Road Refugees (The Bare Bones MC #10) - Layla Wolfe Page 0,3
into Nurse Judy.
The last thing I felt was Chip licking my knee.
Chapter Two
Townshend
I came to, looking at Slappy Lomax’s ass.
I couldn’t tell if I was in bed, which way was up, which way down. It took me several panic-stricken moments of flailing my limbs until I oriented myself in the room.
My living room. The floor.
Slappy’s butt wasn’t moving. He must’ve racked out too. What the fuck time was it? My watch told me three, but day or night? I always kept my blinds closed.
Groaning like a dying horse, I raised myself off the floor. As in a corny anti-drug movie from middle school, three or four empty bottles of rum were strewn over the grimy wall-to-wall carpet. One tumbler still held a couple fingers’ worth of booze, so I grabbed that and gulped.
I’d been drinking too much for far too long to ever become properly drunk anymore.
Slappy’s torso was draped artistically over a sculpture of a horse with a human head I’d picked up in Damascus. Wasn’t it uncomfortable, the guy’s headdress stabbing Slappy in the ribs?
Am I all out of rum?
This possibility made me anxious, gave me the energy to drag myself to my feet. Just like overseas, I hauled my ruined back and pounding skull through twenty-hour days with the assistance of ibuprofen. I managed to sleep, dreamless, for four. Death isn’t some statistic. It creeps up on you, slicing away at your neck. In Syria, I worked myself into a coma. Because I was an excellent shot, the Syrians had me performing as sort of a firing squad.
Now? I surfed on YouTube, leaving my dark condo only for more booze.
I saw by the paused video that Slappy and I had been blasting Avenged Sevenfold. I knew from the dirty looks my neighbors always gave me that playing heavy metal was a common incident. Sometimes it was paused on Slipknot, Bullet for My Valentine, or Metallica.
My stomach growled. Fucknuts.
Staggering into the kitchen, I shielded my face from the glaring sun blazing in the window above the sink. A normal tenant would’ve had several different and lovely views of a snow-dusted Pike’s Peak in blinding 3D. Not me. It reminded me of Fort Carson. Who the fuck forgot to lower those blinds? I guess it’s three in the afternoon.
Someone had made a pot of coffee. I nuked a cup, wondered why it smelled like skunk, and left it on the counter. I went to the can to pee out a hot stream, and even brushed my teeth to honor Slappy’s visit. I merely greased my thick black hair with my palms. Grease. That’s how dirty it was.
“Dude!” Slappy groaned from the living room. Maybe he’d discovered the guy’s head in his liver. “Captain Spiro!” He punctuated his moans with a giant ughhh.
I limped over to greet him. “First Lieutenant Lomax.” I chuckled. “At ease.”
“Ughhh. What the fuck am I lying on? Some kind of creepy Hajji god?”
Slappy was an outspoken, plain-talking guy from New York City, some kind of Ashkenazi Jew with a blond Mohawk. His wife Chloe lived in army housing near Fort Carson. Unlike me, Slappy was still active duty, First Armored Cav. They’d let him come back from Syria when his wife was forced to give birth. He still wore his olive drab fatigue jacket and pants. Like his face, they were extremely crinkled.
I set the horse upright against the wall. “You know I like art.”
“Yeah. Ughh. Reminds me of those god damned Hajji shops with their fucking useless DVDs.”
“No. This is nicer. Remember when we thought we were buying The Ballad of Buster Scruggs?”
Slappy stared blankly at the wall. “Yeah. We got Fifty Shades Freed instead.”
I snorted and grabbed my cane, propped against the couch. “False advertising.”
“Yeah. But it was nice to see some boobs.”
I laughed, once. “I’m out of rum. You wanna come to the store with me?”
Wiggling his eyebrows, Slappy crawled toward the couch. He reached behind it and withdrew the holiest of all grails—another bottle of rum. He stood, wobbling, brandishing the prize. “I remember hiding this. Somewhere between Iron Maiden and ‘Down with the Sickness.’”
“I’m all for that,” I said, reaching for the bottle.
But Slappy held on tight, unscrewing the cap and chugging. When he finished, a sheen came over his face. He was so limp I could easily remove the bottle from his fist. I used my tumbler to drink, like a civilized person, gulping a good two fingers’ worth.
“Ah,” I said, breathing out the flaming fumes. “What’s wrong, Slappy?”