Iron Disciples MC 1 Joy Ride

JOY RIDE

by ELIZA STOUT

Publis
hed by Eliza Stout at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Eliza Stout. ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED.

Email

[email protected]

All characters appearing in this work
are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is
purely coincidental.

Be sure to check out Eliza’s full catalog at
Smashwords!

Joy Ride

David was buttoning up his shirt in
front of the bathroom mirror and checking his chin for missed stray
hairs as he talked me.

“I don’t know what you’re so worried
about, Hannah. They really aren’t so bad.”

“I just… I just don’t like it. I have
a bad feeling about them.”

“Look. Trust me. It’s nothing to worry
about. Yeah, these guys are pretty rough, but there’s a sort of…
code… that they live by. I know the deal. As long as you know
what’s up it’s hard to get in any serious trouble. Besides, I think
they’ve kind of accepted me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh… so you’re one
of them now, are you?”

“Well, no… but they certainly don’t
mind having me around. Share a beer. That kind of thing. Hell… they
give the prospects a harder time than they give me.”

David had been writing a book about
the Iron Disciples outlaw motorcycle club for a few months now. He
had somehow managed to convince them to let him ride with them and
hang out with them while he researched the book, on the strict
condition that the entire thing was published as a fictionalized
account. It was pretty well known that the Iron Disciples were into
a lot of shady stuff. Rumor had it they ran a pretty big gun
running operation primarily, as well as some extra stuff like
hiring themselves out as muscle and extorting local businesses, and
they were apparently laundering all that money through a repair
shop that served as their legitimate business front. To top it off,
they had most of the police department in their back pocket – and
the police and city officials that weren’t in their back pocket
were too scared of them to do anything anyway. I didn’t really like
the idea of David being involved with them, even just as a
tag-along spectator, but he would have none of that talk, so I had
no choice but to roll with it. He said he would propose to me after
the book was published, so as much as I didn’t like it, I owed him
at least as much to stick around and help him see it
through.

“What’s the big deal about this party,
anyway? Don’t these guys party all the time?” I asked
him.

“Almost every night. This is a
different occasion though. One of their core group of guys just got
out of prison today, so they’re really going all out to welcome him
home.”

“Is it… safe?”

He just laughed. “Yeah, it’s safe.
Come on, you need to get out of that shell every now and then and
experience something new. Besides, I wouldn’t be bringing you
around if I thought it was dangerous. They’re just a little rough
around the edges is all. It’s… different.”

*

The party was being held at a large
house on the other side of town. When we pulled up, I could hear
the noise of blaring heavy rock music even before David turned off
the engine and before we opened the doors. The driveway wasn’t even
close to big enough to accommodate the amount of parking that was
needed for this party. There were motorcycles in the driveway, on
the lawn, lining the street. They were everywhere. There were a few
cars and trucks as well, but on the whole it was just a gleaming
sea of motorcycles. These weren’t your pretty little crotch rockets
or street bikes either. We’re talking about monstrous steel machine
beasts.

As we came up the lawn, a grungy man
decked out in leather came staggering towards us with a bottle in
his hand, pointing and yelling. I tensed up, held on tightly to
David’s arm. As quickly as he had appeared though, he was
staggering right past us. I turned and realized that he was yelling
at one of his buddies out in the street. He wasn’t but maybe five
or six steps past us when he fell face first onto the lawn, passed
out drunk with his fingers still gripped tight around his bottle.
It was seconds later before I realized that I was still desperately
clutching David’s arm for safety. I quickly let go and he just
laughed.

“Relax, Hannah. Just pretend you’re in
college again.”

“Right.”

If I thought the music was loud from
outside, opening the front door was like being smacked in the face
with a brick wall of sound. My eyes were immediately stinging from
the thick fog of smoke in the air. There were people everywhere.
Rough, greasy looking biker guys hanging around, drinking, smoking,
laughing and joking. And the women were just as rough looking,
sporting “tramp stamp” tattoos on their lower backs – and proudly
showing them off at that - dyed haired with their roots coming
through and trashy painted on makeup jobs. A few of them gave me an
unimpressed look over when we entered.

One of the biker guys spotted us enter
from across the room and pushed through a few people to get to us.
He put a hand on David’s shoulder and it was hard to ignore the
contrast of his large weathered hand, with the word “P A I N”
tattooed in faded black ink across his knuckles, pressing down on
David’s smallish frame.

“The writer!” he said, giving David a
good shake before removing his hand from his shoulder. “Glad you
made it, Dave. Is this your girl?”

“Yeah. This is her. Hannah, this is
Bug Brain.”

“Nice to meet you… Bug
Brain.”

He chewed on his beard and shook my
hand. “You too.”

“Why do they call you Bug
Brain?”

He shrugged his shoulders and grinned
a yellow smile. “I don’t even remember.”

“That may be part of it,” David said
jokingly.

Bug Brain jabbed him in the ribs
roughly. “The writer and his wit! Hey man, you need to get you and
your girl something to drink. The fridge is packed with
beer.”

“Alright. Do you want one,
Hannah?”

“Sure… I guess I’ll have a
beer.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back. Mingle. I
promise they won’t bite.”

He disappeared into the back of the
house and Bug Brain moved on as well, leaving me alone there to…
mingle. Right. I wandered slowly through the party, feeling like a
detached observer to the debauchery that was going on around me.
Most of the biker crowd paid me no attention, leaving me to feel
like some kind of ghost just wandering through the house. It was
kind of interesting, to be honest. I passed by a table where two of
the more brawny of the men were arm wrestling. They were wearing
their sleeveless leather biker jackets with nothing underneath,
leaving their bare muscular arms to flex as they gritted their
teeth and grunted against the strength of the other. There were
other bikers surrounding them, throwing down wads of cash as bets,
and yelling and spurring on whichever muscle bound freak they had
chosen to win. I stopped and watched them struggle against each
other for a while, neither one seeming to gain any ground. Their
arms for the most part stayed square in the middle of the table.
When things would start to lean one way or the other, the biker on
the losing side would grind his teeth and draw from some deep
reservoir of strength just enough to push things even again. This
only caused more cheers to erupt from those gathered around them,
and more cash to be thrown down onto the table.

My uninterrupted people watching
exercise was cut short when I felt a short tap on my shoulder. I
turned to see a tall man leaning cockily against the frame of the
arch leading into the next room. He was actually pretty handsome –
I could see him on a billboard for designer underwear somewhere out
on a Los Angeles highway in another life. As it were though, his
arms were corded with muscles that were definitely not just for the
camera and the skin covering them was blotted out by tattoos. His
dark hair was tossed about carelessly and he had a goatee that
framed a strong jaw. Even with his rough appearance, though, there
was a sort of unmistakable animal attraction about him that I just
couldn’t put my finger on. He took a long draw from a cigarette and
then casually let his arm fall to his side as he nodded up with his
chin at me and smirked. “Hey, baby. You wanna see my
bike?”

I fidgeted nervously. “Um, no thank
you.”

He was wearing the leather kutte of
the Iron Disciples M.C., but his vest was a little different. It
was more decorated than some of the others I had seen around, and
right over his breast was a patch that read VICE
PRESIDENT.

“What’s the matter, honey… you
somebody’s old lady?”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer
that question. “Something like that.”

He grinned and took another long drag
of his cigarette. “Alright. Fair enough.”

Just then David appeared with two cold
beers in his hands. He handed one to me and gave me a slight peck
on the cheek.

The biker leaned his head back and
made an inaudible “ah” with his mouth.

“The writer’s girl. I knew you looked
out of place.”

David nodded to him. “How are you,
Johnny?”

“Just peachy, Dave. You two enjoy the
party, alright?”

He clapped his hand down on David’s
shoulder, but his eyes hung on me momentarily as he stepped
away.

“Who is he?” I asked David, once he
was gone.

“That’s Johnny. He’s the club’s vice
president. Probably going to be the next president too, if I had to
wager a guess. He’s an alright guy.”

I just nodded.

“Hey, come on out to the back yard.
They’ve got a big fire going.”

“Sure.”

“It’s this way.”

He grabbed me by the hand and started
to lead me through the party. Along the way we passed a room that
had no door, just a curtain hanging across the doorway. I could see
the shadows of figures moving behind it in a dim light. I stopped
David momentarily.

“What’s going on in there?” I
asked.

He paused and looked at me for a
second.

I saw the figure of a woman, and the
darkened shapes of men all surrounding her.

“You probably don’t want to know,” he
said, rather grimly.

But I already knew. It didn’t take
much watching to realize that it was a bunch of men in there
passing around one woman like some kind of commodity - in the same
way that they would pass around a joint. From the shapes I could
make out that one had his hands around her ankles and was holding
her legs up in the air and was having a go at her. There was
another man at the other end of her putting his dick in her mouth.
It was just shadows of course, but still quite unmistakable. The
other men crowded around like vultures, waiting in the wings for
their own turn at her. Her shadow bounced around loosely like some
kind of ragdoll. A chill went down my spine.

“Come on,” David said, spurring me
on.

“Okay…” I said.

Shit. What in the hell were we doing
here? We didn’t belong here. Even David, who appeared to be in good
standing with the club, still stuck out like a sore thumb. I
quickly forced down the rest of my beer and tried to forget about
it.

Outside, around the bonfire, I was
introduced to more of the Iron Disciples. There was Skids, and
Hard-on Terry, and Little Sam – who wasn’t little at all, but was
called that on account of his dad being Big Sam – and Bobby the
Bat, who could hardly see two feet in front of himself without his
glasses on, and a bunch of others whose names I forgot. They all
seemed to be more or else nice enough, despite their intimidating
demeanor. As we stood around the fire, listening to all the bikers
trade borderline insulting jabs at each other and wrap their arms
around their “old ladies” or some of the women that hung around the
club like sucker fish on the belly of whale, waiting for someone to
make them an old lady, I still couldn’t shake the image of those
shadows moving behind the curtain back in the house.