Page 15 of Chaos & Carnage
“I see you’re not ready for their feed yet,” the laugh drifted on the surface of her words. “I’ll mop the floor again,” she said, pointing at something none of us could see over her shoulder before backing out the door the way she’d come.
“Go home. Get some sleep, Alice,” his voice purred at me, my hand still covering his, our bodies still too close together.
“Yeah. Soon. Tired.” I was exhausted, but now I couldn’t even string a sentence together.
And this time he did smile, a mischievous, self-satisfied grin pulling at his face.
Chapter Seven
“I need your ass at the hospital now!” Indie’s voice growled down the phone.
I didn’t even have my eyes open as I held the mobile against my face, not quite finding my ear.
“Ok, ok. I’m coming,” I groaned, wiping my other hand across my face, still unable to open both eyes. “Why am I coming to the hospital, Indie?”
“Someone’s attacked Demon.”
“Again? In the hospital?”
“Aye. Fuckers.”
“Is he ok?”
“We don’t know yet. I need everyone there. And I need someone who can get into the CCTV and identify the fucker who did it. Now go wake Carnage. We need to be there before the police are crawling all over the place.”
The call ended, the room returning to sleepy quiet, the cold seeping under the covers now I was awake. For a moment I lay there, the pull of sleep strong, a heaviness behind my eyes, a sinking feeling in my head.
The door burst open, the light from the hallway outside blinding me, even though I could barely see through my own eyelids, anyway.
“Cade. Indie rang. Demon….”
“I know. I’m coming.”
*****
The bikes roared in a cloudless night, stars twinkling above us. The ends of my fingers throbbed as my body pushed blood to extremities threatened with frostbite. Each bump in the road, I could feel tenfold, jolting through the handlebars. And as we raced on into the night, Gateshead froze around us, the frost sparkling under the bike’s headlights.
We approached a corner, letting the engines slow us, a slight squeeze of the brake. In front of me Caleb’s bike slid, the back wheel skidding, making him wobble, and my whole body tensed under the roaring quarter of a tonne mass of a bike. Caleb squeezed the throttle, edging his bike out of the slide, thick rubber wheels struggling to grip the slippy road. The bike slipped again, twisting and convulsing. I held my breath, my heart beating in my ears, and if I could have shut my eyes, I would have.
And then it stopped, Caleb easing the frame upright once more, finishing the turn and pulling away again in front.
My visor misted, the huge lungful of air I was holding onto escaping all at once, and I pushed at the lid, icy cold air rushing at my face through the gap.
Fucking 4.45 in the morning, when I should be sleeping, not breaking my neck on an icy road as we rushed to answer the call. One in, all in. That’s how it worked. Like fucked up musketeers. We knew that when we joined. When we passed all the initiation challenges, and proved our loyalty to a brotherhood of leather and steel. But at 4.45 in the fucking morning, I questioned that loyalty.
Eventually, the hospital came into view, the three-storey red brick building sprawling in front of us. A pattern of twinkling squares of light glowing from inside, hallways and stairwells constantly lit. The car park was almost desolate, sleeping relatives tucked up snug and warm, knocking out the zeds while we froze in black leather.
It didn’t take long to find the little cluster of Harleys parked under a streetlight at the very front of the car park. A lone Kings’ sentry stood in the night protecting club assets.
“Hey, Security Sam,” Caleb clapped the man on the shoulder, the connection of leather muffling the sound. “Who’s already in?”
“Indie, Fury, Reap and Barry the Blade. I’m looking after the bikes.”
“Like a good prospect,” Caleb fist-bumped the yet-to-be-patched-in member and then beckoned for me to follow. “Good call, Fury making him a prospect. Got loads of skills that one, knows how to keep watch,” my brother rolled his eyes.
“Sure he’ll be good for something,” I shrugged, my brother’s sarcasm irritating my tired brain.
Demon was on the fifth floor of the six-storey, red brick sixties, monstrosity that sprawled the site. The glass panelled front doors slid back as we approached, inviting us into the sterile corridors of beige, wipe clean, lino tiled floors and off-white walls, which were long overdue a repaint. A grey rubber rail attached to the wall at just about waist height, scuffs and black streaks from years of trolleys and gurneys that had been dragged along it, providing the only colour. Someone had thought to hang a few pictures. Aerial photos of Gateshead, so old even I didn’t recognise the landscape, and copies of photographs of the Angel of the North from every perceivable angle, the rust-coloured steel sculpture standing proudly on a hill overlooking the old pit. The building was as depressed as the people recovering and dying within it.