Down the line

36 - Negotiations

LEWIS POV

"Oh shit." I hear Nick whisper behind me as I stare at my mom on the top of the truck.

"We can negotiate Lewis. Work things out. I think we all know this is my land now." The crazy man shouts, holding my terrified mom at gunpoint.

If the stories are true, this isn't the first time she's been held at gunpoint. Maybe the third or fifth time.

"What are you willing to negotiate?" I shout back. Anything but my mom. She deserved to have a peaceful death, many years away from this point.

"You get your mom, I get the land." He says on top of the truck. He seemed insane. Wasn't it obvious that as soon as he let go of mom we would shoot him?

"You're on your own Sam. Your men are dead." I tell him. He didn't seem to want to listen.

"They're not. More will come. So many more." He growls. I doubted him.

Suddenly a figure comes and stands beside me. It was Lee, holding onto his arm, the bleeding hadn't stopped but it was still trickling slightly. He needed to get the fragments out of his arm quickly. It could get infected.

"This guy is a nutter. Just shoot him." Lee groans as he snatches the pistol from my holster.

"Are you fucking kidding me? Do you want to be responsible for both of our parents deaths?" I whisper back to him trying to grab the revolver from his dirty hand.

He stops and looks at me.

"Can we not have this little fight right now. As entertaining as it is. Do you want the deal or not?" Samuel Redwood says down to me and my brother by the flaming trucks.

Lee just glares at me and simply hands me back the weapon. I nod at him.

"We're going to do this the right way." I tell my stubborn, impatient dickhead of a brother. Sighing I put my weapon back into its holster, where it belongs. Where it should stay. Forever.

Redwood fires his weapon up into the air making me jump. At first I thought he'd finally shot mom, but...she was ready to live another day. Unless we fuck this up. Her life was in our hands.

"If we don't hurry this fucking shit up, I will put this bullet through your whore of a mother." Redwood snarls, like some sort of pissed off dog.

"Hey, fuck you!" Lee shouts back up at the somewhat powerful yet powerless man.

The mans weapon fires once more. This time just a few inches away from my feet. I jumped in terror.

"No! Fuck you! I just want something good! Take it away from you dysfunctional fucks, you don't look after this place. We watched you, oh how we watched you. Always fighting, you may as well just kill each other. You sick fucks have no future here, my people however have a future we're looking forward to here!" Redwood screams as the vains pop from his sweating skull.

He was either drunk or just stupid. There was no way he was going to live. No way he could possibly take this place from us. We were the people of Wellington and we wouldn't stand for anyone elses shit. We had been through way too much.

"You might feel as if your people have a future here but my people have a past, present and a future in this beautiful environment. We've all worked too hard to secure this place. We all worked hard to make it work cause that's just how it works." I spill pathetically from my mouth. I swear I said the word 'work' too many times in that sentence but that was alright. I was cool.