"Where you going?" The boss man said.

"Got to return the big-rig Donovan. Its lowjacked, so I got to drop it off at my old work or they'll send the sherif after me. My harley is in the back though so i'll drive back and meet you all here in a few."

"Eh, i'm not scared of no pig. . . " came the voice of Bobby the Cutter. Quiet, from just over Max's shoulder. Max let it go, forcing himself to calm despite the tingling that ran up his spine. The man had been so quiet, even when as drunk as had to be.

"Yeah, but might as well return it. I mean, unless one of ya'll need a semi-truck?" The group all laughed, and Max walked out to his truck while the others stayed behind. Donovan waved him off, and Bobby returned to the group of still heavily drinking men.

The sun had just begun to set, the heat of the new mexico day was fadeing as a cool breeze met Max as we walked to his truck. It was the only vehicle in the large dirt parking lot besides the harley's the other gang members rode and the owners oldsmobile which was hidden in a shed around back. Max pulled open the passanger side door, before hauling himself up into the cab. He found what he was looking for on the ground between the seats. It was wrapped in a red dress. Her red dress. The one she had wore at their last anaversery party, the one she knew he had always loved. He gently unfolded the soft silk and satin dress, revealing the long steel object. it had a hooked end on both sides, and its typical use was as a tool. This was the crowbar from her car The one she had left along the side of the road, the one she had asked for help to use in pulling the bent frame off the tire so that she could replace it after hitting a deer.

Before they had taken her. Before she had shown up on their family doorstep the morning after, bloody, brused, bleeding, and with nearly every bone in her body broken. He didn't know if this had been the thing they had used to break her, beat her within an inch of her life. But regardless, he would use it now to exact payment for what had been done.

He turned, crowbar in hand twoards the door. A knife shot out of the dark and bit into the meat of his theigh. Max didn't scream but grunted and brought the nearly four feet of steel rod directly down on Bobby's head. The man didn't have time to scream, he crumpled to the ground as his skull fractured. A smile at the successful stabbing still evident on his rat like face. Max looked around him not finding anything to use as a terniquit and bandage he held the dress in his callosed working hands. "I'm sorry darlin," he whispered to himself in the dark before ripping the dress into a thin long sheet. He pulled the knife out of the fat around his leg, and quickly tied off the bleeding wound with the strip of dress. His scarlet blood didn't even stain it as the fabric aborbed it.

Max pulled himself down from the truck carefully avoiding Bobby's body and limped twoards the dive bar. Rage and determination in his heart. One down, four to go he thought as he pushed the front door to the place open. One of the four remaining bikers was passed out on the bar, his pants were wet and the air smelled of piss. It was Edger, the youngest member of the gang. The boy was a tatoo artist of Max remembered, and was the one who grimiced at the story Donovan had told. Donovan turned, a stupid drunken grin on his face. When he met Max's eyes the grin vanished.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Whoa, whats wrong? You're bleeding max? Did Bobby have a go at you? Is that, is that bobby's brains on . . ." he didn't get to finish the statement as Max brought the crowbar up in a backhanded swing, meeting the brusers jaw line and shattering it. He crumpled to the ground as the bartender shouted in fear and ran into the backroom.

Probably running for the shotgun he keeps back there, Max thought as he reversed the swing and brained one of the two remaining members of the gang. The man fell backwards on top of Edger, teeth flying and blood spraying. The hooked tip of the crow bar had snagged the mans eyesocket and had probably popped his eyeball. The third man screamed and fell backwards as he desperatly tried to pull a pistol from a holster on his hip. He didn't even get the revolver properly cocked before Max took another step and brought the crowbar down directly into the mans chest, fracturing ribs. The rage finally touched max then, as he felt the ribcage cave under the weight of his fury. He screamed his rage to the world as he brought the crowbar down again, and again, and again. The man who had once been Steven, the one with the gloriusly long biker beared and who had a penchent for young girls if Max remembered right, died after only the second blow. The shattered pieces of his ribs pushed back into his spine by the force of Max's hateful blows severing it.

When Max finally stopped and his vision returned to him he found himself over Stevens blood remains. Remnants of the mans beared were caked with blood and visera from what had once been the mans chest and was now only a bloody maw. Max watched as Stevens heart, well after the mans death, beat open to the air. Slowly, and more slowly as blood pooled around the dead body until it was finally still.

"Get the hell out of my bar!" Came the drug selling petty mobsters voice. Max turned and found the man at the entrence to the back rooms where he kept the cocain and designer drugs. He held a shotgun, the one Max had known about. Max nodded, before lifting his crowbar and ending Edgers life. The brains of the once young and optomistic tatoo artist spilled like yoke from a cracked egg, as the bones crunched under the heavy crowbars assult. Max gripped the last member of the gang, the unconcous man whose jaw and eye he has exploded who had landed atop edger and put his body squarely between Max and the shotgun. It wouldn't do much against buckshot, but Max knew that the bar owner had never known what he was doing. He only had wide spread birdshot, the type used to kill birds as they took off out of the water. The ammo was illigal now days, which is why Max was sure the stupid mobster had thought they were good. When the spray hit Max's meat shield, the barrel of the shotgun also warped slightly. The weapon was old, uncared for, and the illigal ammunition required a special blunderbust barrel rather then a simple standard 12 gage shotgun barrel. So the barrel overheated, warped, and the ammow lost most of its momentum.

Max released the now dead final member of the gang, letting the body slip to the floor and hurled the steel bar into the mobsters face. Max had no idea if the man was alive or dead at the end of it, all he knew was the man had stopped pointing what was left of his shotgun at him. That was enough.

It was over, Max had finally had his revenge.

He had no memory of walking out of the bar covered in blood and visera.

He had only a vague impression of getting into his truck, backing over the body of Bobby the Cutter, and then getting on the highway.

The next thing he remembered clearly was laying in a broken mess along the side of the road stareing up into the sky at the sea of stars over head. Firelight from the burning wreck that had been his long hauler flickering in the distance. The only action he distinctly remembered conciuslly making was reaching down to the wound in his leg and pullin gthe red satin strip of Her dress up to his face.

As he slowly lost conciusness he finally felt like he was returning home.

And then the first started talking to him.