2017:
We've got Lipschitz chained to the urinal. We're just outside of the men's room, arguing.
"What Gayle did was negligent," I say. "What Lipschitz did was murder. He needs to be held accountable."
"Who are you," someone says. I think her name is Audrey. "You just showed up one day. You don't know us. You weren't with us through the hard times."
"So that's it," I say. "Being here when things suck is enough to justify killing someone? Gayle was here for the hard times, too. What about Gayle?"
"Gayle had her trial."
"Is that what that was?" I'm screaming now. "I didn't see a trial, I saw a goddamned execution."
I can hear Lipschitz tittering in the men's room. He's been off since we put him there. Shit, he's been off since the moment right before he pushed Gayle over the edge. There's a hard tint of crazy in his eyes.
"We don't belong here? Fine. Here's the key." I throw the key to Lipschitz's padlock at them. "We don't need to stay here." We start to leave. Bitch is trembling in my arms.
One of the ladies rushes to unlock the mayor. I want to put this place far in my rearview. We're halfway to our bikes when I hear footsteps chasing us and Lipschitz yelling not to let us leave. That only quickens our step. Lucas, Gutierrez, Dante and Mercedes climb onto their bikes while I throw the warehouse door open. Gutierrez covers me with Black Betty while I do. Then I'm on my bike and we're rolling out. Our way is slowed by the claustrophobic car-wall tunnel we have to navigate through, and the zombie bodies we hadn't yet gotten around to clearing out. It's bumpy and hectic. The zeds we haven’t quite finished off reach lazily for us and it’s all I can do not to imagine an arm in my spokes, spilling me into this undead horror-show minefield.
We can see the end. It's a straightaway stretch and we gun it. I hear a strange mechanical whining sound. We shoot clear of the labyrinth. There's an explosion behind us that shakes the ground and wipes us out. I twist as I'm thrown, holding my rucksack with Bitch inside tight to my chest. I land hard on my shoulder and back and I skid.
I slow.
I stop.
I lie there, stunned.
I try to take a mental evaluation. My head feels alright. Neck feels sore, but not damaged. My back feels scraped to shit, and my left shoulder down to my elbow feels like a hot mess. A brown wedge-shaped head fills my vision, and a warm tongue darts frantically over every inch of my face. Bitch seems to be alright.
I move her gently aside with my good right hand, and see Mercedes limping toward Lucas. She seems okay.
Lucas, however...
He's lying on his stomach, head turned away from us. There is blood around him, but I don't know where it's from. I stagger to my feet and run toward him. Just as I get there, he starts sitting up.
"Fug," he says. “I bid my fugging dongue." He's also missing teeth. I point that out to him, and he pokes at his smile with his fingertip. "Fug!" he yells.
Still, we got off light. Gutierrez never even wiped. The sidecar with Dante in tow held him down.
This could have been bad.
Hell, this should have been bad.
"Everyone's okay?" Guillermo says from the safety of his bike.
"Theemth tho," Lucas says.
"Seems so," I translate.
Guillermo turns to Dante. "Thank you," he says.
"Oh Christ," I say, and roll my eyes. "If we're giving him credit, let's give him credit for the crash, too."
They ignore me. I'm getting ignored so much lately, I'm starting to suspect that I may not really exist.
I look back to where the explosion happened. The wall of cars has fallen in on itself and become a wall of twisted fiery metal that reeks of burning tires. There's no easy way in. Or out. I can see the warehouse roof vaguely in the distance through the smoke.
"What a fucking waste," I say. "So much potential."
"The idea is good," Guillermo says. "Wouldn't be too hard to replicate."
"Mayor Lipschitz turned out to be pretty douchy, eh?" I say.
"No kidding," Mercedes says. She's leaning into Lucas in a way that has nothing to do with her hurt leg. I crawl back into my dark place.
"How are the bikes?" Guillermo asks.
My Roadmaster is pretty okay. Traitorous bastard shook me off and got off light. Mercedes' bike is scraped to shit all down the left hand side, but the damage seems superficial. It takes us a little while to find Lucas' bike. After it threw him off, it shimmied downhill for a bit and landed in the bottom of a ditch. No damage. At all. Lucky prick.
We're still dusting ourselves off when Bitch starts barking. We hear the rumble of motorcycles creeping up on us and that old instinct kicks in. My balls crawl up and my hands turn to sweat. Fight or flight. And the herd is weakened. I draw Loki and I wait.
Three motorcycles pull up and I see familiar faces. I do not put Loki away. We're met by the second half of the work crew. They have sidecars filled with dirt and shovels, and a woman named Ellen has hers filled with all kinds of rifles.
They pull alongside us. "Look what we found!" Ellen says. She sees the fiery blockade behind us and her face caves in on itself. "What happened?" she asks. I don't put Loki away. I watch her face as I tell her about the zombies and Tanya and Lipschitz and Gayle. I watch her face and I watch her hands. I'm waiting for her to draw one of those rifles on me, but she doesn't.
"Lipschitz was unstable," she says. "Not around you guys, but...he had it in his mind that he was in charge."
"He kind of was," a woman named Naomi chimes in.
"Yeah. Yeah he was," Ellen says. "But maybe he shouldn't have been."
"Tonya's dead?" This question comes from Meghan. She and Tanya had been together. It slipped my mind.
"I'm sorry," I say. "She died on her feet, though." It instantly feels like a stupid thing to have said.
"I mean, you're sure she's dead, right? You made sure to shoot her...you know, afterward?"
I lie. I tell her we did. Did we? I mean, I know we mopped up, but did we for sure put her out? I wish the answer was an absolute 'yes', but it isn't. I just don't know. There were a lot of half-dead undeads on that road.
"Absolutely," I tell her.
There are tears in her eyes when Meghan tells me "you'd better not be lying. She deserves to not live like that."
"I guess we don't need to be hauling this dirt around then, eh?" Naomi says. "It's hell on the gas mileage anyway." She sets to work unloading her dirt into a pile beside her.
And just like that, the MC gains three new members.
We throw the tools in with the guns in Ellen's sidecar. We dump our knapsacks and backpacks and various other bags in Meg's sidecar. I stuff Bitch into the front of my jacket. Her little triangular nose pokes out above the zipper. Naomi's got an empty passanger seat.
Lucas grins a broad, bloody, toothless grin. "Ladieth," he says. "Leth ride!"
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