Edge of Chaos (14 page)

Kayla shakes her
head until the vision dissipates and she sprints down the hallway towards her
front door. It’s wide open. It’s a little hard to see with the lights in her
eyes, but she can just make out Luke’s form and she can certainly hear his
father yelling at him.

“Drop your
weapon!”

Kayla watches in
horror as Luke bends at the waist and sets his Glock on the grass. Suddenly
there are bodies everywhere and hands are grabbing him, pulling him to the
ground. Then they’re on top of him tying him up, and a few people begin to
strike him as he lies there helpless.

“Stop!” Kayla screams
from just a few feet away.

She points her
shotgun at the crowd. In the heat of the moment, it doesn’t occur to her that
she can’t fire her weapon from where she is without inflicting as much damage
on Luke as she might do on her intended victims. The beating stops and they all
look up at her.

“Boys,” Luke’s
father begins. “No need to rough him up any further, we’ve won. Let’s just take
him back with us and leave the lady in peace.”

They get off Luke
and pull him to his feet. They start to march him across the lawn towards a
waiting van.

“Wait!” Kayla
calls out to them. “I’d…I want to s-say goodbye.”

“Oh, come on,
haven’t you already had a chance?” Luke’s father calls out.

“It’s non-
negotiable. I get to say goodbye or I open fire. I’m pretty sure I can take out
at least one person before I die.”

“Fine! But you
leave your weapon in the house. That is non-negotiable,” he replies.

“Deal,” Kayla
calls back.

She tosses her gun
to the floor. This is going to be one hell of a goodbye. Since they already
said goodbye inside, just in case one of them ate a bullet, she’s not sure what
she’s going to say or why she demanded the chance to say another goodbye. As
she’s walking out to meet him, she realizes there are some things she left out
of the other goodbye. She stops in front of him and surprises herself by not
just throwing herself at him and hugging and pleading with him. She just stands
there and talks.

Suddenly the world
around her fades away and it’s just her and Luke standing in a green grassy
meadow. The air is cool like in the springtime. Butterflies dance around them
as she takes his hands in hers. She can feel his life’s blood coursing through
his fingers and gradually her hands become warm. But the heat doesn’t stop
there. It travels up her arms, into her shoulders, and then to her heart. And
when she feels it there, she realizes it’s not just warmth, it’s his love that
has finally reached her heart from his. It’s everything they ever wanted to say
to one another but were too shy, too damaged, and not eloquent enough to just
say it. With that love comes a complete understanding of each other and the
need to fit into the other’s world is no longer so important; they already fit
inside and that is where it counts.

After a few
minutes, Kayla is aware of the heat cooling and fading as she is pulled back
into the real world where her love is being marched from her lawn into the
waiting van. Even though they hadn’t touched physically, and despite their not
saying a single word to each other, they connected on a deeper level and
there’s nothing Luke’s father can do to take that from them.

Kayla turns to go.
She steps across the threshold of her door when a single shot rings out. The
bullet strikes her in the head, just above her right eye and spins her around.
She is unconscious before her body hits her hallway floor, so she can’t hear
the screams of anguish from Luke as he struggles to break free of his captors
and go to Kayla. His grief and rage give him super-human strength and he
manages to pull free from the men holding him. He reaches her front door in
three great bounds and slams it behind him. It takes a full two seconds before
Luke’s father and his men recover and open fire on the door. By the time they
charge the door and kick it in, no one is waiting on the other side. Kayla is
still lying there in a pool of blood, but Luke is gone. A quick search of the
house fails to produce him as well. They’re about to spread out to search the
neighborhood when sirens rip through the night. Luke’s father gives the signal
to clear out and seconds later they vanish into the night.

After Luke
flees Kayla’s house, he is forced to stay hidden. He avoids any place he has
previously frequented which means his club, his house, and just about every restaurant
and bar in town. He has to stay away from friends, including his old military
buddies. He knows his father is out there looking for him and probably so are
the police. They may even think he is responsible for Kayla’s death. If his
father is smart, he’ll have gone and figured out some way to manipulate the
crime scene, or do something to cast suspicion his way. He is innocent but he
can’t let himself get picked up. His association as the Vice President of the
Suicide Kings would land him in jail for months while they try to pin as many
unsolved crimes on him as they can find. So Luke goes from one flea bag motel
to the next, always staying one step ahead of the law, his father, his brothers
and his friends.

Sleep doesn’t
come easy for Luke.  Most nights it doesn’t come at all. Whenever he closes his
eyes, he sees Kayla’s unmoving form and the widening pool of blood around her
head. All he hears is the lone gunshot that killed her.

Once in a while
he’s able to find the right mixture of sleeping pills and alcohol to knock him
out. At least then he doesn’t dream at all. Thoughts of suicide plague him
night and day. In fact, when he decides that he still wants to live, he has to
quit carrying a gun for fear that in a moment of weakness he will just blow his
own head off.

Six months on
the run and Luke has gone from a muscular athlete to a chubby, pathetic couch
potato because that’s all he does, eat and watch TV.

Nine months
later, Luke wakes one morning to find that someone has shoved a note underneath
his door. Figuring it’s from the hotel manager, he ignores it for a couple of days.
Then one afternoon, while he’s watching TV, he wants to write something down
and the only available paper is that note from the manager. He spreads it out
on his lap and gasps. There are only four words, but they mean everything to
him.

“Take heart,
she lives.”

Prologue:
Down and Definitely Out!

The sour
smell of unwashed bodies, sweat, cheap perfume, and even cheaper alcohol permeates
everything in the tiny motel room. The floor is littered with empty bottles of
bargain-basement wine and other spirits. Everywhere you look there are crumpled
cigarette packages and overflowing ash trays. The carpet is dotted with
cigarette burns and it’s a wonder the place hasn’t caught fire.

In the
bathroom a lone figure sits on the toilet, fumbling with her rig. Her hands
shake so badly she can barely work the zipper of her little leather pouch.
Twice it spills from her hands onto the filthy tile floor. Each time she picks
it back up her stomach rebels and dry heaves wrack her emaciated frame.

Finally she
gets the zipper open but the contents just spill back out onto the floor.
Oblivious to the filth she picks up the syringe, spoon, and lighter.

“What the
fuck?”

She looks
around, but can’t seem to locate the cotton ball.

“Luke, bring
me some cotton!” She yells from the bathroom.

The lone
biker still passed out in bed is in no shape to answer her. Instead he just
groans in his sleep and rolls over.

“Luke!”

The woman on
the toilet looks around the tiny bathroom until she finally locates a dirty off
white cotton ball resting on top of a dried pile of vomit. She retrieves it and
sets it in her lap. The desperate woman takes a deep breath to steady her hands
before unwrapping the dark brown substance her body craves. She empties the
tiny bag into an old spoon, and then dribbles a little water over the top until
the utensil is nearly overflowing. As she gets closer to the fix her body
begins to react. It’s a bit like salivating when your favourite meal is set in
front of you. She begins to salivate as the substance in her spoon begins to
bubble as she waves the tiny flame back and forth underneath. The chills, the
waves of nausea and the shakes are all beginning to fade. She lets out a sigh
as she drops the cotton into the mixture and begins to suck the bubbly brown
fluid up through the fibre and into the syringe.

The
desperate junkie pulls the rubber tubing even tighter as she clenches and
unclenches her right hand. With her other hand she begins the search for a
useable vein. Most of the good spots have turned into ulcerous sores and are
completely useless. She continues tapping her veins until she finds one full
enough to accept a needle. She doesn’t even mind the sharp stick of a dull
needle. In fact it feels kinda good. She watches with baited breath as she
pulls back the plunger. This will tell her if she’s still in the vein or if
she’s blown through the other side. She catches her breath when she sees a
surge of bright red blood shooting up into the syringe. A long delicious sigh
escapes her lips as she pushes down on the plunger and the reddish brown liquid
disappears into her bony arm.

An epic
burst of delicious warmth suddenly suffuses her entire body and once more the
world is all right again. The fact that she has spent the last of her rent
money on the drug doesn’t even register. Her cupboards are empty and she has no
food for her only child to eat when he wakes up, but that all takes a back seat
to her need for heroin. The fact that she should be home with him right now
instead of in some fleabag motel with some stranger doesn’t even give her
pause.

Her eyes
grow heavy and her head lolls forwards. Her hand relinquishes its grip on the
syringe and falls to her side leaving the needle sticking out of her arm. Her
breathing slows and then appears to stop all together.

“Breathe…”
She reminds herself. “Just breathe…”

Slowly the
young woman on the toilet leans farther and farther forward until her backside
is barely still touching the toilet seat. She takes one more shallow breath
before she pitches forward and falls face first in a pool of vomit on the dirty
bathroom floor.

Six hours
later…

Bright
sunlight streaming in through the front door lands on the grizzled face of the
man on the bed. The loud revving of a truck’s engine is not quite enough to
wake the sleeping man. It’s not until the overflowing dumpster is emptied into
the back of the sanitation truck that the man in room 212 finally stirs.

He rolls
over and puts a dirty finger in each ear until he thinks it’s safe enough to
remove them. When he does the sounds of the truck are replaced with the normal
yelling and carrying on that he’s become accustomed to the last few months he’s
been camped out here. He scratches the painful sores from bed bug bites as his
eyes scan the room for something to drink. He looks back to the door.

Who the hell
left that open? He thinks to himself.

Then he
notices the light from the bathroom.

“Hey…uh…girl.
You got anything to drink?” He calls out.

When he
fails to get a reply he rolls back over and closes his eyes, but sleep just
doesn’t come. He’s hungry and his head is pounding. He looks around again.
There has to be something somewhere to drink! Slowly, so as not to make his
head pound any more than it already is, he gets up, hobbles over to the door
and shuts it. There’s a bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum lying partway behind the
TV stand. He retrieves it and proceeds to drain what’s left. It’s only about
three swallows, but it makes a world of difference. His head begins to clear
just a little as the fiery liquid reaches his gut. He walks over to the
bathroom.

“Hey uh… I
really gotta drain the lizard so if you could—"

Luke stops
mid-sentence. Lying in a pool of vomit is the hooker whose name he cannot
recall. He nudges her leg with his foot but gets no response.

“Fine sleep,
but I still gotta use the can.”

Luke
straddles her legs and opens the fly to his boxers. As he empties his bladder
he catches sight of her rig and wonders if she has anything left for him. Luke
shakes twice, tucks his dick back in his shorts and decides to see if the whore
has any more heroin left over. He gives her another nudge with his foot; but
not so gentle this time.

“Hey woman,
wake up!”

He prods her
with a finger then steps back. She’s cold. Luke leans over and looks at her
face. Her eyes are closed and her lips are tinged with blue. He stumbles back
away from her.

“That can’t
be good,” he mutters to himself.

He decides
he has to make sure either way if she’s alive or…or dead. This time he bends
over and grabs her shoulders and gives her a vigorous shake. She’s even
beginning to get stiff. Luke let’s go and charges out of the bathroom. He
locates his backpack and begins throwing dirty clothes into it. He searches
around till he finds his clothes and dresses in record time. Luke grabs his
helmet and keys and shuts the door behind him. He sits on his bike and fires it
up. His watch tells him its 9:30 Sunday morning.