“Stay in there,” he growled. “I’ll be there in a bit.”
“Dad!”
But before I could say a word more, he had shut the door again. I was left in complete darkness, with no preconceived notion of what this room looked like.
“Dad! What the hell!”
One false step... I was in a panic room, that much I knew. But what else was in this room was a question I feared the answer to.
“Dad…”
I turned.
And then a light came on, presumably from the motion of my body. And what I saw stunned me.
There was enough food and water in here to last the two of us probably three months. There was a shotgun, a rifle, and a pistol, each with seemingly infinite amounts of ammo boxes by them. There was even a spare motorcycle in the corner.
I didn’t want to know how thick these walls were or what the various contraptions were here. My father had seemingly left no stone unturned, as if he had feared all along that the day might come when he’d have to remain in here for weeks on end. There was even a bathroom tucked into a corner, though it had no bath or shower. Apparently, hygiene was not part of a room like this.
And then I could hear gunfire outside.
However thick the walls were, they were actually pretty good at muting the sound. Instead of rattling and threatening to rupture my eardrums, it sounded more like books falling off their shelves, noticeable, but not paralyzing. But the frequency of them, as well as the screams of Saints that were getting hit…
Seconds later, the door opened again. My father stepped inside. He pulled one of the bricks aside in the room, pressed something, and the door shut behind him.
“We’re safe in here,” he said. “I know this because you never discovered this room in all the time you were here. So we should be good.”
“And what? Everyone else is going to die?”
My father’s answer chilled me.
“Of course.”
It was said with absolutely no emotion. He did not give a damn of even the smallest degree about any of the men outside. Cruel and criminal as they may have been, to just consign them to the jaws of the Reapers seemed like a horrible fate that went beyond their sins.
“You can’t just let them die!” I said. “You say the Reapers are evil men who will kill and rape? Then maybe we should protect some of our own men.”
But my father was having none of it.
“I have failed in my quest to make the Fallen Saints the dominant club in the town, and as a result, there will be retribution coming to me from places you cannot even imagine,” he said. “The best thing that we can hope for—yes, we—is for everyone in the club to be slaughtered. Let no one here who has been a part of this club live to tell those who come for knowledge about us.”
“What the fuck are you even talking about, Dad?”
But my father shook his head.
“Things extend beyond Springsville, Lilly,” he said. “I got myself tangled far too deep into the webs of some men who are far worse than the Reapers. Your life is at risk if they ever learn of my failure.”
What did you do, Dad?!?
“The more blood that gets shed, the better our chances of survival when we leave tonight,” he said. “We will ride this out—”
“No way,” I said.
This was where I made my stand against my father. Not a stand of walking away, running away, or hiding away, but of fighting back.
“Whatever mess you got into, we can get out of it. If we need to pull the Reapers in to help, so be it. But I’m not—”
“Do not speak of what you do not know, Lilly!” my father hissed. “You are speaking of men who would slit their mother’s throats for a penny. You speak like a child.”
