A New Chapter

Thomas Cromwell was a writer. A wanna-be writer, that is, as he has yet to earn a single penny to his name for his works, the first two of which were off in submissions to numerous publishing agents. It was frustrating. It was a lot of work, and the few responses he did get were simply rejections.

He didn’t have friends, per se, but he had lots of buddies. Mostly drinking buddies, some gym buddies. He was in decent shape. He was slightly on the short side with chiseled features, and a thick sparsely cropped very short beard and mustache. He resembled a modernized character out of a Shakespeare play. In fact, he went by the name ‘Crom’ just because it seemed to fit his character. Most of his buddies dismissed him as a poser who had stories of embellished larger than life experiences, such as having served in the French Foreign Legion. Except, that he had actually in fact served in the French Foreign Legion for the minimum commitment of five years, after which he served as a military contractor in Afghanistan for another three. This was all to the chagrin of the United States State Department, who went through the expatriation process and stripped Crom of his US nationality. But he had French citizenship by virtue of his service to the French Foreign Legion, so he was technically back in the United States on a work visa. Go figure that one out.

Until you become well known, as in famous, you can’t live on a writer’s ‘salary’ even if you do paid gigs like ghost writing. The typical job opportunities in a small college town in upstate New York didn’t particularly appeal to Crom’s sense of placement in society, so he abandoned his cozy apartment and his on again, and more frequently off again girlfriend for a dusty, hot, run down what was formerly an ‘honor farm,’ or minimum security youth detention center in the middle of the Nevada desert miles from the nearest city. And it was, for all intents and purposes, its own little city, now home to a graduate environmental research team and it’s rather healthy support staff of day laborers, equipment operators, cooks and maintenance techs. Crom’s job? Technical editor.

Crom? Technical Editor for a graduate research team working on post-doctoral field studies? Really? The man has a couple years of community college, what qualifies him to be a technical editor? The fact of the matter is that the ‘technical’ part is unimportant. He’s not writing the reports. He’s editing them, transforming them from barely readable rants of gibberish in to standard, grammatically correct and well worded polished documents. Hell, Ken Link’s writing is so bad that to say it looks like it had been penned by a third grader, would be insulting to third graders.

The few dozen citizens housing themselves in the camp’s dormitory style accommodations are an interesting mix of roughnecks and academia. It was sort of like a combination of his former town in upstate New York and the Legion headquarters in Algeria, except without the chicken shit discipline. The one permanent party resident was a bearded old man named Sherman. It was rumored that he had no last name, or perhaps no first name. Story has it he was working on the honor farm prior to the county abandoning it several years ago, and he just stayed there, alone, only going in to town infrequently for supplies and that’s it. You would think he would be a recluse, not keen to the activity, especially from the snotty college kids, but no, he was more than happy to serve as the designated bartender. He was also logically the water and sanitation operator, which in fact was his former job.

It’s interesting that while nowadays you can be stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean thousands of miles from the nearest landfall and still be able to post your daily routine to social media, yet this place doesn’t have cell service, or even a telephone land line. It did, but the telco took its lines and poles back when the county left, and the cost to put them back would be prohibitive, even for the generous grant funded operation. Consequently, Internet was a sporadic, slow satellite service, not suitable for more than a single handful of low bandwidth users. If you need to get a hold of someone, you’re probably driving to town.

Get a few dozen folks together and put them under a pressure cooker, and you’re going to need some regulation. The honor farm is not exactly what you could call a pressure cooker; it’s more like one big party with some manual labor and scientific analysis thrown in. But, one big party does not negate the need for regulation, in fact it accentuates it. They call him Mountain Man, or simply Mountain for short. He has a name, but all of the crew goes by nicknames, for various reasons ranging from privacy to avoidance of the law. Mountain is a heavy equipment operator. He’s roughly three hundred pounds of meat and blubber, with short cropped hair and a long, thick red beard and mustache, who looks more at home playing in the Scottish games tossing telephone poles than he does on a jobsite. He’s a nice enough guy but don’t piss him off. He doubles as the town Sheriff, settling disputes and quashing altercations. And as much as the relatively few ladies try to dress up as frumpy and unappealing as they can, face it, they are targets. They don’t really have much of a problem with this crowd, but Mountain ensures it. He generally likes the job. It’s chill. His only complaint? The pussy equipment they give him to work with. Back at the construction site, the excavator they give him is a Cat 395, with an operating weight of over two hundred thousand pounds, and a maximum digging depth of nearly thirty two feet. Here? Some Kubota mini-thing in which he barely fits. And the dozer he’s used to? A massive Cat D11, which is basically a freight train engine on tracks pushing a shovel the size of the side of a barn. Here? Pffft. A mini skid steer. That said, he’s the geologists’ best friend.

Crom was hanging out in the cafeteria on a quiet, warm (actually it was downright hot) afternoon. The cavernous dining commons was rustic, like the rest of the dorms and support buildings, which were cobbled together with roughhewn lumber and finished with lath plaster interior. Now that’s old school. These weren’t new buildings. The cafeteria was a popular hangout, because it remained relatively cool despite the outside summer heat. Air conditioning consisted of swamp coolers, which were somewhat effective in the low humidity environment. But it was deserted today. Most people were still sleeping off a Saturday night R&R excursion via gray facility transport bus in to town. Except for Shelley.

Shelley Harp was tall, and thin. Her thinness accentuated her height and gave her the appearance of being taller than she actually was, which was still fairly tall. She had dark brown shoulder length hair, and always wore canvas hiking pants and heavily pocketed vests and hiking shoes, which was more or less the de-facto standard of dress for the academic research team. She was a wildlife biologist, with a PhD in some niche field that the average person would have to look up to figure out what it was. She was quite attractive, and bordered right on the jagged edge of being a hippy, without actually being one. Crom liked her. She was fun to be with. Fun to drink with. And she started to gravitate towards him. You would think, that after a couple months, she would have been the last holdout to eventually gravitate to a guy. But actually she was the first. One thing led to another, and academic knowledge became biblical. He suspected that her chest was flat as an ironing board, and that was confirmed one drunken Saturday afternoon in the guard tower.

The guard tower. The place actually had one. It didn’t need one. It was probably there for either effect, or as a cool place to hang out when you’re bored as hell. It’s the only place with a view, even if the view is just more sandy desert, waddies, creosote bush and distant mountains. Crom speculated that it may have been possible that errant guards may have possibly used the tower for similar acts of consummation. Shelley pointed out that it would have been fairly conspicuous, given that the only access was an exposed high angle staircase that wrapped around the wooden frame to the landing up top. Curious onlookers might have guessed Shelley and Crom went up to the tower so she could observe wildlife and he could take notes. If only curious onlookers knew the truth. They probably did.

It all started midweek, on a Wednesday to be exact. Sherman, the bearded old maintenance man, slash bartender, was standing in the shade outside of the door, puffing on a cigarette, when he observed a distant cloud of dust rising beyond the shimmering mirages in the sweltering heat. It was miles away. But there was only one road. It would be a cliché to say that he went inside and thought nothing of it. But he did, and he didn’t like it. They weren’t expecting company, and there was more than one vehicle. Back inside, the crews called it an early day due to the heat, and they were all gathered near the makeshift bar while Sherman doled out the cans and bottles of beer. Sometimes on a weekend, Sherman would manage to score a keg from town, but that wasn’t every weekend because it was that long of a drive. Sherman didn’t step outside to grab a smoke out of courtesy, he needed to fire up the genset anyway to recharge the batteries, make some ice, and run the swamp coolers. The genset couldn’t run night and day, so it was run on demand when power was most needed.

The mystery of the dust cloud started to disappear as the rumbling, rough sound of choppers could be heard approaching the compound. One by one, they filtered through the entrance, and parked in the gravel parking lot in front of the cafeteria. There were five in total. Four Harleys and a Victory. And it wasn’t exactly that it didn’t look like it might have been a biker hangout, several of the crew had bikes, and they were parked in the lot too, just not right out front.

A small entourage of five bearded men in denim jeans and jackets, boots and chaps, and two women, similarly dressed, entered through the front door. The entire room fell silent, and all eyes fell on the group. They approached, and the leader of the group surveyed the room, and the bar, and spoke. “Bar open?” He said in a rhetorical tone of voice. It was apparently open.

Sherman approached the man, who wasn’t that much difference in appearance except for being years younger, and replied. “We aren’t actually a public drinking establishment. But seeing as y’all folks came all the way out here, and that you could probably use a drink, I’ll give you a round on the house to tide you over so you can get on your way.” He surveyed the group carefully. There were only seven of them, and only five men, but were they it?” He had hoped so. They looked like trouble.

“Mighty kind of you. We’ll take whatever you have on tap.”

“I’m afraid the tap isn’t working today. I got some cold bottles though.” Sherman pulled out seven bottles of domestic beer and placed them on the counter.

“Name’s Jesse. We’re the Emperors.” They grabbed their opened bottles of beer from the counter and proceeded to drink. Jesse turned to the silent crowd. “I see we have some riders in the room. We’re always looking for new members.”

For the next ten minutes, the sound of a dropped pin would have been audible. Glances from the crew were directed to Mountain, as if to suggest that if some discussion might be appropriate, now might be the time, and you are the right one to do it. Mountain keyed in to the body language, and stood up. He was halted. The field labor crew boss stood up. He was wiry with a short, close cut jet black beard, mustache and hair. “I’ll handle this” he said, as he proceeded over to the table where the motorcycle gang was seated. “Where you out of?” He asked the leader.

“Vegas. But we’re all over the place. What can I call you?”

“People call me Spike.”

“Makin’ decent green here, Spike?”

“Yeah.”

“I see. Well, thanks for the drinks. We’ll be heading down the road.”

“I’ll walk out with you” Spike replied. They arrived in the parking lot. “You asked me in there if I made decent money. What kind of gig are you guys running?”

“You like powder?”

Spike turned round nervously, checking to see if he was being watched. “Haven’t done it in a while.”

“Tell you what. This one’s on the house. See you next time.” He nodded toward the blonde woman. She pulled a small plastic packet out of her bra, and handed it to Spike, then smiled. As Jesse mounted his bike, he spoke again. “Get me some customers, and maybe next time, you can fish that package out on your own. In private.”

“What the hell was that about?” Mountain asked as Spike returned.

“Just having a heart to heart.”

“Now you listen to me here. Those boys are bad news. Do not entertain anything they have to offer. Do not encourage them to return. You hear me?”

“Loud and clear, Mountain.”

“And that goes for all of you” Sherman said.

Crom appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and watched the sullen crowd. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing that concerns you” Mountain said.

“Something ain’t right” Crom insisted.

“It’s handled. Don’t worry about it.”

Sherman handed Crom a beer. “Look, there is these guys here, and then there is you college kids. We don’t get in to your problems, and we can handle our own. Well let me stand corrected. We do actually handle your problems.”

Sherman, it’s Interesting to see you take sides now. I want to remind you that technically, I’m not a college kid.”

“I don’t see you out there driving hammers to get core samples, or driving a backhoe.”

“I may not look it, but if you’re dealing with an outlaw biker gang, you probably really want me on your side.”

“Kid, you don’t look the look or talk the talk. No disrespect intended.”

“Fair enough.” Crom downed his beer and left. “There’s enough tension in here to snap a steel cable.”

Dr. Santos was a tall, lanky man who compulsively wore a white lab coat despite the fact that he spends his entire day inside an office performing project administration duties. He’s the man in charge. The Big Kahuna. The Grand Master. A native Argentinian, he’s about the most progressive, leftist professor you will ever meet. And in academia, that is a very high bar, or low, depending on your perspective.

“You wanted to see me, doctor?” Crom asked, as he knocked on the open wooden door. His secretary was busy organizing payroll forms, and did not even look over as Crom entered. She resembled a Hispanic version of Marge Simpson.

“Yes, please come in Mr. Cromwell. Have a seat.” Santos adjusted his tie. Everyone else is wearing jeans, work overalls, and warm weather hiking gear, and Santos has to wear a tie. You would think a man with Marxist leanings would wear a drab, issue worker’s smock. But no, party leaders do not wear worker’s smocks. Workers wear worker’s smocks. “I have heard… rumors, from our doctoral fellows that there has been a rift in the unity of our laborers.” He stared at Crom.

“Okay. What is your question?”

“Well, are you aware of them?”

“Aware of what? Rumors, or rifts in the ranks of the field crew?”

“Permission to speak freely, doctor?”

Santos was somewhat taken aback. “Well, yes, of course.”

“You assigned Jenkins to be in charge of the field crew. Jenkins may be a top notch geologist, but he has no place managing a group of roughnecks. Rank doesn’t work out there. If you heard rumors about breakdowns in morale, I’d be genuinely surprised if you heard them from him, because literally, the only time he ever sees them, is to hand over the paychecks to Sherman every two weeks so he can issue them.”

Santos cradled his head in his hands and leaned over the desk. “I know that. None of these guys are fit for that. And that’s kind of why you are here. I want to put you in charge of them.”

Crom choked out a short laugh. “Those guys barely tolerate me when I’m around them. Thank you for the generous offer, but I’ll pass on that one. Besides, making some of your so called doctoral fellows appear as if they are actually literate in the English language is a full time job.”

Crom ambled in to the mostly empty cafeteria save for a couple researchers busy typing away on their laptops as they listened to music over earphones and pulled up a rusty metal barstool. Shelley came in and joined him. Sherman pulled out a couple beers from the ice chest, and left to see to the generator.

“You don’t look so good” Shelley said. “How did your meeting with Santos go?”

“Apparently, the observation that his doctoral candidates are lousy writers didn’t sit too well with him. So, I guess I’m now in charge of a field labor crew.”

The official leader of the field labor crew was now one Mr. Thomas Cromwell. But the unofficial leader was Sherman. He was Top. In the Army, he would be the First Sergeant. The two supervisors under him was Mountain, who was the ranking supervisor that was in charge of the equipment operators. The other supervisor was Spike, who was in charge of the manual labor crew. Mountain was Sherman’s right hand man. Spike… Sherman kept him at more or less arm’s length and felt that something wasn’t one hundred percent right with him. Mountain outright disliked him. All three viewed the newly introduced Crom, as Jenkins’ replacement, as just another company man, who had his head up his ass and new nothing about the trades. Which wasn’t entirely true, Crom was just in a different trade, but on that was physical, involved operating equipment, and moving earth.

There was a different dynamic in the morning meeting held in the cafeteria. What was a unified group, had split up in two. Well there were two trade crafts, led by two trade craft leads, but the split was not exactly between the two trades. One of the equipment operators hung with the laborers. Three of the laborers hung with the equipment operators. The laborers were largely the bikers. The equipment operators were largely not. But even that wasn’t quite the strict line. It seemed like the seedier bunch were on one side of the room, and the cleaner bunch on the other.

“All right gentlemen, listen up” Sherman said, calling the attention of the room. “I’ve got an announcement to make. Mr. Cromwell here, will be assuming role of Mr. Jenkins as our corporate manager. Mr. Cromwell, would you like a word with the men?”

Crom walked up to the front and addressed the group. “Sure. I’m sure the second thing in your mind, is what’s going to change here. And the answer to that is, to the extent things get done right, and you work with the science crew when and where they need you, then nothing. So far so good. And the first thing on you mind, is why would you give a fuck. And the answer to that is pretty much what I just told you.” There was some muffled laughter. “You got an issue? You got a chain of command. If they can’t solve it, come to me. That’s all I have.”

Sherman took the floor. “All right, you heard the man. Check the assignment board and get to work.” The men scurried out of the hall in search of their charges for the day. Sherman held back Mountain. “All right Cromwell, you’re about to get your feet wet. I need to talk to you guys. Step over in the office.” Sherman closed the door. “Mountain, what the hell is going on?”

Mountain stroked his thick curly red beard. “It appears that Spike has formed him a little social club. They’ve been taking off for town evenings. I found out from one of my guys that they have been meeting up with the Emperors.”

“Not much we can do about that” Crom replied. “It’s a free country.”

“There’s only one reason they’re meeting up with the Emperors. And that’s drugs. Scuttlebutt is they’re running coke. Introduce that shit and, all hell is going to break down.”

“Well, the solution is simple. I think. This project is on a no drug tolerance policy. We can piss test them, and fire the ones that fail.”

Mountain shook his head negatively. “It’s not that simple. The problem is, even most of the good ones are smoking a little weed now and then.”

“All right. Well obviously you have an insider. We just find out who they are, then we can their asses and move on.”

“We can’t just fire them on suspicion they are using coke. Even I know that much about labor law” Sherman said.

“No. We just lay them off for a reduction in need. Just like any other trade.”

Both Sherman and Mountain looked at each other, and nodded. “All right. I hate to do this kind of shit, but I don’t have a better solution to propose” Mountain said.

Of course you would name your narc Squeaky. Squeaky Rollins was a tiny thin guy that looked like and sounded like a mouse. He wasn’t really very good for swinging a sledgehammer, or breaking a shovel in to hardpan soil, but if you needed a little man to scurry up a tree, or slip through a tight tunnel, he’s your man. And he’s gossip central. He knows anything and everything that is going on in the compound. Who’s cutting it. Who isn’t. Who might have a little herb to share. What Dr. Santos is really doing with his secretary late nights. But even he himself alluded that the men, all of them, are becoming more tight lipped. It was apparent to Mountain, and Sherman, that the bad apples were probably simply identified as the group that sat on the left side of the hall that morning. But they wanted to confirm it. And that is where Squeaky would come in. His reward? Immunity. Because he is on the inside. Technically, he’s one of them.

It was nearly a moonless night, when a cool breeze wafted through the slightly opened windows, causing Shelley to pull the covers up her pale, naked chest, and sink in to Crom’s arms. Go figure, the girls just happen to get their own rooms. Well Santos gets his own room too. At first Crom felt it was a bit unfair, but now he was really digging the bunking arrangements.

“You have a girl back home, don’t you?” Shelley asked.

Crom looked over at her barely visible outline in the darkness. “Not really. Well, I mean, no.”

“I thought so. What are you going to do after this project is over? Go back home?”

“I don’t know. Probably. For a while. Until I find my next disaster.”

“Next disaster? What?”

“It seems like every place I go, a disaster happens. Algeria. The Congo. Iraq.”

“Well, you’re here now. This place isn’t a disaster.”

“The ancient Roman generals knew to follow the cycles of the moon. They liked to plan their attacks during the new moon, to take advantage of the darkness.”

“Crom? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, Shel. It’s just a bad feeling I have.”

“I know you write about stuff like that, but you’re not some Rambo, running around the world fighting wars single handedly at every corner, with no room for a family in your life.”

“I’m not. You’re right. I don’t fit the mold. I don’t belong in a movie. But I’m a hell of a lot closer to Rambo than I am to being Ward Cleaver. I write what I write because it’s the stuff I know about, not because it’s some fantasy I want to be in.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Maybe I should ask you the same. It’s not like you’re looking for some marriage thing with kids and white picket fences and all that.”

She immediately sat bolt upright. “What? Of course I want that.”

Fucked that one up. Crom drifted off in to a tense, uncomfortable sleep.

The group of three archaeologists stood in front of the dig site, wondering where their work crew was. They hadn’t shown up this morning. Back at the compound, Mountain was scratching his head in the all-purpose cafeteria hall meeting room. “My guys are ready to roll. But Spike’s crew is nowhere to be found. It’s kind of pointless to mobilize the equipment without them for today’s project.”

Sherman lit up a cigarette and kicked his boots up on a wooden table. “Been giving it some thought. I think we just need to let Spike go. He’s the bad apple. I’ll betcha we ace him, and the problem will be self correcting.”

“I’m good with that” Crom replied.

An hour later, a dust trail approached the compound, and Spike’s men dismounted their bikes and cars, and stumbled in to the meeting hall, half drunk. The three men, Mountain, Sherman and Crom, stared at them. “Sorry we are a little late. Hit some rough patches out there.”

Sherman approached spike and handed him an envelope. “Spike. I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go. This is you final paycheck.”

Spike became agitated. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’ve dragged half the crew down to the pits. I can’t allow you to take the other half down.”

There was a long, awkward silence, as both Mountain’s, and Spike’s men stared each other down. Spike started shaking his fist. “You’re gonna really regret this.” He turned towards his group of men. “C’mon boys. Mount up. We’re out of here.”

“Any of you men that go with him, can consider this your final day so don’t even bother coming back” Sherman said in a harsh tone of voice. Of Sherman’s eight men, two of them stepped forwards and remained. The rest disappeared, and the sounds of several motorcycles could be heard departing the area. “All right listen up. I want a show of hands here. Shit’s going to get real, and it’s going to get real ugly. I need to know. Who’s with me and Mountain on this?” Every single man including Crom raised his hand.

Santos was livid. Geologists and archeologists were just standing around with no labor support. They were in the field, engaged on a futile effort to do the hand work on their own. “Mr. Cromwell, I am aware that we are having a labor dispute, but it occurs to me that we still have half a work crew present that can be productive out in the field.”

“We do, but I have to tell you. We kind of need them to stay here. Just in case.” Crom replied.

“Just in case of… what?”

“Retaliation for terminating Spike.”

“Who?”

“The laborer crew supervisor.”

“Well then, shouldn’t we call for law enforcement?” Santos asked.

“Feel free. Knock yourself out” Crom said as he started to depart the room. “Oh, and I would recommend keeping your people confined to their dorms when they are on site for the next day or two.”

In the middle of the night, the sound of an approaching vehicle could be heard driving up, and the slam of a truck tailgate could be heard, prior to it driving off. Mountain heard the commotion, and went in to the parking lot to investigate. It was Mouse. He was laying on the ground, bloody, beaten to a pulp. “Oh Jesus, Mouse, can you hear me?”

Mouse nodded, but could barely speak.

“What the hell happened?”

Mouse tried to speak, but his words were unintelligible.

“Never mind. I know what happened. Come on. Let’s try to make it to where you can get some help.” You motherfuckers have declared war.

Morning broke. Mouse needed medical attention, but Sherman decided it would be too risky to drive him to town, given that they were likely to encounter Spike’s crew returning to exact revenge. The men were all gathered in the meeting hall, and every single one of them was armed with either a rifle, or a shotgun. Sherman himself wore an old school model Colt .45 long revolver in a holster. Crom entered the room, and surveyed the armed men.

“Boys like to hunt and target practice in their downtime” Sherman said. “This ain’t your fight. You should stay out of it.”

Crom pulled his shirt aside, to reveal a Sig Sauer 9mm automatic pistol. “Hell no. I’m with you. This fight came to me, not you.”

For the first time since Crom set foot in the compound, both Mountain and Sherman nodded to him out of respect. “All right.”

It was like being in a pressure cooker. The ominous sounds of distant Harleys approaching the compound could be heard. As they started to filter in to the gravel parking lot, the sounds of several rounds being chambered could be heard. Crom pulled out the Sig, racked the slide, and held it at the ready, pointed to the ground.

They poured in to the room, slowly but methodically. Spike, his crew, minus Mouse, and the five Emperors, minus the two women. The leader of the Emperors, Jesse, clutched a double barrel sawed off shotgun, and stepped out in front to address Sherman. All of the men behind him were strapped, and carrying at the ready. “Let me introduce you to the Emperors, Las Vegas Chapter.”

“What do you want, you sleazy piece of shit?” Sherman demanded.

“You” Jesse said. “This is the deal. All of you, turn Sherman over to us, and we’ll let you live.”

They were outnumbered. One of the Emperors even had an M4 carbine, and it was almost certainly fully automatic. It didn’t look good. But they were about to force a hand. Crom surveilled the situation carefully. It was one big Mexican standoff. Always take out the leader first. That was a cardinal rule in any mob type of fight. Once the leader is taken out, the rest of the fight becomes that much easier. He started to whisper to Mountain, standing on his left, to take out the guy with the M4. But the problem was that everyone was probably trained on the guy with the M4. And that would be a problem. These are field laborers, not trained combat troops. He wished he could have had some dry runs. He should have done some dry runs, but nobody knew exactly what the scenario was going to be. Just sort of generally what it could be like. Well, it’s worse.

The first man that flinches, starts the fight. It didn’t really matter who fired first, in terms of legality. But it certainly mattered in terms of survival. Crom decided that he would take Jesse out first with a single headshot, then take as many of the new Emperor crew out has he could. He had fifteen rounds to play with. And, although they were outnumbered, Some of Mountains crew had taken shelter positions. None of the Emperors had a sheltered position.

Crom squeezed off a shot. It seemed like slow motion, but actually he emptied the magazine in less than seven seconds. The first shot ripped in to Jesse’s head. As soon as he fired the shot, instantaneously, a huge volley of gunfire erupted from both sides. And in twenty seconds, the whole thing was over. The total damage? Every single Emperor was down. Surprisingly, only five of Mountain’s crew were down, including Mountain himself. Crom took a round to the leg, and Sherman managed to avoid fire. He did though discharge all six rounds. In all, three were killed on Mountain’s side. Nine were killed on the Emperor’s side, including all five core members. The rest were critically wounded.

Shelley was holding pressure on Crom’s leg, wrapping the wound until help could arrive. The blood loss was starting to mount. “If this gets any worse, you’re going to need a tourniquet” She said.

“Jesus” Crom said. “I think my leg’s fucked.”

Shelley looked at it. “I don’t think you’ll lose it. But it definitely isn’t going to be the same.”

“Okay. It’s starting to hurt. I guess maybe I better reconsider that white house and blue picket fence after all.”

Shelley smiled. “I think the pain is talking there, buddy. It’s a white picket fence. And a blue house? I don’t think so.”

He looked back down on his leg. “Can you get some alcohol?”

“I really don’t want to undo these dressings. You’re bleeding pretty badly.”

“No, I mean for me.”

“Does it hurt that bad?”

“The thought of having to repaint a perfectly good house and picket fence? Yes.”

Sherman walked over and sat down on the floor beside him. “God damn outlaw bikers. I knew they was trouble. But God so help me, I had no idea we were in store for this. You did good, kid.”

“You didn’t do too shabby yourself, old man. This isn’t your first rodeo, is it?”

“Earned my blood wings in ‘Nam.”

“How is Mountain?”

“He’ll be alright. The man could take a tank round and come to work the next day.”

Crom grinned. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about the Emperors out of Las Vegas anymore. Looks like they’re going to need a new chapter.”