Tainted Rose (17 page)

Without even thinking about it he turned his bike around and rode straight back to the Sioux Rangers clubhouse.

He let his bike fall to the ground as he ran from the lot into the clubhouse.

“Hey,” one of the guys guarding the entrance called out. “You can’t come in here.”

The guard grabbed a hold of Josh but Josh ignored him.

“Jack Meadows?” he called out, “I’ve got to speak to him”. It was hard for him to get heard over the din of the music. No one was at the bar now. They were all out back where the band was. “I’ve got to speak to Jack,” he said to the guard.

The guard wouldn’t let him go and Jack punched him. Then he freed himself and ran out to the back. He got up on the stage and the band, which had been in the middle of a song, stopped playing.

“What the hell are you doing back here?” Flash said.

“They’re coming. They’re coming now.”

*

A
LMOST TEN YEARS TO THE
day had passed since that morning but Josh could remember it perfectly. It wasn’t with pride, or anger, or even guilt that he looked back on it with. It was regret.

The warning he’d given the club had given them just enough time to organize a hasty defense before the DRMC arrived. They positioned men all along the street leading up to the clubhouse. There were brick factories on both sides of the Rue Cordner and Jack Meadows had ordered his best shooters to take positions in them.

The rest of the club armed themselves with sawed-off shotguns, automatics and whatever else they could get their hands on and took up defensive positions within the clubhouse.

The women took the children down the basement and locked it behind them. Everyone knew that if they ran for it, the DRMC would have hunted them all down anyway. Their only chance was to hide in the basement and hope the men were able to repel the attack.

But there was no way the men could repel the attack that was coming. Josh had seen over a hundred bikers partying in the street and he knew the kinds of weapons that a posse like that carried. This would be a fight to the death.

He looked around the clubhouse. He looked at the faces of the men of the Sioux Rangers, at their wives and children, and he knew that they were all going to be killed. And then he saw the girl again, Jack Meadows’ daughter, so small, so young, and he knew he couldn’t leave. If there was something he could do to protect that innocent little girl, he would do it. If these people were about to die, he would stand by their side and die with them. Rex Savage was with the DRMC now anyway, so it might even be that he would get a chance to avenge his father in the battle.

“I’m with you on this,” he said to Jack Meadows.

“You aint one of us, you can get away,” Jack said.

“I’m one of you, if you’ll have me.”

Jack Meadows stopped what he was doing and looked at Josh. “Are you sure about that? I don’t know if any of us is going to walk away from this fight.”

“I’m sure,” Josh said.

Jack took Josh’s hand in his and shook it firmly. Toothless, Flash, Patsy and the others were all there. Someone pulled a jacket down from the wall, it was a jacket of one of the dead brothers of the club, and handed it to Josh. The name on the back was Renegade.

He took off the old jacket he was wearing and put on the Sioux Rangers jacket in its place.

Jack Meadows lifted up a bottle of scotch from the bar and poured some on the ground in front of Josh’s feet.

“I guess we can all start calling you Renegade,” Jack said. “The newest member of the Sioux Rangers. I wish times were better to welcome you but they are what they are.”

Jack took a swig from the bottle and handed it to Josh. He took a long drink and then passed it around to every other member. They all drank from the bottle and then got ready for the fight that was coming.

Josh Carter became the newest member of the Sioux Rangers on the morning of Sunday, April fourth, 2004. That was the morning that the press would later dub Bloody Sunday because of the number of people who were killed on Rue Cordner that day.

*

T
HE SIOUX RANGERS FOUGHT WELL
in the dawn hours of that fated day, but it was a bloodbath. There was no way it could have been anything but a bloodbath. The DRMC had grenade launchers, AKs and every other assault weapon they could have possibly gotten their hands on. They came with over a hundred and fifty men, their mission to wipe out every trace of the Sioux Rangers. The Rangers’ twenty seven members including Josh fought them off for five hours in the wildest gun battle in the history of the city.

It later emerged that the police had waited three blocks away till the shooting stopped before getting any closer. Once it was revealed that so many woman and children had been in the house, there was a public outrage about the fact that the police had been too scared to get involved. The police chief was forced to resign but the truth was there was really nothing the police could have done except get themselves killed if they’d moved in any sooner. They weren’t equipped to deal with a battle like that. It was warfare.

The DRMC blew holes three feet wide into the reinforced concrete walls of the clubhouse. A whole section of one of the adjacent factories collapsed because of the amount of firepower it sustained.

Josh saw the whole thing, the entire massacre, and he fought as bravely as any Sioux Ranger there. He saw Flash take a bullet to the head in the opening minutes of the battle. Toothless charged the attackers and took out five men with his shotgun before being gunned down. It had taken more than ten bullets to bring his charging body to a stop. Patsy was blown to pieces by a grenade a couple of hours into the fighting.

Josh saw more blood and gore that day then many soldiers coming back from wars would ever see. In the later stages of the battle, someone in the DRMC poured gasoline down a vent leading to the basement and threw his lighter down after it. The women and children were forced to come up then, and pretty soon they were taking casualties too.

Josh would have begged Jack to surrender at that point but there was no point. The DRMC wasn’t there to accept surrender, they were there to annihilate all trace of the Rangers and they wouldn’t stop until it was done.

Close to the end, when it was clear that there would be no mercy, that there would be no succor given even to the children, Jack gave Josh his last order as head of the Rangers.

He pulled a photograph of a woman from his coat.

“Kid,” he said to him. He had to speak quickly as the DRMC henchmen were closing in on the clubhouse, closer by the minute. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Josh said.

“I’m not looking for heroics, kid. Someone needs to get the children out of this place.”

Josh looked around the crumbling building. He wasn’t even sure the roof would hold much longer. A cave in would trap everyone inside. Worse would be if the DRMC came in and put a bullet in them all. There were at least five children still huddled in the rubble of the far corner and Josh knew that if they didn’t get out of there, they would all be killed.

Jack Meadows was fingering the old photograph he’d taken out of his pocket, looking at the face on it. Josh realized then that Jack was bleeding. Blood was flowing from under his jacket, seeping into his clothes and making them heavy.

“Jack, you’re hit.”

“That doesn’t matter. Listen to me. The children, it’s not too late. You’ve got to take them out of here.”

“How can I do that?” Josh said. “You think the DRMC will hold fire to let them leave?”

“No, I know the DRMC will never hold their fire. They’ll kill every last one of those children if they can get their hands on them. But there’s another way out. There’s a tunnel from the basement leading to one of the factories on Cordner. The entrance to the tunnel is through the back of the safe.”

“Okay,” Jack said. He had to duck as bullets rained in through the opening in the concrete wall.

“The combination to the safe is seventy-nine, eight-nine, ninety-nine. It’s an old bank safe, big enough to walk through. At the back of it is a wooden door. Just take the women and children and follow that tunnel till you get out at the other end. It’s about a kilometer to the end. When you get out at the other end, try and find the police and surrender to them. It’s the only way any of them will survive this.”

Josh nodded. “Will you be able to hold the DRMC back long enough for us to get away?”

“I hope so,” Jack said. “I’ll die trying, that’s for sure. Now go. Don’t waste any more time.”

“Your daughter’s down there, isn’t she?”

Jack looked up at him. The pain of the gunshot in his chest was beginning to make him cloudy. He nodded. “She’s down there.” Then he handed Josh the photograph of the woman. “If you get a chance, give her this picture. It’s of her mother. She’s never seen her.”

Josh took the photograph and put it into a pocket inside his jacket.

“I’m sorry to have you join a club only to see it decimated,” Jack said.

“Don’t talk,” Josh said. “He could tell Jack Meadows was already dying. He was losing his clarity. His eyes were beginning to fog over. The DRMC guys weren’t far from the building now. They were getting closer and closer. A few scattered Rangers were still taking shots at them but they wouldn’t last long. The DRMC was sweeping through the factories and getting the Ranger snipers, one by one.

“Jack,” Josh said.

“I know what you’re going to say, son. The police will arrest you. I don’t know what to say. If you surrender to the police it will mean a lot of jail time for you.”

That wasn’t what Josh was going to say at all. He didn’t care about jail, not at a time like this.

“No,” he said, “I need to know, is there a way to lock the safe from the inside.”

“Oh,” Jack looked up at him, tears in his eyes. “Yes, it will lock automatically behind you. You’ll just have to hurry to get to the end of the tunnel.”

Jack’s breathing changed. It became more labored and heavy. He was dying. He was bleeding out.

“Go,” he said.

*

T
HAT HAD BEEN THE END
of the Sioux Rangers. The club had been an institution in South Montreal for over twenty years, but in a single morning raid, its entire membership had been decimated. Well, almost its entire membership. One man, the club’s newest member, Josh Carter, had survived. No one even knew he was a member. The DRMC had excellent intel on the Rangers thanks to Rex Savage. They had a list of every single man who had ever been a member of the club, but Josh’s name wasn’t on that list. He’d been sworn in literally minutes before the raid and there was no way anyone could have known he was a member. If the DRMC had known, they’d have made sure they got him, but they didn’t know. And that was how Josh had survived the years that followed.

Josh lowered Jack Meadows’ head slowly to the ground and then left him there with his shotgun propped on his chest. He’d be able to get one last shot off when the DRMC entered the house. That would be the last thing he would ever do.

Josh kept his head low as he ducked and dodged through the house. He gathered up the children and the few women who were taking shelter with them. He led them all to the narrow staircase that led down to the basement. He wasted no time. He passed a few of the remaining Rangers but their attention was on the fight. Josh knew they’d all be dead within the hour.

In the basement, the women and children were frantic. The five kids ranged in age from a baby to Rose, who was twelve. Five women were with them too.

“What’s going on?” one of the women said to Josh.

She was close to hysterical. Josh didn’t blame her. The concrete structure of the building muted the sounds of gunfire up above but whenever something heavier hit the building the entire basement shook. It was like a scene of a bombing raid during World War II. Josh had never seen anything like it.

“Why did they bring us here?” another of the women said.

“Shut it, Darlene,” the first woman said. “This club has weathered everything together in the past. We’ll weather this together too.”

“We’ll die together, and so will our children.”

“Maybe not,” Josh said. “Gather up those children. There’s a way out and we might still have time.”

He went over to the safe. It was massive, like the vault of an old bank. The door was a solid, steel circle about three yards in diameter.

“What’s that?” one of the women said.

Josh didn’t answer her. He opened the door using the combination Jack had given him. The door was very heavy, almost too heavy to move, but Josh managed to open it just enough for everyone to squeeze through. Jack was the last to enter the vault and he spun the combination dial on the door behind him so that the DRMC wouldn’t be able to follow. At least they wouldn’t be able to follow without blowing that door, which would take time.

Behind the door it was pitch black. He pulled out his lighter and lit it. It gave only the faintest light but it was enough for them to see that they were in a vault that hadn’t been used in some time.

“Grab those flashlights,” he said to no one in particular. He pulled the heavy door closed. He had the terrible, horrible fear that someone from the DRMC would come down and see the vault before he could get the door fully shut and locked. It was so heavy that it took over a minute to pull shut and the whole time, he was afraid the DRMC would come. But they didn’t. The shooting continued up above until the vault door sealed and then they couldn’t hear anything.

There was light in the vault now. He looked around frantically as his eyes adjusted to the light. Rose had been the one to get the flashlights. She looked up at him, her bright eyes reflecting the light even in that dark space.

Josh went to the back of the vault and found the wooden doors Jack had told him about.

“Okay,” he said to the terrified group of women and children that were crowded in the vault behind him. “Follow me. The police will be at the other end and we’ll let them take us.”

“Won’t they arrest us?” one of the women said.

“They will,” Josh said, “but it’s the only chance for these kids to have any safety.”