Nolan's Ark Page 14

  “Yeah we heard about the election,” Eddie asked. “What the hell you doing that for? You’re already the President and you’ve got muscle and that big mother of a death truck. Why waste time with an election?”

  “Because I love democracy,” Rage said. “When the dust clears they’ll examine what happened here tonight and see that I did everything right. They won’t be able to take it off me. Think long term Eddie, always think long term.”

  Eddie nodded and looked back at his men. “And you want soldiers huh? Well just how much are you willing to pay Mr. President? Ain’t no soldiers I know of working for free.”

  “Mine do,” Rage said. “Call it a personal favor until we get things up and running again. Then you’ll be richly rewarded.”

  “You’re looking for slaves,” Eddie said, his face disappointed. “The Grim Lords don’t…”

  “MICKEY,” Rage yelled.

  Jaws let rip with a sudden volley of gunfire on both sides.

  Kasey and Shirley leapt back from the window, hands covering their ears. But the bullets outside weren’t hitting anyone. They whistled over the heads of the Grim Lords harmlessly. The bikers, including Eddie Knox, didn’t realize this at first. As Jaws fired they ducked for cover and some fell off their bikes, collapsing onto the road in a clumsy, chaotic mess. Some tried to run.

  The shooting was over in seconds.

  Both barrels remained locked on the Grim Lords. A wispy trail of smoke leaked from the ends.

  Rage was the one laughing now.

  “This is a fight you can’t win,” he said, once the disheveled Grim Lords had started to pull themselves back together. They slowly climbed back onto their bikes, still reeling at the exhibition of firepower just witnessed.

  Eddie gawped at the left gun barrel in horror.

  The barrel was pointing straight at him.

  “Have you reconsidered my offer Eddie?” Rage said. “And remember what I said, you’ll be richly rewarded in the future for your loyalty. The same goes for all your men. You don’t work for free, of course you don’t. And you’re certainly not slaves either – you’re my soldiers. You’re the beginnings of my army.”

  Eddie’s eyes never left the big gun on the left. He swallowed.

  “Looks like you just got yourself an army Mr. Rage.”

  Knox went over to the President and offered his hand. Rage waited for a moment, then he shook it.

  “We’re holding an election tonight,” Rage said. “That still goes. But I must be honest with you my friends – our campaign hasn’t gone well so far and quite frankly, it’s taking too much time. Grim Lords, our new colleagues, I give you your first job as members of the Presidential military force. I want you to be my shepherds tonight. Ride around town, persuading all the survivors you find to come to Hollywood Boulevard. Round them up, bring them to me. Encourage them to vote and what I mean by that is encourage them to vote correctly. Is that understood?”

  “Understood,” Eddie said.

  Rage signaled towards the red MBT.

  “Start her up Mickey,” he said. “Let’s go to Hollywood Boulevard.”

  Chapter 11

  “Jesus Nolan,” Typhoon said, wiping his bloody nose dry with a handkerchief. “You just left her there? She’s an old woman for Christ’s sake.”

  “I left her alive,” Nolan said, his eyes glued to the road.

  He shifted in the driver’s seat, trying to get comfortable. He’d taken a few extra aches and pains with him out of the battle with Jezebeth’s men, but it was nothing serious. Cuts and bruises, it would all heal in time. Same with Typhoon and Eagle Boy. Despite the fuss made by Cowboy Samurai after they’d returned to Goliath, it was obvious that the two wounded Retaliators would live to fight another day.

  “Would you rather I’d killed her?” Nolan asked.

  “Now I didn’t say that,” Typhoon said, standing beside the cabin door. “But, yeah maybe it would have been better than just…oh shit, I don’t know man. I’m not exactly used to all this you know? Plus I just got my ass kicked.”

  “Who is used to all this?” Viking Chick said. She and Axel stood closest to the cabin, like parrots perched on Nolan’s shoulder.

  “I heard you were a hard case Nolan,” Eagle Boy said, dabbing at a small cut under his hairline. He’d pushed the beak cap back to expose the wound. “No offence man but people in the industry, they talk about you.”

  “What do they say about him?” Axel asked.

  “They say he’s a miserable bastard to work with,” Eagle Boy said. “And that if the fans didn’t love him so much he’d be out on his ass. This guy’s burned too many bridges already. What’s that about Nolan? Your show, as big as it is now, it ain’t gonna last forever man. Nobody’s going to catch a guy like you on the way down and then where will you be?”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Nolan said.

  Viking Chick leaned over and punched Eagle Boy on the shoulder. With all his other wounds, it was the last thing Eagle Boy needed.

  “Owww,” he said, looking devastated. “What was that for?”

  “That man just saved your ass back there.”

  “We saved his too,” Eagle Boy said. “Well sort of.”

  Viking Chick made a tut-tutting noise, like a disappointed teacher to a naughty child. “You have no idea what Nolan’s been through,” she said in a quiet voice. “Maybe if you did you’d get off his case.”

  Nolan’s ears pricked up.

  “Huh?” Eagle Boy asked. “What are you talking about?”

  Silence in the aisle.

  Nolan felt a hot flush coming on. Behind him he sensed human eyes crawling all over his back. It felt like a pack of spiders trying to penetrate his flesh, to dig underneath the surface and go exploring. To violate him. One glance over his shoulder confirmed it. They were all staring at him but it was Viking Chick’s gentle gaze that hit hardest.

  “You know?” Nolan asked her in a quiet voice. “About that?”

  “It’s like I said,” she said with a sad smile. “I’m a big fan Nolan.”

  Nolan turned his back on the five passengers and tried to concentrate on the road. On finding Jaws. That was the only thing that mattered.

  “I don’t talk about that.”

  His hands were trembling.

  Please God, he thought, let it be over. Let them go back to the apartment, sit down and shut up. Weren’t they supposed to be happy just being off the streets? Why did they have to keep talking to him like they were lifelong buddies, prying, prying, prying?

  With any luck Viking Chick’s baby would show up soon, riding to the rescue. It was one way of changing the subject.

  “Fuck off,” he snapped. “Just fuck off will you?”

  It was a moment before anyone said anything.

  “Are you alright Nolan?” Viking Chick asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’d feel a hell of a lot better if you people would just…what the hell are you all hanging around here for anyway? Didn’t you see enough at the gas station back there? Enough blood? Enough death?”

  Nolan’s sweaty hands slipped on the steering wheel. “Fuck!”

  “Careful Nolan,” Axel said. “Hold it together man.”

  “Please,” Viking Chick said. “I know it was a long time ago Nolan but…”

  Nolan couldn’t see a damn thing. The samurai helmet was no longer holding back the sweat. Now it poured into his eyes, causing Nolan to blink as if a life-threatening seizure was imminent. He pulled the bandana down and gasped for air. His heart was thumping and his throat had never felt drier. Something bad was happening. Was this a stroke or the beginnings of a heart attack?

  Not now, he thought. Don’t you die Nolan. Not until you’ve found Rage and after that you can do whatever the hell you want.

  He felt like he was drowning in a fire inside the Kowalski costume.

  “FUCK!”

  Nolan yanked the steering wheel to the right, stabbing the brake over and over again with his boot. Goliath screeched, jerking back and forth on the road at sixty miles per hour, lurching towards the sidewalk and a row of low-roofed buildings.

  “Nolan!” Axel yelled. He and Eagle Boy both grabbed a hold of Viking Chick to prevent her falling over. “Stop for God’s sake.”

  Nolan heard the boy’s voice. Barely.

  “She’s pregnant Nolan,” Eagle Boy shouted. “For Christ’s sake man, stop the bus!”

  Nolan couldn’t get the sight of that big swollen belly out of his mind’s eye. Just lying there on the road…

  “Please,” Viking Chick said.

  Nolan brought Goliath to a violent halt at the side of the road.

  He fell back in his seat. As quickly as he could, Nolan pulled the helmet off his head, threw it onto his lap and touched his face. It was scalding damp like he’d been swimming in hot lava.

  His breathing was off the charts. Short, shallow and painful gasps.

  He sat in the cabin, staring out towards the distant flames, watching smoke spirals drifting skyward.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Cowboy Samurai whispered.

  “He’s flipped,” Typhoon said. “I mean I think he’s actually lost it. Didn’t you see him at the gas station back there? This guy doesn’t care if he lives or dies. I’m not blaming him – he wouldn’t be the first person to lose his mind tonight. Only question is, what do we do about it?”

  Someone tiptoed cautiously towards Nolan. When he turned around, Viking Chick was edging her way closer. She had a finger pressed to her lips, urging the others to stop talking.

  Nolan wiped the sweat off his face.

  He pointed at Viking Chick’s bump, exposed in between the edges of the cloak.

  “Hell of a time to bring someone into the world.”

 
Viking Chick put her hands over the bump. She rubbed softly, as if comforting the life inside.

  “Tell me what happened Nolan,” she said. “But only if you want to.”

  Nolan’s voice was drained of all emotion. Even the anger had dried up for now.

  “That story’s largely been forgotten,” he said.

  “Not by everyone,” Viking Chick said.

  “Apparently not.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Eagle Boy said, his brows furrowed in confusion. “Can someone tell me what’s going on? I feel like someone just turned over two pages at once.”

  “They’re talking about the crash,” Axel said quietly, as if talking in the middle of a church service. “The car crash.”

  “Crash?” Typhoon said. “What crash?”

  “It was a long time ago,” Viking Chick said. “I guess you’d have been nineteen or twenty when it happened, right Nolan? An up and coming MMA fighter from New York, a solid prospect with the world at his feet. Then…”

  A pause.

  “You were driving the car. Your girlfriend was in the passenger seat and…”

  “Jesus,” Nolan whispered. It felt like he was having an out of body experience, watching this conversation – if that’s what you could call it – unfold from the ceiling.

  “…she was pregnant,” Viking Chick continued. “You guys were on vacation in the country and if I remember the story, that asshole cut right in front of you at a T-junction. Although that’s not what the official version says.”

  “Somebody get me a drink,” Nolan said.

  “What’ll it be?” Eagle Boy asked. “Whiskey? Beer?”

  “Water,” Nolan said.

  “I’ll get it,” Axel said. He hurried down the aisle and opened up the small fridge in the apartment. When he came back he thrust an ice-cold Evian into Nolan’s hand.

  “Drink it.”

  Nolan unscrewed the lid and drained the bottle in a single gulp.

  “Want another one?” Axel asked.

  Nolan shook his head. “No.” He tossed the bottle onto the floor next to the Kowalski helmet. Then he closed his eyes and sighed.

  “Malcolm Campbell,” he said, snarling all four syllables of the name.

  “Huh?” Axel asked.

  “That’s the man who was driving the other car.”

  “Before your time Axel,” Viking Chick said. “Before my time too but I do know that he was a senator. And by all accounts he was also a giant, gaping asshole of a human being.”

  “That’s him,” Nolan said.

  It was Typhoon who spoke next. “Oh shit,” he said, staring at Nolan with wide eyes. “Are we talking about the same Campbell crash that I think we’re talking about? Twenty, twenty five years ago right? I saw pictures of the wreck. No way. That was you?”

  Nolan nodded.

  “There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet about it these days,” Viking Chick said. “Chat forums and that kind of thing.”

  She put a hand on Nolan’s shoulder and Nolan didn’t push it away. It felt okay and he was too tired to fight.

  “What really happened Nolan?” she said.

  Nolan picked the Evian bottle up off the floor and started peeling the label off, hacking away at it with his thumbnail.

  “Campbell was driving a soft-top Bentley,” he said. “Vicki and me, we were in my old Ford Focus – it was the first car I ever owned. Campbell came flying out of that T-junction like a maniac under a full moon. Drunk as a skunk, coked out of his mind – that’s my take. It’s no secret nowadays he was an alcoholic cokehead but back then? Forget it – he was a white knight as far as Joe Public was concerned. Mr. Charity.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Vicki was pregnant,” Nolan said. “She was nearly eight months pregnant and that’s why I was driving like an old woman going to church on Sunday morning. But…there was no way of avoiding it. Campbell came out so late, so fast. Vicki’s seatbelt was off just before it happened. She asked me if I wanted a drink. It was the last thing she ever said to me. You thirsty babe? I said yes. She was reaching for the cooler when…”

  Nolan crushed the bottle and threw it to the floor along with label torn in a hundred pieces.

  “I can’t talk about this.”

  “Try,” Viking Chick said. “Trust me. Try.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “We were both scared about having a baby,” Nolan said, sitting up straight. Somehow it didn’t feel right remembering Vicki from a slouch. “We were so young and there was always this fear that we’d never have time for ourselves after the kid was born. But we were excited too. We were. Our kid was going to be the best kid ever. But that trip to Maine, that was for us. One week, that’s all. Me and Vicki. It was our last hurrah as a twosome. Well that turned out to be true, just not in the way I thought.”

  “What about this Campbell?” Axel asked. “What did he do? Did he go to jail?”

  Nolan closed his eyes, going back to that day in his mind.

  “Campbell’s Bentley didn’t come off too bad. He walked out with barely a scratch and I remember seeing him with this old-fashioned cellphone pressed against his ear, talking at a hundred miles per hour. He didn’t even look at us, not right away. He went over and sat down beside a white picket fence that ran alongside the road. Kept talking into his phone. I thought he was calling an ambulance because I didn’t have a phone at that time. Well it turned out he was calling for backup. It was only later that I found out he’d been vacationing in a nearby cottage with a woman who wasn’t his wife. He had a little club with him too, movers and operators who tended to his every request. Hangers on, that kind of thing. Asshole thought he was a rock star, not a politician.”

  Nolan opened his eyes.

  “Vicki’s head hit the windshield,” he said. “She died instantly. I brought her out onto the road, did CPR, but she was gone. I sat on the road, numb – more than anything I was numb. Campbell was sitting beside the fence talking to his team and I swear to God, I’ll never forgive myself for not killing him that day. Never. It’s the biggest regret of my life. But my mind was gone – I was a wreck and Campbell’s reinforcements arrived on the scene long before I started thinking straight.”

  “What did they do?” Viking Chick asked. “His people.”

  Nolan shifted in the driver’s seat, his back facing the others.

  “They talked to me. In fact they wouldn’t stop talking to me. They explained that the man in the Bentley was a ‘very important gentleman.’ I’ll always remember that part. He was a very important gentleman.”

  Viking Chick rubbed Nolan’s shoulder. “Assholes.”

  Nolan stared outside with haunted eyes. “Vicky was lying on the road and that bump – it was even bigger than yours…I can still see it now.”

  His skin felt cold. All the sweat had dried and now its icy cold afterlife clung to him.

  “Anyway,” Nolan said, clearing his throat. “His goons told me the police were on their way and that when they got there I was to tell the truth. I asked them what the ‘truth’ was. They said I’d tell the police that I was driving too fast and that the accident was my fault.”

  Axel’s jaw dropped. “They tried to intimidate Butch fucking Nolan? What a nerve man!”

  “I was just a kid Axel,” Nolan said, glancing at the boy. “And there were other matters to consider. Things nobody would have believed at the time. One of the first things Campbell did after the crash was take note of my license plate number. Motherfucker kept a cool head throughout the whole thing. He passed it onto his goons over the phone and they ran it through their files. When they reached the crash site they knew who I was, where I lived, they knew everything about me. They knew who my mother, father and sister were – they actually read out their names and addresses to me. Even back then they could pull every last detail of my life out of a hat. They also knew about my criminal record. I used to steal cars with my friends when I was fifteen, sixteen. They knew all about that.”

  “What happened?” Cowboy Samurai asked.

  “I told them it was Campbell’s fault,” Nolan said. “The funny thing is when I said it I honestly thought that it would make a difference. That the truth mattered. I was a real dreamer I guess. Well those bastards, they just leaned in closer, about eight of them as I recall. One guy, bald head, big walrus mustache and black sunglasses – he was the spokesman. He whispered in my ear in this creepy voice. He told me that my family wouldn’t see another Christmas if I said anything about Campbell to the police.”