He laid it carefully over the back of a wooden dining chair. Reno followed suit a bit more reluctantly. Jax was too busy shaking to care. Reno had to strip the vest off the kid's back for him. "Sit on the rug," Martha instructed.
"Not the furniture. You're soaking wet." They sat. Three giant men cross-legged on a floral rug staring at the fire. Martha walked over to the kitchen alcove.
She didn't put the shotgun down. She leaned it against the counter right next to her hip as she grabbed an old blackened percolator. She poured water into it from a pitcher, scooped in a generous amount of cheap, bitter coffee grounds, and walked back to the living room, setting the pot directly on the flat top of the wood stove. "You got a phone?" Reno asked, his voice rough.
"Need to call the rest of the pack. Let him know we didn't end up as popsicles. "Lines are down," Martha said flatly. Been down since noon. Cell service out here is garbage on a clear day.
In this, you're completely cut off. Buck nodded slowly. He extended his massive legs, rubbing his thighs, trying to get the circulation going. We got separated, hit a patch of black ice under the snow. Bikes went down hard.
Walked for about two miles before we saw your chimney smoke. "You're lucky," Martha said, pulling her rocking chair closer to the stove. She sat down, picking up the shotgun and laying it directly across her lap. "People die out here less than a hundred yards from their own front doors. Silence descended on the room, broken only by the crackle of the wood and the chattering of Jax's teeth.
The kid was in a bad way. His shivering was violent, uncontrollable. Martha watched him with a critical eye. She knew cold. She knew what it did to the human body.
"He's going into shock," Martha stated. Buck looked over at Jax, a flicker of genuine concern breaking through his stoic mask. Yeah, he's freezing from the inside out. Martha sighed, a heavy, bone-deep sigh. She was tired.
She wanted to be asleep. She did not want to be running triage for an outlaw motorcycle gang. But she was a pragmatic woman. If the kid died in her living room, she'd have a corpse to deal with. and she hated messes. She stood up, grabbed the shotgun, and walked down the short hall to the linen closet.
She pulled out three thick handmade quilts. When she returned, she threw one at Buck and one at Reno. She took the thickest one, a heavy patchwork quilt Arthur's mother had made, and walked over to Jax's. She didn't ask permission. She draped the quilt over his shoulders, pulling it tight around his neck.
"Take your wet shirt off, boy," she ordered. Jax looked up, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He fumbled with his frozen fingers at his shirt buttons, but couldn't grip them. Martha clicked her tongue in annoyance. She knelt beside him, brushing his clumsy hands away and unbuttoned the soaked flannel herself.
She pulled it off, revealing a torso covered in crude, dark ink, a spiderweb on his elbow, a skull on his chest. She ignored the tattoos. She grabbed a clean, dry towel from the pile she'd brought out and began vigorously rubbing his arms and chest, creating friction to generate heat on his freezing skin. Buck watched her closely. "You don't scare easy, do you, lady?"
Martha didn't look up from her work. I survived a husband who drank too much, a bank that tried to take my farm twice, and 30 years of Dakota winters. "Three wet rats in leather jackets aren't going to give me a heart attack," Reno chuckled. It was a genuine sound this time. ""Damn, the old bird's got teeth." Watch your mouth."
Buck snapped at Reno, his voice low, but carrying a heavy threat. He turned back to Martha. "We appreciate it. Seriously." The coffee percolator began to bubble and hiss, the rich, bitter smell filling the small room, masking the scent of the road.
Martha finished drying Jax's off, wrapped the quilt tightly around him again, and stood up. Her knees popped loudly in the quiet room. She retrieved four heavy ceramic mugs from the kitchen. She poured the pitch black coffee, handing a mug to Buck, then Reno. She held the third out to Jax.
The kid's hands were shaking too badly to take it. Without a word, Buck shifted closer, taking the mug from Martha. He held it up to Jax's lips, supporting the kid's head with his other massive, scarred hand, while Jax took a slow, painful sip. Martha watched the interaction. The tenderness of it was jarring.
These were men who traded in violence, who projected fear as a currency. Yet here was the leader, a mountain of muscle and scars, gently feeding coffee to a freezing junior member. It was a crack in the armor, a flash of something intensely human beneath the terrifying exterior. Martha took her own mug and sat back in her rocking chair, the shotgun returning to her lap. "Drink up," she said softly.
"It's going to be a long night." The storm raged outside, throwing itself against the farmhouse in a frenzy of white noise. Inside the fire popped. Four unlikely occupants sat in a tense, fragile truce, bound together by nothing more than the wood stove and the desperate human need to survive the cold. Martha didn't sleep.
She sat in the dark, watching the rising and falling of their chests as exhaustion finally overtook them. Buck slept sitting up, his back against the wall, one eye seemingly always half open. Reno snored loudly on the rug. Jax had stopped shivering, his breathing evening out under the heavy quilt, as the hours crawled by, the intense fear Martha had felt at the door began to recede, replaced by a strange, cynical curiosity. Who were these men when they weren't wearing the leather?
What possessed a person to ride into a storm that the weather service had been warning about for 3 days? She sipped her cold coffee. The wind screamed again, rattling the window panes. Martha patted the wooden stock of the Remington. Tomorrow morning the snow would stop.
Tomorrow morning they would have to leave. And Martha assumed, with the cynical certainty of a woman who had seen the worst of the world, that when daylight broke, the illusion of this fragile piece would shatter. She had no idea how wrong she was. The quiet woke her. The mechanical shrieking of the wind had finally died, leaving behind a heavy, absolute silence pressing against the farmhouse.
Pale morning light bled through frosted window panes, casting long, warped shadows across the floral rug. Martha blinked, her neck screamed from sleeping upright in the wooden rocker. The Remington was still heavy across her lap, her knuckles pale from gripping the stock. The fire was down to glowing, pulsing embers. The three men were already awake.
Buck stood by the front window, staring out at the ocean of white. Reno was quietly folding the thick quilts. Jax looked pale, his lips chapped, but the terrifying translucent blue color was gone from his skin. He was breathing steadily. Martha gripped the shotgun's trigger guard.
This was the pivot point. The storm was over. The desperate truce of necessity had expired. Now came the harsh reality of three outlaws trapped in a vulnerable widow's house miles from anywhere. "Coffee's gone," Martha croaked, her voice dry as dust.
Buck turned. He didn't look menacing in the soft light. He just looked depleted, like a man who had lived too hard for too long. ""We drank it. Kept the kid warm from the inside." Snow stopped," she noted.
"Yeah." Buck rubbed his jaw, his thick beard rasping against calloused skin. Sun's trying to come out. Roads buried, but we can dig the bikes out. Get moving before the ice sets hard.
He didn't move toward her. He didn't eye the silver tea set on the hutch. He simply looked at Reno and nodded. "Boots," Buck commanded. They pulled on their stiff engineer boots and heavy leather cuts.
The winged death's heads were stark, violent, and aggressive against the quaint backdrop of Martha's living room. "Where's your shovel?" Buck asked, his voice a low gravel pit. Martha frowned, her grip tightening on the gun. ""Mudroom. Next to the deep freeze.
Why?"" Buck didn't answer. He walked into the mudroom, followed by Reno and Jax. The heavy oak door opened, letting in a blast of freezing sharp air, then clicked shut behind them. Martha stood up, her arthritic knees popping loudly. She moved slowly to the window, wiping a circle of frost away with her sleeve.