“Shit!” Mason yelled from up front. “They’re better armed than we expected!”
“I will kill!” Butch yelled. “Cover me!”
Before any of us could react, Butch was sprinting to the side of the base. The rest of us laid down suppressive fire, mostly out of fear of having to explain to Cole and the rest of the Springsville charter why the hell we’d let Mountain Man get killed.
But the tactic stopped as soon as Butch disappeared into the night, and the rest of us were left in an old-fashioned shootout. It was a damn good thing this side of town wasn’t particularly full of civilians, because this looked like something you’d see in Iraq, not in a local neighborhood.
The location barely mattered, though. The sights and sounds were that of war. Bodies crumpling. Blood spewing out. Gunfire erupting to the point that regular hearing was barely a thing. Men shouting orders. Men calling out situations.
And then I felt a sharp bullet hit me near the shoulder.
“Fuck!” I yelled.
“You all right?”
I looked up. It was Mason. I grimaced and nodded.
And then he collapsed to the ground from a crouching position.
“Mason!”
“Shit!”
Connor covered him as much as he could, but it looked like a bullet had managed to get through the slog and hit him in the leg. We might have taken cover behind our bikes, but this wasn’t without risk. Our bikes could get too damaged, or…
I had no time to think strategy. I was not the club president or Butch. I stood up, walked in front of Mason, and laid down suppressive fire. I couldn’t quite tell, but I was pretty sure that I’d killed at least one Bandit.
“What the fuck you doing?” Mason said.
“Covering your ass, what the hell does it look like? You want me to kiss it, too?”
Mason didn’t respond. When I crouched down to take cover and looked at him, he just smirked.
“You fucking asshole, Garrett,” he said. “Let’s fucking kill these shitheads, shall we?”
I nodded, helped him crawl back up to a firing position, and we laid down everything we could.
And then, moments later, Butch was running back to us, firing behind him. My view shifted back to the base so I could accurately fire upon them.
“Roll out!” Butch yelled.
I looked over at him when he came into view, still continuing to lay down gunfire. He had blood on his face, but it didn’t look like it had come from him. I could only guess that some Bandit had had the misfortune of trying to ambush Butch and take his gun, only to pay the ultimate price.
I looked back at Mason, struggling a bit with his wound, but still able to follow commands. We laid down some last fire before we sped back into the night, driving west with victory in our minds. We hadn’t eradicated the Bandits, but I’d stopped counting the number of kills we’d gotten after we’d hit a half-dozen. That alone would probably deplete their forces by at least a quarter, maybe a little more.
On the drive home, several of the Reapers held their guns up. No one fired, but the symbol was clear. We came, we saw, and we fucking conquered the shit out of the Bandits. We had fucking won the night, and we had made it clear—this town was no longer a free zone for the Bandits to do whatever the fuck they wanted.
But just as we got into the populated part of Santa Maria, the intersection of the only two major streets, Mason pulled over once we got to a red light. Though one of the prospects saw him and drove over, I cut the prospect off.
“I’ll make sure he’s fine,” I said. “Go clean up the clubhouse for a celebration.”
“I…yes, Garrett,” the prospect said.
I turned back to Mason, bent over the handlebars.
“How are you feeling, fucker?” I said, letting my bike drop to a putt-putt-putt.
“How the fuck do you think I feel, asswipe?” Mason said, but he did so with a smirk. “Wound to the leg is pretty bad. Need to go to the hospital.”
