Page 5 of The Devil's Viking

Waiting for the man to drive her away from the hell of the Garden and Gideon; waiting for him to stop for food or coffee in a few hours, so she could creep out of the van and start her new life.

Wherever that turned out to be.

Chapter Two

It was hours later – Iris didn’t know how many hours, obviously, but it was manymany,like enough for her to have dozed and woken up stiff and sore and cold – and she was starting to think that this guy couldn’t possibly be human.Whodidn’t stop for a bathroom break or a coffee or to just stretch their legs? Who just drove and drove endlessly, singing along with the radio in a surprisingly melodious voice? Robots, that’s who and Godknows, this mystery man was about the size of a damn Terminator.

She shifted her weight from one hip to the other, stretched her legs in front of her and tried to point her toes. She stared at the weird shape of her calves all wrapped up in scarves and at the ugly huge boots sticking six inches off the ends of her small feet; she truly looked like a lunatic, and now that she thought about it, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. If the large man caught her sneaking out of the back of his vehicle, maybe Iris should drool a bit, talk to an invisible pet iguana, ask him for directions back to the mother ship. Maybe if he thought she was an amiable wandering crazy lady, he’d just back up and let her make her escape.

But first he had to stop the damn van.

Suddenly and as if she’d made it happen just with her thoughts, the van turned sharply right and then stopped. Like stopped hard enough to knock Iris’ breath out of her and knock the back of her head against the wall. She froze, totally sure that the guy must have heard the sound of flesh and bone making impact with metal… and that was when she realized that for the first time since walking out of the women’s dormitory, she was actually scared. God knows who this guy was, really, and what if he took one look at her hidden in the back of his van and got angry? Like, even angrier than Gideon could get? And now that she thought about it, wasn’t a van the serial killer’s vehicle of choice?

She held her breath, as if that would make any difference at this point, and waited. She counted her heartbeats and when she reached thirty, she slowly exhaled. Listened hard, then jumped when she heard the driver’s side door slam. She only started to relax when she heard footsteps crunching away in what must surely be snow.

He was leaving the vehicle. This was her chance.

My only chance, I’m sure.

Slowly she got to her feet, wincing as pins and needles started up in her feet and moved up her legs, and waddled over to the door. Another pause as she strained to hear any movement or voices outside, and then she reached for the door handle. Turned it down and pushed.

The door didn’t move.

“Shit,” she whispered. “Other way, idiot.”

But that wasn’t the right way, either, and so she stood there locked inside the freezing cold van surrounded by boxes and tools and a huge steel barrel that reeked of smoke and something awful, and suddenly realized that she was trapped with zero control over what happened next. She had no idea how she’d failed to realize that the man would probably lock the van door from the outside – for some idiotic reason, she hadn’t thought beyond gettingintothe van and getting anywhere but where she’d been. Now she wanted to simultaneously kick herself unconscious and collapse into a distressed heap on the floor.

For the first time Iris fully understood – like really, reallygot it– that she had actually left the Garden, left her sisters, left everything that she’d known for a year. She’d been so desperate to just disappear into the woods, she hadn’t really considered that she might very well be jumping headlong from the frying pan straight on into the roaring, raging fire.

The question she asked herself now: was this impulsive choice going to end up being a mistake? And if so, was it a fatal one?

Maybe literally.

**

Viking sat at a table, perusing the menu (such as it was), wondering what had possessed him to stop for food at what was clearly a real roadside dive. A quick glance at the other patrons’ plates showed puddles of grease and oozing oil and fatty meat. Still, the coffee was hot and strong, and he’d get by on a grilled cheese sandwich or an omelette or something. Assuming this place had decent cheese or semi-fresh eggs.

He gulped his black-as-death coffee and thought about how weird it was that he was now, to all intents and purposes, a vegetarian. It had happened gradually, over the time that he’d been working with Zoe Parish at the Blue Dragon Ink tattoo parlour. Zee had requested veggie meals every lunchtime from Rebel over at the kitchen in Satan’s Bar, and Viking had been surprised at how amazing everything looked and smelled and anyway, it couldn’t possibly hurt him to eat a few more green things and cut back on the heart-strangling red meat.

So just like that and before he knew it, he was poring over vegetarian recipes online and giving them to Rebel to try out, then proudly telling Zee stuff like, “I know you love eggplant, doll face, so that’s what I requested for our lunch today!”. Like, who evenwashe anymore?

He sighed and shook his head, ran his hand over his wild beard. He’d rinsed the smoke stench out as best he could in the dive’s truly disgusting bathroom, and he’d enthusiastically spritzed himself and his clothes with his favorite cologne, but he was longing for a real shower, with soap and water pressure. It would get him clean on the outside: the inside was something else entirely, of course.

Not that Viking was big into the soul and sin and salvation – not anything evencloseto any of that crap. His time as a combat medic in Iraq had pretty much inoculated him to any belief of a higher power of any kind: no way that any good or gracious god would allow what Viking had witnessed with his own eyes. Suffering wasn’t purifying, and pain wasn’t cleansing. Both were just hell on earth – no need for some mythical, imaginary, holy hell. The one here and now was the real deal.

His appetite gone, he closed the menu and resigned himself to coffee and a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips to take on the go. He’d just carry on for another couple of hours and then get Rebel to fry him up a mess of french fries. He’d just go all-in for salt and oil that day, forget that these things were about as bad as red meat – but Viking was used to living dangerously. He was the ex-body man for The Road Devils MC, after all.

Well, he’dbeenex. Ex until two nights ago.

Viking slipped a ten under the coffee mug, got to his feet, stretched his massive six-foot-seven frame to get the blood flowing again. He stepped into the February chill and for about the millionth time, he admired the Rockies in the distance. Being a farm boy from North Dakota, he’d never been a mountain guy before moving to Colorado, but he was a full-on convert now: it was love, deep and abiding. He knew that he’d die under the unblinking, unforgiving gaze of the mountains, whenever and however that came about. But he knew that there was a greater chance to see his forty-sixth birthday now that the Road Devils were out of the one-percenter criminal life.

Well, out of it until two nights ago.

As he headed back on the highway and turned towards Denver, Viking finally allowed himself to really think about the body that he’d left behind, back over the state line. Jolene’s now-fully-ex-husband Brian Fielding had been a twisted, abusive piece of shit and no doubt: Jo’s badly-beaten face had shown him that. Viking also knew that the man had shown up at Jo’s place two nights ago with torture and murder in his heart… if the body on the bedroom floor hadn’t been Brian’s, it would have been Jo’s. Guys like that deserved death more than prison, in Viking’s humble view, and they also deserved an anonymous forest grave more than a headstone and peaceful resting place.

On the whole then, this little jaunt to Utah to dispose of a monster's body was a fleeting blast from the past, it was him shallowly dipping a baby toe in a scummy pond. He was just visiting the MC’s old ways for a few hours – he wasn’t going back there for good. He’d done what he’d done out of sheer necessity, to protect Jo, and it was all buried deep in the ground one state over now. No need for Viking to worry that he was backsliding to a violent, dangerous time in his life, or diving headfirst into the slimy, fetid water. It was all fine; he was totally fine.

So why am I waiting for the other shoe to drop? Why do I feel like this just isn’t over?

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