Page 4 of Kick

“You think she’s gonna talk? That fucker was ripping her teeth out. Bitch ain’t gonna talk.”

I close my eyes and remember a scene only a few short years ago in a cane field in the arsehole of nowhere town. The dude I’d loved my whole life like a brother, standing before a bitch that’d seen too much, begging him to spare her life.

How the mighty have fallen and become fucking pussies.

I can’t believe I’m begging to save her life the way Ethan did with that whore. “We’re taking her with us.”

“The hell we are.” Tank says. “Prez is gonna grind your balls for his bread over this shit.” He waves his gun at the plastic-wrapped body of the dentist. “You can’t bring a civilian into the club.”

The woman takes that opportunity to scream. I clamp my hand down over her mouth, wincing when I touch the cracked and swollen flesh beneath my fingers. She bites down. I yank my fist away, the pain in my hand acute and searing. “Fuck me, bitch! I’m trying to save your goddamned life here and you’re doing a hell of a job trying to fuck that shit up.”

“Kill me,” she growls. “I’d rather die than be passed around between filthy fucking bikers.”

“Oh, that can be very easily arranged, sweetheart,” Tank says, lifting his gun and aiming it at her head. I hold up my arms and ease in front of the rabid bitch, protecting her. Who the fuck knows why? Certainly not me, that’s for sure. I just can’t walk away. I can’t look at her face, all beaten and bruised, and put her down like a dog.

“Do it,” she screeches. “Fucking do it! Do it! Do it!”

Tank looks as if he’s about to put a bullet through me in order to stop this bitch’s screaming. I’ve had enough. I snap. I lash out and strike her on the temple with the butt of my gun, rendering her unconscious.

I stare at her face for a long time. Swollen and bloodied as she is, there’s no telling if she’s beautiful, or is she’s as ugly as a hat full of arseholes. Her hair is filthy, her body is covered in crusted blood, and shit, she smells like shit too. How fucking long has she been here? Locked away in an empty warehouse, the plaything for a sick, twisted fuck. Hooked up to an IV that I’m guessing fed her sedatives and other more potent drugs, instead of nutrients. I rip off the tape and yank the needle from her arm, then shove away his tray of torture devices. All gleaming, shiny dentist tools, or they would have been gleaming and shiny, if they weren’t covered in the fucker’s brain tissue and tiny fragments of his skull.

Lifting a syringe and a tiny vial labelled morphine from the tray—which I’m sure he uses in order to knock her out rather than ease her pain—I push out the air from the needle and tap the crook of her elbow, finding a vein to drive into.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Tank asks, but I ignore him as I place the needle back on the tray, and run my fingertips across her shoulder. I lift a limp strand of matted hair to my nose. It’s sweat and blood, fear, and general human filth. My gaze rolls over her from head to toe. There are bruises everywhere, but it seems as though he only liked to really mess up her face and mouth.

“She’s not Lauren.”

I close my eyes. “Don’t say her name. Not here.”

“End it, Kick.”

“Fuck you.”

Tank lifts his gun and aims it at her head. I move on autopilot. I don’t even think about what I’m doing. I just do. Like in all the important decisions I’ve made in life, it’s as if my brain flips a switch and someone else takes over. Someone who isn’t me, but cares as much for self-preservation as I do. Cares for life. Cares for others who can’t muster a shit of care for themselves. I pull on him, gun aimed and at the ready, my finger hovering over the trigger.

“You fucking pulling on a brother?” Tank demands with seething, narrowed eyes. His jaw ticks.

“We’re not killing her,” I say, though the words feel as if they’re being pulled from me, wrenched from some alien place in the pit of my gut. “Not today.”

“What the fuck’s gotten into you, man?” Tank says. He hasn’t lowered his gun yet, so I don’t lower mine either. I can feel the fury radiating off of him. If another brother had pulled on Tank this way, he’d already be laid out on the floor, a bullet between the eyes, blood oozing out from the hole in his skull. I don’t know why he hasn’t put me down already like the rabid dog I am. A part of me wishes he’d quit fuckin’ holdin’ back.

“She’s not her.”

“I know,” I whisper. I don’t know why I’m fighting for this. Bitch is probably crazy—not that I’d blame her—and I’m the last person who should be attempting an act of decency. I’m not the hero in this story; I’m the motherfucking villain.

Tank shakes his head as he lowers his gun and tucks it into the waistband of his jeans. He may have decided not to shoot me today, but there’s venom in his tone when he says, “You pull a piece on a brother again, and I’ll put you to fuckin’ ground.”

I nod.

Tank crouches down and hefts the dentist’s body over his shoulder. He might be wrapped in plastic but blood still pours out from the clear tarp and leaves a trail across the floor. Once Tank has cleared the room, I bend and pick up her tooth from the floor. I take a moment to roll it across my palm and then pocket it before I turn back to the woman in the chair, and unbuckle her restraints. I lift her in a groom’s hold and carry her out into the sombre grey Sydney day. I climb into the back of the van and Tank shoots me a questioning look from the driver’s seat.

“I wanna be close if she wakes up.”

He glares at me.

“Can’t have her busting open the doors and streaking around town like a madwoman.”

“If we’d shot her in the head, we wouldn’t need to worry,” he says without preamble and throws me an“I’m not fucking buying your bullshit excuses”glower over his shoulder as he shifts the van into reverse, forcing me to clench my body tight to keep from toppling onto my ripe-scented new plaything. I glance down at the woman in my arms. She’s sleeping soundly, probably for the first time in a long time. Her body is covered in bruises. Yellow, purple, blue-black, head to toe—there isn’t a single part of her thin frame that hasn’t seen some form of torture. It makes me wonder—if this is what she looks like on the outside, what the fuck kind of damage did he do to her insides?

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