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There’s one guy missing half of his face where he’s clearly been shot. It makes my stomach go at the sheer gore. The room is trashed, and the window is put through.

“Did you throw someone out the window?” I ask, stuttering at the absurdity, not waiting for an answer to my first question.

“I threw him at the wall… he missed… so he left by the window…” comes the eerily chirpy voice of the other one, slightly smaller and seemingly more psychotic Viking in my bedroom. Sitting on my bed, fidgeting with a corpse. I look at him, just lost for words and confused.

“Sawyer, this is Reaper… Reaper, Sawyer” and instead of shaking my hand like a normal human, he waves the dead guys arm at me with a beaming grin on his face.

“We’ve got to get out of here, five minutes, grab everything you can, if it can be bought, don’t bother” he picks up, dusts off, inspects, and then hands me Reddy.

“The van’s ready to go,” Reaper confirms

“Go where, Nik?” I ask, dumbfounded that I’m being asked, squeezing the imaginary life out of my bear

Nik shakes his head, rubs his hand down his face.

“My place!” Reaper replies, with an overly enthusiastic double thumbs up “It’s got everything you could need! Burgers, beers, bullets, and brothers!”

“Mmhhmm” I disapprovingly hum, but I start packing. Because I have precisely zero alternatives in mind.

“Reaper is a Forsaken Bastard, him and Ghost - in the van - have said we can stay there until we get this all smoothed over”

Do you smooth over a murder attempt? I don’t know, but I’m along for the bloody ride now, aren’t I? In four minutes I’m sitting in the back of a black panel van. Can’t I just have my Range Rover and my old life back?

The smell of gun smoke and tile dust lingers in my nose, and the latter floats from my hair as I try to shake the intrusive memories from my mind. I’m horrified at all of it. Being hunted in my own home is the kind of violation of safety that I think is going to stay with me for a long time. I’m disgusted to my core that Nik can kill people with no second thought, and Reaper can shake a dead-guys hand at me as an acceptable introduction. I know that I’m doing that numbing thing again, I can almost feel myself leaving my body and letting autopilot take over. The van dirt rolls under my fingertips and palms as I mindlessly self-soothe on the floorboard.

Reaper pulls a bottle of port out of a bag in the back, and offers Nik a swig. Nik looks incensed by the insinuation. Does he not like port?

“Brother, get your head outta your arse. We’re all alive and unhurt. That’s success, and you fucking know it. Now drink with me” begrudgingly, Nik takes the bottle and downs nearly half of it in one swig, handing it back to Reaper who takes a gulp and then offers me the bottle with solemnity.

I shake my head, and I’m told “Newby, this is a long standing tradition, you gotta” I look to Nik for reassurance who nods and pulls that lips-to-the-side face, confirming this is some kind of tradition. I wipe the bottle with my hand and take a swig. I fucking hate Port. But I give it back.

He hands it to the driver, who I presume is Ghost, and who I also presume takes a swig, Reaper takes the bottle back and pours a measure out the window. The pair bow their heads for a second.

Sensing my confusion Nik looks to me “A drink for every man who made it home, and one for those who didn’t”

He puts his hand on my knee, and tries to fake a smile, trying to look me in the eyes. I pull away from him. I was emotional, I am emotional. But I’m serious. I can’t do this. This is someone who I know for sure has killed at least three people, but fuck knows how many more. Sure, I can see how he got there. I’m not entirely convinced he’s an awful person. But he’s brought me into a world so dangerous, did he know they’d come for me? Why would he teach me all that shit about cover and concealment if he didn’t know he was dragging me into danger? He’s so fucked up. I can’t even look at him. I liked who I was. I’m not sure I can live with who I’m going to be if this carries on. He swore he’d never hurt me, no matter how mad I made him. I guess I’m going to find out.

Both of them rest their heads backwards against the shaking panels of the van. My arms wrap my knees, and my chin rests on them against the motion of the van.

The rest of the ride is silent.

Thirty

Sawyer

My body lurches sideways as the van pulls to a stop. I’ve never been travel sick before. But then I’ve also never been shot at before, so hey I guess it’s a day of ridiculous firsts. The doors open and reveal a grimy looking car park, if you can even call it that, on a grimier looking industrial estate. My throat burns as the fresh air hits me, and I cough and heave with my legs hanging off the back of the van, my head almost between my legs.

Reaper jumps out and is handed his motorcycle jacket, with the notorious three piece back patch. He doesn’t look back at me, his welcoming committee seem to have all of his attention and they all disappear in a hum of chatter. I glance up with morbid curiosity at the sea of big motorcycles, with big handlebars, all lined up perfectly, gleaming in the yellow street lights.

The motion of the suspension churns my stomach as Nik drops down to the ground before backing up to sit next to me.

“You okay?” he asks, almost gingerly. I don’t answer. I can’t even think about him right now. It’s like my heart is in two pieces, being pulled in opposite directions. I’m not even sure I’m actually mad at him or if he’s even hurt me. But I’m repulsed by the bodies, the gore, and how it just doesn’t affect him. He ends people’s lives and just goes on with his day as if they didn’t matter. They didn’t have, I don’t know, lives and spouses and kids or hobbies or whatever they did. They were people. Now they’re not. That’s what Nik does. He removes people from the planet. That didn’t sound so bad, until it went from an idea to a reality.

He still sits silently next to me, but when his hand reaches my shoulder to pull me in, I don’t melt into him. I turn and pull away. He doesn’t force me. He just slowly stands up, pushes out a deep breath, and walks away. Leaving me alone with my thoughts. I’ve never been more scared, and now I’ve never been more alone.

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, not even thinking, or even really feeling. Just absorbing the cold night biting at my skin, when I hear the crunch of boots against the loose tarmac. The van barely dips as this… woman, sits next to me. Not much bigger than me, but entirely covered in tattoos practically everywhere except her face and her hair is almost offensively short.

We don’t look directly at one another, just looking out at the estate, separately but next to one another. I hear the scraping of the flint in her lighter, and see the spark before I smell what she’s smoking. Two obnoxiously large puffs, and she wordlessly hands me the spliff. A couple of puffs later, I hand it back. I can’t keep up this silent thing though, it’s too awkward and I have way too many questions.