Edge of Chaos (20 page)

About fifteen
minutes later Luke’s ears pick up the sound of at least one motorcycle
overtaking them. By the way the sound is increasing, whoever it is must be
coming up on them pretty fast. When they get to a long straight stretch in the
road Luke looks back and sure enough, there is a pair of bikes coming up on
them fast. Luke shifts, pops a wheelie and moves from a cool 80 to 110 miles
per hour. There is very little chance of running into the Highway Patrol on
this stretch of road.

Kayla senses
something is wrong when Luke suddenly speeds up. She twists around and confirms
her worst fears. There is at least 2 bikes coming up on them. This had to be a
coincidence. No one knows they’re out on the road right now; no one. When she
looks forwards again she sees Luke has his phone out, he got his glove off and
is trying to text someone. It’s slow going but he finally sends his message and
tucks away his phone, but keeps his glove off. She looks back again. Damn,
their close. Her best guess is a several hundred yards and closing. She hopes
Luke has called in the Calvary because she is in no mood for a gun fight. The
last two weeks of intense training has been fun but it was just that; training.
This is for real and for her the element of fun just isn’t there and she’s pretty
sure she’ll never dig fighting like Luke does. She’s just not that kind of
person. She’s a healer not a…well the opposite of that despite the gun she
carries.

She can clearly
hear the other bikes in her ears and turns around again. They’re right on them.
They don’t have any weapons out but that can change in a hurry. Suddenly an
overwhelming desire to take her gun out and start shooting hits her in the
chest. If they shoot first they’ll have a better chance of survival. But they
may not even be troublemakers. She does not want to shoot at innocent bikers
either. Suddenly one of the bikers pulls up alongside of them.

Luke twists the
throttle and they jump out ahead but the other two guys are quick to follow his
example. They draw even with them again and this time, before Kayla can
convince herself they’re just curious, the biker on their right pulls a three
foot long pipe out from the other side of his bike. He transfers the pipe to
his left hand where he hefts it and smiles wickedly at Kayla.

Suddenly it
becomes abundantly clear what he intends to do with it. All he has to do is jam
it in the spokes of Luke’s front tire and they’ll go down hard; hard enough to
kill them both at their speed. The man readies himself for the lunge and Kayla
steels herself for a hard fall. The man draws his arm back and an ugly look
crosses his face. Kayla opens her mouth in a silent scream. Suddenly there’s a
deafening explosion in her ears and the man’s face literally disappears in a
huge spray of blood, brains, and the shredded remains of a motorcycle helmet.
Luke hits the breaks just as the driverless bike wobbles then goes down and a
disintegrating metal heap. Luke expertly guides his bike all the way to the
shoulder of the road narrowly missing motorcycle parts spread out on the
roadway.

She hadn’t even
seen Luke get out the Mossberg; evidently the guy hadn’t either. Then Luke
twists his wrist and their bike jumps forward and just in time too. Luke’s
right side view mirror suddenly shatters and disappears! At first she just
stares at it wondering what the hell happened, but when the next shot pings off
the bikes back fender she realizes what’s going on. She twists around and sure
enough, back about twenty feet behind them is the other biker. He has his
pistol out and is trying to get a good shot off. She turns around and renews
her grip on Luke expecting at any time to feel the hot bite of a bullet in her
back.

Having already
lived through being shot in the head once, she does not want a repeat. Then it
occurs to her. What the hell is she doing? She has been training for the last
two weeks on how to shoot, including shooting from a moving bike and here she
is with a loaded gun at her disposal and she’s just sitting there holding on to
Luke. What an idiot! She reaches into her jacket and pulls out her Glock. Just
like Luke said would happen, her hands are shaking so badly that she nearly
drops the weapon the second it clears her coat. She hears another metallic ping
somewhere on the bike.

So far their tires
are fine. She twists around and points her weapon towards the biker and finds
it’s infinitely more difficult to acquire a site when your target is doing the
same to you. It takes her a second to override her fear and open her eyes
again. Finally she gets her sights lined up and as smoothly as she can she
squeezes the trigger.

“Shit!” She
screams at herself. The safety is still on.

She flicks it off
and aims again. This time the guy takes evasive action and her first too shots
are nowhere close to him. This is a lot harder than she thought it would be.
She takes aim again. She holds her breath, then lets it out slowly and squeezes
the trigger twice; tap tap, just like she’d been taught. She misses again.
She’s about to berate herself for missing four times in a row when she notices
something.

As long as the
other guy is taking evasive action he really can’t get a good bead on her and
Luke. She squeezes off two more shots, and then has another realization. She is
supposed to be counting her shots so she knows when to change magazines. She
can’t remember if she shot 6 or 8 bullets. She decides to go with 8. Better to
change magazines too soon than run the gun dry. Kayla fires off to more shaky
rounds that are clearly far off target. As she takes aim again their assailant
decides he’s had enough dodging and makes his move.

Even as Luke adds
more speed the man behind them is riding a larger more powerful bike and they
just cannot seem to outrun him. This time he pulls up on their left side,
making it infinitely more difficult for Kayla to get him in her sites. When he
pulls up within about twenty feet he begins to fire. The first bullet tears
into the top of Luke’s helmet, jerking his head to the side. The bullet’s
impact startles Luke and he just about spills the bike. As he fights to get
control another bullet creases the top of their fuel tank, ricochets off
another part of the bike before it whizzes away leaving the two riders stunned
but unharmed.

Kayla realizes she
has to do something. Luke has his shotgun out but their attacker backs off each
time when Luke brings the weapon up. The level of fear seizing Kayla’s brain is
overwhelming. Many people can handle terrorizing situations as long as they
only last for a few seconds, but when you are in the danger zone for a
prolonged period of time it gets to you. Pretty soon that fear that was gnawing
on the edges of your consciousness becomes this giant beast attached to your
brain and it just sits there eating you alive.

Kayla fires off
two more shots, and then makes a big deal about her weapon being jammed. It has
the desired effect. He guns his chopper and in a few seconds he is just ten
feet behind her and off to the right this time. As he brings his gun to bear on
her she suddenly raises her weapon and fires, but to Kayla’s horror she just
hears a faint metallic click.

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck,
and fuck!” She swears over and over again as panic seizes her mind.

She jerks
involuntarily as a bullet, like an angry hornet passes through the right arm of
her motorcycle jacket. The burn immediately brings tears to her eyes as she
tries to focus on what she is doing.

“Drop the
magazine…slip it under your pinkie…” Kayla repeats the mantra as she begins to
clear her gun of the jam. “wrack the slide back two times then reseat the mag.”

She snaps the
magazine back in place and hammers it with the palm of her hand to make sure
it’s seated correctly. A magazine that is not all the way in place will likely
cause the next bullet to jam at the feed ramp. Kayla wracks the slide back
again, chambering another round.

Suddenly their
bike is fishtailing madly, causing her to grab onto Luke and hold on for dear
life. Luke fights for control of the bike as their back tire literally begins
to disintegrate. Luke knows immediately what happened and what he needs to do
to keep them from smearing themselves along the highway like some giant bug
splatter. As he eases off the throttle and moves to the side of the road two
more bullets ricochet off the bike but amazingly not a single one finds their
intended targets.

Kayla aims her gun
one more time. They guy on the chopper backs off when their bike began wildly
gyrating, but now he is coming on hard and she knows that if she doesn’t do
something right now he’s gonna fill them with holes. It’s an impossible shot
Kayla takes. As she depresses the trigger she sends a silent prayer in its
wake. She watches as the man jerks in his seat and seems to ease up on the
throttle. Her second shot strikes him again and this time he pitches off to the
side and his bike goes down in a shower of sparks. Just as Kayla raises her arm
in triumph their bike pitches violently to the left and Kayla finds herself
airborne. Her gun flies out of her hand and before she can even think about it
she hits the dirt off the shoulder of the road and begins to tumble before
sliding like some baseball player trying to steal home base.

When she finally
opens her eyes again the world has stopped spinning. As Kayla lays there she
takes stock of her body and waits for the pain to hit. Amazingly, even though
she feels like she’s just spent the last hour tumbling round and round in a
dryer nothing appears to be broken. She aches from head to toe but she seems to
be otherwise unhurt.

“You’re alive!”
Luke exclaims a few feet from her. Slowly he gets to his feet and comes over to
check her out.

“Yeah, I’m alive;
just barely.” Kayla replies.

“You got him
Kayla. You just saved our lives.”

“I seem to have
lost my gun,” she replies looking around.

“It’s okay we’ll
get you another one. How do you feel?” He asks, looking straight into her eyes.

“Fine I guess. I
mean I feel like I just fell off of a speeding motorcycle…hey wait, I just
did,” she jokes. Then seeing his very serious expression she catches herself.
“Oh…you’re not talking about me physically are you?”

“Not really.”

“So you mean, how
do I feel after…after…” She finds it impossible to finish.

In all the
excitement and all the other feelings that go along with fighting for her life,
she has forgotten she just violated her sacred oath. Do no harm. True she’s not
in the hospital ER but that doesn’t make her feel any better. She just shot and
apparently killed another human being.

Kayla and Luke
have to wait two hours before some of Luke’s buddies are able to pick them up.
For protection she and Luke ditch their helmets and walk a half mile from the
scene of the crashed bikes, then turn down a side road and hike another half of
a mile before coming to a stop. Hopefully no one will find them or connect them
with the carnage they left behind. Fortunately they were able to recover
Kayla’s Glock as well as Luke’s Mossberg. To slow down anyone investigating the
accident Luke removes the license plate from his bike. He’s glad he had the
foresight to remove any serial numbers that could connect the bike to him; he
should be in the clear. Too bad he has to ditch a $15,000 bike in the process.

Kayla sits in a
truck between Luke and his buddy Seth for the ride to the hospital where she is
scheduled to come on shift in a couple hours or so. She is only vaguely aware
of Luke’s efforts to draw her into a conversation.  She knows she has to snap
out of this before she is due at the hospital or someone is going to know
something is very wrong. On top of the mental anguish going on through her mind,
her right arm is really beginning to cause some serious pain. It hurt before,
but as her adrenaline leaves her body so does the endorphins that were
shielding her from a majority of the pain. Now that she is safe and the danger
has completely passed the full effect of the grazing bullet is making it really
difficult to keep from crying out. Who would have thought a grazing wound could
be so damn painful?

Luke must sense
something is wrong. He keeps shooting her glances out of the corner of his eyes
as he and Seth talk quietly amongst themselves. Kayla grits her teeth and tries
to think about something else but that last image of the dead guy, when she
shot him the second time causing him to fall from his ride; that’s the mental
picture that has burned itself into her consciousness. She squeezes her eyes
tighter in an effort to somehow block that image from her mind but it’s just
not working. How, she wonders for the thousandth time can Luke shoot so many
people and not be tortured by their dead faces staring back at him. And that’s
it, she keeps seeing the dead guy’s face which is really weird because she
could only see his eyes and the bridge of his nose.

Gradually at
first, and now at a much faster rate, anger begins to build. How can Luke put
the woman he supposedly loves in a position where she has to violate her
do
no harm
oath? Shouldn’t he be making sure she is protected from the enemy
as well as herself? For the millionth time she wishes she had a best friend to
bounce things off of. Long ago she began isolating herself from others and that
is what has made breaking away from Dillon so damn difficult. No one has been
there to kick her ass and make her see the error of her ways. Really the only
person she has actually spent any quality time talking to is Doctor Collins
from her work. They can actually carry on a conversation that not one time from
start to finish is littered with emergency room lingo or doctor- speak.

The more time
passes the more the anger builds until she is beginning to feel like some
pressure cooker that’s unable to vent even a little. She’s afraid she’s going
to blow her lid off at the wrong time and at the wrong person.

“Kayla,” Luke
tries to draw her back into the land of the living; a land where the love of
his life didn’t just compromise her very soul by shooting dead another man.
“Kayla we’re almost here. You’re going to have to shrug it off so—"

“Shrug it off? Is
that the best you can do? I didn’t just cut off another driver in the parking
lot of K-Mart Luke. I shot another person dead. Somewhere out there is a mother
who just lost her baby. I did that. Me! So can you tell me how I am supposed to
just shrug that off?”

Luke shakes his
head. He really can’t answer that one and it was so long ago that he killed his
first man he’s not even sure what it felt like. Besides, he was a different
person than she is when he killed his first victim. He was a hardened soldier
with his humanity safely buried far beneath the surface. It’s no wonder she’s
having this kind of response. He has heard about and read about people who
react similarly and he is pretty confident that she’ll make the adjustment and
eventually she’ll be just fine.

They ride in
silence right up until he is about to drop her off at the hospital.

“You’ll be safe
here Kayla. I’ll have the guys checking on you the entire shift and I’ll be
around as well as soon as I can break away from the club meeting. Don’t worry
you’ll be perfectly safe from my father and his men while you’re here.”

“Can you also
protect me from you… or myself?” She replies bitterly. And when he doesn’t
answer her, “I thought so.”

That’s as far as
they get before they pull up to the ER landing. Without another word Luke hops
out and Kayla climbs out and walks into the emergency department without
looking back. It is going to be a very long day for her; a very long one
indeed.