I let myself into the room that matched my key number and threw my things down onto the narrow bed. My hands were still pretty numb, but maybe a nice hot shower would help increase the blood flow. With any luck, the motel water heater was a slightly more robust model than the one at my parents’ house.
The faded sky-blue window curtains were already closed, but they were only about as thick as Bible pages, so I grabbed the felt-lined blackout drapes on top to pull them shut. But Leo was still outside, straddling his big, problematic motorcycle with a thoughtful expression on his face. He ran a hand through his hair, let out a long breath and then pulled the cell phone from his pocket. Leo swiped the screen a few times, then held it up to his ear. The motel room walls were nearly as thin as the curtains and I could hear every word.
“Hey, Audrey,” Leo said. “Are you still clear? Good. Yeah, I got some help. I don’t know what’s wrong with the Packmaster, exactly, but I hired a mechanic. She’s riding with me. Where is everybody now?”
I couldn’t hear the response, but Leo shook his head.
“No. No, don’t come back,” he said into the phone. “I’ll catch up to you soon. And if I don’t, you take the Knights and keep going west.”
Leo glanced toward my window and I jumped. Could he see me through the drapes, too? I grabbed the blackout curtains and yanked them shut, heart pounding. What would Leo do if he caught me eavesdropping? He had been nice enough so far, but I hadn’t for one second forgotten about that rattlesnake patch. Maybe Leo just wore it because it looked badass and didn’t know the snake’s significance.
Yeah, right. And the saddlebags full of bank-banded money were a birthday present from his uncle in San Diego.
But after a few minutes passed, Leo hadn’t busted down my door and I couldn’t hear his voice outside anymore. There was a thump – not very loud, but enough to make a framed map of the town bump on my wall – so I guessed that Leo had finished his phone call and gone to his room for some rest.
The same as I was supposed to be doing. I still felt like something was watching me, though, so I went into the bathroom and closed the door before stripping out of my clothes for a shower. Once the water was nice and hot, I climbed in and got to work scrubbing off the day’s sweat and grease with the motel’s bar soap. I washed my hair, too, but used my own shampoo for that. The cheap miniature bottle provided by the motel just wasn’t up to the challenge of dense curls like mine.
I lingered in the warm water for a little longer than I should have. Okay, a lot longer. But hey, I brushed my teeth while I was in there, so at least I was still accomplishing something. The shower began to cool down, though, so I turned off the water and wrapped myself in a towel. It was scratchy but clean, so I called that a win and climbed into bed.
It was finally the end of the longest, weirdest, and best day of my entire life. Tomorrow morning, I would loosen up the head bearings on Leo’s bike. If that did the trick and fixed his motorcycle, then it would be time to get paid. I had a whole new life outside Crayhill to consider and plan. No way was I just going to sleep tonight.
But within seconds, I was fast asleep… and dreaming.
The eternal forces of existence were fighting their endless, repetitive war all over again. They clashed, circled and clashed again in the infinite void. No, not the void. Not anymore. There was a battlefield now. Wait, was it a cornfield? There were acres of wheat on the other side of the highway, rippling and golden in a blazing wind.
I was in the middle of Highway 44. Blue sky stretched overhead and flashed white with every blast of light. Something fought back and forth across the highway – four huge man-shapes riding astride even bigger stallions that seemed to have been forged out of nightmares and living chrome. Manes and tails of smoke snapped in the wind and sent glowing red embers up into the air.
The four horsemen rode out against three tall winged figures of blinding radiance. From on high, the trio of archangels flung lances of light and crackling lightning, and the demons tore their burning shots down from the sky with coils of shadow. The whole planet shuddered and quaked beneath my feet.
I threw my hands up over my face, trying to block out the sight of angels and demons fighting, of my world tearing apart at the seams. But my hands were glowing, too, and I held a blade of pure white light.
There weren’t three angels – there were four.
I slept in. Of course, six-thirty in the morning was sleeping in for me, so I was still awake by the time the sun had finished rising. Leo had already paid me a lot of money up front and I wanted to have something to show for it. The luxury of sleeping late and hope of diagnosing the Packmaster more than outweighed the night of intense, chaotic dreams and I was in a great mood.
I got dressed in some new jeans and a tank top, pulled on my jacket and headed outside with my toolkit. The early morning light was good, so I set down my tools in the motel parking lot next to Leo’s big black motorcycle. I rubbed my hands together for warmth, then took out what I would need and sat on my toolbox. A lift table or a stool would have been a lot better, but I didn’t have either one and had no desire to wear out my spine or knees before breakfast. With my Bonnie’s shitty shocks and no gloves, it was already going to be a rough ride today. I had just gotten the feeling back in my fingers.
Checking the head bearings on a motorcycle wasn’t hard and I had all of the right tools, but it did require unfastening and peeling away some bodywork to access the steering mechanism. Time to get started on that, so I picked up my wrench set… but none of them fit the Packmaster’s bolts. I switched to the metric set and then my torx keys, but they didn’t fit either. I frowned at the bike.
Plenty of motorcycles had specialized parts that called for specialized tools, but just removing a few pieces of the body and cowling should have been easy. Leo’s Packmaster was a CVB, which stood for custom vehicle build, and meant that the manufacturer made a bunch of changes for this edition… But custom bolts? I didn’t remember ever reading about that before.
Had Leo installed them for some reason? He was clearly an experienced biker, but he didn’t seem like that much of a grease monkey. That was what he had hired me for, after all. And why would anyone put in weird-ass bolts that didn’t fit any tool?
Were they just covers or plugs or something? I can’t tell you how many people called the garage in a panic because they were trying to change a tire and didn’t realize that the actual bolts were under the hubcap. The little domed bits on the plastic cover are only for looks.
So maybe I wasn’t screwed, just sleepy and dumb. I could live with that.
I selected a small flat-head screwdriver and worked it under a corner of the Packmaster’s casing – carefully. Leo had a beautiful custom paint job and I didn’t want to ruin it. Gently, I pried back the metal, but then jerked my hand away with a hiss of pain. A red line sliced all the way along my palm, blood welling up and oozing across my skin.
“Shit!” I said.
Well, that was going to make riding fun today. I flipped off the Packmaster and winced.
“Hey, everything okay?” Leo asked.
I jumped again, but in guilt this time instead of pain. I really hoped that Leo hadn’t seen me give his motorcycle the bird.
“Your Packmaster bit me,” I said.
“Is it bad?” Leo asked.
“No, I’ll be fine,” I answered quickly. “Maybe I should have had some coffee before getting to work. Did you have custom bolts put on this thing?”
Leo yawned and scratched his cheek. His face was freshly shaved and still a little bit pink along the jawline. But he shook his head.
“Nope,” Leo said. “Just the paint. I haven’t changed anything else.”
I frowned. “Hmm…”
What the hell was going on with this motorcycle? I had no idea, but I didn’t want Leo to think he was wasting his money on me. If he asked for his deposit back, things were going to get really awkward.
Leo circled his bike, patted the
gas tank and then sat down on the curb to watch me work. No pressure.
I picked up my socket wrench again and got ready to explain the problem to Leo. But when I slipped the wrench over one of the bolts this time, it fit perfectly. I rolled my eyes and barely resisted the urge to flip the Packmaster off again. So it was just me being dumb.
I was still pissed off, but with the bolts finally playing fair, I quickly stripped back the bodywork to reveal the guts of the bike’s steering. I grabbed the handlebars to find that notch, but they pivoted smoothly.
“What? This was stuck like glue yesterday,” I groaned. “Please tell me you snuck out last night to lube up the bearing.”
Leo shook his head. “No. I was in my room all night.”
I was about to rename this thing a Packmaster PJO – Piss Jaz Off model. I growled at the motorcycle, which made Leo laugh. I was torn between wanting to punch him in the face for that and enjoying Leo’s smile. It was a good one.
“Is the bike ridable?” Leo asked.
I sighed and then began bolting everything into place again. “Same as yesterday. So yes, but expect the same problems. I still don’t know what’s wrong with this beast.”
“Then let’s have some breakfast and get back on the road. Alright if we hit the same diner as last night?”
“Yeah, just let me grab my things,” I said.
I went back into my motel room and washed my hand, then took a look at the gash across my palm. It was jagged and it hurt, but it wasn’t too deep. I cussed a little more and cleaned it out with soap, then wrapped it in a towel until the bleeding stopped.
I collected my shampoo from the shower and stashed everything in my backpack again. Outside, I put my tools away while Leo returned our room keys. He came out of the front office just as I was stowing my toolbox into the Bonneville’s tailpack.
“How’s the hand?” Leo asked. “I’ve got a first aid kit in one of my bags.”
I shook my head. “There’s a grocery store right across from the diner. I’ll grab some bandages and antibiotic there.”
“You sure, Jaz?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” I assured him.
I was supposed to be fixing Leo’s problems on this trip, not the other way around. We drove carefully down the little town’s single main road and stopped in front of the diner, in view of the windows. Leo headed inside to get a table while I went across the parking lot to the store. I picked out a couple of bandages, a tube of antibiotic ointment, and a big bag of beef jerky in case I needed a snack later.
I hesitated as I approached the check-out counter. My bank account had about five bucks in it and as cheap as this shopping trip was, the total would come to more than that. Which meant using the cash in my wallet – the stolen money that Leo had paid me.
Well, I couldn’t ride all day with an open wound in my hand, so I held my breath and dropped my stuff on the conveyor belt. The teenage clerk in a store-branded red vest scanned each of the boxes and I handed him a hundred-dollar bill, which he regarded suspiciously. He tested it with one of those counterfeit pens, but that wasn’t the part that worried me – I didn’t think Leo and his gang had printed that money.
But the clerk nodded and slid the cash under the tray in his drawer, then counted out my change. I was pretty proud of how even my voice was when I thanked him before scooping up my purchases.
I left the grocery store and hurried back across the parking lot to the diner. There were only a couple of cars outside, and no other motorcycles. I decided that I didn’t really feel like navigating breakfast with a bandaged hand, so I stuffed the medical supplies and snacks into my backpack for the moment.
Leo was already seated and his menu lay closed off to one side. Instead, he was staring down at his cell phone screen. The crease between his dark brows didn’t look happy and my heart jumped up a few gears.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
Wasn’t that the first thing Leo had asked me this morning? But his hand wasn’t bleeding and the biker set his phone face-down on the table.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “Just expecting a text.”
“Got a girlfriend or boyfriend waiting in San Diego?” I asked.
If I didn’t already know that Leo was running around with stolen cash in his saddlebags, a girl or guy might have explained Leo’s hurry to get out to California. I did know about the money, though… So I was just being nosy.
“When I got up this morning, I asked my friends where they were. But they haven’t responded,” Leo said. “So I was trying to find them on my mapping app.”
That didn’t exactly answer my question, but I didn’t press Leo. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop until a waiter came by and took our orders. I got a stack of pancakes and eggs over easy, while Leo just ordered some coffee and a bagel. He alternated between staring out the window and down at his phone as he devoured his breakfast in record time. I’m not even sure Leo chewed that bagel.
I followed as much of my employer’s lead as I could and ate like I was late for work. As soon as I was done, Leo asked for the check, put on his jacket and paid at the front counter. I didn’t bother arguing about paying my share, but went straight to the parking lot and our bikes. By the time Leo joined me outside, I had already applied the antibiotic ointment to my palm and wrapped both hands in my new bandages. Leo closed the distance from the diner to his motorcycle in a few long strides, but paused as he put on his helmet.
“What happened to your other hand?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I answered. I wagged my fingers and showed off my now-padded hand. “And I want to keep it that way. Still no gloves, but they shouldn’t get as numb today.”
“Good call,” Leo said as he pulled on his helmet.
“You want me to take another look at that steering?” I asked.
Leo shook his head. “Maybe later. Right now, we need to get moving.”
I put on my backpack, tightened the straps and then jumped onto my bike. Leo swung a leg over his Packmaster and stomped it into gear, making the engine roar like some kind of monster. He yanked the heavy motorcycle around in a tight half circle, leaving a faint black arc of rubber burned on the asphalt, and raced out into the road.
For a moment, I considered just letting him go. By the time Leo noticed that I hadn’t followed him back to the highway, I could be long gone with the cash that he had already given me. He probably wouldn’t even bother chasing me – Leo was racing off to find his friends and didn’t seem to care about much else.
I could forget all about Leo, about his stolen money and his rattlesnake patch, and let him vanish from my life as suddenly as he had appeared. I didn’t even need to go back to Crayhill. I had five hundred dollars – minus the cost of some bandages and beef jerky. I could go somewhere else, anywhere else.
But I shook myself. Leo had paid me to figure out what was wrong with his weird-ass motorcycle and I wasn’t done doing that. Besides, there were worse ways to spend the week than following a hot biker around and letting him buy my food.
Okay, I really needed to convince Leo to let me get the next bill. It was only fair, and I had no intention of relying upon some strange man.
I revved the Bonneville, turned it west, and raced to catch up with Leo.
The bandages weren’t as effective as real riding gloves, but a couple of hours later, I was too excited to care if my fingers fell right off into the road and got run over by a tractor.
Not that there were tractors here… I leaned over my handlebars and grinned up at the jagged city skyline. Leo and I were driving through Oklahoma City. It wasn’t as big as Paris or Los Angeles, but Oklahoma City was a thousand times bigger than Crayhill. There were people here that had never met each other, who never would. I could walk into a bar in Oklahoma City and not know everyone sitting at the counter, and every one of the three shitty beers on tap.
There were whole new shitty beers here!
I wished we had time to stop and try one of them, but Leo wa
s in a hell of a hurry and raced through Oklahoma City with barely a glance. I supposed that it was all pretty dinky compared to Chicago, but still… If I didn’t have a job to do, I would have been gone in a flash, riding away through the shiny office buildings of the downtown commercial district. Bright, hot sunlight flashed off the glass and turned every skyscraper into a silver blade of radiance.
But I did have a job to do, and just trying to stay close enough to do it was proving a challenge. My Bonneville’s engine put out sixty-two horsepower, which wasn’t bad at all. A Packmaster had somewhere between eighty to ninety, maybe about a hundred if you threw EPA regulations out the window. It’s not that much of a difference, but I struggled to keep up with Leo through Oklahoma City. Every few minutes, his motorcycle growled thunderously and surged ahead of me.
By the time we were driving out the other side of Oklahoma City, Leo had signaled for me to ride single-file again. I fell back with a frown and followed him at a distance. Okay, I was worried about Leo losing control of his motorcycle and side-swiping me, but what about him? If the throttle stuck and he couldn’t brake, he was going to end up a biker-sized smear down the center of Highway 44.
Was Leo in that much of a hurry, or was his engine surging again? Making sure that his bike didn’t crash itself or its rider was my job. And I needed gas, so I accelerated up beside Leo and raised one hand, gesturing for him to pull over. He nodded tightly and took the next off-ramp.
We stopped at a filling station on the western edge of Oklahoma City – that’s a gas station if you’re from the coast. It was the middle of the day in the middle of the week, and we were alone at the row of pumps. I parked in front of the first one, then ran inside the little convenience store and threw a ten-dollar bill on the counter. The man behind it collected my money and then flashed me a thumbs-up.
I hurried back outside as Leo was climbing off of his motorcycle. The Packmaster’s extended tank probably wasn’t as low as my Bonnie, but filling up was usually a good idea.
400 Horsepower of the Apocalypse Page 4