Chapter 7
Sean rode confidently through the streets, staring down anyone who even thought about looking at him funny. There was a lot on the line right now, and he had run out of fucks to give. He was practically daring people to make a move on him as he sat mounted atop his horse, armed to the teeth.
Buttercup was a good horse, though Sean winced at its name.
He had imagined this moment many times—the fall of society as he enacted his mission to protect those he cared about.
Somehow, the fact that his noble steed was named Buttercup seemed to cheapen the moment a bit.
But he could ignore the name for now. He had an important mission ahead of him, and it was something he needed to focus on.
He hadn’t been lying to Deb when he had mentioned some untrustworthy allies that could help get them out of the city. But if Deb had known who he was dealing with, she might have decided she and Jimmy were better off taking their chances on the street alone.
“Attention, residents!” a voice could be heard from a block over, shouting authoritatively.
“This city is now under martial law by order of the United States government! There is a mandatory curfew for all residents, and entry to and from the city is closed! Return to your homes immediately, or you will be branded an enemy of the state!”
“Fuck,” Sean cursed. He could vaguely hear the sound of other voices farther away repeating the same message. “They’re fast. They must’ve known this was coming.”
He wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular, but it felt comforting to voice his displeasure aloud. It was something he had started doing as a child, when spending a lot of time on his own, wandering these very streets now being controlled by the military.
It made him sick. The government remnant had wasted no time in trying to strip away the freedom of private citizens and exert its power over a powerless populace.
Well, he wasn’t powerless. Not anymore. And he’d use the skills the military had taught him to fight back against that same organization if need be.
Thankfully, Sean knew his destination was close, so he likely wouldn’t encounter any armed resistance on the way.
Not from the soldiers, at least…
Sean was not heading into friendly territory. It was perhaps the furthest thing from it. However, he was hoping that past encounters and experiences would be enough to get him through this relatively unscathed.
Turning a corner, he saw his destination. It was a little hole-in-the-wall dive bar called Pit Bull’s Ear. The black sign that hung above the descending staircase and door showed the head of a rabid, one-eared dog, with the name of the bar emblazoned in fiery-red lettering.
Everyone in the city knew to stay clear of this place. While it was open to the public, it was simultaneously very much not open to the public. You had to be “in” to get inside, and very few people were in.
Apparently, the military remnant hadn’t gotten the memo. The pavement in front of the bar was littered with the bodies of a dozen dead soldiers. They were lying in a rapidly expanding pool of blood, their bodies still fresh.
This battle had occurred very recently.
Sean pulled Buttercup over to the side of the road and climbed out of the saddle, hitching the horse to the banister of a nearby stoop. He reached into his bag and pulled out an oatcake, holding it out to the horse, who took it gratefully in its mouth.
“Be right back,” he said, though he wasn’t sure whether he was reassuring the horse or himself.
Sean stepped over the slain bodies of soldiers and couldn’t avoid walking through the huge pools of blood that continued to pour out of their lacerated bodies. He put it out of his mind as he quickly descended the small staircase, leaving bloody footprints in his wake.
Sean stopped before the black reinforced metal door and knocked three times. A slot slid open, and a pair of angry-looking eyes peered out at him.
“What you want?” a gruff voice asked from inside. Sean straightened himself up.
“I’m here to see the man,” he said, speaking the words slowly and with a confidence that he didn’t actually have.
“Ain’t nobody seein’ the man right now,” the eyes said from behind the door. “Fuck off.”
“Wait,” Sean said, trying not to sound desperate. The eyes softened not one bit, but the slot didn’t close. “Just…tell him it’s Sean Miller.”
“Whatever,” the voice spat, slamming the slot closed.
Sean waited for a moment, worried his message wasn’t going to actually be delivered. Had he come all this way for nothing? He had feared that might be the case, though, in the grand scheme of Sean’s fears at this moment, it was one of the smaller ones.
A minute later, he heard the lock of the door click open, and the slow, heavy entryway swung in.
The man behind the eyes stood there, looking at him.
He was tall and bald, with a scowl that could turn a man’s hair white.
He wore the typical uniform that members of the Chain Gang liked to show off—black jeans and boots, a sleeveless shirt, and a biker vest with a flaming chain emblazoned on the back of it.
“You got five minutes,” the bouncer growled at him, motioning Sean inside.
He gave the man a nod and walked inside. The bar was dark, lit by a series of candles. But even without the blaring music and the commotion of drunken bar fights, the air within the Pit Bull’s Ear still reeked of violence and ill intentions.
The faces of every Chain Gang member turned in his direction as he walked inside. None of them were happy to see him. Their glances bore expressions of mistrust, malice, and downright hostility.
Sean looked past them, though. They weren’t who he was here to see. At the back of the room sat a large office with “PRIVATE” written in big, bold letters on the closed door. A massive man stood at the side of the door, twice as wide as he was tall.
This wasn’t the first time Sean had seen Legion, but he always had marveled at how this six-hundred-pound behemoth of a human being was able to ride a motorcycle.
“Legion,” Sean said as he approached.
Legion wasn’t a tall man, but his massive girth made him a horrifying threat. He was ungodly strong and downright vicious. That was why the man had made him his personal bodyguard.
Legion grunted in response to Sean’s greeting and reached a thick arm out to knock twice on the office door. The big man rarely ever spoke, and some people thought he didn’t even know how.
“Yeah,” a voice called out from inside, and the mere sound of it made Sean’s insides tense.
Legion reached over and opened the door, pushing it open with one arm. As Sean went to move inside, the big man’s arm came forward, palm pressed into Sean’s chest.
Sean wasn’t a weak man by any stretch. He believed himself more than a match for most of the bikers in this bar.
In fact, he believed he could probably take down all of them at the same time if push came to shove.
But Legion and the people he knew were sitting in that back office were cut from a different cloth altogether.
Legion stared at Sean, and he returned the look with equal intensity. Sean wasn’t going to let the big man see how intimidated he was by him internally. That was a hand he was unwilling to tip. Legion grunted at him and slowly lowered his arm.
Sean got the message behind the gesture. He was saying don’t cause any trouble in there. Though, Sean knew if he did get uppity within the office, he’d be dead before Legion could push his way in there.
It was also telling that no one had bothered to take his guns or tell him he wasn’t allowed to bring weapons into the back. This might have seemed short-sighted on their part, but Sean saw it for what it was—a power move.
The Chain Gang was telling him that they weren’t worried about him wandering in with weapons. That spoke volumes about the strength and power held within this small room.
As Sean walked inside, he was greeted by a cloud of cigar smoke and the stench that went along with it.
The office was a respectable size and fairly Spartan in its décor.
However, when you realized that this was the office in which the entire criminal underworld of Arizona’s every move was decided, it started to feel entirely too small.
“Sean,” a low gravelly voice said from a poker table that sat in the center of the room in front of a large desk. “As I live and breathe.” The voice was slow and deep and sounded like what Frankenstein’s monster might have sounded like if he had ever learned to put together complete sentences.
“Chainz,” Sean said, nodding to the massive man who sat behind the table.
He was at least six foot nine inches tall and cut an imposing figure even when sitting down.
His flesh was muscled and tanned all over, his head shorn of all hair.
His face, full of malice and contempt for seemingly everything around him, was pulled into an eternal scowl that looked like it could cause flowers to wilt under its gaze.
“What brings you to my place of business?” Chainz asked, gesturing around him with his huge arms. He had a nose ring attached by a chain to his earring, and it jangled as he moved. “Just out for a little stroll in the apocalypse?”
The man and woman seated at either side of him chuckled at his joke.
The woman was someone Sean knew well from back in his childhood days.
They had grown up together on these streets and had taken wildly different paths in life.
She had artificially dyed black hair and piercing blue eyes that drank him in over a sharp nose.
She always looked at him like that, with a mixture of desire and contempt.
“Jessie,” he said, giving her a nod, and then turned to the man on the other side of the big boss.
He was lean and muscular, his chest exposed through the long black coat he always wore. Greasy black hair with red tips fell over a pointed face and a crooked nose, obscuring his eyes from view.
“Maverick,” Sean said to the area’s most feared contract killer.
“Surely you didn’t come all this way just to greet my friends here,” Chainz said, the edge of impatience appearing on his tone. Sean focused quickly.
“No, of course not,” he said. “I’m glad to see you’re still thriving in all of this.”
Chainz stopped him mid-sentence and waved him off. “Enough, Sean,” he said, rolling his eyes and curling his lip. “I don’t want the pleasantries. Just get to the point and then get the fuck out.”
Sean swallowed a gasp of panic that tugged on the edge of his consciousness but maintained his composure. Chainz wasn’t just huge. He was fast and strong and downright vicious.
The stories told of Chainz and his utter ferocity weren’t for the faint of heart. They traveled through every darkened corner of the city. Some believed them, and some thought they were exaggerated. However, everyone who had ever met Chainz believed every single horrifying word spoken about him.
“Right,” Sean said. “I need to get out of the city. Me, my wife, and her…our son.”
Chainz leaned forward in his chair, resting his bulky tattooed elbows on the poker table. It groaned under his weight.
“Don’t we all,” he said. “Why do you think I’d help you? Cause I’m such a nice guy?”
“We’ve been working together a long time now, Chainz,” Sean said, speaking aloud the single greatest secret he had been keeping from Deb for a long time now. “I’ve been using my ranch to smuggle in your shipments for over a year now.”
“And you think I owe you something for that?” Chainz said with a laugh. “What I owed you for it was money. And that was delivered. I owe you nothing.”
“I risked a lot doing all of this for you,” Sean insisted. “I risked my ranch, my marriage?—”
“Your wife’s ranch,” Chainz corrected, holding up a huge finger. “That ain’t yours. Neither is that little brat you’re asking me to help you save. You ain’t his daddy. Speaking of which, how is Vin doing?”
“I…I dunno,” Sean said, and that was the truth. “He doesn’t come around the ranch, really.”
“Hmm,” Chainz said, folding his fingers into one another as he stared at Sean with a withering unblinking gaze that most grown men would wet themselves under. “You know, he took down six of my best earners. Bounty hunting scumbag sack of shit…”
“He’s not a part of this,” Sean said, holding up his hands. He could feel this situation starting to go off the rails, and he wanted to get out ahead of it before the point of no return was passed.
“But you want me to risk my men, risk myself, to get his little crotch spawn out of the city, is that what you’re saying?” Chainz asked, leaning forward now with a dangerous glower.
Sean opened his mouth to respond, but no sound came out.
“And you want me to do this for what?” Chainz asked, motioning around the office. “Because I’m such a nice guy? Because doing a good deed is gonna make me feel all warm and fuzzy about myself?”
“No,” Sean said, choking out the only word his desperate mind could cook up.
“People like you upset me, Sean,” he said, now leaning back in his chair. “You all seem to think I owe you something; I owe society something. You think because corporate CEOs give to charity that my business works the same? Is that it?”
“No, of course not,” Sean croaked, sweat tickling his temple as it trickled down his face.
“You know those corporate fat cats only give to charity because it’s a tax write-off, and it makes their companies look good,” Chainz continued as if conducting a class.
“That, in turn, makes their customers buy more. There ain’t no generosity in their actions.
It’s all motivated by greed and ambition. ”
Sean nodded. He knew now that he was completely sunk and was cursing himself for being stupid enough to come here.
He wanted to apologize, turn, and leave.
But he knew that trying to end this conversation himself would be seen as an insult to the man, and people who insulted Chainz usually didn’t last very long.
“In that way, I’m the same as them,” Chainz continued. “I don’t do anything unless there’s profit in it for me. Unless there’s something I want.”
Sean felt his stomach drop. He knew this was a complete bust now. He just hoped Chainz would allow him to leave the bar without inflicting pain on him first or robbing him of his weapons and supplies.
“Luckily for you, though,” Chainz said, raising an eyebrow in Sean’s direction and kicking a folding chair across from him at the poker table out. He motioned to the chair as if inviting Sean to sit. “There is something I want.”
Chainz snapped his huge fingers, and Legion appeared in the doorway, closing the door and leaving them in relative privacy. “Have a seat, Sean,” he said, motioning to the chair. “Let’s talk.”