Hello! Enjoy chapter 2!

Viking

In a flash, I remembered even though it was long ago and I hadn't seen her often back then. Pretty, in the underfed teen kind of way. Painfully timid, shy from being messed with so bad, and more than a little fucked in the head, like all the cult bitches. She had somehow turned up at the MC's compound out of nowhere, allegedly searching for safety from The Order. The others – Mae, Lilah, Maddie – had taken care of her, brought her into the fold even when Prez and VP were unconvinced.
One day, the bitches had all visited that church in downtown Austin that Maddie used to go to while Flame was recuperating from being shot in the neck. The pastor got shot dead, and the chicks were carried off by some neo-Nazi goons paid by The Order. In the end, we had found them again, relatively unharmed because Rider – Prophet Cain, then – that let them go.
Sarai had disappeared that day. She must have gone back to the commune with Cain. Some time after that, the Hangmen and a returned Rider had unleashed war upon his lunatic twin Judah and his fanatics – as much as that had been possible, with more than half of them already lying dead by their own hands – and razed New Zion until nothing and nobody was left.
It couldn't have been difficult for a fourteen-year-old to slip through the cracks in the confusion, and then, somehow, some of Meister's merry band of Nazis must have snatched her up.
That was, what, almost seven years ago? Looking down at her, her face, her whole body seemed to be a barely-living testament to every single one of those years.
Doesn't change the fact that she is a fucking snake.
Yeah, this wasn't going to be uncomplicated, I could already tell. Fan-fucking-tastic.
"Let's get you out of here," I told her unresponsive form, because there was literally nothing else to say or do.
Because the sheets and blankets were fucking revolting and there was not a single other helpful item in the room, I took off my cut and put it on her for the moment. With all the time that had passed, she had to be twenty or twenty-one years old, but her body was still that of a teenager. My cut, being a relatively small piece of clothing made of less material than your average jacket, was still enough to wrap her up and cover her from her chest to her thighs.
Just as I scooped her into my arms, noting that she was as cold and clammy as a dead fish, AK appeared in the doorway.
"I've got her," I told him, consciously omitting her name, pulling her closer to my chest to shield her face from his eyes a little even though it was unlikely he'd recognize her, beat up as she was. AK was thin-skinned when it came to anything New Zion-related, rightfully so. Now wasn't the time for any drama, though. "Lead the way."
AK looked around the room one last time, then nodded, turned around and made a beeline for the front door.
"She the only one?" AK was scanning the place.
"Only one I found anyway," I answered. "But there's another key on the ring I got from the asshole who bashed my tooth in. He must've been their head honcho. This must've been his place. Maybe he's hiding more, somewhere. I haven't checked for a basement."
AK nodded. "Give me those keys, I'll get a closer look at everything. You want Rider to have a look at her? Take her home?"
Rider was running around somewhere in the encampment, part of the back-up group that had entered just after the last Nazi had croaked. Just my luck, really. He would have recognized the bitch right away. I doubted it would've been a happy reunion.
"She's in too bad shape," I said, shaking my head. Having seen her body, including the oozing track marks in the crooks of her elbows, I knew that, unlike with Mae, Lilah, Madds, Phebe and Sapphira who had shown up on the MC compound in bad fucking shape, some biker TLC wasn't gonna cut it. Not this time. "Nothing Rider can do about it, and she won't make it a hundred miles, let alone six hundred 'cross state. She needs a real doctor, right here."
AK didn't see much of her, wrapped in my cut and my arms as she was, but he could smell her as well as I could, so he agreed.
"Get her to the van and out of here, then. Tell Ash to come in here with Trooper. We'll have a closer look at this shithole."
Ash, Flame's little half-brother and full member of the Hades Hangmen MC, had adopted a pitbull mix called Trooper some years ago. Maddie had trained the 85 pound dog to be a teddy bear while at home (I was starting to suspect that that was his real factory setting), Flame made sure that he became a fucking cannonball with teeth in times of crisis, and Ash had trained him as a detection dog. Trooper had successfully sniffed out explosives, drugs, and corpses in the past. Styx hadn't been a fan at first because his bitch was wary of dogs, what with the big fucking scar from a dog bite on her calf, but now he sometimes mentioned that Troop was 'really more useful to the club than certain patched-in brothers'. (I had no idea who he could possibly referring to.)
"Aye," I said and swiftly carried my precious if broken cargo out into the night, leaving AK behind at the house.

/

Near the west gate of the encampment, hidden behind a small hill, a massive Mercedes-Benz van was parked.
The vehicle was technically Flame's, even though several MC members used it frequently. The psycho brother had bought it new two years ago, and gone a bit overboard reinforcing it with steel and bulletproof glass, turning the family van into a family fortress on wheels that guzzled gasoline like a hole in the ground.
It transported MC members, goods and excess equipment to and from club business across Texas – and, on days off, ten rug rats, their inexplicably large amounts of stuff, their moms, and a dog; to kindergarten, Walmart, the adventure pool, the doctor's, the dog park, wherever.
Since Nazi-hunting had carried significant portions of the club's soldiers as far as fucking Idaho, I couldn't deny that having a reliable-as-fuck vehicle with that sort of loading capacity was mighty useful. Still, for Flame to be riding that thing almost exclusively and leaving his Fatboy in the garage was a fucking disgrace for a biker.
I gave him shit for it, naturally – he was motherfucking Flame, after all, and over the last few years he had basically transformed into the biggest pussy in the club (which no one but me would ever have the balls to tell him to his face, and someone had to do it. Otherwise the brother would develop a fucking God complex and then where would we be?) – but I also knew that that van gave my brother the opportunity to learn. About the world, and life, all the shit normal people took for granted, shit he never had the chance to go through, what with his seriously fucked-up childhood and his mental wiring being different from everyone else's.
His biological half-brother Ash, who had gone to school and got his GED in no time and was taking all kinds of classes like the brainiac he was, was something of a conduit between him and the real world – the one that he, Flame, wanted to show and share with his children as they grew up.
I knew that the psycho was afraid that he wouldn't have anything to talk about with them down the road. There was only so much interest a small kid could have in the topics of bikes and knives, after all.
So Flame and Ash were spending hours upon hours on the road in that van, sitting, talking about any odd thing, giving Flame the chance to figure out talking with people who weren't Madds, and how the fucking world worked. Meanwhile, a younger generation of Hangmen earned its place in the club out in the field, one drop of blood at a time.
Life could really get fucking boring once your brothers started raising munchkins left and right.
As I approached, Ash and Flame both jumped out and came my way.
"What happened?" Ash asked, eyeing the human pile I was carrying around.
"Found her." That means I get to keep her. I shook the thought away. "Nazis had her. Phebe and Sapphira type situation, looks like." I glanced at Flame and saw that he understood. He had been there, back then. Almost gone entirely psycho imagining that that might've been in store for his Maddie, too. We'd never taken him on another mission that involved brothels again.
I also saw that he wasn't recognizing her. That was probably for the best. I sure as shit wasn't going to tell him her name just yet. Triggering Flame was just not a clever move, ever, but especially with Maddie over five hundred miles away.
"She needs medical attention, ASAP."
Ash pulled the van's sliding back door open. "I can find the nearest hospital-"
"You're needed elsewhere," I interrupted. "AK wants you and Trooper at the house where I found her."
"Site's all clear?" Flame asked, even though I was pretty certain he knew perfectly well that the site was all fucking clear, being in contact with Tanner and everyone else. But this was about Ash's safety, so of course he would make doubly sure.
Ash heard and got it. I saw him wiping his mouth to hide an embarrassed little smile.
"Yep. Nazis just went extinct in Texas," I assured him. "So they won't need their shit no more, which is where Lil' Ash and Troop come in."
I gave Ash quick instructions about how to meet up with AK. Ash whistled a command, and Trooper jumped out of the dark bowels of the van, remarkably graceful for a dog his size, his brindled brown-and-tan fur shiny and healthy. His wet nose started twitching even as his clever amber eyes were focused entirely on Ash. No doubt he was checking out the corpse smell emanating from Sarai's body.
Ash geared up quickly and then he and the dog quickly vanished toward the encampment. Flame got directions for the closest medical facility with his tablet while I deposited Sarai in the seat right behind the driver's that had been folded up before. The seat reclined almost all the way to a horizontal position, so I tried to get her comfortable on it. I wrapped her in the crinkly golden thermal blanket from the first aid kit until she looked like a Werther's candy, adding the two self-heating pads and putting them on her upper belly, and stuffed one of Isaiah's back-up baby blankets under her head as a pillow. I also tried to drip a little water onto her lips, but she was too out of it to swallow and I didn't want to drown her or get water into her lungs, so backed off.
"Clearwood Treatment, Rehabilitation and Recovery Center, outside El Paso. 42 miles," Flame announced from the driver's seat where he checked his tablet. His voice was sounding a little dead. I supposed he wasn't a fan of driving into a place that would be real fucking similar to the one where his old man had him institutionalized. I shook my head. Brother was just gonna have to deal with it.
42 miles was not exactly ideal under the circumstances, but they really were in the middle of nowhere. I was surprised that Flame's device even had data reception out here anyway.
"Nothing closer than that?" I probed, fastening Sarai's seatbelt as well as I could and rearranging the boxes of stuff that had had to make way for her temporary bed.
"Fucking nothing," Flame confirmed.
That was probably literally the case. I'd be surprised if there were even a fucking Starbucks or a McDonald's closer to this godforsaken place than a one hour drive.
I looked at Sarai, all bundled up and barely moving, and then thought of my Fat Boy that was waiting for me near the southern entry point where AK and I had taken up position before sundown, before going in and getting the slaughter started. It wasn't ideal to leave my stud out here, but I had to, for now. No way was I letting her outta my sight right now.
"Let's go, then." I squeezed my six foot six into the passenger seat and slid it all the way back so I could easily keep an eye on the passed-out woman right behind Flame.
"What if AK and Ash find another one?" Flame asked, looking straight out the windshield as if that would magically conjure the two of them up on the little hill. "Another bitch."
I grit my teeth. He had a point. This van was the only vehicle we had around here that was fit for transporting people injured as badly as Sarai. AK would be stuck here with any additional prisoner they found.
But those were hypothetical people. Sarai was real, and I was certain that she wouldn't make it if we waited another hour or two.
"Drive. You can drop us off there and come back here right away." Probably a good idea, anyway, to let the brother know I wasn't expecting him to hang around the medical facility. "And I'll talk to Ky and Tanner, maybe they have another idea for that scenario." I got out my phone.
Flame replied by turning the key in the ignition and speeding off toward Clearwood, outside El Paso.

/

On paper at least, Clearwood turned out to be a fucking fluke.
On the phone with the VP and our resident Grand Computer Wizard, Tanner, I found out that the place was well-equipped and well-staffed, small and private – which meant that waving some money would open many doors, silence many questions and keep us away from snooping officials like police – and that they had 24 hour emergency admittance on top of a larger, integrated inpatient rehab institution for a whole range of physical and mental ailments. Perfect.
As for the problem of how to get Sarai into that system: The head nurse listed on the website turned out to be a familiar face. Melanie Simmons, who was looking at me from her "Director of Nursing and Assistant Director of Business Management" staff photo on the Clearwood website, was known in the Austin chapter of the Hades Hangmen MC as Mels. She had been a club slut for several years, hanging around our compound during parties and switching regularly between brothers to keep her entertained in the evening and warm at night. I remembered her, or at least her face and her generous tits. She was a fun girl and a sweet drunk. We probably fucked a couple of times.
Ky, who had seen her on the website first and pointed her out to me, told me that she had permanently split from the club maybe four, five years ago. "I don't think there was bad blood, though," he added.
Some sluts got possessive and bitchy after a while, claiming men who didn't want to be claimed, causing drama, and had to be shown the door. Apparently, dear old Mels wasn't one of them. She just got older and wanted more from life than being just another club slut hanging around bikers, getting high or drunk and shooting shit for days on end. Fair enough.
What Ky was trying to tell me was that maybe there was some old love for the club left in Mels that I could use to get the beat-up bitch into Clearwood. The girl had no papers, no social security number, no health insurance, not any of the crap that was needed nowadays to get a proper doctor to so much as look into your fucking direction. The way she looked, the emergency personnel would probably not turn her away because of their Hippocratic Oath or some shit, but I didn't just want her to be brought back from the brink of death. She clearly needed long term care, so that her body and her mind had a chance to heal after everything the fucking Nazis – and those cult cunts before that, and probably her shit parents before them – had done to her. Otherwise, what would've been the point of the whole rescue? Leaving her lying in that bed and blowing the whole dump sky-high with her still in it would have been kinder.
Tanner let me know that he had activated a few numbers on several official databases – that's what he said he did anyway, I didn't have the faintest idea how that whole shit worked – so that I could use one of the official ID cards he had made for me. It would probably come in handy when checking Sarai in.
Every member of the MC now had several fake papers at their disposal, each with different names and sets of data connected to them, all legit-looking. The one I found in the glove box of Flame's van, coincidentally, was the one with my actual, real given names and my mother's last name on it. I had requested it from Tanner specifically, a few years back.
"Ulfr," I had said, spelling the name out. "Middle name 'Einar'. Last name 'Sorensen'."
Tanner's fingers had stilled on their keyboard, and he had looked at me over the rim of his reading glasses with a faintly amused expression, eyebrows lifting. I could see that he didn't believe me when I said that that was my real name, but he also found it unlikely that I had pulled a name like that out of my ass. To be fair, I wasn't the most imaginative of people, except maybe when it came to the many, many ways of using a gun.
"What?" I lifted one eyebrow and one corner of my mouth in reply. "Got a problem with me being more Aryan than your mongrel ass?" As if comparing my definitely Germanic coloring – red-blond hair, blue eyes, bright pale skin that never bronzed – to his dark-blond-going-on-brown hair, brown eyes and easily tanning skin hadn't been enough to establish that as a fact at first glance.
Tanner huffed out a laugh and shook his head, then resumed his typing, still grinning. "No problem at all, Mr Wolf Warrior, son of Soren."
That gave me pause. Knowing the meaning of Old Norse names wasn't exactly part of general education, especially not for the average American. Then again, I supposed that even if Tanner and his elders weren't as genetically Nordic as Hitler's wet dreams, at least they had done their homework – for the future White Power Crotchfruit, no doubt, which Tanner himself would never beget now that he had his Latina bitch.
Ah, life. Fucking hilarious.
"Here," Flame announced, making me fucking jump and drop my ID card into the foot well. He had pulled up across the road from a rather unimpressive-looking squat construction with a brightly lit entrance area. A black-and-white no-nonsense sign next to the door read 'Clearwood Treatment, Rehabilitation and Recovery Center, Homestead Meadows North, El Paso, Texas, USA; founded 2001'. Apparently, Flame didn't want to come any closer than this to a place where people were drugged and tied to their beds. I couldn't fault him for that.
"Fucking finally," I said, as if I was eager to get going and set my brilliant plan into motion or something. Truth was, the entirety of my plan thus far had three bullet points: haul this here bitch into that there facility, have them get her into stable condition so she didn't fucking die right away, and somehow – by asking nicely, paying a lot of money, blackmailing, threatening, somefuckinghow – get them to treat for her long-term so that she wouldn't die right next week, either. The parts in between I was gonna have to play by ear, with the help of my real fake ID and one of my unlimited credit cards, both courtesy of Tanner, sweet, big-titted Mels and, I supposed, my charming personality. For starters, I had half a story pulled out of my ass about how Sarai had been kidnapped and tortured by some thugs from Ciudad Juarez and I had somehow got her out… and that was it. Slightly better than "I found her in a Nazi base 40 miles east which doesn't exist anymore by now because my brothers have probably blown it up, but I originally know her from a doomsday cult for which she killed and kidnapped people when she was a teenager".
Still not the imaginative type.
"You're gonna stay with her," my brother said suddenly, stopping me halfway in the process of opening my door.
"That a question or an order?" I asked him. He had listened to the phone conversations I had had with Ky and Tanner. I had told them both the bare minimum, sold it like I was just dropping the no-name bitch off and heading back to the Nazi base in Hudspeth County with Flame right away so they wouldn't ask questions I didn't know the answer to.
Apparently, my psycho brother from another mother knew me better than that, though.
"Statement," Flame said. Fuck. He was not a happy camper. His inked-to-hell fingers drummed and fidgeted on the steering wheel.
"Yeah, I guess I gotta stay a while," I hedged, but in my bones I already knew that I couldn't just hand her over and piss off, and that this would take longer than I was banking on. Maybe a lot longer. The way I knew American medical facilities, they'd barely tape her together and send her on her merry way with a large bill in a small white envelope, undocumented as she was, if I didn't stay and keep both eyes on her. She'd be dead or worse in less than a week. I couldn't let that happen, as stupid as it was to feel responsible for her at this point. "Make sure they take care of her like they should."
"I don't fucking like it," Flame commented and glared at the building across the road as if it had offended him personally.
If it had been anyone but Flame, I would have laughed and said 'Tough shit.'
"I know you don't," I said instead. Reaching down into the foot well and picking up one of the smaller handguns I had stripped off my body a few miles back – because I couldn't walk into a medical center armed to the teeth…or maybe I could, but I really rather shouldn't – I stuffed the modified Beretta back into my right boot. A smaller-sized Bowie knife went into my left boot. I looked up at Flame who had been watching my actions. "How about now?"
He glared at me, the muscles in his cheeks working, then turned away and gave a small nod. That was as approving as he was going to get, I supposed.
Behind him, the reason for our being here flinched again, which made the thermal blanket rustle sharply. She had done so a few times on the way here, as if to remind me that she was still there, and still alive – or still dying. I didn't have a fucking clue what those spasms were all about. Nothing good, I'd wager. In any case, it got my focus back on track.
"Take care of my bike for me," I said, flicked the keys over to him, and got out of the car.
A few minutes later, Flame was driving off, and I was standing, stranded, on a sidewalk in El Paso at three in the morning, with a Beretta in my right boot, a knife in my left, a fake ID with a real name in my wallet next to my last 83 bucks in cash money, a hole in my gums that was still bleeding into my beard, and a mangled, naked, dying bitch in my arms.
I wasn't the most imaginative, but even I could imagine several dozen better ways to spend a fucking Saturday night.

/

Sarai

When I came to, it was one sense after the other.
First, my skin came alive. I felt the pain from all over my body, from my middle, my chest, my throat, from between my toes and the entire length of my spine. My lips and nostrils screamed at me with every breath I took, the air of every inhalation cut at them like an icy knife. I was cold all over, but not numb.
I wished I were numb.
Taste. My mouth tasted like human waste and death, and like something sharper. It reminded me of the stinging taste of toilet cleaner, the one drink I would never forget.
Then, suddenly, the other three senses were switched on and impressions barreled into me. A steady beeping, metal screeching and clanging on metal, faint voices growing louder, the nauseating smell of disinfectant and starchy rubber gloves that seeped over my tongue as well as into my nose, blindingly bright white walls and ceiling and curtains, a protracted, keening cry, the coppery scent of blood, the cloying scent of rot-
Oh God.
This was all so familiar.
I was going to be sick.
Because I had been here before, years ago.
Oh God.
It was happening all over again. My life, my death, again.
Hell was not a place of fire and brimstone at all. It was an endless loop of days and nights of agony and misery that started over just when I thought I had finally made it.
I opened my mouth and cried, even though the salt from my tears hurt my eyes and the skin of my face cracked open when I grimaced. I cried out of pain and shame and weakness. Out of a bottomless tiredness, like a big, fussy, inconsolable infant. For myself, out of pure self-pity, at the prospect of having to go through this again. And again. And over again. Out of fear, because I knew, I remembered so well what 'this' was.
And this time was even worse because I knew exactly what lay ahead of me, and how it would feel, and that I would survive it all because it would just all start again, right here, in some hospital-
Oh God. Please, please. I know I do not deserve Your grace. But please, save me. I howled in tears, trusting that, if there was a God, He would understand regardless.
Behind the veil of tears, a dark brown blotch came into view against the stark white backdrop of the ceiling. My shoulders were pressed down by two firm weights.
"Miss, settle down. Please. It'll be okay, you can calm yourself. Lay back, everything is alright. I'm right here."
The sound of running feet, opening doors. I felt the cold draft of moving air cut against my thin, brittle skin.
Hands on me. The grip so tight it hurt.
"Relax."
No!
If You are there, please—God! Please!
The reek of iodine.
A strong grip on my arm and a cold, hard sting. Rubber over my nose.
"Notify her husband," I heard someone say, "He needs to decide-"
Then my senses switched off again.

/TBC