The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (12 page)

That's when
he saw them pull into the road that lead to a small pond. They had reached
their destination, and here he was just starting his fifth beer.

"Shit!"
he thought, crushing the beer, letting it
pour down his neck as he drank as much as he could.

He let the
fifth empty can fall to the ground as he grabbed the handlebars with both
hands, sliding into the final destination of the beer run.

Letting his
bike fall to the ground like a dead lover he popped the last beer and downed it
as he walked toward Spider. "This do the trick?" Frank asked, letting
the last can fall to the ground between them, now empty.     

Spider
pointed at Frank's chest with his beer can. "You were supposed to drink
the beer, not spill it all over your shirt."

Frank looked
down. "It's just like what they used to say in the war," he replied,
grabbing his shirt and shaking it, causing beer to rain to the ground for a
moment. "Collateral damage, sometimes shit just happens. So long as the
mission gets done, it's nothing but a sad fact."

Spider smiled
at him. "I do like the way you think, Franky. Let's wait until Beans gets
here to verify you drank whatever beer that didn't get on your shirt."

After a few
minutes, Beans rolled in, shutting off his bike.

"What's
the count?" Spider asked.

"Found
five," Beans replied, pulling a beer from his saddlebag and cracking it
open.

"He
rolled in with the last one, so all cans are accounted for. What's the word on
if they were all empty?"

Beans
shrugged. "There was some wetness around one, but the rest had nuthin' but
backsplash left in them at the most."

"Alright,"
Spider looked back at Frank. "That's good enough. You're one of us
now." He said, throwing a new beer Frank's way.

"Cool,"
Frank replied, catching the beer.

Spider opened
a new beer for himself as well, holding it up. "Let's all drink up and
welcome our new brother to the club." Spider chugged his beer and all the
others followed.

For those few
moments of silence as they all drank, Frank felt almost numb over his quick
graduation into the club. The vibe that seemed to creep over him was that of
deep morose, not wild elation. It seemed more like he was at a night funeral
than a biker party.

Spider
crunched his beer as he finished first. "Alright, boys," he pitched
the empty can behind him. "Let the wilding begin!"

And with
that, the funeral tone was gone and the drinking began. The party really picked
up when a car load of girls showed up.

As the women
climbed out, Frank recognized one of them, walking up to her.
"Margie?"

"Frank?"
she asked. "When the hell did you get home?" she grabbed him, giving
him a big hug. They had gone to high school together. Messed around a couple
times, but never anything serious. For their last date, they were supposed to
meet out at his parent's place when he got off work, but his co-worker's car
wouldn't start, so he had to walk home that night, which took over three hours.
She never talked to him again. His excuse didn't seem to matter in the least,
she wanted nothing to do with him after that. It appeared time had finally
healed that wound.

"Just
got off the bus today," he replied. "Where the hell did you guys come
from? How did you know anybody would be out here."

"We work
at the Chevy plant and this is a pretty common party spot."

"Really?"
he asked. "I don't remember this spot at all."

She giggled.
"That's because it wasn't here then. Since you been gone, they built the
interstate through here, so they had to build a bridge for this little road to
go over." She pointed at the water. "The pond came along with the
bridge, which makes this a great place to party." She flashed a sexy smile
at him. "Out in the middle of nowhere and plenty of water to skinny-dip
in."

Frank smiled
back. "That so?"

Spider came
up on them like a panther. "Who is this lovely young thing, Franky?"

Her smiled
wavered for a moment as she took in the tall, lanky man with the dark smile.

"Margie,"
Frank answered quietly.

"Good to
meet ya," she said, holding out her hand.

He grabbed
her hand, turning it over and raising it up to his lips. "The pleasure is
all mine, my sweet," he said like he was a dapper gentleman, not some
dirty biker.

 So with a
kiss, the beginnings of a very dark time started for all of them, except for
Spider.

Within  a few
days
The Dead Bikers
were on the road, on their way to Chicago, where
there was a lot more action as well as a lot more money to be made. Two of the
girls from the Chevy plant had decided to go along. One of them was Margie, who
took the trip on the back of Frank's bike.

Spider seemed
to have everything already set up, cause he led them straight to their new
home: an old warehouse not too far from some smelly damn river.

"This is
it boys," he said, unlocking the huge padlock and pulling the chain off
the sliding door, pulling it up so they could ride in.

It was
relatively small for a warehouse, but it was more than big enough for them.
They rode the bikes in, parked, and started looking around.

"This
place is going to be an oven come summer," Fizz said, looking around.
"But we definitely got plenty of room to do whatever we wanna do."

"Once we
get that going again, it'll cool things down," Spider said, pointing up to
the ceiling forty feet above them. There was a huge ceiling fan with blades
close to fifteen feet long. "Over there," Spider pointed to the west
side of the building where there was a normal sized door for human traffic.
"We'll put up some walls and a lower ceiling, pipe in some AC for the
summer and heat for the winter, and that will be the clubhouse. All the serious
partying will take place in there."

Howls of
excited agreement came from the others.

"We'll
build a door that leads from the clubhouse to back here. DB members only go
through that door, cause this is where all the work gets done, and when I say
work, you all know what I'm talking about."

The men
nodded their heads, chuckling.

"Up
there, is the mezzanine" Spider pointed to a small room up above that
could only be reached by a metal staircase. "That's where the board room
will be where we have our meetings at," he started walking up the stairs.
"We'll be having our first meeting right now. Ladies, you start cleaning
up the place."

"Is that
why you brought us along?" Margie asked. "To be your maids?"

Spider
stopped on the sixth step, slowly turning around and looking Margie in the eye,
saying nothing.

The other
girl who had came along, whose name was Ann, immediately started cleaning,
making crude piles of trash with her bare hands.

Margie kept
eye contact with Spider for nearly four seconds before she started doing the
same as Ann.

Spider
watched her clean for a few moments, all the other bikers were standing on the
steps below him, waiting.

Finally,
their leader started walking back up the stairs.

"What
the hell is a mezzanine?" Pogo whispered to Paint as they climbed.

"It's
what they call a floor inside a building that doesn't cover the entire area,
just a small spot. So it's not really an entire floor."

"Oh,"
Pogo replied, still somewhat confused.

"Hey
boss," Paint called up to Spider. "I'll make a sign for this room.
I'll call it the 'Bizz Mezz Room', get it? Instead of business room."

Spider let
out a laugh. "I love it, Paint. You are one creative son of a bitch."

They followed
their leader into the room, closing the door behind them. The air was stuffy and
it was damn near pitch black in the small area since the sun was nearly down.

Spider lit up
a cigarette, making his face glow a spooky orange for a moment. "Alright
boys, we have arrived at our destination. We came here for two reasons: to
party and to make some money, cause you can't party unless you got cash."

The boys
agreed.

"Paint
and Pogo are both from here and they got contacts in the drug business, which
is going to end up being our cash cow, but it'll take a while before the cash
starts rolling in, I'm sure the local drug trade will make us jump through all
kinds of hoops before they trust us. Fizz has got a background in stealing
rides and chopping them up for cash, which is something we can start making
money on immediately. We'll concentrate on motorcycles but if the opportunity
for thieving a high end auto presents itself, we definitely don't want to pass
that up. Franky's got experience working on rides, so he'll be able to help
Fizz chop them up."

Everybody was
nodding their heads. Franky a little slower than the rest.

"So,
starting tomorrow, Paint and Pogo will start working their contacts to get the
drugs rolling. Fizz, Beans and Franky start bringing in some hot bikes and cars
until this building is full of them, then start tearing them apart. I'll start
working on finding buyers for the parts so by the time you guys got 'em torn
apart I got 'em sold. Sound like a plan?"

Everyone
agreed it was a hell of a plan.

"Alright
then, let's go celebrate our arrival to the windy city!"

And with that
the party began, and it didn't seem to stop because things just kept rolling in
for
The Dead Bikers MC
. Within a few days, they had the small warehouse
packed with a dozen motorcycles, as well as a corvette and a Mercedes. Spider
was good on his word, having people come in to buy the parts almost as soon as
they had the machines torn apart. Within a couple of weeks they had all of the
tools and equipment to tear apart any vehicle they pulled into the building. It
was at about this same time that the drugs started coming in as well.

"Things
are rockin' and rollin' on all fronts boys," Spider told them one night in
the Bizz Mezz Room. It was already midsummer and an A/C unit cooled the room to
near arctic temperatures. "The only thing we are lacking in is manpower,
which means it's time to expand."

The clubhouse
had been built for close to a month now, and although they missed the extra
space for storing stolen vehicles, it was more than worth it for the great
party room it had become. It had also become quite the magnet for those who
liked to party, so they already had all the women they wanted as well as quite
a few guys who were looking to join the club, cause only members and loose
women partied at the
Zombie House
for free.

"Any
potential members need to be screened by each of you," he pointed to the
other five in the room. "If you all agree he's worth a try, then he has a
private meeting with just me, up here in the Mezz. If he gets past me, then he
is a junior member until he proves himself. If he does, then he's full fledge
DB."

"What's
he got to do?" Pogo asked.

Spider waved
his hand at him. "Hell if I know, we'll figure that shit out as we go
along." He tapped his finger on the table. "Right now, we need some
guys to do the shit-work!"

They all
agreed with that, and so the recruiting started that night at the
Zombie
House.
Several guys that came to party on a regular basis to the club house
immediately came to mind: they all knew how to handle themselves in a fight and
they all had rap sheets with the cops.

"Guys
that are good at busting heads and breaking the law are good candidates,"
Spider explained. "But the ones we really want are the ones with some
extra skills as well. Look around boys, everybody in this room knows how to
kick some ass, but everyone of you also brings a skill set to this club. He
pointed to the two airborne. "Drug contacts and drug trafficking
experience." He moved his finger to Franky and Fizz. "Chop shop
experience as well as mechanic skills." He then looked at the tunnel rat.
"And the most surprising of skills: bookkeeping. Who the hell would have
thought a cold blooded killer like the rat here would know how to do accounting
shit? At least now we know where your nickname came from, you're a fucking bean
counter!"

Everybody got
a laugh from that comment. Beans nodded his head. "I'm full of surprises,
boys."

"Anyways,"
Spider continued. "Guys with extra skills are probably going to be a rare
find, but keep an eye out for them. If they ain't that great in a fight, but
they bring something to the club that we are lacking, they might be worth a
second look."

The others
all nodded their heads in agreement.

"That
brings me to my final topic and then we can get the hell outta here and go
party." He tapped his finger on the table again. "Everybody in this
room is an original member of the DBMC, whoever comes next is after us. We are
the original six." He looked at Paint. "I want you to come up with a
patch for our jackets that symbolizes that for just us. No other member will
ever get one."