Page 4

Anchor

Pull and Piney wrapped him in a thick black tarp and then sealed him with duct tape to keep him from leaking anything across the dock. The air stank of lake water and fear, but no one said a word. Lost drove the utility cart with the headlights off, the quiet rumble of the engine masked by the fake storm sounds from the haunted house speakers up the hill. Skull and I walked behind, and our eyes scanned the tree line and paths for wandering tourists.

The boat tour crowd was too wrapped up in their own thrill to notice the real horror happening just feet away. A fog machine hissed near the ghost tour kiosk and covered the exit path in a white veil. Behind that, actors in rotted fisherman costumes leapt from barrels to scare guests getting on the boats. No one noticed us vanish into the woods.

We took the back trail, one that only the club used. It curled around the old service shed hidden behind the haunted house. Piney pulled open the warped wooden door and revealed a wall of fake supply crates. He pushed the crates aside, and there was a large steel door.

It groaned open, and the smell that rose from the tunnel was cold and metallic.

We descended single-file. The narrow stairwell led into a service corridor that had been carved into the limestone decades ago, back when Skull Island was used for government training exercises. We’d reinforced the walls, added lighting, and rerouted power through a dummy line. It was our tunnel now.

And tonight, it was our morgue.

The tunnel ended at another steel door that opened into the cellar beneath the clubhouse. The room was cool and dry. There were shelves stacked with backup supplies, boxed liquor, and spare gear. In the middle stood a stainless steel table, normally used for gear repair and cleaning firearms. Tonight, it held a corpse.

Pull and Piney hoisted the body onto the table, unwrapped it, and stepped back.

The man lay still. Pale. Slightly bloated. The twine still threaded through his lips. The carved letters across his chest, KOAMC, were angry, deep, and raw. Kings of Anarchy Motorcycle Club.

It wasn’t a message. It was a challenge.

“Get Doc,”

I said to Push, who was waiting near the entrance.

“Tell him we need him now. Bring the case.”

Doc showed up twenty minutes later. He looked like hell, but that was normal. Thin frame, thinning hair, unshaven jaw. He wore a wrinkled hoodie with the Lions logo half peeled off and cargo pants that looked two sizes too big.

“Jesus, Anchor,”

he said as he entered the room.

“You boys pick up a side hustle in execution now?”

“Less jokes. More answers,”

I ordered.

“Yeah, yeah. You paying in Jack or Jameson this time?”

“Whiskey. Full crate.”

“Then let’s get to work.”

Doc rubbed his hands together.

He snapped on gloves, one of them tearing before he got it on. He didn’t care. He leaned over the body and began his work. Clinical, fast, and efficient. He sniffed. Checked beneath the eyelids. Pressed the stomach.

“Cold. No obvious decomposition yet. He hasn’t been in the water long,”

Doc muttered.

“Petechial hemorrhaging present. Broken capillaries in the eyes. That’s classic strangulation.”

He lifted the man’s hand and flexed the fingers.

“Stiff, but not locked. Time of death, I’d say... six to ten hours ago. Could be more, but the water might’ve slowed decomp.”

“And the mouth?”

Skull asked, arms crossed.

Doc leaned in and twisted the man’s chin with a gloved hand.

“Stitched tight. Thick thread. Some kind of waxed twine. You want my guess? Done postmortem. Lips show no trauma from movement, no bleeding. He was dead when it happened.”

He used a scalpel to slice near the letters carved into the man’s chest. The tissue parted cleanly.

“Same with the carving. No active bleeding. They waited until he was dead, then did this. Message was for whoever found him, not him.”

“No ID, no phone, no wallet. Just a body,” I said.

Doc peeled off his gloves and tossed them into a bin. He looked up at me.

“You want my medical opinion, Anchor? Whoever did this? They weren’t just trying to kill someone. They were trying to unnerve you. This is psychological. A scare tactic. You don’t do this unless you want someone to feel it.”

I stared at the body with my jaw tight.

“You ever seen anything like this before?”

Doc shook his head.

“Not even in Detroit.”

Push entered with a wooden crate in his arms. He set it down near the door.

“One case of whiskey, aged nine years.”

Doc grinned.

“I always knew I liked you guys.”

He hefted the crate, gave us a casual salute, and vanished down the tunnel.

Thirty minutes later, the patched members of the club gathered around the Church table.

The room was lit low. The walls, once bare concrete, were now covered in black wood paneling and framed patches from fallen brothers. The table itself was thick oak, battle-scarred and solid as hell. The chairs were heavy, too. Nothing in here was delicate.

I sat at the head with my hands braced on the table. Skull to my right, Prime next. Piney, Post, Vin, Cross, Bob, and Pull followed in clockwise order. Wannabe and Lost stood behind the last chairs, their hands clasped behind their backs, eyes sharp. Prospects listened. They didn’t speak unless asked.

“We’ve got a body on our shore, and marked with our name,”

I said and scanned their faces.

“Stitched mouth. Strangled. Dumped near the boat dock on a Saturday night, when every camera was rolling.”

“No one recognizes him?”

Prime asked.

“Nobody,”

I confirmed.

“That’s not random,”

Skull said.

“That’s precision. Whoever dropped him knew our schedule. Our routes. They wanted to make sure it was seen.”

“Push and Vin are going to go through camera footage?”

Piney asked.

“Yeah,”

I said.

“All angles from the past six hours.”

Vin tapped a notebook.

“Already pulled three blind spots while Doc was downstairs. Two along the back trail by the loading dock, one near the south bluff. Could be where he came in.”

“How’s the tide there?”

Bob asked.

“Could carry a body to shore if it’s dumped from a skiff,”

Skull said.

“But it’d have to be placed carefully. You’d risk it drifting too far.”

“Or not being found at all,”

Cross added.

“Unless that wasn’t a risk,”

I said.

“Maybe whoever did this wanted us to find him.”

Pull hadn’t spoken, but I caught the tightness in his shoulders. He looked rattled. Focused. Like he was trying to remember something.

“What is it, Pull?” I asked.

He looked up.

“When I first saw the guy from a distance... I thought he was just another drunk who’d fallen in. That’s why I called Lost over instead of radioing it immediately.”

“You think he was left there recently?”

Pull nodded.

“He wasn’t bloated the way I’d expect from a longer submersion. He looked... recent.”

“Doc confirmed that,”

I said.

“Dead six to ten hours. Carving was postmortem. This was deliberate.”

“You want a recon sweep?”

Piney asked.

“I’ll take a boat around the island. Check for fresh tracks.”

“Do it. Quietly.”

“What if it’s a warning?”

Bob said.

“For the club? For you?”

“Then we take it seriously,”

Skull said, voice sharp.

“And we hit back twice as hard.”

Cross cleared his throat.

“We should be careful. Panic leads to mistakes. We don’t even know who this guy is yet.”

“You think we wait?”

Post asked.

“I think we investigate. Hard. But we don’t strike blind.”

I leaned forward.

“This club doesn’t roll over,”

I said.

“We’re not afraid of ghosts. We make ghosts.”

The table fell silent.

Everyone understood what that meant.

“Nobody outside this room hears about the body,”

I said.

“Not until we have answers. Not until we know who we’re hunting.”

Skull nodded, his jaw tense.

“We find out who this bastard was. Who dumped him. And why he wore our name carved into his skin,” I stated.

“And then?”

Prime asked.

I looked down at the table, and my fingers curled into fists.

“Then we show them what happens when you mess with the Kings of Anarchy.”

Even the walls seemed to hum with silence after that.

And deep down, I knew this was only the beginning.