The Biker At The Chapel And The Sins Of Blackwood Creek
CHAPTER 5: THE ALTAR OF RETRIBUTION
The smell of burning pine and turpentine hung heavy over the chapel cemetery as black smoke poured from the shattered windows of the parish annex. Toby’s terrified screams cut through the howling storm, his small hands pulling desperately against the heavy zip-ties securing him to the burning portico pillar. The orange glare of the flames danced across the polished mahogany of James Sterling’s casket, still sitting marooned upon the brass bier under the lashing rain.
High on the wooded knoll fifty yards above the church, Richard crouched behind an ancient granite headstone, the Remington shotgun pressed tight against his chest. His heart beat with a fury that felt ancient, raw, and completely unchained.
“There are six shooters on the perimeter,” Richard whispered, his voice trembling with pure adrenaline. “Plus Wilkes and Colter by the steps. If we charge down that open lawn, they’ll cut us down with automatic fire before we reach the gravel.”
Hammer knelt beside him, his scarred face completely calm, his silver hair plastered to his skull by the rain. He pulled a heavy tactical radio from his vest pocket, keyed the microphone twice, and clicked the transmit switch in a steady three-beat rhythm.
“They aren’t looking behind them, Richard,” Hammer said softly, his voice cutting through the wind. “A mountain timber wolf never hunts alone.”
From the dark mountain highway below the chapel, a sound began to build—a low, rhythmic rumble that shook the wet clay beneath their boots. It sounded at first like an approaching mountain avalanche, but within seconds, the distinct, thunderous roar of thirty unmuffled V-twin engines echoed through the narrow hollow. The earth vibrated with the collective horsepower of thirty heavy machines tearing up the blacktop.
A phalanx of thirty motorcycles—the Shadow Riders—burst through the chapel gates in a tight wedge formation, their high-intensity halogen spotlights blinding Colter’s perimeter guards. The roar of the straight-pipe exhausts was deafening, disorienting the tactical shooters as the bikes circled the burning lawn like a mechanical war party, kicking up rooster-tails of mud and gravel.
“Now!” Hammer roared, leaping forward.
Hammer and Richard charged down the wooded knoll. Hammer fired his 12-gauge from the hip, the blast of double-ought buckshot blowing the windshield out of the nearest sheriff’s cruiser with an explosive crash. Sheriff Wilkes dived for cover behind a tire, screaming into his radio for county backup that was never going to arrive.
Richard sprinted straight toward the flaming portico. A private contractor in a tactical vest swung his carbine toward Richard, but a Shadow Rider on a heavy iron chopper slammed his front tire directly into the contractor’s ribs, sending the man flying across the gravel like a rag doll.
Richard reached the burning porch, sliding on his knees through the hot ash and burning shingles. He pulled his pocket knife, slashing through the heavy plastic ties binding Toby’s wrists with one savage upward cut.
“I got you, buddy,” Richard yelled over the roar of the fire, hauling the terrified boy into his arms and rolling off the wooden porch deck into the wet grass just as the flaming roof timbers collapsed with an explosive shower of sparks.
“Behind you!” Toby screamed, pointing toward the chapel steps.
Richard spun around. Vance Colter stood five paces away in the rain, his silver hair wild, his bespoke coat scorched with soot, his face contorted into a mask of homicidal insanity. In his right hand, Colter held a polished, stainless-steel Colt Python .357 Magnum—aimed squarely at Richard’s face.
“You should have stayed in Richmond, you bastard!” Colter snarled, his voice trembling with manic desperation. “You are your father’s son—stubborn, arrogant, and determined to burn everything to the ground!”
Colter pulled the hammer back with a distinct, heavy click.
Hammer threw himself across the gravel between them. The .357 roared with a blinding muzzle flash. The heavy magnum bullet struck Hammer high in the left shoulder, spinning the massive biker backward into the mud.
“Hammer!” Richard screamed.
Before Colter could realign his sights for a second shot, Richard lunged forward with all the speed and rage inside his body. He drove the steel barrel of his shotgun straight into Colter’s throat, knocking the judge backward onto the chapel steps. Colter’s revolver went spinning across the wet stones, clattering down into the darkness of the church basement drain.
Richard pinned the gasping judge to the granite steps with the shotgun muzzle pressed hard beneath Colter’s jaw.
“Look at me, Vance!” Richard roared, his eyes wild with unbridled fury. “Look at my face! I am Richard Cole Cross! My father bled to death in the creek you stole, and James Sterling died to keep me alive! Your dynasty ends tonight!”
Colter choked on his own blood, his hands scrabbling against the cold stone, his arrogant power utterly broken.
From the shattered doorway of the chapel sanctuary, Toby ran out holding an iron key he had salvaged from the burning vestry. “Mr. Richard! The altar! The safe is open!”
Richard dragged Colter to his feet by the collar of his coat, hauling the bleeding politician into the smoke-filled sanctuary. In the center of the nave, beneath the carved oak communion rail, a square iron hatch in the stone floor stood open.
Inside the iron floor safe lay the original leather-bound 1974 geological surveys of Blackwood Creek, Cole Cross’s handwritten mineral patents, and a sealed police evidence bag containing an antique .38 service revolver with three filed notches on the frame—the exact weapon Vance Colter had reported stolen thirty years ago on the night of the sawmill fire.
