The eastern Montana badlands rise up around me like God's graveyard—ancient spires of eroded sandstone carved by wind and time into shapes that don't make sense. Red rock striations glow silver under the moon. Deep gullies cut between formations like open wounds in the earth's skin.
This land doesn't forgive.
Doesn't offer second chances or soft places to land.
It just is. Brutal, and honest, and unashamed of what it's become.
I get that. Understand it in my bones.
The bike eats up highway, then dirt road, then the unmarked two-track that leads to the compound. Dust plumes behind me in the headlight's wash. The air tastes like sage, and diesel, and something older—minerals, maybe. Stone ground down to powder over millennia.
Out here, you see what everything becomes eventually.
Dust, and silence, and wind that never stops.
The gate appears ahead, chain-link and razor wire catching moonlight. Two prospects lean against the guard shack, cigarettes glowing orange in the dark.
I slow. Stop.
Neither one meets my eyes.
Dusty shifts his weight. Crow stares at his boots like they're suddenly fascinating.
The gate opens. No words exchanged. No acknowledgment.
Just the mechanical grind of the motor pulling it aside.
I ride through.
Behind me, it closes with a metallic clang that sounds too much like a cell door.
How long?
The question sits in my chest like a stone.
How long has Brick been running this operation for the Feds?
Two years of nomads who aren't nomads. Two years of brothers voting on club business with federal prosecutors pulling their strings from the shadows.
Two years of lies, stacked on lies until the whole structure's rotten.
And how many men here hate it? How many are as pissed as I am about bein' used like pawns in somebody else's game?
I park the bike in its usual spot. Kill the engine.
The silence that follows feels heavy. Weighted with all the questions I can't ask and all the answers I already know.
However many men are angry, it's not enough.
Not enough to stand with me tomorrow when Brick calls church and demands his twenty-five-thousand-dollar blood price.
Not enough to vote against a president who's already proven he'll sell out anyone to protect his own skin.
Not enough to matter.
I pull off my helmet. Hang it on the handlebar.
The clubhouse squats ahead—cinderblock and corrugated steel, lights bleeding through dirty windows. Normally at this hour, there'd be noise. Music. Voices. The low rumble of brothers who can't sleep congregating in the bar to drink away whatever demons chase them.
