He hadn’t planned on going to sleep. Exhaustion had torn at every part of his body and weighed on his eyelids to the point of his finally collapsing into an uncomfortable slumber. Now, it was taking him some time to get his bearings. He wasn’t sure how far they’d actually moved, or where they actually were. To the layman, everything in the swamp looked the same. But to a boy who had grown up in them, landmarks were noticeably important. Unfortunately, as he looked around now, thankful for the sunlight, nothing looked familiar and no landmarks gave away their location. Knowing he would have to get out on land and walk, Gabe drew on all the resources he had left and carefully, and slowly, lowered himself over the side of the little canoe and down into the water. His feet were able to touch the bottom...or so he thought, at first.
The wild movement underneath him was his first clue he wasn’t on solid ground and before he could pull himself back up into the boat, the feel of the gator’s teeth digging through his jeans and into his calf was his second clue. Gabe scrambled to get a good hold on the boat, and using all of his strength, tried to pull himself out of the jaws of the startled gator. He wasn’t able to get loose, and pulling only seemed to make the big reptile clamp down tighter. Grunting and sweating, he reached back into his jeans for the gun. When he pulled it out and, he could hear the water drain out of the barrel. Closing his eyes to the pain that the teeth and jaws were causing, he aimed the gun downward and pulled the trigger. It took him a few precious seconds to realize that it hadn’t fired, and another few to realize his knife was in the boot the gator was currently trying to make a snack out of.
Gabe had wrestled alligators before, but that was only when he’d been able to sneak up on them and get a hold on their back, keeping his flesh away from the powerful jaws. Blackheart had taught him that trick, always approach them from behind...and also if you had to fight one, fight like hell because at that point, your life depended on it. Gabe knew that the longer the gator held onto his leg, the more of a chance there was of his losing it altogether. He didn’t want to live the rest of his life as a one-legged man, even if it would be a cool story to tell later on.
Gabe held onto the boat with both hands and using his free leg, he began to kick the gator over and over in the head. The twisting of the beast’s massive jaws made him scream and he was glad there was no one else there to hear it, but he didn’t stop kicking. Blackheart’s words about fighting like hell rang in his ears as he did. Later, Gabe wouldn’t be able to say how much time passed, or how many horrible things passed through his mind while he tried to get free of the gator, but eventually, the gator tired of being kicked in the face, and let go. As soon as he did, even with the pain weighing on him like a thousand-pound weight, he began to scramble back up into the boat.
Gabe tried not to notice the blood pouring out of his leg, and he had to fight the dizziness that wanted to consume him as he struggled to get the knife out of his boot. His hands were covered with his own wet blood by the time he got it out, and his vision was becoming blurry around the edges. The pirogue was being tossed back and forth and his body was thrown on top of Chance as he raised the knife. The gator’s jaws were wide open, ready to take a bite at the oval tip of the pirogue, and Gabe closed his eyes again, and brought the knife down. He felt the scrape of a heavy tooth as the gator fell away. It continued to thrash wildly, however, and when Gabe slipped out of the boat again to push it toward the bank, the gator’s tail whipped around and hit him upside the face several times, almost knocking him back out. Somehow, however, even as his young life was flashing before his eyes, Gabe and the pirogue were at the bank. While the injured gator fought to get the knife out of his mouth, Gabe sat on his butt in the mud and grasped tightly onto Chance’s vest and pulled with both hands. Eventually, panting and sweating and feeling the world spin around him, he collapsed back underneath Chance’s weight. His friend was out of the boat and the gator had stopped thrashing and had disappeared under the water.
He had to push Chance off him so that he could take off his wet, muddy vest and shirt. He used the shirt to tie around his leg, hoping to stop the blood loss long enough to make it back to his bike. He didn’t want to leave Chance alone, but there was no way he could take him. He’d have to pull him up as far from the edge of the water as possible and pray for the best. He felt a wave of nausea from the pain as he got to his feet and just as he was about to grab a hold of Chance’s vest again he heard his friend say, “What the fuck is going on?” His voice was raspy and with his lips in the mud, he was barely understandable...but Gabe was relieved to know he was okay...at least for now.
“Worst hangover you’ve ever had, bro, but no worries...I’m gonna get us out of this mess, as usual.”
8
By the time Blackheart got to Manchac, it was a full-blown circus. Gabe and Chance had been found because Gabe had managed to send a text message to Le Singe from the backup phone he carried in his saddlebag, right before he called 911, and then passed out. When the ambulance got there, he came to with a vengeance apparently, and refused to get in. They were having a hard time understanding him. He was weak and he’d lost a lot of blood, but he was still fighting them when they tried to put him on the gurney and load him into the back of the bus. Le Singe got there just as they were putting the kid into restraints with two cops holding him down. It was he who understood that Gabe was trying to tell them he’d left Chance about half a mile up the trail. Le Singe had almost gotten arrested, refusing to heed the cop’s order not to pass the yellow tape they’d put up when they found Gabe. He drove through it and the yellow tape and black words flew behind him like float decorations in a ticker tape parade as he pushed his Harley hard through the mud. The cops tried to chase him, but their cars got about four feet in before the deep, sucking mud had cemented their tires, refusing to allow the cruiser to move forward. Le Pirate followed his VP, and when they found Chance, the two big men were able to carry him back out to where the cops and EMS were. Blackheart arrived just as they were about to close the back of the ambulance, and so did Lowlife and the prospects who had been searching an entirely different area.
“Gabe! What the fuck happened? Are you okay?” There was an IV in the boy and his jeans had been cut up the side. All Blackheart could see was there were heavy bandages, tinged with blood. He glanced at Chance, who was in the same ambulance, and the only sign that kid was alive was the beeping heart monitor they had him hooked up to. A surge of rage hit him like a tsunami when he looked at the boy’s face. He’d been beaten, and badly.
“Tangled with a gator,” Gabe said in an exhausted voice, but surprisingly, he grinned before saying, “I won.”
“What were you doing here? What was Chance doing out here?”
“Sir, we need to get going,” the ambulance driver told him. Behind him there were two cops, one in uniform and one in plain clothes. The uniform had gloves on and was holding a piece of pipe about three feet long. On one end it was covered with blood, and blond hair. He swallowed another knot of rage and looked back at Gabe. Just as the ambulance doors were closing the kid said two words that ignited the fire in his belly:
“Mad Men.”
An hour later while Gabe and Chance were being worked on at the hospital, Blackheart was sitting behind his desk, surrounded by all the men Le Singe was able to pull together for church. The mood was somber as soon as they all heard what condition their brothers had been found in, but it was even worse as Sharon, Chance’s girlfriend and the woman violated by this other club, took center stage. She’d been the first one to alert Le Singe that Chance was missing, and Blackheart had spoken to her alone before he convinced her to tell her story to the guys. He knew they’d be hesitant, getting in on the fight they believed was Chance’s...but not after they heard what Sharon had to say.