“I remembered how to have fun.”
“It’s better if I don’t ask about it, isn’t it?” he said.
“Absolutely.”
“Have you given any thought to our road trip?” he asked.
“Before I answer that, there’s something else we have to talk about,” I said. “I ran into Mother at the store earlier.”
I didn’t doubt that Hilda May Crouton had enough guns and ammo to take on the whole gang of Dragon Riders, but I was worried that the lily-livered locals wouldn’t step up and support her when she made her stand. Even if they did, there would certainly be casualties and a good-sized chunk of Gizzard’s Creek would be shot to pieces. Hilda May probably dreamed of going out in a blaze of glory, but I didn’t want her doing it while I was in town.
“We need to deal with the Dragon Riders before Hilda May decides it’s time for her High Noon comeback show,” I said. I explained how we had to make our move before midnight, hitting them before they rolled out to gun down me and the old lady.
“What do you have in mind?” Floyd asked.
I told him my plan. He didn’t like it.
Chapter Six
After the sun went down I got into the Trekker and drove over to the bar that the bikers had taken over and made their place. You could hear the music and shouting a long time before you could see the bar. The stink of their sweat got to you about half a block away. The bikes were all parked out front and there was a skinny guy with his hands in his pockets keeping watch over them. I pulled up and leaned out of the window to speak to him.
“Hey, beautiful, what you doing?”
His name patch said ‘Peanut’ – it wasn’t the toughest biker name I’d ever heard.
“You!” he said, surprised. Then he recovered enough to taunt me in a sneery school-bully voice. “Where’s your old lady?”
“It’s karate night at the senior centre,” I said.
“How come you’re not rolling around on the mat with her?”
“She’s too much woman for a man like me,” I said. “She’s small but she’s fierce. Aren’t you supposed to be keeping watch?”
“What does it look like I’m doing here?”
“Playing with yourself,” I said. “And while you do that there’s a kid around the corner painting graffiti on the wall. It says Bikers Do It with Hogs.”
“What?!” Peanut pulled his hands out of his pockets and dashed around the corner into the darkened alley. I drove forwards so I could keep an eye on him – and block his exit from the alley with the Trekker at the same time.
He was walking up and down in front of the defaced wall. He seemed agitated. “Mother will kill me!” he said. “Or worse.”
Mother would have been even more upset if we’d painted my first choice of wording. Floyd had vetoed that. But he did let me paint the worried expression on the cartoon pig.
The biker bar’s music didn’t sound quite so loud in the alley, but it was still loud enough that the walls were pulsing to the beat. It almost brought the artwork alive.
“Dammit, that even looks like him,” the skinny biker said.
The artwork showed Mother standing behind the pig and his smile was a lecherous leer. Given the speed at which he’d painted it, Floyd had done a great job.
“The kid that painted it certainly has some talent,” I said.
Peanut turned and glared at me. “What are you doing here anyway?” he asked. “Don’t you know we’re dangerous?”
“I’m just distracting you,” I said.
“What? Why?”
“It’s part of the plan.”
He frowned. “You’re just asking for trouble, you know that.”
“You Dragon Scrackers don’t scare me none,” I said.
“We’re the Dragon Riders,” he said, getting more annoyed now.
“Nope, that can’t be right,” I said. “The Dragon Riders go around on motorcycles.”
“We ride motorcycles,” he insisted. “What do you think those things are out front, roller-skates?”
I looked back over my shoulder. “There’s no bikes out here,” I said.
“What are you blind or something? There’s a whole line of hogs out front.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “Some guy had a robot load them into a semi-truck and drive them away. Heading East.”
“What?” Peanut ran past me to the front of the building. I backed up the Trekker a little ways. The street in front of the bar was empty.
“Who took them?” he shouted. “Which guy? Tell me quick!” I think he wanted to recover them before the others found out they were missing.
“This guy.” I pointed at myself with a casual thumb gesture and then gave him a finger wave. “Catch you later.”
“You come back here!”
I looked in the rear-view mirror as I drove away. He was standing in the street shaking his fist. It made me smile.
The Dragon Riders had gone from bikers to hikers. Boy, would they be swazzed off at me. I wondered how long it would take them to rustle up some vehicles to come after us. I’d warned the townsfolk to make sure their cars were all safely hidden away. I knew the bikers would chase us. That was the whole idea – to lead them away from Gizzard Creek. Hilda May hadn’t liked my plan any more than Floyd had, but she agreed to go along with it. She would probably fire off a few rounds as the bikers headed out after us, just to make herself feel better. I wished I could see that.
Hilda May wasn’t the only one who had to make a personal sacrifice – I did too. I’d resorted to bribery to get Floyd to do this. I told him that if he helped me to steal the motorbikes, we would take Mister Flint’s cargo from Roslyn to New Grimsby. I figured it was time for us to move on anyway, so we might as well get paid for doing it. Leaving town with an empty trailer seemed a waste so I’d decided we should fill it with motorcycles. I thought we could stop somewhere and push them off a cliff or something.
Floyd headed out with the truck and I followed on in the Trekker. Ours was a big old Penwald tractor, painted black with orange rust highlights. It had a lot of highlights. The trailer had a corrugated metal container sitting on it – the kind they use to ship freight around the galaxy. The container had been sprayed with red oxide primer so it didn’t show the rust as much as the truck. The rig was an ugly beast of a thing, but I kind of liked it. It was an honest workhorse. You saw trucks like it all over Saphira – a lot of them were newer than ours and not many of them were older. But this one was ours. We’d even painted our own logo on it. ‘Q & F Trucking.’ I did it while Floyd wasn’t looking. He’d have wanted to put his ‘F’ first. I’d resisted the urge to name the truck – I didn’t want to get attached to it. Being a trucker was a temporary diversion, I was still an outlaw. I’d just been having a run of bad luck lately.
As we drove into the night, the lights of the town dwindling behind us, we passed a sign: Buzzard Creek Thanks You for Driving Safely.
Buzzard Creek – I knew it was something like that. I was sure the next town we stopped at would be just as lovely.
You need music when you’re driving into the night, so I called up my favourite local channel on the Trekker’s dashboard screen.
“I’m Bobby-Ray Bitrot and you’re listening to Kay-Bee-Oh-Tee, bringing you the best music from a bygone age – because dead folk don’t get royalties. Up next, something smooth and sexy from my our favourite soul diva.”
Bobby-Ray was a robot and he broadcast twenty-four hours a day from an old satellite in orbit around Saphira. I tune in because he doesn’t read many commercials and tends to mock those he does. Plus the music is better than the stuff young people are playing today. I’m starting to sound like my Grandpa.
Chapter Seven
By noon the next day we were a hundred miles away and had passed through a couple of places that had looked very much like Gizzard Creek – Clearwater was slightly more well-to-do while Bullocks Hollow was very much a poor relation. In the first, we’d stopped so I could ge
t a few hours’ sleep and in the second we’d slowed down only enough for me to pick up a takeaway lunch. We were back on the highway, the sun was shining, and the pastrami sandwich wasn’t half bad.
“We’re being followed,” Floyd said. He was driving the truck and I was about half a mile ahead in the Trekker.
“The Dragon Riders?” I asked.
“No.”
“The police?”
“No.”
“Who then?”
“Mister Snowball,” Floyd said.
“What?”
“We’re being chased by an ice-cream truck,” Floyd said.
“I didn’t steal ice-cream,” I protested.
“I believe you,” Floyd said. I couldn’t tell if he meant it.
I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the ice-cream seller pull out from behind the truck to overtake it.
“They’re coming up alongside,” Floyd said. “They want me to pull over.”
“Who does?”
“Mother is pointing a shotgun at my head,” Floyd said.
I flipped on the rear-view camera and zoomed in. It was the Dragon Riders. The muscle-bound hotdog thief was driving the ice-cream wagon and Mother was riding shotgun – literally. The rest of the bikers, all ten of them, were packed into the back of the little truck. Some of them were leaning out of the side window pointing, shouting, and shaking their fists. And the ice-cream seller’s jingle was playing at full blast – Pop Goes the Weasel. I guess they hadn’t figured out how to turn it off.
“You’d better stop,” I told Floyd.
I slowed to a stop and watched the truck pull in to the side of the road. The ice-cream wagon came to a halt at an angle in front of Floyd, preventing him from driving off again.
I’d thought the Dragon Riders would catch up with us long before this, but I had over-estimated their abilities. How had they all ended up in an ice-cream truck? Of all the ridiculous-looking vehicles they could have chosen, why this one?
I watched Mother climb out, still wearing the tartan slipper and still limping. He kept the shotgun pointed at Floyd, urging him to step down out of the cab. The rest of the Dragon Riders clambered out and it was like watching a bunch of circus clowns tumble out of a tiny car. The ice-cream truck swayed from side to side as they made their exit. The hotdog thief was the last to squeeze himself out.
I turned the Trekker around and drove back towards them.
“Open it up,” Mother said, pointing the barrel of the shotgun towards the back of the trailer.
“You’re wasting your time,” Floyd told them.
I leaned out of the open window of the Trekker. “Open her up, Floyd. They need to see for themselves.”
Floyd went around the back and the bikers all shuffled after him, pushing and shoving and getting in each other’s way. Floyd opened the doors of the trailer. There was nothing in there except a fading whiff of rubber tyres.
“Where are they?” Mother demanded. “Where are they?”
“Where are what?” Floyd asked.
“Our bikes?”
Floyd turned his head towards me and the bikers all looked my way too.
“We sold them,” I said.
“You what?”
“When you didn’t come for them, we thought you didn’t want them anymore. I sold them to a scrap dealer back in Bullock’s Hollow.”
“You sold our bikes?”
“The dealer said he was going to crush them today. If you hurry, you might be able to stop him.”
“Did he just say they were gonna crush our bikes?” my old friend Blud the hotdog thief asked.
“Let’s get back there. Quick!” Mother said.
“You’re going to have to run,” I said, pointing back down the highway.
“Back in the ice-cream wagon!” Mother called.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said as they all moved in that direction.
“What? Why?” Mother asked.
“Pop goes the weasel,” I said.
“What?”
“Duck, you sucker,” I said. I rolled up the window on the Trekker.
“What...?”
There was a small explosion inside the ice-cream truck. Ice-cream flew outwards in a great steaming cloud, splattering everything and everyone.
“It’s hot!” I heard Peanut shout as they all ducked for cover.
It was worth the price of a grenade to see their expressions.
The ice-cream truck was burning now and – finally! – the jingle wound down to silence. The Mister Snowball figure on the front of the truck melted – I guess the thaw had caught him off-guard this year.
When the last of the ice-cream had come down to earth, I rolled down the window again. “Did I just do that?” I said. “Ain’t I a stinker?”
Mother heaved himself to his feet. He looked like he’d been dipped in a tub of rum and raisin. “Kill him!”
“What about our rides?” Blud asked, pointing back down the road. He too had a liberal coating of dairy-based dessert.
The Dragon Riders were conflicted, torn between two desired actions. They wanted to tear me limb from limb and they wanted to go back and save their bikes. If they’d had any sense they’d have split into two teams and achieved both goals. But sense was in short supply. In the end, their love for their motorcycles won out. After all, the bikes defined their identities. They all set off down the road at a shambling run. It looked like a deleted scene from a zombie movie.
I’ll be honest now and say that I hadn’t actually sold their motorcycles to the scrap merchant. He told me the metal in them was worth next to nothing and he only offered me a hundred dollars for the batteries. I got a much better price for them from a second-hand car dealer. He was going to auction off the bikes that afternoon. I would have loved to see the looks on the faces of the Dragon Riders when they discovered that they were going to have to bid on their own rides to buy them back.
Floyd reversed the truck a little way so he could get past the burning wreckage of the ice-cream truck.
“Next stop, Roslyn!” I called up to him.
He waved and pulled away. I had to wipe the gooey-remains of several snow-cones off my windshield before I could follow him. The air was filled with that hot sugar smell you get from a cotton candy machine. Delicious. All I had for dessert was an apple. That’s what you get for killing Mister Snowball.
Chapter Eight
Next morning the sky was still dark when we left the motel and drove the truck to Honest Herb’s freight depot. I liked this time of day, it was quiet and there was nobody on the street. It was an ideal time for thievery. But today we were on a legitimate mission. I’m not going to pretend that this felt right to me. But money was money – even if it was gained honestly. I just hoped word wouldn’t get out. I had a reputation to uphold. Floyd was behind the wheel of the truck and I was in the cab beside him. We’d left the Trekker back at the motel. We got to Honest Herb’s at a little before seven. The sky behind us was showing a hint of pink.
The depot was a single-storey warehouse constructed from old prefabricated panels. It had a curved roof and in the front there were three loading bays with steel shutters. You could back a truck up to the raised loading platform and shove cargo straight into the back of the trailer. There were places like it all over the planet. There was a yard to one side that was now empty and around the whole thing was a chain-link fence with two pairs of wide gates to allow trucks in and out. The building and yard were dark and the gates were locked, fastened with a chain and a hefty padlock. I looked at my watch. 7am.
“The sign says they open at nine,” Floyd said.
I squinted through the windshield. I couldn’t even see a sign, never mind read what it said. Normally I would have checked the opening hours before setting out, but the paperwork we had from Mister Flint said we were scheduled for a seven-fifteen pick-up. Nine seemed late in the day for a place like this to open. Business must be slow. Or maybe it was just another example of the slower pace
of life on a backwater planet.
“Two hours,” I said.
“We could play Scrabble,” Floyd said.
“You always win.”
“I’m not playing cards with you,” he said.
That was because I always win. And he can’t figure out how I do it.
“I don’t want to sit here for two hours,” I said. “We’re wasting driving time.” Our fourteen-day deadline started today.
“What do you suggest?” Floyd asked. I think he knew what I’d say.
“Check my logic here,” I said.
“Oh, boy...” he said.
“We have paperwork authorising us to take those crates of medicine and deliver them to New Grimsby.”
“Correct,” he said.
“If we go in there and take them, it won’t actually be stealing, will it?”
“True,” he said. “But we would leave ourselves open to charges of breaking and entering, trespass, and criminal damage.”
“But if we are really careful and don’t damage anything, we’ll be fine.”
“In theory,” Floyd said.
“A skilled thief can open that padlock in under a minute without leaving a trace,” I said.
“A skilled thief,” Floyd said. “Do you know anyone we can call?”
“You’re not funny. I could get us in there with my eyes closed.”
“Keep them open, eh? And give me a shout if you need any help.”
“Just keep a lookout,” I said.
We climbed out of the truck. The fence was pretty flimsy and swayed when I touched it. Not all of the posts were cemented into the ground. Perhaps the swaying was intended to make it more difficult to climb over. Or maybe Honest Herb just did things on the cheap. The padlock was of reasonable quality but nothing special. It would have been easier to pick if Floyd had held the gates still for me, but there was no way I was going to ask for his help. He turned suddenly when the chain rattled and fell to the ground.
“Did you damage the lock?” he asked.
“The lock is fine,” I said.
“Is that blood?”
“The probe slipped.” I put the injured finger in my mouth – to hide it. “Back the truck up to the loading bay.”
Road Rage Page 4