I hadn’t carried a dead body before. It didn’t seem like an experience that would grow on me, even though I got to do it twice in rapid succession.
Brock was ahead of the game; he’d brought tarps.
We patted the two Aesir down for anything useful before we tossed them in the trunk. Neither had usable ID; both had Utlangr on their cuts, with local marks identifying the particular branch, I guessed, and some other runic patches that symbolized who knew what. They both had phones and, luckily, one of them was very, very new. We hadn’t shut the trunk yet, so I tugged the right arm of the guy whose throat I’d crushed out of the trunk and stripped his glove off.
I pressed the thumb of the ex-biker to the home button when his phone asked for it to unlock, and unlock it did. Then—still using his hand, which I tried hard not to think about, with Brock holding the phone—I opened the GPS and looked for saved locations.
Then the phone startled us by ringing. I looked at Brock “He’ll know my voice. You gotta answer it. Just sound gruff and deferential.”
“Huh?”
“Lower your voice and say ‘yes, Jarl’ or ‘yes, sir’ every time you’re asked a question.”
I answered the call and held it to Brock, then leaned forward so I could hear it.
“Did Dixon show?” It was Troy’s voice, that was clear even from a distance.
“Yes, sir,” Brock growled. He did a passable growl, I had to admit.
“Peaceably? He hasn’t tried anything?”
“No, sir.”
“Odd. I expected more of him. Bring him to the clubhouse. Make sure he is cuffed.”
“Yes, Jarl.”
“Do this well, Bode, and promotion is likely.” The line went quiet. We waited in absolute stillness until we were sure the call was dead.
“So this asshole’s name was Bode,” Brock muttered, as he tucked the arm back inside the trunk and shut it.
“Not real interested in learning his name,” I muttered. I felt the stirring of butterflies in my stomach, but I was able to quash it without having to look at the bodies. Brock seemed to notice something was wrong.
“You gonna hold it together?”
“Yeah,” I said, with more conviction in my voice than my head.
“First one, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He shrugged. “Look, uh…if you’re planning to club the rest of them to death, I don’t blame you, but…”
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I realize this is gonna come down to a gunfight. I get it. Let’s go.” I’d kept Bode’s phone awake by opening apps, and finally found what had to be the clubhouse in the navigation app, as it was saved as home, was only a few miles away, and had been the most recent starting point, with the desolate farmhouse as the destination.
“Was anybody else in there?” I asked Brock, gesturing towards the house.
“Nah,” he said. “Looks like it’s deserted.”
“Aesir probably owns it. Alright. I’m gonna take their man’s bike, you drive their car. Those’ll be the engines they’re expecting to hear. Here’s what I’m thinking, but speak up if you don’t like it…”