Fiend is My Hero: Small Town Biker Rom

Crash Site

I have no idea if it took seconds or minutes to get back to the downed biker. For a terrifying minute I couldn’t find any sign and wondered if I had somehow passed him on my mad dash back. I even hoped that I had imagined the whole thing.

If I couldn’t find him, that meant I hadn’t just witnessed an attempted murder, right? That almost meant I hadn’t been in danger of being wiped out as a potential witness. That there wasn’t some guy bleeding out or already dead while I struggled to control my breathing and scanned the side of the road frantically, with no system or coordination as the seconds ticked by like sand in an hourglass. Slow, final. It felt like every moment I couldn’t hold myself together was another moment a life was in danger. There was no way my imagination was that good.

Finally, I found it. A mound of metal a few feet off the road, with a small tendril of smoke coming off the engine. I barely stopped the car before slinging it into park and throwing myself out of the door. Some part of me felt I was too late. Nothing I could do would help. I had taken one CPR lecture so long ago it didn’t count, but I don’t think they went over any combination of a motorcycle crash with being shot. I feel like that would have been covered if it were more common. Or maybe it was, but I zoned out because I thought, like a normal person, I would never have to deal with that particular situation. Now it didn’t seem so ridiculous.

Not far from the bike lay the man I had been erratically looking for. He was faced down in the dirt with his arms outstretched above his head, like he had tried to start crawling but given up. From the shallow buildup of thick, dark liquid forming close to his head, my immediate thought was he had already lost too much blood to be crawling anywhere.

His face shot up when he heard me, though he had to crane his neck to see. His expression moved quickly between guarded anger, to confusion before landing on relief as he seemed to recognize me.

“You,” he breathed as I slid into a kneeling position at his shoulder.

“OK, OK, you’re OK,” I barely registered his relief at all as I got my first look at what could only be described as a blown apart shoulder. Hollywood had nothing on the pure gore of weakly spurting blood right next to bone that no person should ever have to see. I’d seen skeletons, but I’d never seen one that had its shoulder smashed by what must have felt like a sledgehammer so that it looked so mangled and not at all where his shoulder should have been.

“Sure, sure Kid. Just to be sure, though, could you grab the first aid kit from my bike? Might help to reinforce that.” Any other time the thought might have landed that anyone who could joke after getting shot was way too used to getting shot. Fortunately, I was too busy scrabbling through the dirt to be snarky.

It didn’t take long to find. Thankfully, the side he’d stored the kit on was on the right side up after the crash. Being the only thing in there also helped narrow down what I was looking for. Rushing back to him and tearing it open, spilled several wraps, band-aids and other items all over him.

He had spent the time flipping himself over, showing another side of the horror show that was now his shoulder. His breathing was deep and harsh, like he had to keep reminding himself to do it while his eyes switched between weakly closing, tracking my movements, and keeping an eye on the road behind us.

Grabbing a big gauze pad, I pushed it into his outstretched hands and guided it toward where it looked like the worst of the spurting blood was. He flinched and groaned a bit, but appeared to be staying fairly conscious. With a moment to think, I finally realized that I should be calling for help.

Somehow my phone magically appeared in my hand. It took two swipes to start opening the emergency call, but I was stopped by a bloody hand weakly reaching out.

“No EMS. Call Fiend. He’s faster.” He rattled off a number and a voice answered on the second ring.

“How’d you get this number?” A deep voice spoke clearly and with no trace of the humor the man in front of me seemed to have at every step.

“A guy on a bike—a m-motorcycle. He got shot.” I’m not sure any of it was intelligible. I don’t think even trained EMS could understand anything other than that I needed help and there was blood.

“Keep pressure on it, keep him awake. I’ll be there soon.” That was all before the screen showed that he’d hung up.

“Not much for words, but he lives up to them,” the man currently struggling to breathe said.

“He didn’t even ask directions,” I say, getting ready to call him back but being stopped again.

“My phone has tracking. He’ll find us, no problem.

“He better,” I mutter, eying the wound but putting on my best brave face, while also thanking the tech jobs for their Find My Friends abilities. I took another of the large pads and did my best to spread it out as much as possible around his shoulder. Under his watchful gaze, I tore a bunch of sticky bandages and wrapped and taped it all together.

Meanwhile, I asked what I hoped would be relevant questions. Anything broken, anywhere else hurt? Does this…Fiend…know blood type and medications a doctor would need.

“He’ll take me to the doc that knows everything. Whole compound is probably on the ready right now.” He chuckled darkly before wincing again.

“Compound?” I cast a skeptical glance over his biker outfit, then back at his bike. “Does the military have a new rock department I didn’t know about?”

That got a full belly laugh that turned into a pained cough that eventually quieted into deep groans. Meanwhile, there was nothing else I could do. There was nothing in the kit to manage pain, and one thing I did remember was not to move cyclists after a crash. I would assume the same would go after being shot. Common sense told me I didn’t want to talk about who were those guys who shot him.

“No, though some of us have served. Hell, if the military could keep that many guys wrangled at the same time, we’d have taken over the world a long time ago.” He went on to explain he was in a biker gang. His name was Bomber, but he wouldn’t get into how he got it.

He talked very casually about his club, like they were just a group of guys, which I found it hard to believe there was anything casual if he was the victim of a targeted attack.

What worried me more was how hard it was getting to keep Bomber awake. His words got slower, his eyes started drooping, and there was no denying there was a weird paler to his skin. Just as tears were starting to form in my eyes at the thought that he couldn’t hold on anymore, the unmissable roar of engines became recognizable.

I thought about standing up so they didn’t have to think about missing this spot the way I thought I had. Then I realized that it would be stupid if it was the shooters coming back. Just as I decided I would have to risk it, the shooters wouldn’t have waited this long to come back, Bomber pushed a heavy metal gun into my hand.

“Safety’s off. If you see a red demon on their helm, don’t ask questions, just shoot. If it’s a walking talking storm cloud, that’s Fiend.”

Recipe for disaster, but for the first time in my life I was glad for a gun. I’d shot before but it had been years. Still, the heavy weight felt good, and the look of the massive man that slid to a stop at the very edge of the road and almost launched himself off his bike was perfect.

It took a second to realize there was no red demon on his helm, since he didn’t wear one. It took less than one to realize he really did look like a walking, talking storm.

And I wasn’t ready.