He turned the dented knob, walked through the door and his eyes adjusted to the smoke and the darkness. The AC had been on for a while and it was colder the further he walked inside and almost freezing by the time he reached the bar. The stares of the local barflies and of the tired old bartender who quit wearing makeup ten years ago made the temperature feel even colder.
“Draft beer and a glass of ice water” he ordered without waiting to be asked. He was offered not even a word or an expression as his drinks were placed on the bar.
“You seen any motorcycle gang members around here recently?” he demanded while pointing his finger at her.
Before he finished the word recently, an old rummy eyed man tried to say something but the bartender interrupted him with a sharp “Who wants to know!?”
He said in a very smart ass way, “If you don’t speak politely, I may not let you buy me this drink.”
The bartender screamed at him, “You are gonna get stomped talkin’ that way round here. You just wait till Thumper shows up!” she spat.
“And who might that be? Let me guess, he is that short, hairy man who likes little boys.” he inquired, pretending to talk like a lawyer.
“You’ll get yourself kilt talking that way round here!” she yelled back.
He thought about burning down this place in the morning if he lived that long. These people weren’t worth saving; they were just taking up space. If they were here when he came back, he doubted that anyone would live.
Walking out with the glass of beer in his hand, he finished it, dropped it on the floor deliberately and looked at the shattered mug. Opening the door, he closed his eyes and opened them slowly as he approached his bike, letting his eyes adjust to the bright sunlight. Then he noticed a parking sign that said MC parking only with a cartoonish demon painted on it. He kicked it over before leaving. He heard the bartender cussing him over his pipes as he burned out and covered her with dust. Yes, she would get hers and if she didn’t die, at least she wouldn’t be working in this soon to be destroyed dive bar.
That was three days ago…
Now he had a new name, compliments of a busty college dropout named Trista who worked the local coffee shop and dreamed of getting out but had no means to make it happen.
She saw his exit from the bar from the porch of the café. She served him a blueberry muffin with extra butter of course, soon to be dead men don’t count calories. While he ordered a tall hammerhead, the woman said he resembled a zen master who was ready to die at a moment’s notice. He chalked it up to her trying to perceive Customers through the pages of an eastern philosophy book he spotted. It was dogeared and leaned near her register.
So he let her call him “Zen” for the next couple of days as he spent hours in that shop while keeping an eye on the bar across the street. While he didn’t particularly like his new name, he figured that he wouldn’t be living much longer anyways. And why should he? Everything had been taken from him by some drug dealing men who masqueraded as bikers who ran his car off the road over a perceived insult.
Zen told Trista he was coming back in three days and destroying the bar on the night it was reserved for a Demons motorcycle club annual party for members only. Zen didn’t even hesitate to tell her he was going to do it, and somewhere he just knew she wouldn’t warn anyone and would likely watch it from a distance, whatever he would do.
Then as he was leaving she just said, “Take me with you.”
How fatal that sounded to him. He was bent on a suicide mission and here was a desperate and trusting girl who looked like she had one last hope in those green eyes. He told her that he doubted he would make it out alive but if he could, he would.
“Be ready to go when you hear the blast.” was all he said. She told him she him she would and that she wouldn’t be a burden. The café wasn’t hers and she lived with her grandma who didn’t need her around, and he felt she had all but given up on life and this would be “her last try.” Zen didn’t want to think about what that meant but he had an idea she was about to lose hope in whatever she believed in.
That brief discussion caused him to plan harder, and he thought deeper than he ever had to make it out of this mass murder alive, to revenge his family and perhaps live again and start a new one. Lofty thoughts for someone who was living like a dead man walking, he considered over his third cup of coffee.
On the fourth day he parked his bike behind some pallets in the drive through of a boarded up old hamburger shack. It was cold and grey and he missed the Arizona desert in the fall. Here it seemed that things were dying and he supposed part of him was dying with it. He didn’t believe he would make it out alive or even if he did, he would likely be caught and be spending some time in prison if he decided to let the cops take him in. He kept thinking with sadness how his life had been destroyed since the accident months earlier that took his family. Shaking the pain away he focused on his kamikaze mission and wondered if that was how the Japanese pilots felt when they faced certain death.
Putting the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, he checked his jacket for the extra magazines and walked along the tree line towards the back door of the bar with the Krinkov close against his chest. Yeah, the party was starting and the already drunken band was playing some really bad Southern rock. But he wouldn’t start the fireworks until the band got off the stage and the president of the club starting giving out anniversary pins, new prospect patches, and making speeches.
Security was strong for such an annual event. But the prospects who were busy watching the front and the bikes forgot to check the backside of the building. There wasn’t a reason to because there were trees out back, and no one could drive through trees. Trouble wasn’t being expected and as the night wore on few bikes showed up. It was getting close.
Zen crawled back to where he was out of site and got within 15 feet of the ice cream truck he had stolen a week before and laden with homemade explosives. Then out of the corner of his eye was Trista.
“What are you doing here?” he shouted in a whisper.
“You really are going to do it aren’t you?” she said; her eyes terrified.
“Disappear!” he screamed in a whisper to her and she did but not without doubts of her own sanity. It was one thing to ride off into the sunset. It was another thing to do it after you witnessed a mass murder, she thought.
“Get out of here right now!” he yelled for real this time, still not believing she was there. He told her to wait inside the drive-through of the hamburger stand and not to move until he came back. If he didn’t come back, well then, she should just go home. He reasoned that she’d keep making coffee for the rest of her life.
He started the truck and closed his eyes once more, thinking of his family he put the truck in gear and started towards Main Street with the lights off.
As he approached the corner he could see only one prospect standing outside and some women talking to him. They looked like they wanted him to let them in and he wasn’t having any of it.
Zen rolled down the window and saw the band coming out the front door. While he didn’t put much value on their lives, he didn’t consider himself a murderer of innocents. Yes, there might be a guest inside during the private ceremony to celebrate the club and award Thumper with his release from prison and perhaps some other collateral damage, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances he told himself.
As he drove up to the front of the bar, he heard some cheering knew that some ceremony was kicking off. He hit the gas and jumped out of the cab as it slammed almost perfectly into the side of the aluminum building and right between two support beams. The next thing he knew he was face down with ringing in his ears and a screaming headache. He looked up to see what was left of the bar and brought up his weapon and charged through the hole in the building.
The smoke was so thick, and the fire and screams where as overwhelming as the heat. He saw two Demons MC patch members trying to run out and he cut them down and walked over their bodies. There were people bleeding out of their ears and mouths trying to stand up. Trying to find where the stage was to locate Thumper was going to be impossible. He emptied his magazine on a group huddled under what was left of a table and ran towards where he thought the stage would be. It was there he saw pieces of Thumper’s head.
He knew that red beard anywhere and he stared at it for at least a minute though it felt like hours. The smoke and fire stung his eyes and he ran out the way he came in shooting at random as he exited the furnace that was once a bar and dance hall.
Running towards the hamburger stand while coughing and spitting out smoke and mucus, he saw Trista sitting on his bike and crying. He swung his leg over his Dyna and started the bike.
Trista instinctively hugged him and screamed at him, “Floor it!”
He even smiled at that; his first smile in a long time. As he rode around the corner, he could see other patch members making their way out of the building. He stopped the bike and fired the last of the ammunition in his magazine at them hitting two or three before they scattered. He rode out of town passing a volunteer fire department truck heading towards the bar and a county sheriff right behind them. It wasn’t until they crossed a bridge that he realized he had a Krikov still strapped around his neck. He threw it over the bridge and headed West taking back roads. He thought he heard a helicopter or a motorcycle but it was just his ears ringing or the thunder in the sky. An hour later, they were at a farm and almost out of gas. He stopped the bike and pushed it off the road behind some trees.
“What now?” asked Trista. Yes, what now indeed. The lights on the farm weren’t on and there were no trucks or cars parked outside. Could he be so lucky? He knocked on the door and after five minutes went around to the barn and looked inside. It was a farm being resold and the power was out. The front door was unlocked and there were some boxes inside. He went to the restroom and took off his jacket. There was blood on his shirt and then Trista screamed.
