled.

“This is Gauge.”

I looked at him. He was a bit older, maybe late forties. He had a goatee but no hair on his head. He ran his eyes over me as I held out a hand. He was clearly checking out my body, but not in a leering way. It felt like a compliment and I gave him a smile when he shook my hand.

“’evening.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Lucy also exchanged a greeting with him, and just as he
’d done with me, he ran his gaze over her too. If I wasn’t mistaken I saw a glimmer of something in his eyes as he sized her up.

“Come from a business meeting?”

“What?” I was confused for a second. “Oh.” I looked down at my conservative blouse. “No. We just thought, that, y’know…”

Jase laughed but it seemed a little forced.
No wonder, he had the funeral today. And then there’s the thing later.

“You should know we don’t do formal around here.”

I felt a little embarrassed, then an idea struck me. I looked at Lucy who was dressed similarly. She looked back at me. I raised an eyebrow and she grinned and nodded in response. I could swear that sometimes it seemed like we could read each other’s minds. Perhaps it comes with living together.

Simultaneously we both reached to the bottom of our blouses and pulled them over our heads. Underneath we were both wearing bright red bras. With our tight jeans on we had managed to change our look from business casual to party girl in a moment.

Jase grinned and ran a hand over my stomach. I tingled. I cast my eyes around the room; we didn’t look out of place; not really. Quite a few girls were wearing bikini tops, and in the corner I could see a girl sitting on a table completely naked from the waist up, while a guy I didn’t know sucked on one of her breasts while squeezing the other. The
I don’t give a fuck
attitude was in full effect.

We sat together and drank for a while. Lucy and I sipped beers, while Jase and Gauge took minuscule sips from a single glass of whisky each. They didn
’t want to get drunk. Not yet, anyway.

We tried to joke around but we were all tense. Sure we laughed and smiled, but it was all a little forced. At 9:30 Bottle joined us. Jase gave me a look. I nodded.

Soon his hands were on my body and our lips were locked together. While we surely looked like we were kissing passionately his heart wasn’t it, and so nor was mine. Our tongues flicked at each other, we bit each other’s lips and he put a hand down my jeans, grabbing my ass while another slipped under my bra, squeezing my nipple.

After about a minute of our very public display of affection Jase grabbed me by the hand and dragged me through the clubhouse. A lot of people saw us.

As he was pulling me away I saw Lucy had done her part too. When I’d told her what Jase wanted us to do she’d just shrugged and said ‘sure’.
She didn’t give a fuck
.

Her bra was gone and Bottle was squeezing both of her breasts while she had her hand down his pants. A moment after we
’d left they were following us, and we clambered up the metal stairs to Jase’s trailer together.

He swung open the door and we all entered.

“I left a couple of bottles of wine in the fridge. We’ll be back in ninety minutes.”

I held each of his hands in mine and squeezed.
“Be careful.”

He nodded. His face looked strained. He leaned forward and gave me a peck on the lips before turning towards the door.

“Let’s go.”

I saw Bottle reach for Lucy
’s breasts again but she stepped backwards as if she hadn’t noticed and sat down on one of the beat up old chairs. With a thunk the door closed and they were gone.

“Find me a shirt?” asked Lucy.

I nodded and went to find one.

Soon we were sitting at the rickety card table Jase used for meals with a bottle of wine between us. Lucy wore one of Jase
’s plain white t-shirts - it seemed to be all he owned.

“They’re going to get them, right?” Lucy asked.

I nodded, hoping I was right, hoping
they’d
be alright.

“Good.”

The time dragged as we sat and waited. We didn’t want to talk about the violence they might be committing, but it was the only thing on our minds. The very idea of making smalltalk about college was too ridiculous to even consider. So we sat almost in silence, drinking the wine too fast.

Please come back, Jase. Please.

Jase

He could hardly see Bottle, despite them being just inches apart. With their dark clothes and painted faces they were almost invisible in the dark. There was no moon. Gauge had been delighted when he realized that would be the case.

This week several of the streetlights had mysteriously gone out, leaving several pools of darkness around the area. Sneaking through the darkness they headed to their first target, an unlit house. The occupants were asleep, as they had been at this time every day this week.

They crept towards the front door. Making almost no sound, Jase slipped the key Gauge had given him into the lock, and turned it. There was a click as the lock slid open, and Jase and Bottle hurried in.

“Is someone there?” The voice was male. Tough sounding. Jase and Bottle headed to the source, the main bedroom, which was exactly where they thought it would be.

Bottle spoke in Spanish, “Do not make a sound. We mean you no harm. It’s your neighbors we are after.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“We’re from out of town. Way out of town.” Bottle spoke to them fluently, with a southern Mexican accent. Jase didn’t say a word. He knew a few phrases, but there was no way anyone would mistake
him
for a Mexican. They needed this family to report to the cops later that it was Mexicans who’d barged in. Not a bunch of white bikers.

“We are going to tie you up. But we will not harm you.”

“How do we know that?”

“You don’t know that. But we have big guns. You just have a .22 pistol. If we wanted to hurt you you’d be dead already.”

There was silence for a moment. The man was probably wondering how they knew he had a .22 pistol. He wouldn’t have believed the truth if they told him: his house had been entered the previous two nights running without him hearing a peep.

“Okay. Please, don’t hurt my family.”

“We won’t. Promise.”

Jase and Bottle quickly got to work, wrapping wide swathes of tape around the wrists and ankles of the immigrant family. Although the wife remained quiet, they had to cover the mouths of the children to stop them screaming.

In a few minutes, the wide eyed family was secure. “It will be okay, I promise, as long as you don’t make a sound,” Bottle told them as he locked them into the bedroom. There was no telephone in there and their cell phones had been removed. The windows had security bars across them, and the curtains were drawn tightly closed. With the whole family tied together there would be no chance of them escaping any time soon.

“Let’s do this.”

Jase and Bottle headed out the back door of the house to the tiny yard behind. They reached the back fence, and tossed down their rifles and backpacks. They could hear their target as soon as soon as the cool outside air hit their faces. They peeked over the fence.

The house behind was where the Mexicans usually congregated on a Saturday night. They called it a business meeting, but mostly it was an excuse for the men to get drunk and talk about who they were fucking apart from their wives or girlfriends. They
’d stay in there, drinking and smoking, until about 11 or midnight when they’d go for joyrides in their souped up cars, or to a club, or, rarely, home to their families. There was raucous shouting and noise, and loud Spanish rap music pouring out of the building.

“Shitty neighbors.”

“Yep. Let’s get to work. Go get the hose.”

While Bottle went and grabbed the hose that was exactly where Gauge had said it would be, Jase pulled out the hand-pump that was in his backpack. From Bottle
’s backpack he removed the two gallon container of gasoline.
How’d a little guy like him carry that?

When Bottle returned Jase quickly attached one end of the hose to the pump, and shoved its intake into the gasoline container.

“Can you see it?”

“Hold on.” Jase heard Bottle moving his hands along the fence. “Here.”

Jase passed the end of the hose over to Bottle, who carefully fed it through the hole in the fence that had carefully been cut out the night before. He could see the dark outline of Bottle’s face pushed up against the fence. He was peering through the eye-hole that was conveniently placed above the hole for the hose, watching as he fed it through.

The hose snaked its way across the grass. It didn
’t need to go all the way. Jase checked his watch. 10:30. They had fifteen minutes to finish preparing.

Jase emptied the rest of his backpack. Six glass 2 liter bottles. Finding them had been the hardest part of their shopping expedition - everything was fucking plastic these days.

“Here.” Jase tossed three rags and three of the glass containers over to Bottle. They removed the rubber stoppers that sealed them. If the area hadn’t already reeked of gasoline, it would now.

“Think they’ll smell it?” asked Bottle.

“No. The amount of weed they smoke in there, they wouldn’t smell shit if you put it in their burrito.”

“Maybe we shoulda done that.”

“This is better.”
Is it? Are we doing the right thing?
Then Jase remembered Brodie.
We’re doing the right thing.

They shoved the rags into the bottles, turned them upside down for a moment, removed the rags and re-inserted them the other way around. The rags were now soaked in gasoline, and what they held were basic, yet deadly, crude bombs.

Bottle went back inside to check on the family. Jase lined the bottles up in two sets. A line of four next to Bottle’s position, and then a pair next to him. He placed two lighters in front of each set. Gauge had made them run through it a dozen times, checking every last detail.
We never could have done this without him.

When Bottle returned giving the all clear it was five minutes until go-time. Jase began to work the hand-pump. Up and down, up and down. The gasoline ran through the hose and spouted out in front of the back door of the house. The ground there was concrete, and gasoline soon spread in a wide puddle, some of it forming little streams which rolled onto the dirt and scraggly grass behind.

As the container began to empty, Bottle began to pull back the hose slowly.

“Not too fast.” He needn’t have said it. He knew Bottle wouldn’t go too fast. But he felt like he needed to say something anyway.

“I know.”

Soon the gasoline trail was complete. Jase checked his watch again. 10:43 and thirty seconds. He took a fire lighter from his pocket, where he had half a dozen more secreted. Usually used for lighting a charcoal barbecue, today they
’d be lighting something much more impressive.

Jase stood up and peered over the fence. In his camouflage he
’d be invisible from the house. He could see movement in the windows ahead of him. It was the kitchen, and two men were visible holding a bottle between them.
Enjoy your last drink fuckheads.

Jase took a Zippo from his pocket. The other lighters were just backup. He lit the fire lighter in his hand, and before it could burn him, he dropped it over the fence to the beginning of the trail of gasoline.

He stared down as the fire lighter burned and the ground didn’t.
Fuck
. He stared, and he stared. His eyes flicked back to the window. One of the men was looking in his direction.
He can’t see me, can he? Fuck. I think he’s seen me.

Jase glanced back down. The man hadn
’t seen him. He’d seen the flames. The flames that were now making rapid progress towards the house.

“Go, go, go.” Jase’s furious whisper was unnecessary. Bottle, right on schedule, had already lit one of the Molotov cocktails. With a powerful, practiced overhand throw Jase watched the bomb fly through the air. He held his breath. His aim was true. With a tinkling of glass the bottle flew through one of the two visible upstairs windows. On the ground the flames reached the small lake of gasoline at the same moment the back door opened.

“What the fuck—” the man started to say. He’d already been in the act of stepping outside before his mind had processed what was happening. He stepped into a conflagration and his cries turned to screams. Jase’s eyes flicked to the upstairs window where an orange glow was now visible. He licked his lips.
Let’s smash this pinata.

The burning man jumped back inside and someone else slammed the door shut to block the flames. In the next twenty seconds Jase and Bottle lit and threw their remaining firebombs. They
’d brought six to toss through the two upstairs windows, but they only needed three. They threw the other two bottles anyway.

The entire process from igniting the fire lighter to tossing all six Molotov cocktails had taken less than a minute. By 10:45, precisely as planned by Gauge, the backyard and the top of the house were engulfed in flames.

From the very bottom of his bag Jase pulled out the last remaining item. An empty pack of
Faro
cigarettes. A Mexican brand. He dropped it on the ground. Hopefully the cops would be competent enough to find it later.

They grabbed their backpacks and with big swings tossed them into the raging fire, quickly followed by the pump, the disposable lighters and the almost empty gasoline container.
Leave nothing else behind
, Gauge had told them.

As they swung their rifles over their shoulders the first sounds of automatic gunfire erupted.

Shaking with adrenaline Jase ran and hopped the fence to the right, while Bottle ran to the left.

Going through two more yards, Jase and Bottle erupted on either side of the Mexican house and went to join Gauge and Lonnie.

Jase slid down beside the ex-soldier who didn’t flinch or speak as he squeezed his trigger again and again. Jase aimed his rifle towards the house. He saw movement in the front window which was already emitting a sickly orange glow, and let off a burst of gunfire. The shape dropped.
Fuck you.

The air reeked of smoke, and the previously silent night was filled with gunfire and screams. Jase fired twice more. Then there was nothing. He glanced at Gauge who raised his watch to his face, and then gave a nod. It was now 10:48.
Three minutes? That’s all? Holy shit.

“Go!”

They got to their feet and ran, Gauge leading the way back to the van. Jase caught Lonnie’s eye. His eyes were wide and his face was beaming. His maniacal grin set Jase off, and he found himself laughing hysterically as they ran back to the van parked a block away.

Jase felt like he could have run forever. He was light as a feather. It was like a great burden had been lifted off his shoulders.
We did it, Brodie. We did it.