Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
My name is Legion.
And I'm not rollin’ over for anyone.
CHAPTER 7
The eastern Montana badlands rise up around me like God's graveyard—ancient spires of eroded sandstone carved by wind and time into shapes that don't make sense. Red rock striations glow silver under the moon. Deep gullies cut between formations like open wounds in the earth's skin.
This land doesn't forgive.
Doesn't offer second chances or soft places to land.
It just is. Brutal, and honest, and unashamed of what it's become.
I get that. Understand it in my bones.
The bike eats up highway, then dirt road, then the unmarked two-track that leads to the compound. Dust plumes behind me in the headlight's wash. The air tastes like sage, and diesel, and something older—minerals, maybe. Stone ground down to powder over millennia.
Out here, you see what everything becomes eventually.
Dust, and silence, and wind that never stops.
The gate appears ahead, chain-link and razor wire catching moonlight. Two prospects lean against the guard shack, cigarettes glowing orange in the dark.
I slow. Stop.
Neither one meets my eyes.
Dusty shifts his weight. Crow stares at his boots like they're suddenly fascinating.
The gate opens. No words exchanged. No acknowledgment.
Just the mechanical grind of the motor pulling it aside.
I ride through.
Behind me, it closes with a metallic clang that sounds too much like a cell door.
How long?
The question sits in my chest like a stone.
How long has Brick been running this operation for the Feds?
Two years of nomads who aren't nomads. Two years of brothers voting on club business with federal prosecutors pulling their strings from the shadows.
Two years of lies, stacked on lies until the whole structure's rotten.
And how many men here hate it? How many are as pissed as I am about bein' used like pawns in somebody else's game?
I park the bike in its usual spot. Kill the engine.
The silence that follows feels heavy. Weighted with all the questions I can't ask and all the answers I already know.
However many men are angry, it's not enough.
Not enough to stand with me tomorrow when Brick calls church and demands his twenty-five-thousand-dollar blood price.
Not enough to vote against a president who's already proven he'll sell out anyone to protect his own skin.
Not enough to matter.
I pull off my helmet. Hang it on the handlebar.
The clubhouse squats ahead—cinderblock and corrugated steel, lights bleeding through dirty windows. Normally at this hour, there'd be noise. Music. Voices. The low rumble of brothers who can't sleep congregating in the bar to drink away whatever demons chase them.
Tonight—nothing.
Just the wind moving through the compound like a ghost looking for somewhere to haunt.
I push through the front door.
The bar's empty.
Completely empty.
No Diesel nursing a beer. No Chains sketching at a corner table. No prospects cleaning up or hanging around hoping to catch scraps of conversation that might teach them how to survive here.
Just empty tables. Stale air. The neon beer signs buzzing their lonely electric prayers into the dark.
In all my years at Badlands—prospect days, prison, coming home, getting patched—I've never seen this room empty.
Not once.
Paranoia crawls up my spine like something with too many legs.
Are they having a vote without me?
The thought hits sharp and cold. A secret church session where they decide my fate before I even walk through the door tomorrow.
I turn. Head back outside. Cross the compound toward the church building—the original structure, older than everything else here, where real club business gets handled.
The door's locked. No sound, no clues, just nothing.
I step back. Light a cigarette with hands that want to shake but won't let themselves.
Maybe everyone's asleep. Maybe it's late enough that even the insomniacs and addicts have given up and crawled into beds, or couches, or wherever the fuck they pass out.
Or maybe they're avoiding me.
Maybe I'm already dead, and they just haven't figured out how to tell me yet.
"Fuck it," I mutter to the empty compound.
I head for the bunkhouse. Climb the exterior stairs to the second floor. The hallway's dark except for one flickering overhead light that's been dying for six months. Nobody's fixed it. Nobody's going to.
Room 3. I open the door. Step inside. Close it behind me.
The space greets me the same way it always does—bare, and spartan, and deliberately free of anythin' that might make it feel like home.
Steel bed frame. Thin mattress. Gun rack bolted to the wall. Duffel bag in the corner containing everything I own that matters.
I strip off my cut. Hang it carefully on the hook by the door.
The brand underneath aches. Always aches now, even weeks after the infection. Scar tissue pulling wrong. Shape distorted where they cut away too much dead flesh trying to save my life.
I peel off my shirt. The B is barely recognizable. Just a mess of scars that burn when I move. Then the jeans. Kick them into the corner.
The shower’s cramped, but it's better than nothin'. I turn the water on. Step under the spray before it's even warm. The cold water hits like a baptism.