Highway Don't Care (Freebirds) (8 page)

  “What do you mean, you hotwired the car?”  He asked.

  “I learned that useful skill on YouTube.  I also know
how to get out of zip ties, and pick a lock.  Cheyenne and I
practiced.”  I said proudly.

  “Why would you need to know how to do this?” he asked.

  “Duh.  Because it is useful information. 
Especially in that situation.  So anyway, I start the car, and only hit
the car in front of me twice before I managed to get us turned around and
headed out of there.  About that time, James and Max come barreling out of
the house.  Their dates are nowhere to be seen.  They’re running full
tilt towards us and hop in the back seat just as I pealed out of the driveway,
skirting the cops as I went.

  I was one of many cars though, and managed to get out of
there before being questioned.  Max and James were drunk as skunks in the
back seat, and pass out before we even make it home.  I parked outside of
Cheyenne’s house and we left there asses there on the front lawn.  We went
back to my house.  The next morning we went out to the car and realized
that even more damage was done to the car than we thought.  Cheyenne’s mom
came out around that time and found us staring at the car.  You should
have seen how pissed she got.  To this day they don’t remember how they
got home, and think that one of them wrecked the car and drove drunk.”

  “You can’t be serious.”  He said to me.  “You
were only thirteen.  How did you know how to drive?”

  “I used to borrow Max’s car all the time.  I was a
little bit of a delinquent.”  I explained.

  “A little bit of a delinquent.  Are you still this
way?” he asked.

  “I am a tad impulsive, but I would never endanger myself.”

  “Well thank God for small things”

Chapter 5

I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence.

-Talladega Nights

Gabe

  “I think we can use this kid.  He doesn’t want to be
in this situation, and if we get the brother out, then he won’t have a reason
to be entering the gang anymore.

 I was in the down room with Sam, Max and Jack.  Elliott
is at home with Blaine, who was perilously close to dropping her kid out on the
pavement at any moment.  Cheyenne and Ember decided to help Blaine around
the house as well.  James is delivering a bird to her new cage in South
Louisiana.

  “What does Luke think?”  Sam asked.

  I turned my head and looked Sam in the eyes.  He had
his feet propped up on the edge of the desk.  Grease covered him from head
to toe, and had a bottle of Heineken dangled from his fingers.

  “He tried to make contact, but the kid’s like a
ghost.  Knows his shit.  I’ve only been able to tail him twice in the
past two days.  Once to school, and the other home from school.  He
gave me the slip though, because when I knocked on the door the grandma said he
wasn’t home, and she didn’t look like the type to take any shit.  I
haven’t seen any Skulls near him at all.”  I answered him.

  Sam nodded, and seemed to lose himself in thought. 
Max was staring at me with scrutinizing eyes.  He’d been doing this ever
since Ember started staying with me.  He knew that I was sleeping with his
sister.  He also didn’t seem too happy about it.

  He could go fuck himself.

  My phone rang, interrupting the quiet.  Ember’s bright
idea of putting “The Bad in me” by Jake Owen’s shifted the mood from serious
and somber to playful.  Sam chuckled, and Max faced cracked into a
semblance of a smile.  Apparently, he understood his sister’s sense of
humor.  I would have sworn he’d kick my ass when he heard the part about
having nothin’ on.

  For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how she found this
song, let alone how she managed to get the shit on the phone.  I haven’t
changed it yet.  It’s something she would do to me, calling me at work
when she knew I couldn’t come to her.  Teasing me, and making me want her
for the rest of the day.

  Ember’s name and picture of her foot flashed across the
screen, and I smiled wide as I picked it up.

  “Yeah?”  I asked.

  “Can you take Blaine, Cheyenne, and me to the Baby’s R
Us?  Elliott needs to go check on his mom, and Cheyenne’s mom has the
twins.  We need to get her the rest of the shit she needs before the baby
gets here.  She’s being induced in a week.”

  Oh didn’t this just sound like a shit load of fun. 
Although, I wasn’t going to make her go alone.  It was nice that she at
least asked me to go with her, instead of just going, as I knew she wanted to
do.

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in about ten minutes.  Is that
enough time?”  I asked.

  “Perfect.  We’ll be waiting outside Blaine’s for you.” 
She said before hanging up.

  Sighing loudly, I touched the end button and shoved the
phone back into my pocket.  Walking over to the desk, I grabbed my spare
Colt out of the desk drawer, pulled the slide back to check the chamber, and
then shoved it into the back of my jeans.  Normally I only carried my
Glock on my ankle, but today I felt the need for some extra firepower. 
Just in case, I needed to shoot myself in the middle of the baby food isle.
 Just kidding.  Maybe.

  “Gotta go take the girls to a fuckin’ baby store.”  I
grumbled.  “Let me know what Jack can pull up, I’m sure I could use some
distraction while going to baby land.”

  Sam and Max chuckled.

  “Better you than me, my man.”  Sam said.

  “It’ll be you again in a couple months.”  I shot back
as I walked out of the room.

  Sam’s cell started ringing just as I made it through the
bay door. 

  I bypassed my bike and decided to walk since I wouldn’t be
using it.  Turning the side of the garage, I saw Ember with her arm around
Blaine’s waist.  She was whispering to her, and both eyes locked on me
before Blaine burst out laughing.  It was obvious they were talking about
me.  The giggling cut off once I was close enough to distinguish clear
sounds. 

  Ember was in a pair of tight white jean shorts and a
Ranger’s shirt.  Blaine was wearing her usual long dress that brushed the
top of her feet, stomach bulging out from her tiny frame.  She looked like
she would pop at any moment.  Not that I would dare tell her that. 
She was a little fire cracker, and I’ll be damned if I lit her fuse.

  Both women wore blinding smiles, which if I was being
truthful, made me a tad nervous.  I always found that when women wore
smiles like that, things didn’t end well for me.

  “Where’s Cheyenne?”  I asked.

  “She and Sam are going to have a little alone time since
her mom has the twins for the night.”

  I nodded.  Must have been the call he’d gotten as I
was leaving.

  “Y’all ready to go?”  I drawled. 

  I loved teasing Ember about her accent.  ‘Y’all’ was
never in my vocabulary before I moved here.  Ember decided to broaden my
horizons, and started teaching me a few slang terms.  I still couldn’t
figure out how they worked ‘might could’ into a sentence.  That one might
never stick.  ‘Fixin’ to’ was definitely easier to accommodate her on.

  “Sure am.  Blaine here is gonna need a lift into that
monster truck of yours.”  She said.

  I rolled my eyes.  It wasn’t that big.  I’d just
had thirty-five inch tires, and a four-inch lift put onto my Chevy the day
before.  Cheyenne and Ember absolutely adored it.  Or so they
said.  Not like I cared what the girls thought.  I’d wanted this
dream truck since I was a little kid.  My dad always used to talk about
the kind of vehicle he would get if he could afford it, and this was the
one.  I got it for him.

  “Let’s roll.”  I said while walking to my truck.

  I hoisted Blaine into the front seat, and then did the same
for Ember in the back.

  Pulling out of Free, I hooked a left and started down Main
Street.  Just as I was about to turn onto Grand, a blue Impala zipped
around me and cut me off.  I’d clocked him as soon as I pulled out of
Free, but I wasn’t sure he belonged to the Skulls.  Now I was.  These
kids in the front seat were wearing their signature blue bandanas and sitting
low in their seats, practically laying down.  They hit the brakes
suddenly, but I expecting it, and adjusted accordingly.

  “Call your brother.”  I said while breaking and
putting some distance in between their car and my truck.

  The little pricks were trying their hardest to get me to
hit their vehicle, but this was nothing.  I dodged IEDs in Afghanistan
while driving an armored Humvee.  Avoiding running into these shit heads
was a piece of cake.

  They also weren’t very skilled.  They looked to be around
fifteen or so, with just enough balls to think they could handle playing with
the big boys.  Most likely didn’t even have a learner’s permit yet.

  Ember was speaking quietly with Max, and Blaine was sitting
tensely in the passenger seat chewing her thumbnail.  Flashing lights
appeared in my rear view mirror, and the Impala took off.  Two police
cruisers passed us with a roar.  The air that came off their car when they
passed shook the truck, rocking it from side to side.  Ember hung up with
Max, and Blaine took a deep breath.

  “Okay?”  I asked them both.

  “Good.”

  “Okay.”

  Letting my grip loosen on the wheel slightly, I headed into
the direction of the store.  Ten silent minutes later, we arrived. 
Crisis averted.

  “You have to park in the expectant mother’s spot so Blaine
doesn’t have to hoof it too far.”  Ember said.

  Blaine silently agreed from the back seat.  Fuck
me.  Giving up the fight I knew was inevitable, I swung the truck into the
spot that had a stork carrying a baby on the sign.  Feeling like a dolt, I
got out and rounded the car.  Ember was sliding down, so I went to the
front door and helped Blaine down. 

  “Jesus Christ.  My vagina bone is fucking killing
me.  I swear it feels like this kid is sitting in my vagina and pushing my
pelvic bone to impossible proportions.”  Blaine said to Ember.

  Ember made accommodating noises while I just ignored
them.  Over the past year, I’ve gotten really good at tuning out their
chatter.  After listening to them talk about their periods, I concluded
that it would be easier to ignore them.  That wasn’t something I liked to
hear about, and Blaine’s ‘vagina bone’ was completely off limits.

  The store itself was even worse than I thought.  It
looked like a baby factory puked up its contents and then arranged them in
order.  Bottles, beds, torturing devices disguised as breast pumps, and
clothes were scattered everywhere.  There was even a second floor of more
crap that I’m sure a baby would never use.  We spent an hour on the bottom
level of the store.  In that, time a bitch of a storm rolled in and shook
the building with the intensity of its thunder.  Blaine also used the john
no less than four times. 

  They decided that it was time to tackle the second floor,
so we took our cart full of baby crap and made our way onto the elevator. 
The doors closed with a whoosh.  The lights flickered once, and I had a
horrifying thought that we shouldn’t have taken the elevator when the lights
went out completely and we were stranded in between the floors.  Cursing
silently, I made my way towards the numbers panel when the emergency lights
came on.  I pressed the big red emergency button, and a disembodied voice
said that they were aware of the problem, and would get us out as soon as
possible.

  I hung my head and groaned.  “Well doesn’t that just
fucking figure?”

  “Blaine?”  Ember said shrilly.

  Whirling around I took in the figure of Blaine, hunched
down over her big stomach.  She was panting slightly, and as white as a
sheet.

  Years’ worth of medical training kicked in and I went to
Blaine’s stooped figure.  My boots slipped slightly in a puddle on the
floor and I knew without asking what it was.  Blaine’s water broke. 
In a stranded fucking elevator.  With the fucking lights out.  Panic
came over me, but I shoved it down where it belonged.  Panic had no place
here right now.  Just because I’ve never dealt with anything of this
caliber before, didn’t mean I couldn’t handle it now.  Blaine probably
wouldn’t even be in danger of having her baby before the lights were fixed
anyway; first babies always took hours and hours to deliver.  We were
good.

  Boy was I wrong.

Ω

 
Ah hour and a half later.

“Goddamn you, Elliott.  You are never getting near my lady
lumps again.  No more hiding the salami.  You had better cherish this
one baby, because
never
will you get another one.  I really want to
chop your dick off right now for doing this to me!  Why’d you have to go
and see your mother anyway, you should be here with me.  How could you do
this to me?”  Blaine was wailing to Elliott who was on speakerphone. 
He was also outside the elevator with medical crews standing by. 

  A tractor-trailer hydroplaned and took out a whole city
block of power poles before it came to a stop.  The Swepco crews were working
frantically to get the power back on, but it wasn’t going to be fast
enough.  Ember had Blaine’s head in her lap, wiping sweat off her forehead
with one of the baby washcloths from the buggy.  I was in prime view of
the newest Master barreling its way into the world.

  I’d taken my paramedic classes, and finished my
degree.  Only once have I seen a baby born, because in the ten years that
I have been a medic, never once was one born on the front lines of Afghanistan
where I was stationed.  The only birth I’d seen was on the video they’d
shown in class on the week we covered birthing.  My knowledge was true
though, and my instincts took over.  The baby’s head was now crowning.

  Looking into her pain-filled eyes, I asked, “Okay Blaine,
this is how it’s going to go.  When I tell you to, I want you to grab your
legs and push with all you have.  When I tell you to stop, you stop. 
Understand?”

  She nodded, and I glanced at Ember pleading with my eyes to
give me strength.  She must have known I was scared, because she nodded
and reassured me with a smile.

  Going back to the task at hand, I directed Blaine to push
on her next contraction.  Twenty minutes of pushing later, baby boy
Masters was born kicking and screaming.

  “It’s a boy!”  I exclaimed loudly so Blaine, and
Elliott could hear on his end of the line.

  A loud whoop sounded from the doors behind me, and followed
closely by the loud whoop over the phone line.

  While I was working, the doors were finally able to be
propped open a mere four inches.  A metal pipe was wedged into the space
to hold the doors open.  Elliott stuck his arm inside and slapped me on
the back, giving me a thankful squeeze.  I could hear Sam and Max clearly
now giving orders to the fire fighters who were on scene.