“The Triple X?”
“It’s a strip club, sometimes a sex club, doll. Although they’ll take one look at you and throw your skinny ass out.”
“Gee, thanks. I’m a survivor of COVID-19, asshole!” I call out, raising a finger. I spent six weeks on a ventilator and an IV drip of drugs. There was nothing. I didn’t even dream while in a medically induced coma. I’ve stared down death. This herd of oversized bikers won’t scare me. I’m a survivor. I might look small, weak, and pathetically pale, but I’m alive.
“Well, shit. We need to help.”
The huge giant in front of me puts his hands on his hips and turns to his man. “I decide, Prospect. Not you.”
Only then do my eyes lift to the patch on the giant’s right pec. “Prez.”
Well, shit. Somehow in this upside-down post-apocalyptic world, I found myself standing on the side of a burning road with the Prez of an MC named the Black Scorpions. Maybe I died after all and this plane of existence is some other world? Or maybe, I’m still in that hospital bed in Tampa and the drugs are giving me some crazy dreams?
I pinch myself hard.
“No, you ain’t dreaming sweetheart, but you did just step into a nightmare.”
“I’m done with nightmares. I’m chasing dreams now.”
“Yeah? Do you see rainbows and unicorns and shit anywhere? You came to the wrong damn place looking for happily ever after. Isn’t that place in Orlando?” He points to my Florida plates with the rusted, faded oranges with faded green numbers.
I clench my fists, feeling helpless, something I swore to myself that I’d never feel again.
“Get your shit and let’s go.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me, get your wallet and get on.” He saunters back to his colossal bike and takes an extra helmet out of a small box attached to the back.
“Aren’t you going to at least look under my hood?”
“No, thanks, sugar. I can already tell there’s nothing special there.”
My cheeks burn hotter than the sun. I know the illness stole a lot from me. But insulting my lack of curves and sex appeal at a time like this is a low blow. As if I even wanted a jacked-up asshole like him to find me attractive anyway.
The desert wind picks up speed, swirling up specks of dust. They spin around me like a tornado. I try to hold my breath, but my lungs are still weak. I had asthma before I got the virus. My lungs might never be the same and they were shit before.
The coughing goes on and on. I wheeze terribly, struggling, and blindly open the driver’s door frantically reaching for my inhaler and bottle of steroids. The steroids will help open my lungs, but it’ll take a while to work. The giant devil curses behind me. His large palm pushes me back into the car and then he slams the door. The air inside is stuffy, but clean. I gulp in huge breaths while trying to hold back tears.
I thought I was ready. I left the sick days behind. Despite my doctor’s and family’s pleas—I left my old life behind, needing something new. I craved to live. Really live. Not like before either, when I just went through the motions. My illness changed everything. Hell, it changed the whole world and I was never going back. I’m full steam ahead. A little desert dust won’t stop me, and neither will this MC full of bulky men hiding behind bandanas and bikes.
My eyes smart. Precious air fills me, but I feel defeated. I have hours to go until my destination. Help isn’t coming. I know it. I bite my lip, grab my purse and cell. I open the door and lock it. Saying goodbye to the car is hard. Every possession of mine is in there—every memory of the old world. The sweatshirt from the tourist shop in Boca, my Gran, bought me on our last family trip—my high school yearbook, filled with scribbled hopes of friends that I lost. My favorite paperback books with their faded pages, some are wearing a fingerprint or two from when I would sit with a bowl of Doritos and binge-read long into the night. I wanted a new life, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten my old.
“Here.” The man whose name I didn’t know other than Prez held up a bandana soaked with water and tied it around my face. Before I could protest, he grabbed my hand and tugged me over to his ride. “Hold on tightly, broken butterfly.” He placed a helmet on me and fitted the strap snug under my chin.
“Do you think it’ll be safe?” I nodded over to my Subaru.
“No one messes with what’s ours.”
“Yours?”
He whistled and the Prospect got off his bike holding an aerosol can of something. Before I knew what he was about, he sprayed. I screamed and tried to move, but the giant held me in his arms. A scorpion emerged on the side of my car, painted in black. It was now marked.
“Like I said. No one will touch your shit, or they’ll get bit by the spider.” I still couldn’t see his face. But he removed one of the leather gloves on his hands, revealing a black scorpion tattoo going from the base of his thumb across the back of his hand.
“Ride or die, butterfly.”
I grimace as he got on and motioned for me to straddle the bike behind him. I knew what he meant. I didn’t have much water, a running car, or any cell signal. It was either go with the Scorpions or death out here. I’d beaten death already, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still chasing me.
My hands check the knot securing the bandana around my face. He’s so big. I can’t fit my arms around him. The best I can do is hug the shit out of his back and grip the sides of his hips.
“Damn, tiny thing. You’re gonna fall off. Grip my hips harder, hold on to the side of my jeans and hook that chicken bone arm of yours as tight as you can around my waist.”
“Chicken—what?” You, you ogre! You buffoon!”
“Darlin’ if you’re gonna survive out here, you’re gonna need stronger fighting words than that.”
And then we’re off.
Through the make-shift mask, I inhale the tangy smell of man, leather, and oil. My tiny arms hug him for dear life. We cut through the air and fly. The unforgiving desert sun beats down, but as the miles erase between us and civilization, I realize this is the first moment in years where I feel alive. I get it now—the fascination with motorcycles. You feel like flying. Weightless. Every fear and worry rolls off you and into the wind. It gets carried to the land of ‘giving zero fucks’, and I hope that’s where all mine will stay.
I have no idea how long we’ve been riding, but the sun sinks low in the sky. Finally, a few metal signs appear. Then the mountains are upon us. Huge, brown-black and imposing, it seems as if we’re going to crash right into them, but at the last second, the road bends and we go between them instead. Glittering city lights shine like gemstones in the twilight.
The mountain range hid the city. The pack of bikers pulls off the first exit, zooming through backstreets then enters a dirt lot.
He wasn’t kidding.
The flashing neon pink and blue sign screams “TRIPLE XXX.”
My legs are stiff and feel like jelly. I stumble a bit as I get off the bike, much to the enjoyment of the giant whose body I practically imprinted on during the ride.
I’m about to tell him to fuck off now that I’m safely in civilization when my breath catches. Not by some disease or medical condition either. He removes his handkerchief and sunglasses, revealing the most brutally male face I’ve ever seen.