Suicide Kings vs Peckerwood schemes

CHAPTER 1

“Run! Run! Run!” The shouts came to my ears mixed with the panic pulsing of my heart. I pumped my legs as hard as possible trying to make it to the barbwire fence where my friends stood.

I was gonna make it, I was fast as fuck and nothing was gonna catch me.

Reality crashed into me in the form of a pissed off 600lb bull. Its massive head plowed over me like a bulldozer flinging me the remaining few feet into the barbwire. A fence post gave out and I came crashing to the ground feeling each barb dig into my flesh. Shit, it felt better than the piece of shit bull that put me through it.

Scrambling to my feet off pure adrenaline, looking over my shoulder, the big angry bitch pawed the ground getting ready to crush my again.

Shouts from TJ and G trying to distract the raging beast to no avail, I limped as fast as I could, the bull lunged forward, I picked up my pace to a brisk limp run turning my head forward.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” was the only thing I could think of. Bam! Bam! Bam! I stopped dead in my tracks knowing what happened without seeing it.

G stood beside the slumped bull, revolver in hand, a look of seriousness on his normally jovial face. “You slow as fuck.” He said to me, then cracked a smile.

We crossed the other field quickly with no other issues, until we hit a dirt road that was rarely traveled.

Mushroom picking normally goes off with minimum issues. Today, not so much. The pain pierced through my dying adrenaline, causing me to wince.

“Brooooo, I never seen someone fly like that!” TJ howled, laughing. “You looked like Rocky the flying squirrel.”

“Felt like I was hit by a damn truck, that big bitch broke my ribs,” I replied.

The pain in my side amplified as G slapped the shit out of the spot the bull made contact with. It was lightning bolts behind the eyelids pain. Yup, something was broken.

G went in his backpack and pulled a few treasures out. Dirty cow shit covered mushrooms, expensive on the street, but we rarely sold them and right now in pain I knew they’d be the best cure.

“Clean the shit off,” TJ said to me and G pulled more from his bag, flicked off a chunk of mud from a cap, or shit, probably shit, and shoveled two large shrooms down his gullet.

I was hurting so bad trying to play cool and I said fuck it and ate mine as well. TJ looking grossed out as G held out a couple for him.

“Give in to the peer pressure, you know you wanna be cool,” I said with short breaths.

“Fuck it, peer pressure wins.” TJ grabbed the caps and forced them down, commenting how gross they were with each chew.

By the time we made it to the abandoned shed where we hid our bikes, I was seeing colorful echoes off everything and I felt only the smallest of aches.

A noise caught my attention. Voices deeper in the woods. We all went silent, eyes darting to each other, I tapped my ear and my friends nodded in affirmation. We found this shed years ago and I knew the half mile radius around it. Never in three years did we hear or cross paths with any other humans.

TJ grabbed a piece of rebar and walked toward the voice before I could react. He got about ten feet before we started following.

We crept through the woods, listening as the voices slowly got louder the closer we got.

Who would be out here?

I flanked right to the side of a stand of trees. TJ left. G center. Belly crawling through the brush, I peeked through to see three rednecks, a couple trucks, and an old house, paint gone and vines crawling on it.

Alarm bells were already going off in my head as I saw another redneck come out of the dilapidated front door. I couldn’t make out what they were saying but they seemed relaxed. Maybe these backwoods boys lived here?

After about ten minutes of watching proved that theory wrong. I watched as they took propane tanks, hoses and milk crated full of shit into the house. I laid there, fascinated at the amount of shit they pulled out of the trucks.

Moonshine? Maybe. It’s a popular hustle here in the South, but if that’s it, where’s the grain and shit?

We backed out the brush and headed back toward the shed, discussing in low tones the possible theories to why they were there.

We pedaled back to town, our suspicions and conspiracy theories getting more wild. By the time we got to the gas station, those rednecks were skinning babies and holding Klan rallies if you believed us.

After going in and grabbing drinks, we sat on the ground at the side of the gas station, tripping out and talking too loud to everyone that walked by. The rednecks faded from memory as I tried to hit on a group of girls, I was so fucking high. I swore I was running mad game on them but all they did was laugh and walk away. We were just wasting time, enjoying life.

G was regaling us with a story of two fat chicks, a crackhead and two pitbulls when an old school cutlass pulled up and rolled down its dark tinted windows. I knew the car and the driver but always happy to see our OG Brother. I stuck my head and arms through the passenger window and shook hands, then reached for his cigarettes.

“Where you been, Slick?” I asked. “We had some business out of town, Fatboy. What’s been going down with ya’ll stupid muthafuckas?”

G pulled me out the window, opened the door, and sat down in the car to start in on the shit we knew that’d happened in town over the past couple of weeks.

Then he got into earlier that day and G and TJ took turns relaying and exaggerating my flight into the barbwire fence and the killing of the bull, but damn, they didn’t wanna stop laughing and reenacting the flight I took. Assholes. More than anything, I brought the rednecks up to redirect the roasting of little ol’ me. It peaked Slick’s interest quickly though, and he started asking us a hundred questions. We answered the best we could but the shrooms had us by the time we saw them and the shack, and we had added some odd ass details Slick had to decipher through.

“Go to G’s house and I’ll swing by in the truck and we’ll go check that shit out,” Slick told us in his carefree, laid back way.

Looking at the smirk on Slick’s face, I already knew he was thinking about how he could fuck those rednecks over and I was down.

I don’t think we were evil people, we were just hungry and trying to always eat. There wasn’t much in this town so we roamed like lions. But unlike lions, we didn’t hurt anyone – unless it was necessary. But who didn’t in this sadistic world?

We made it to G’s house and sat on the front stoop talking shit and waiting. As the afternoon sun started to shift into evening, we heard the loud boom of bass heavy music getting louder. Slick pulled up on the back suburban and we took off toward the hide out spot.

We got to the shed and parked, getting out and Slick looked in and around our hideout then asked what direction the rednecks were. TJ took the lead and after a bit of silent walking, we were back at the patch of thick growth that led to the house.

The shrooms were fading a bit in my system. My aches from earlier started to say hello; as did my paranoia over this situation. I saw the house with no one in sight. The trucks were gone and relief washed away the shit talking voices in my head.

Two sharp low whistles then a third, just like a bird, then Slick popped out into the clearing like an anorexic jack in the box and was strolling toward the house and slowly got my aching body off the ground. I followed behind them to the front door.

Not a lock or shit on the door, it swung open and the three stormed in like frat guys at a party. I say my ass down on the porch and kept watch until G shouted for me.

I lumbered up and into the door, walking through the big empty space of the center of the house. I turned right down a short hallway, opening the door I heard G’s voice come from. I saw the crew inside the room that resembled a chem lab. Not a fancy Harvard lab, mind you. But very much a lab still. But a lab for what?

My first thought was LSD and I got pretty happy thinking we could knock off a ton of sheets. Maybe they were planning to stomp on a shit ton of cocaine? For this crazy setup it’d have to be a crazy amount.

“This is a meth lab,” Slick said, popping out the back room, grinning like a shit-eating dog.

“Meth like in that semi charmed life song?” I asked.

“Kinda. Come here.” Slick responded and went back into the room. The small bedroom had big ass boxes piled almost to the ceiling and a few scattered on the floor.

Pulling something from a box, he threw the object to me. Catching it, I look at the small package. “Sudafed,” I say aloud. “Sinus pills? How’s this meth?”

Taking the meds out of my hand, he slid them in his pocket, and we walked out the house and hit the woods at a good pace without speaking until we were back at the suburban.

As we were leaving our hideout, Slick broke down everything he knew about meth, the variations, and how it’s being pushed.

“These Peckerwoods got muthafuckers going wild on that shit, that’s why you see more cops on the backroads near big farms. Them crazy fuckers go steal this gas from farmers and be blowin shit up tryin to make the shit.” Slick ended his spiel with “But they can make big money.”

Aw, shit. I knew what that meant. He was formulating a plan to get whatever they make and I was giddy, hoping he was gonna cut me in. He didn’t say shit though. We rode back, not speaking, music bumping, watching the trees fade into the townscape. Getting Slick to drop us off at the park, we met the weed man and sat at the picnic table to roll a joint.

“You think they got the shit to make kilos of that shit for real?” G asked us. You could see the wheels spinning in his head.

“Big Bro say they do, so I’m gonna go with his assumption” was the only response I could think of.

TJ had just been sitting there in his usually quiet fashion and I knew without looking that he was thinking similarly. By the third joint, he finally spoke up. “Whatever the shit is, we can make bank, but we gotta get Slick to cut us in.”

Convincing the older guys to cut us in on the big plays was next to impossible, but we knew we had to start getting bigger payouts. That, or we’d have to start searching for our own big scores. That’d bring a lot of conflict to the neighborhood, we all knew where it’d lead, and we barely had three guns and a few magazines. Shit would end pretty badly for us.

“I’ll talk to Big Homie and see what’s good” I said, standing up and heading out the park with a purpose.