shoulder. I managed to tip my chin to tell him I was all right.
His eyes locked onto mine. “Are you sure? I need to hear you say it, Doc.”
“I’m sure,” I croaked out. “It’s not East. It’s Eric. Like Eric and Conner, Eric,” I said, the words taking everything I had to form.
“Fuck,” Preppy growled, glancing to where Eric was groaning on the floor. King and Bear appeared.
“End him,” Preppy said, shoving his arms under me and lifting me into his arms.
King and Bear strolled toward Eric, but they didn’t make it very far. The room shook, a high-pitched ringing sounded in my ears. The roof on the far side of the room collapsed, trapping King and Bear behind it.
Or under it.
“Fuck, we have to get you out of here,” Preppy shouted, climbing over debris with me in his arms.
“Preppy, wait!” I shouted with everything I had. He turned and his eyes followed to where I was staring at a red faced and angry looking Eric. His hand shaking.
A gun pointed at Preppy.
“You know, I don’t even like these things,” Eric said, shaking the gun from side to side with his right hand, his left hung straight and lifeless by his side. “But the weapon isn’t what’s important here. Ending your life is.” His lip twitched. “So a gun it is.”
Preppy slowly set me down on the rubble with my back against the wall. “If it’s me you want. It’s me you can have. Just let her go.” Preppy stepped in front of me shielding me with his body. He held up his hands in surrender.
His empty hands made me realize he didn’t have his gun. He must have dropped it when he picked me up. I searched around, spotting it just out of reach in the rubble.
Eric sneered at Preppy. “There is no OR, I want BOTH of you dead.” Without warning Eric shifted his aim to me and fired. That’s when everything shifted and became like watching a movie in slow motion. Even the POP POP POP from the gun sounded slurred and drawn out. Preppy leapt sideways, his body almost still in the air as he stretched himself out as long as he could, like an outfielder trying to catch a baseball. Only he wasn’t playing some game. He was shielding me.
And it wasn’t a baseball he caught.
It was a bullet.
Preppy landed on his side with an ‘UMPH’. The fabric of his undershirt grew red with his blood. I crawled over to him, barely noticing Eric approaching.
“We need to get you the fuck out of here,” Preppy ground out, sitting up. “No matter what happens you go to Bo. Take care of him.”
I was about to argue when he added. “Please, Dre. Just take care of our boy.”
Tan pointed-toe dress shoes clicked against the concrete. Eric crouched down in front of us. A look of satisfaction crossed his face when he realized he had us defenseless and cornered.
When another part of the roof collapsed nearby I used that moment of distraction to extend my foot and slide Preppy’s gun between my legs.
“I’d really hoped we’d have more time to get reacquainted, Dre. But it appears that Romeo over here is cutting our time short. Well, that and I kind of made the building explode,” Eric sang while staring hatred at Preppy. “Why don’t you move the fuck over so I can kill this fucking whore first without having to shoot through you...again,” he laughed. “Then I can send you to hell where you belong.”
Preppy chuckled. “Hell? Bitch, I just got back from there and I don’t plan on going back any time soon. So sorry, but you’ll be making this trip solo.”
“What you don’t understand is that it’s all too fucking late!” Eric shouted manically, pressing his gun against Preppy’s forehead. “This is just the rain. Soon, you’ll be drowning in the flood.”
“Listen, motherfucker. I love Bon Jovi as much as the next man, but let’s focus less on quoting the poignant lyrics of an iconic hair-band, and concentrate more on the fact that I’m about to cut you open, gut you like a fucking mullet, and feed your balls to my pig.”
“You can’t do shit!” Eric cried out. “I have the power of the Lord on my side and he says that you have to die.” Eric cocked the gun.
“I feel like this is really bad timing on your part,” Preppy started. “I feel compelled to share a little something with you. A motherfucking life lesson, if you will.” Preppy’s breathing became labored. “The greatest gift I was ever given, was death. Because only then did I learn what it meant to truly live.”
“That’s touching,” Eric said sarcastically.
I had to get the gun to Preppy. I would have fired it myself, but I had no shot. I didn’t want to risk not hitting Eric, or even worse, accidentally hitting Preppy. I finally managed to shuffle the gun between my legs. I pressed it up against Preppy’s back. He leaned back against me and Eric followed him over with the gun still at his head. Preppy folded his arms behind his neck, over my legs, like he was getting ready to tan at the beach, grabbing the gun in the process.
“And since my death was such a gift to me, I’m about to pay it forward and give that same gift to you.” Preppy shifted the gun from his back to his front while Eric was too busy focused on his words. “Now say ‘thank you’,” Preppy demanded, firing a shot off before he knew what happened. It hit him in the forearm, his gun flew across the room. He dropped to his knees.
“Say ‘thank you’,” Preppy repeated through his gritted teeth, cocking the gun once again and aiming for Eric’s chest.
Still nothing.
“Say fucking ‘thank you!’” Preppy roared, sitting up on his knees so the two men were eye to eye, only a few feet apart.
“Th-th-thank you!” Eric cried out in fear.
Preppy squeezed the trigger, hitting Eric in the thigh. A spurt of blood streamed from his leg onto the floor. Eric slumped to the floor.
“You’re fucking welcome,” Preppy said.
Eric sat back up, producing a smaller gun that must have been strapped to his leg. Preppy fired his gun first but nothing. He tried again and again. It was jammed.
Eric laughed long and loud. My heart was beating so rapidly I feared cardiac arrest at any moment. Preppy, still bleeding from his own gunshot wound on his upper chest, dropped back down to once again shield me from Eric’s bullet. “Remember what I said, Doc!” he called out as Eric aimed his gun at Preppy’s head.
“No!” I cried, reaching for Preppy but he turned around to face Eric. “Noo!”
I braced myself for the boom of the bullet meant for Preppy, but it never came. Eric stilled, dropping the gun. His mouth opened and blood poured over his lips, spilling onto and off of his chin like a bloody chocolate fountain.
He fell forward onto the ground revealing the hand axe that had been lodged in his head, and the person who put it there.
Bo.
Preppy
Life was all about sacrifice and my son has just made a big one.
A human one.
Not only had he just killed a man, he was standing there twirling his arms around like he was about to ask me to change the channel from Sponge Bob to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Sweetly. Innocently. He stepped around Eric’s blood pooling at his feet without so much as a second glance. He pointed to Dre who was awake but incoherent. Her eyes open but seeing nothing. Mommy okay? he signed.
“She will be. How the fuck did you get here, Bo?”
Hid in van.
Kevin came running in. “I heard something explode. What the fuck happened?” he asked, surveying the scene, huffing like he’d ran all the way to the house.
“No time to explain. Take Bo to the van. NOW!”
Kevin did what he was told, grabbing Bo’s hand and dragging him from the house.
The collapsed ceiling-turned-wall shook, revealing a dusty but alive King and Bear standing on the other side. “You look like you guys fell into a bowl of blow.”
“I fucking wish,” Bear answered. They both looked as relieved to see me alive as I was to see them but there was no time for a family reunion.
I picked up Dre, ignoring th
e shooting pain in my chest, and followed King and Bear out into the sunlight.
Dre was dazed from all the blood loss. Her skin pale. The circles under her eyes dark. “I have to get her help. Now.”
Before it’s too late.
King started dialing numbers on his phone.
Dre’s eyes rolled back in her head and she began to shake. Then the world began to shake.
We were only a few steps from the house when it exploded around us with a boom that was both blinding and deafening. Bursts of orange flooded my vision, bits of metal tore open my skin as I was blown forward.
My wife torn from my arms by the blast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Preppy
I hate the term ‘nothing left to lose’.
Because lying there in that hospital room was everything I had to lose. I barely let the hospital staff tend to my gunshot wound and stop the bleeding, it was barely even a wound. It was a sandspur in my sock compared to the chunk of my guts destroyed the last time I’d been shot. But my injury wasn’t important. What was important was Dre and that’s why as ridiculous as the idea I just had was, I couldn’t ignore it. I’d try everything and anything to bring her back. I didn’t care if she was getting comfortable wherever she was. I didn’t care if they were ushering her through the pearly gates with a bottle of champagne and three-dozen white fucking roses. I didn’t care if she was the happiest she’d ever been and if heaven was everything she could ever want. Didn’t care. I was a selfish man.
She was mine, and I wasn’t letting her go.
Ever.
I closed my eyes and started the deep breathing technique Mirna had taught me years before. I hadn’t meditated since getting out of Narnia, but sitting there next to my wife I felt helpless. It was worth a shot.
It was only seconds, or at least that’s what I felt like, when I was no longer in the hospital room, holding onto my wife’s bloody hand as the machines she was hooked up to beeped and blink with the erratic rise and fall of her chest.
We were now on top of the water tower. She was awake, standing on the edge just like the night I met her. Except this time, she wasn’t naked. She was in a hospital gown splattered with red. The IV tube still taped to her wrist. Her eye and lip swollen and bruised. She looked over the edge of the rail. Her black hair blew around her battered face.
“Don’t jump,” I said, taking a step toward her. I tried to keep my voice as calm as possible, hiding the fear pitting in the depths of my stomach. Dre turned to me and smiled. I gasped when she leapt up to sit on the very top of the thin and rusted railing. My heart leaped into my throat and I step between her legs, wrapping my arms around her waist and resting my head against her tits. Holding her to me. Holding her onto the tower. “Don’t leave me,” I told her. “Don’t leave us. Bo misses you. I miss you.” I felt the vibration of her laugh and looked up into her bruised but beautiful face. Her smile was big although her bottom teeth were coated in red.
“Save me, Preppy,” she said, her voice an eerie echo that doesn’t sound like it’s coming from her mouth, but from the air around us. Her lips weren’t even moving.
“I did save you,” I argue. “At least I tried to save you. It’s up to the doctors now.” I held her tighter, but it’s not tight enough. It never was.
She shook her head and pressed her index finger to my lips, which I kissed on instinct. “No, you still have some saving to do. It’s not over yet. Not yet.” She touched my face and suddenly I was awash in an image. A doctor leaning over me and I realize it’s not me at all. I’m seeing him through Dre’s eyes. The doctor laughs when she tries to cough out her words. Questioning what he was doing and why. “Save me,” she said to me again, and the image of the doctor is gone. I’m back looking into the dark eyes of the only woman I’d ever loved. The breeze is now a wind. Leaves and pine needles from nearby trees cyclone around us, creating a wall of debris and a noise that sounds like a train clattering against the tracks.
“But...” I started to argue. I was cut off when she leaned back over the rail, pulling me with her. She’s falling and I fell right along with her, but I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Right before we reach the ground she shows me the backside of her hand, which has some sort of sticker on it. No, it’s a tattoo. A cheesy yellow smiley face. As the wind rips through my hair and the ground grows closer and closer I recognized the tattoo. A flood of memory I didn’t know I had rushes forward, playing like a movie in front of my eyes.
The truth won’t save us because it’s too late.
We crashed into the ground.
****
My eyes popped open and I inhaled sharply like I’d been drowning and someone had given me CPR. I was back in Dre’s hospital room and my eyes immediately landed on the doctor who was leaning over Dre. He had a needle in his hand, fidgeting with her tubes. He looked up at me with a smile that faded the second he saw the recognition in my eyes. “You look familiar,” he said, gulping nervously and pushing back on the sleeves of his white coat, revealing the stupid tattoo on his hand that gave away his identity.
I stood from my chair, reluctantly dropping Dre’s hand gently back to the bed. “I should look familiar.” I looked around the room. “I died here once,” I said, not recognizing my own voice that was deep dark and deadly, full of the anger pulling in my veins. Doctor Gonna-Be-Dead-Soon straightened his posture and was shuffling backward toward the door when Bear and King appeared in the doorway. Right away they noticed the look on my face and all it took was a tip of my chin for them to push the doctor back into the room and slam the door shut behind them. He fell to the ground and scurried into the corner like the scared fucking rat he was. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“What’s up?” King asked as casually as if he was wondering if I wanted to go grab a bite to eat. He points to the doctor.
I bend down on the floor over the doctor and grab him by the throat. “So you hand me over to the fucking lunatic biker, you try and make it seem like I was dead, you try to kill me, my wife, and you killed my fucking mother?”
The doctor frantically shook his head.
“It’s a little too late for denial now,” I tell him.
“No, I mean yes. I did that. Everything but kill your mom. Grace. It was the cancer. Not me. I swear!” he shouted. “At first I just did some paperwork for him. Patched him up a while back at his house when he got cut or shot. He paid me cash.” The doctor shook his head. “I was losing my house. I didn’t want to do all those other things for him. I had no choice!”
“You had to? Why?”
“Because...he had my sister. She was one of their biker whores. Their BBB’s.” He waved at Bear’s leather cut. “I just wanted to take her home. Keep her safe. Chop said if I didn’t do what I asked of him he’d kill her and then me.”
“That never happened though,” Bear said. It wasn’t a question.
The doctor shook his head. “No, that bastard killed her and the rest of them before he could keep his promise and give her back to me.” He sighed.
“So when I showed back up you figured you had to take me out yourself? Finish the job? Then my wife?” I shook my head and kicked him in the ribs. “You piece of shit coward.”
“I didn’t know what else to do!” he cried. When he tried to stand up King pushed him back down onto the floor and his head crashed against the wall, knocking him out cold. “Oops,” he said.
“She needs help,” I said when Dre’s monitors started beeping and blinking. “I don’t know what he might have done to her.” I ran out into the hall and almost crashed into the nurse that gave me Bo’s information months before. “I need your help,” I told her, pulling her into the room. She took a second to assess the situation but we didn’t have a second. “Please.”
“He tried to kill her,” I said, offering the quickest explanation I could. I opened his coat pocket and pulled out the needle and little glass tube thing. “He might have given this to her,” I said to her. She
took them from my hands but continued to look down at the doctor on the floor. “Please. What is this?” I asked, snapping her out of her shock.
She looked down and turned over the little glass bottle. She sniffed it and scrunched up her nose. She pushed it back into my hands, ran toward a cabinet in the hall and came back with a pair of gloves and another two bottles with different colored labels than the one she just tossed onto the bed by Dre’s feet.
The nurse took the flashlight and peeled open Dre’s eyelids, shining it into each pupil. She gave Dre two injections into the port on the back of her hand.
“Nothing good that’s for sure. It’s that same shit that kills celebrities when they take it to help them sleep and realize it’s good for a coma and maybe a little death, but it’s not exactly Tylenol fucking PM. We don’t even use that shit here. Haven’t for years.”
“How much is in her system?” King asked.