Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(6)

Eventually, Signal Bend got its own station, and it thrived as a community through the middle part of the 20th century. Never having developed any other kind of industry but farming and the railroad, and the commerce to support it, Signal Bend began to starve slowly as interstates and corporate farms became the way. By the 1990s, the railroad had been abandoned and suburbs of St. Louis finally had started to bump up against the farmland surrounding the town. A Walmart went up less than 30 miles away, drawing dollars from the locally-owned shops. Things in Signal Bend were getting dire. The most recent recession dealt the death blow, though the dying was slow. The only people who stayed around now were the ones whose families had been here for generations and knew nothing else. Not even many of them were left.

About half the family farms were still operational and still hanging on. The rest of the farmland was lying fallow or was being run by corporations, and many of the people working them commuted to work from other towns. These days, the most lucrative “commerce” in Signal Bend was crystal meth. As the Night Horde well knew.

A town like this, in the straits it was in, there wasn’t much to do at night. Everything but No Place was closed by 9pm. No movie theater or video store anymore; nearest ones were 25 miles away, in the same strip center as the Walmart. No cable TV or internet, unless you ran a dish, which not many could afford.

Three things: drink, fight, f*ck. All three happened just about nightly, and usually in that order, at No Place.

On Saturdays, when Tuck, owner of the bar and Rose’s old man, brought in live music, you could add dancing to the list.

It wasn’t Saturday tonight, though. The drinking had been going on for a few hours. Now it was time for the fighting.

Usually these fights were little more than good natured scrapes, a lively but friendly disagreement turning physical. People cleared the furniture out of the way and tried to do minimal lasting damage to body or property. This one had a sharper vibe, though, Isaac noticed right away, when a flying bottle nearly missed his head. Jimmy and Don were really fighting, and that had changed the attitude of the whole bar.

Isaac spared a quick second to wonder what the f*ck was up and then busted Ed Foss’s nose for throwing a goddamn bottle at his goddamn head.

His brothers had noticed the difference in the scene as well, and most of them were going in hot. Isaac saw Dan, though, pulling two women out of the midst and sending them behind the bar. Leave it to Dan to remember his chivalry. As Isaac watched, amused, he took a punch to the lower back and turned to find Meg Sullivan glaring up at him, arm cocked for another go. He backhanded her and put her on the floor.

His chivalry wasn’t dead, but if a bitch was throwing sucker punches, she got what she got.

Aside from ducking flying bottles and putting thug bitches in their place, Isaac’s primary interest here was in minimizing the damage to the bar. Tuck paid the Horde to keep some semblance of order, so they were on the hook for damage done in these regular melees. Usually that wasn’t a problem. Tonight it was.

So he stayed out of the fray as best he could and surveyed, looking for the flashpoint—which was not, surprisingly, Jimmy and Don, who weren’t fighting each other anymore. Showdown had Don on the floor, but Jimmy was engaged with Will Keller, and they were going at it with murder on their minds.

What the f*ck was going on?

Then Jimmy got over on Will and put him against the wall, and Isaac caught a glint of metal in Jimmy’s right hand. Goddamn son of a bitch f*ck. Nothing worse than a twitchy * with a blade. No. Not gonna happen. There were at least three brawling bodies between Isaac and Jimmy, but Isaac plowed through them and grabbed hold of Jimmy’s plaid shirt, yanking him back.

Not before his knife had found a home, though. Will went down quietly, sliding to sit on the floor against the wall, holding his side. Jimmy flailed with the switchblade still in his hand, now going for Isaac, but Isaac grabbed his wrist and broke it with one hard snap, and the blade fell from Jimmy’s suddenly useless fingers to the floor, embedding in the rough wood.

Isaac was proud to be a man who kept his cool in a brawl, but now he was filled with a heady fury. He put Jimmy on the floor, his knee on the wrist he’d just broken, and laid in with abandon, pulping the murderous *’s face.

A shot rang out, and the room went quiet. His knee still on Jimmy’s wrist, and one hand around his throat, the other cocked back, Isaac turned toward the sound. Meg was behind the bar, with the new girl, whom Isaac was beginning to think of automatically as “Sport,” in a chokehold, a little snub-nosed .22 at her temple. Sport’s hands were on Meg’s forearm.

“Back off him, Ike, or your new little friend gets a piercing.” Meg grinned like she was proud of her turn of phrase.

The force of the chill he felt surprised him. Without breaking eye contact with Meg, Isaac released Jimmy’s throat and started to back off, lifting up from his knees. He’d come up maybe two inches, when Meg was sailing over Sport’s shoulder and landing on her back on the bar. Isaac watched as Sport came in from the side with a hard punch to Meg’s throat, leaving a visible gash where her big ring connected. Meg immediately began to choke desperately. And then Sport had the gun and was emptying the cylinder. She looked over at him and waved the now empty gun, in a carry on gesture.

Grinning, Isaac came to his feet, bringing Jimmy with him. “You and me, Jimmy—and your lovely missus—we’ll be havin’ a talk.” He looked over at Show, who already had his burner open. Dan had taken Meg over from Isaac’s very interesting new friend. Len, and now Rose, were tending to Will, who didn’t look too bad off, thankfully. “Havoc’ll be around with the van any minute. Comin’ armed into Tuck’s place —very bad idea, my man. Regrettable.”