Slash and Burn

Chapter 11

When he’d wakened from his enforced slumber, Larry Bolan should have been apoplectic with rage. However, surfacing from the thick cloud of confusion with his brother patting his cheeks, he found he was only mildly annoyed. Some of the turnaround in his mood had to be down to the fact he was still alive, but even more to the fact that he would get another chance at killing this man. A bullet in the dark would have been too painless. This way he got to do it with his hands.

‘Your head’s split wide,’ Trent remarked, helping him to his feet.

Larry touched the cuts on his skull. ‘Tell me about it.’

A rifle cracked almost by Larry’s ear and he flinched from the noise. Looking towards the trail, he caught a glimpse of tail lights as the Grand Taurino sped round the curve.

Larry looked at the tall youth with the smoking rifle.

Without warning, he grabbed the boy’s throat between his massive fingers and squeezed. The boy was lifted off the ground, toes scrabbling for purchase on the dirt.

‘The hell you doing shooting at my wheels, Jeb?’ he roared in the youth’s purpling face. Then he tossed Jeb aside and the gangly youth cartwheeled into the nearby bushes. He landed awkwardly on his back, twisted among branches.

Larry and Trent stomped down on to the road. Looking in the direction where their vehicle had disappeared, they both stood in silence. Behind them, the rest of their friends dragged Jeb out of the undergrowth.

Larry turned and looked dispassionately at the dazed youth. ‘You OK, Jeb?’

Jeb nodded in confusion, wiping at scratches on his forehead.

‘Be thankful I’m not in a bad mood,’ Larry told him. Then turning to the group of men surrounding him, he warned, ‘Any of you motherfuckers mess up again, believe me, I’ll rip your fucking heads off.’

The men all nodded in acquiescence.

‘Any of you idiots got a phone with a signal?’

One man handed over his phone. ‘One bar only, but it might be enough, Larry.’

‘Go get the fucking cars,’ Larry told the men. ‘We ain’t achieving nothing standing round here, are we?’

The men scattered, and only Trent was with his brother as he reported in to Huffman.

‘How did he take it?’ Trent asked when Larry hung up.

‘In his usual way,’ Larry said. ‘He’s bringing in some help for us.’

‘We don’t need help.’

Larry touched the tender spots on his head. ‘No,’ he said.

Before they returned to town, they backtracked up the hill. They laid out the four dead men in the living room of Imogen Ballard’s house, then Trent got busy with a can of gasoline off the pick-up. Flames fought back the flurries of snow falling on the disintegrating A-frame.

Sending the others ahead, Larry and Trent commandeered Tom-Boy’s SUV.

‘It’s full of shit,’ Trent complained as he surveyed the blood and tissue sprayed through the interior.

‘It’ll clean up back at the shop,’ Larry said.

As was the norm, Larry drove.

They caught up with the others at the pass. Trent got out the SUV armed with his can of gasoline and doused the Ford Explorer. Then there were two fires raging on the mountainside.

Good job it’s winter, Larry thought, otherwise Trent’d probably burn the entire forest down. Trent’s growing fascination with flames was another thing that concerned Larry about his strange sibling.

Trent grumbled all the way to town, brushing at drips falling on him from the roof.

‘I ain’t cleaning this fucking thing,’ he told Larry about a dozen times before they reached Little Fork.

Larry didn’t bother arguing. His head felt like someone was beating it with a hammer and all he wanted was to get back to their workshop where he could find something to take away the pain.

They’d left the snow up in the hills, but it was still a gloomy night. Not too many people out on the streets. The others continued on, but Larry slowed the vehicle as they approached the back alley that led to the workshop where they’d customised the Dodge. A guy with a bag of groceries was standing in the mouth of the alley, watching them warily.

‘The fuck’s his problem?’ Trent enquired, then he leaned out the window and yelled at the man. Larry closed his eyes, flinching with every word rocketing around inside his skull. When he blinked open his eyes the man had stepped up on to the kerb. Larry drove into the alley.

‘Should have run the fucker over,’ Trent said. ‘Inconsiderate bastard!’

‘Trent…’

Trent blinked across at him. ‘What’s up, bro?’

Larry could only shake his head.

Arriving at their lock-up, Trent clambered out and set to the padlock. As Trent cursed loudly, Larry reached for his Magnum. But it wasn’t there. Good job, because this time he really would have put a round through his brother’s skull.

When Trent opened the door, Larry drove the SUV into the workshop. He didn’t turn off the headlights until Trent found the light switch and bathed the shop with stark light. Larry climbed out of the vehicle, trailing a string of viscous gunk that clung to the sleeve of his jacket. Gross! he thought, wiping the congealed blood on the hood of the SUV.

‘Jesus Christ, Larry,’ Trent moaned. ‘You don’t have to make things worse than they already are!’

‘Shut the fuck up, will ya?’ Larry walked over to a tool bench arranged along the far wall. He was pretty sure he had a stash of morphine somewhere. His head was pounding, and his nose was full of the stink of Tom and Richie’s brains. God knows what the hell he had sticking to his clothes. ‘How could things get any worse?’