Chapter Twenty

Hep, Scroat, Robert Wheeler and Brother Stuart stopped to eat near Rapid City, South Dakota. The restaurant was called Harold’s Burgers and Beer. There were probably twenty motorcycles parked out front. Inside, the place had cheap tables, cheap chairs and cheap staff, but a good selection of beers, and the burgers the other patrons were eating looked fantastic.

They ordered, and tried to make awkward conversation while they waited for their food.

“So, uh, did they treat you reasonably well while they had you locked up?” Hep asked.

“Yeah, they weren’t too bad. It seemed like they didn’t really have a plan or know what they were doing,” Robert said.

“That’s good, I guess,” Hep said.

Scroat sat and stared at the table. After a few minutes of complete silence, Hep excused himself to the restroom, leaving Robert and Brother Stuart with Scroat.

“So,” Scroat said to Robert, “what are you up to, anyway?”

“I beg your pardon?” Robert said.

“You keep showing up at the most unlikely times. What are you up to? What do you want from us?” Scroat said. He leaned forward and stared at Robert. Brother Stuart looked confused and very uncomfortable.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Every time I’ve run in to you guys has been a complete coincidence,” Robert said.

“Well, that’s a pretty good story, but I don’t fucking believe you,” Scroat said. “I think you’re trying to pull something, some kind of con.”

“I’m not.” Robert said.

“I’m not either,” Brother Stuart said.

“Did I ask you?” Scroat said to Brother Stuart. To Robert, he said, “I still don’t believe you. How is it that you keep popping into our lives if you aren’t doing it on purpose?”

“I told you, it’s a weird coincidence. Back off, will you?” Robert said.

“Don’t get testy with me, dickhead. How is it that an ‘information broker’ as you call yourself, gets around so much. Shouldn’t you be in a library somewhere, researching things?” Scroat said.

“Yes, that’s exactly where I should be. Like I told you, it’s a coincidence. I got shanghaied, apparently, and then I was kidnapped by a bunch of bored farm kids. Which, by the way, totally sucked both times. The fact that I’ve kept bumping into you guys is just chance.”

“What the fuck ever, buddy, I...” Scroat began, but fell silent when Hep returned.

“Hey, did I miss anything?” Hep asked. Then he looked at the three of them. Brother Stuart looked like he desperately wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, else. Robert looked frustrated and a touch angry. Scroat, meanwhile, looked like he was about ready to burst from anger.

“I guess I did,” Hep said. “Care to enlighten me?”

“Scroat here thinks I’m following you for nefarious reasons, and setting up situations where we’ll encounter one another,” Robert said.

“Scroat, he’s not up to anything,” Hep said. “You really need to lose the paranoia.”

“Whatever. He’s up to something, it’s just a matter of time until we find out what,” Scroat said.

The waitress brought their burgers then, so the conversation ended.

“About how much longer of a drive is it from here to the monastery?” Brother Stuart said.

Hep said, “Eight hours, though it’ll be more like seven the way we drive.”

“Great,” Brother Stuart said. He seemed less than enthusiastic about another eight hours in a van with all the tension between Scroat and Robert.

Outside they heard several vehicles with loud exhaust pull up and park. They sounded too big to be motorcycles, so Hep and Scroat didn’t bother to look and see what they were on. Hep was about to try making some more conversation when he noticed that Brother Stuart suddenly looked freaked out. He was looking at the entrance to the restaurant, so Hep turned to look.

Looking through the restaurant, presumably trying to find them, were the kids they’d just encountered at the Society of the Seven Seals’s barn. Along with twenty or so of their meanest-looking friends.

“Well that’s probably not good,” Hep said.

“What’s not good?” Scroat asked. Hep pointed. The gang had spotted them, and were coming over to their table now.

“Please tell me you guys are armed,” Robert said.

“Nope,” Hep said.

Their table was surrounded by the Society members.

“Hey fellas, what’s happening?” Hep said in a cheerful voice. “Have you tried the burgers here? They’re amazing!”

One of the kids, presumably the leader of the group, said, “We were thinking about it, and we realized we really couldn’t just let you have these two back. So I think we’re going to take all four of you back to our compound and let you chill for a while. Now, do you want to do this the easy way, or the hard way?”

“Do people actually say that?” Scroat said to Hep. “I thought it was just an overused line in Hollywood.”

“Go easy on them, these are simple, salt of the earth folks,” Hep said. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to go the easy way.”

Brother Stuart’s eyes looked as though they were going to pop out of his head and make a break for it. Robert also seemed a bit worried about their predicament.

Hep and Scroat, however, were not intimidated by a group of youths wearing black t-shirts and too much Old Spice.

Several of the Society members grinned, and they reached to grab the four of them.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Hep said. He swung a fist up from under the table and connected solidly with the underside of the closest kid’s jaw. The kid fell over backwards into a couple of the other Society members. The entire group’s eyes went wide.

“What are you so surprised about?” Hep asked.

The group surged forward. Scroat and Hep grinned, and stood up. The Society of the Seven Seals didn’t stand a chance.

Almost at the same time, Hep and Scroat threw punches at the closest Society members. Things devolved into chaos very quickly.

One of the bikers saw the fight start, and yelled, “Brawl!” He and the twenty or so other bikers got up from their tables and went to get in on the action.

One of them tapped a Society member on the back. When he turned around, the biker said, “We don’t like people coming in to our favorite place and starting fights.”

“Fuck off,” the society member said. That was, as you might suspect, the wrong answer. It’s hard to say who swung first after this, but either way there was suddenly a forty man brawl in progress in Harold’s Burgers and Beer.

The Society of the Seven Seals were now fighting Hep and Scroat on one side, and twenty enthusiastic bikers on the other side. It would be fair to say they were caught between the hammer and the anvil.

Scroat grabbed one of them and said, “this is for making me have to deal with that fucking Robert guy again,” and cold-cocked him.

Brother Stuart and Robert Wheeler had absolutely no idea what to do. There was no where to run, as they were surrounded by fighting men on all sides. On the upside, any time it looked like someone was about to direct some hostility towards either of them, Hep or Scroat would, apparently without even breaking pace, intervene and make the aggressor very sorry for his mistake.

At one point, one of the smaller Society members, who couldn’t have been more than five foot five and one hundred and twenty pounds, found himself face to face with Hephaistos. He looked up and saw six and a half feet of muscular, ugly and angry blacksmith looking back at him. He wet his pants a little bit.

Hep gave the kid a tight, hard smile, and said “Take a hike.” The kid nodded once, and bolted.

Between the bikers, and Hep and Scroat, the fight was over in a couple of minutes. The Society members who were still conscious dragged their unconscious brethren outside, got into their trucks, and drove like Hell away from there.

“Stupid fucking kids,” Scroat said. “What did they think was going to happen?”

“Probably that we’d just give these two up,” Hep said. He went over to the bikers and told them he owed them all a beer. He turned around to go back and found Brother Stuart and Robert right behind him.

“Hey, guys,” Hep said.

“Uh, sorry. Just thought we’d stick close,” Brother Stuart said.

“No sweat,” Hep said. He took a look at the destruction in the restaurant. It wasn’t as bad as some brawls he’d been in before, but it was definitely going to take a while to clean up.

“We should probably scoot on out of here,” Hep said.

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Robert said.

The four of them went out to the van, and found it had been keyed. There were several deep, ragged scratches running all the way down both sides.

“Well, they sure showed us,” Hep said.

The four of them got into the van, and continued driving West towards Winnett, Montana. It started to get dark outside, and soon Brother Stuart and Robert were sleeping, each of them stretched out across a seat in the van.

“Kind of a weird day, huh?” Hep said to Scroat.

“It’s been kind of a fucked up day every day lately,” Scroat said. “I’m thinking we should drop these guys off, find Inktomi and ask what the hell happened, and then get our asses home to find a trailer or something we can live in until we get the house rebuilt. I could really go for a couple months of routine, if you can dig it.”

“Yeah, I can dig it,” Hep said. The idea of just being at home sounded very good. They could spend a couple of weeks building a new house, relax for a while, and then maybe go on a couple of rides that were just for fun, not running away from someone, or looking for someone else.