The Psycho (The Soldiers of Anarchy 1)

Chapter One

Adam

“Tick tock, Harvey. I’m waiting.” I tapped my watch and took a step closer to where he stood, balancing on the edge of the roof of Brinton Manor’s derelict community centre. His feet shuffled against the rubble and crumbling brickwork as he tried to gain a more secure footing on the ledge.

We could have dealt with this dirty peado scum anywhere, but it seemed fitting to bring him here tonight. It was a place that was supposed to encompass the spirit of our community. A service built for the people of Brinton, and in its current state, it stank of piss, shit, and was littered with used needles and other filthy crap. A bitter irony of a broken promise if ever there was one.

Community?

We made our own.

We never had anything handed to us on a plate. We learnt from an early age that if you wanted something, you had to take it, and right now, I wanted to take this motherfucker to hell. Break him into a million pieces on the ground below us, but not before he’d told us what we wanted to know.

Where were the others that’d helped him carry out his sick acts?

Who else did we need to take out?

Harvey’s time had come to an end. He’d lived on borrowed time for long enough. But we knew there were others out there, and we’d never stop until we’d washed the streets of Brinton free from their filth.

“I’m losing my patience, Harvey.” I cocked my head to the side and glared at him, hoping he could feel the sharpness of my stare penetrate through his eyeballs, spear into his brain, and yank what he knew out onto the floor to bleed at his feet. The fact that we all wore our signature balaclavas added to the overall effect. This was his own personal horror movie, playing out right in the heart of where he’d carried out his atrocities. Brinton Manor.

“I want names and addresses. You can tell me and make this easy on yourself, or… I’ll get Devon here to work his magic and get you to squeal another way.” I leant forward to whisper in his ear, turning my nose up at the stench of stale body odour and greasy, unwashed hair that blew my way as I got closer to him. “They don’t call him the reaper for nothing. In fact, I call him the artist, because every kill he makes is a fucking masterpiece.” I leant back and sniffed in disgust. “And from the smell of you, you need putting down like the filthy animal you are.”

Grimacing, I took a step away from him to get some much-needed air into my lungs, repulsed at the thought of going near him again. But I enjoyed watching his reaction, revelling in the pain of his response. He knew he’d reached the end of his life of lies, but it never ceased to amaze me how men like him would cling onto their vile secrets until the very end. Men like him had no shame. In fact, he was no man. He was pure fucking vermin.

Harvey, the dirty nonce, sucked his breath in through his teeth and clenched his eyes shut. I guessed the involuntary shiver he gave had nothing to do with the biting cold wind whipping around us. No, that was triggered by the fact that he knew this was his day of reckoning. His time was up, and he was dreading what lay ahead for him in the afterlife. A coward to the end, that was Harvey. Even hell would be too good for this piece of shit.

His hands were tied behind his back, but he’d stopped struggling and trying to free himself. The dim light from the nearby streetlamps bathed us all in an orange glow, like a solemn backdrop to the events taking place on this rooftop. The buzz we could hear from the town below reminded us why we were here.

This was our town.

We kept it clean.

And he was filth that didn’t belong. Filth that needed taking care of.

For tonight, we were his judge, his jury, and his mother fucking executioners.

I had two of my fellow soldiers holding him up, keeping him steady on the ledge as I read him his rights.

His right to tell us whatever the fuck we wanted to know–where were the other sickos hiding out in this town?

His right to take a beating for being the lowest piece of peado scum to walk into Brinton.

And his right to meet a painful death after what he’d done to countless others out there. Others who had no voice, no power to fight back. Not like we did.

Poetic justice some might say. Only, our form of poetry wasn’t written, it was performed.

Gripping his left arm and grinning like he couldn’t wait for the grand finale stood Colton King, our very own fucked-up joker. He would take anyone out with a smile on his face. He’d cut your throat while laughing like it was nothing. And right now, he was chuckling to himself like a maniac as he glared at Harvey, no doubt picturing what was coming next. He loved the game. He lived for it. In our game of consequences, the part he enjoyed the most was the chase. For me, it was the fear in their eyes. That, and the fact that we controlled everything, even down to when they took their last breath.

“I’m so over this. It’s fucking pointless,” moaned Will, who had Harvey’s right arm in a death-like grip, not because he was holding him steady, but because he was bracing himself to lift this motherfucker and send him straight to hell. Will Stokes was a player, but the games he favoured were a whole different ball game. He liked the kudos that came from running in our gang, but he revelled in the additional perks more. He was a fuck boy and proud of it.

Standing either side of me were Devon–our very own reaper–and Tyler, who’d probably already emptied the guy’s pockets, along with his life savings in the time it took for the rest of us to blink. We were all so different, and yet, we just seemed to fit. We all had our roles and we played them perfectly. An army of vigilantes that worked as a unit, lived and would probably die standing shoulder to shoulder.

So, what was my role?

I was the one with no moral compass.

I had no fucks left to give.

I didn’t have a conscience and that made my job easy, because when decisions needed to be made, and shit needed to be done, I did it, no questions asked. I was the fixer, the hammer that’d put the final nail in your coffin without a second thought.

Which brought us to where we were now, holding Harvey–the hopeless piece of shit–over the edge of the building after giving him the beating of his life. He still hadn’t given us the names of the other sick freaks though, the ones that could’ve colluded with him. We knew he was lying when he protested his innocence. We could smell bullshit a mile off, and right now, we were sick to our stomachs of smelling it on him. Not to mention, his mobile phone held all the evidence we needed to know that he was a worthless sack of shit. He’d hurt kids. Robbed them of their childhood. He didn’t deserve a voice and he definitely didn’t deserve to live.

“This is your last fucking chance, Harvey. Tell us who else we need to pay a visit to, and this will all be over. Speak. Now.” I tried to negotiate with some degree of conviction, but I could tell this was a pointless endeavour. Harvey had reached the point of no return. He wasn’t going to give us what we wanted, and this was becoming a waste of our time. We needed to wrap things up.

Right on cue, Colton shook his arm and glared at the side of his face as he whisper-yelled in his ear, “We can do this the hard way or… Fuck it. What am I talking about? We only do things the hard way. Looks like today is your lucky day… punk.”

But Harvey shook his head frantically, still acting like a clueless fuck, and not doing a very good job of it either.

“I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t have any names. I already told you.” The way he kept shaking his head made him look like a pathetic fish, flapping about on the deck of a boat, thrashing as it took its final breath.

He looked at each one of us in turn with pitiful wide eyes that did nothing to cool our thirst for vengeance. Then, he settled his cowardly stare on me, taking a deep, shaky breath to prepare himself for what was about to happen. For a spilt second, something flickered in his eyes, and I could tell he still harboured some foolish hope that something, or someone, might save him at the eleventh hour. He really was a brainless sick excuse for a human being.

Did he think we’d let him go?

That we were useless punks?

This wasn’t our first rodeo; we did this for sport. We were damn good at it too. It was what we lived for. It was our calling.

The ripples of irritation grew stronger as they drifted through my body, and I felt something snap in my head. I was done with this. I didn’t usually give our victims this many chances, and this guy was playing on my last nerve. I’d given him every opportunity possible, and that pissed me off. I never showed weakness or leniency. That wasn’t what I was programmed to do. The time for talking was over. Now, it was show-time.

“You really don’t help yourself, do you, mate?” Colton laughed as he looked at me and then back at Harvey. He knew if they didn’t take him out now, I was about to launch myself on him and rip him apart with my bare hands. Colton smirked with a devilish grin, and then he looked back over at me as I nodded to give them both the green light.

Do your worst, lads.

Instantly, Colton and Will kicked into gear, dragging him further over the edge as he started kicking and screaming, doing anything he could to halt his impending doom. Harvey’s eyes bugged out of his head, and he pleaded for his life, offering us money, favours, begging for us to stop and listen. But we’d had enough of his stalling tactics. It was time for action.

I took a step forward and ripped my balaclava off. I wanted him to know exactly who it was that was sending him straight to the gates of hell. Then, I folded my arms over my chest, smiled and stared straight at him as they lifted him into the air and threw him off the building. Those few seconds, watching him fly through the air to the ground, was poetry in motion, literally. He didn’t scream for long, and the impact of him landing impaled on the wrought iron fence below was the ultimate reward for our first job of the night.

The others took their balaclavas off, and I turned to see the smug smile on Devon’s face. He’d got the artistic ending that he’d wanted. Harvey-the-fucker’s guts were pouring out of his body like he was a piece of performance street art. Devon, the reaper, could add this as another triumph in his book of macabre fairy tales. The perfect happy ending, Devon-style.

We all stood at the edge of the roof, peering over at the filthy piece of crap lying below. His ending was fitting for a waste of oxygen like him. He looked like roadkill that needed scraping off the floor and feeding to the pigs.

“I wonder if his life flashed before his eyes as he went down?” Colton mused, raising his eyebrows at us and then giving us a sadistic grin as sick thoughts raced through his mind.

“I hope so. He lived a shitty life, and he deserves to go straight to hell with that imprinted on his brain,” Tyler spat back, fishing the guy’s wallet out of his own pocket and thumbing through it, taking the cash out and throwing the rest down onto his corpse.

I couldn’t agree more. Live in shit and die in shit. He’d got what was coming to him.

Colton shrugged and nodded over to Will. “Ready to work off some of that adrenaline?” He smirked and rubbed his hands together, falling easily into the joker side of his persona. The kill switch that he had in his head had become easier to activate. Psycho to sociable in less than a second. Colton had that down to a tee.

“Do you even need to ask?” Will puffed his chest out and straightened his shirt, as if righting himself after a hard day’s work. “I’m fired up and ready to rock some lucky girl’s world.”

“Girl or girls?” Colton waggled his eyebrows, but he knew as well as the rest of us that anything was possible where Will was concerned.

“Whatever happens, happens.” Will shrugged nonchalantly. “You know me. I’m not fussy.” Then he turned to smirk in my direction. “Not like this one.”

I didn’t react. My face gave nothing away and I wasn’t in the mood to get into another debate about the fact that I was more particular than they were when it came to where I stuck my dick. I didn’t see the appeal in the nameless, faceless pussy they drowned in every week. I had standards, a code that I lived by in all aspects of my life. I answered to no one. Lucky for them, they didn’t push it. They knew better than to goad me into a reaction. They’d tried it once… It never happened again.

“Remember, tonight isn’t all about you getting your dicks wet,” I announced drily, trying and failing to hold in my irritation. “We still have other business to take care of.”

They might be buzzing to party after what we’d just done, but I couldn’t. We had a few more debts to settle before we could call it a night, and I had to stay focused. I had to be the leader they needed me to be.

“Just think,” Tyler added, as he sauntered past me towards the stairs that’d lead us out of here. “When we get our own club, we won’t have to chase the pussy, the pussy will come to us.”

If all the decisions were left to Tyler, we’d never get anything done. The guy thought with his dick, and like Will and Colton, he’d seen more action than an Avengers movie. Lucky for us, I had a lot more restraint in that respect. Someone had to take the reins.

“I don’t chase pussy.” Colton winked in response and then rolled his eyes. “It always comes crawling right to me.” He slapped my back as he strode past me and followed Tyler down the stairs. “Stick with me tonight, Ty. I’ll hook you up,” he called after him, cackling with laughter.

Tyler grumbled something about not needing his help and marched on ahead. I followed, leaving them to their dick measuring bullshit, and pulled my mobile out of my jeans. I fired off a message to our clean-up guy, Gaz, letting him know he needed to drop by the community centre and sort out the mess from the railings. Gaz and his team liked to think they were soldiers, but they needed to prove their worth, and doing our clean-up was one of those ways. A message came back instantly to let me know he was on his way, and it would be sorted. He knew better than to keep me hanging.

I pocketed my phone and kept my head held high, following the others as they laughed and joked about. They all seemed to find it easy to shut down from a kill and switch over to being themselves again, but I didn’t. I found it worked better for me to shut myself off from reality all together. Because the kill switch that I had in my head only went from psycho to simmering. There was no off switch.

I doubted there ever would be.