Stone Rider

by David Hofmeyr

  Kane shakes his head. “Hell it is. Kid chose to race. He knew the risk.”

  “What choice did he have? It’s the Race or the mine.”

  Kane squints at the sun. “We gotta move.”

  Adam turns to him. “You planning on riding with me?”

  “Reckon so. Why?”

  Adam juts his chin at the grave. “I’ve just buried two in two days.”

  The two Riders on their metal horses tremble in the heat. They ride east, through the scorched earth, under the watch of the Sawtooth foothills, out onto the desert plain. Their bykes kick up dust and it trails them, slow and red in the blazing sun. Far away, in the blue distance, lies the dusky shadow of El Diablo. It seems nearby one minute and the next unreachable. A mirage. A trick of the heat. On a flat-out track Adam knows he would arrive at its lava slopes in one day, no more.

  But the Blackwater Trail is no flat-out track. It’s a mean and twisted loop.

  It will be long days under the bare sun before he gets to El Diablo and slingshots round the old volcano, back west towards Blackwater. If he gets there at all.

  They settle into an easy rhythm, keeping the pace even and strong. They follow stone Race markers painted white and they don’t speak as they ride. Adam feels the heat on his face and the bite of grit. He spreads out his arms and closes his eyes, riding blind and hands-free.

  They ride out of sight of the trykes, until they are alone.

  Kane’s words haunt him. They up and die. Just like that.

  He feels the loss of Nate like a festering wound. A pain that won’t let go. The way Frank’s death never relents. Adam chokes back tears. Frank was all the kin he had and the world took him. And now the world has taken Nate. The way the world takes everyone.

  Dammit, Nate. You and that stupid knife.

  Adam looks at Kane—who rides five or six lengths in front. He sees Kane’s dangling cord, whipped back by the wind. But no sign of a knife handle. He tries to think if he saw it in the grave, if they buried Nate with his knife, but he can’t think straight.

  He throttles hard, flips the gears and stands up off the seat. He powers down a well-tracked road, leaving Kane behind, lost in a screen of dust.

  I need air. Need space to breathe.

  —

  They come to a broad, sandy valley where granite and sandstone mesas rise sheer-sided and flat-topped. Here the desert shimmers in the heat and stark silhouette trees float in the haze. Tire tracks course through the sand, disappearing into the milky distance.

  The sky is an opaque pearl color and the noon sun, stuck at its zenith, blazes cruel and hot.

  They pass several wrecked bykes. Four of them. A Backtrail, a Sandblaster, a Stormchaser that won’t be chasing much of anything anymore and, last, a lone Scorcher. The bykes are Riderless, yet to be reclaimed. All except the last. The Scorcher has a Rider still clinging to her frame.

  They come to a stop.

  The Rider doesn’t move.

  A girl. Her helmet is gone. Her neck is twisted. A stream of dried blood comes from the corner of her mouth, open in the rictus of a death leer, as if expressing disgust at something she’s seen. Adam dismounts and places himself behind the Rider. He crouches low, in her line of sight.

  Whatever was there is long gone.

  Adam places two fingers to the girl’s wrist. No pulse. The skin is warm.

  “It sickens me,” he says, rising.

  “It is what it is,” Kane says, still seated on his Drifter.

  Adam turns to him. “You feel nothin?”

  Kane shrugs. “S’pose you want her buried too?”

  Adam shakes his head. “I’m done laying people in the dirt.”

  —

  They stand on a rise and survey Camp One, helmets under their arms, mopping the sweat on their brows. They came upon the camp quite suddenly—over a rise and into a sandy valley.

  It’s deserted. All that remain are flagpoles and their bits of colored cloth, flapping in the weak breeze, and the carnage of byke gear and empty enviro-tents—built to withstand extreme temperatures. The ground is littered with trash, a network of crisscrossing tire tracks and the ash of several fires.

  Adam and Kane drift through the camp, looking for signs of life. But all they find is a silent pack of unarmed service GRUBs—first generation—moving through the camp, collapsing tents and clearing garbage. And, looming above them, a digital hoarding. A Race notice.

  “They have these at every camp,” Kane says. “Race stats.”

  The sign doesn’t make good reading.

  CAMP ONE. BLACKWATER TRAIL. MONDAY 4TH RACE STATS. 81 RIDERS RECORDED AT THE STARTING LINE. CURRENT STATUS: 10 DEAD. 5 MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD. CURRENT ODDS FAVORITE, LEVI BLOOD AT 3:1.

  “That’d be us,” Kane says, grinning. “Missing. Presumed dead.”

  But, as they sit looking at the sign, they see the numbers change. The 5 shimmers and flicks to a neon-lit 3.

  Adam blinks and rubs his eyes. “What the…”

  Kane grins. “Sign reads our Plugs.”

  Adam shakes his head. “How far behind you reckon we are?” He squints into the distance, holding up a hand to shield his eyes. The stone markers seem to map a course into infinity.

  Kane looks down at the tire tracks. “Couple hours. No more.”

  Adam shifts in his seat and swivels to look behind them, as though seeking some reassurance there. There’s nothing in the desolate landscape. Nothing but death. He turns and looks ahead.

  —

  An hour’s ride down the track they come to the second obstacle course. They slide to a stop and watch. No sign of Riders. The course is constructed between two rising mesas. From an elevated vantage point, they can see it cuts through a narrow pass leading uphill to the High Plains.

  An alternative route, one that avoids the obstacle course, leads down to the valley floor. The Lowlands.

  “High Plains will be faster,” Adam says, consulting the map.

  Kane looks over his shoulder. “No question.”

  Adam squints into the sun. Beyond the entrance, the course makes a sharp dogleg and the rest of it remains hidden to them. A chute into the heart of darkness. He sees movement.

  A salvage crew, going to work picking up Riderless bykes for reconstitution.

  “Retrievers,” he says. “Not a good sign.”

  Adam watches the Retrievers load carts behind their sail trykes. He knows they will haul the bykes back to Blackwater and, from there, either sell them for scrap or use Bykemongers like Sadie to reconstitute them. They work in the dark shadow of three waiting airships.

  Kane spits and wipes his mouth. “Think it’s true what they say? Sky-Base gives bykes back to the families?”

  Adam shifts in his seat. His saliva is thick. The air feels sorrowful.

  He remembers the day well: the Longthorn being returned—unloaded and left at the well. But no Frank. Until he showed up a week later. Minus a leg.

  “Yeah, they return ’em. But damaged.”

  Adam looks south, to a road that leads down to the valley and the course.

  Kane shakes his head. “Not this one.”

  Adam nods. His instincts are buzzing. In silent agreement, they kick in their motors and take the low road.

  —

  The haunting call of a carrion bird carries to them and they look up and see a black-winged buzzard, turning slowly on rising thermals. The buzzard’s blue shadow ripples over the sand and disappears. Then a familiar glint, thin as a needle. A tower of white jet stream climbs the sky and a faint engine drone carries to them across endless klicks of empty space.

  A rocket, blasting its way up off the planet. Up into the unknown.

  Kane leans to the side and spits. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. They avoided the obstacle course three hours back and both boys are tired.

  “Beautiful,” Adam says. “Seen one close?”

  “Once. When I was a kid.”

  “How do they work, you know?
”

  “Something to do with Voddenite, like everything nowadays.” Kane squints at the rocket, knocking back his canteen to take a slurp.

  Adam hauls out his own water bottle and shakes it. He’s down to the last dregs. He looks at Kane and he can see—by the tilt of his canteen and the weak sloshing sound—he’s in the same predicament. Adam knows it will be all hydro-pills from this point forward, but once their supply is depleted…Death comes quick in the desert without a supply of hydro. Hydro-pills quiet the craving for actual water. A poor substitute for the real thing, but they allow Riders to survive days longer, sometimes weeks.

  “We need water,” Adam says, taking a small sip.

  “Still got them two bottles of pop.”

  “But we need water.”

  Adam stares into the distance. He sees something move, down on the plain. A wavering smudge. It floats above the surface of the earth and bends in the liquid waves. Appears. Vanishes. Reappears. Then dissolves again.

  “See that?”

  Kane slakes his thirst, wipes his mouth, replaces the stopper and reaches behind his shoulder to drop the canteen in his Race pack. He keeps staring ahead. “I see it.”

  “A Rider?”

  “Has to be.”

  —

  They strike out onto the low plain. Their motors purr and their speed is constant and measured. A curl of dust hangs over them and they ride with their helmets stored and their goggles drawn over their red eyes and their air-filter masks covering their dry mouths.

  Two outlandish figures, tooling through the dust.

  They ride in slow pursuit of the single Rider—up ahead—swimming in the heat haze. The figure floats and drifts in and out of sight. They ride all day after the Rider. All day under the sun. The heat becomes unbearable and they clutch their canteens and take careful sips. They ride until the mesas are black shadows cut out of a blue dusk. Stars come out, cold and bright.

  They dismount from their bykes and gather driftwood for a fire. Across the sands, in the velvet dark, they see a lone, guttering light. A primitive howl carries to them, across the dunes.

  “Hear that?” Adam asks.

  “I hear it.”

  They listen to more howls—plaintive and wild—and they don’t speak further.

  —

  They eat meat for the first time. A sand rat that Kane struck dead with one quick slingshot—the raw crack of the sling hanging on the cold air. Kane guts the critter with Nate’s knife, removed cool and casual from his back pocket. Adam watches him and says nothing.

  I knew it. I knew he had it.

  Kane skewers the rodent with a sharpened stick—one end to the other—and they roast the evil-looking carcass over swirling flames. Adam smells the meat, hears the popping of the fat and the wood crackling, and his stomach growls.

  “It’s protein rich.” Kane hands him a thin sliver of meat in greasy hands. It’s charred black and looks as unappetizing as it was alive. Adam takes it all the same.

  They chew with slow, grinding jaws, watching the flames, and the other fire of the lone Rider, across the black plain, flickering like a star in the darkness.

  —

  He wakes at dawn to the sound of Kane relieving himself in the ashes of the fire. The jet of his urine is almost fluorescent yellow. The sky above them is bright orange, a brilliant dome of color, and the desert comes to life with a surreal glow.

  Adam looks out over the plain. Nothing. No movement. “Where’d the Rider go?”

  Kane finishes pissing on the fire, zips up his black riding suit. He squints into the dust and shrugs. “Out there. Somewhere.”

  After a lean breakfast of rat meat leftovers, they ride. The Rider they pursued the day before has vanished. They don’t see him throughout the morning. They keep their pace fast and strong. The heat builds and builds until, by midday, the desert is a furnace.

  Kane pulls up. He looks at Adam. He squints at the sun. “Too hot to ride.”

  “Can’t stop,” Adam says, slowing down. “Gotta keep moving.”

  Kane shakes his head. “Keep moving and die right now. Gotta know when to stop, when to move. It’s a game. And it’s a long one.”

  They collect sticks to erect their heatkeepers as tarps for the shade and they sit on boulders alongside the track. Kane removes two bottles of pop from his Race pack. He leans them in turn against the rock and slams down the heel of his palm on their tops, sending their caps spiraling.

  “Haven’t had one in summers,” Adam says when Kane hands him a sun-warmed glass bottle with its distinctive ridges and hourglass shape. He watches bubbles rise in the dark liquid.

  “It’s like they’re mocking us,” he says.

  Kane tilts his head back for a long, two-handed pull. “How you figure?”

  “Giving us things that aren’t available anymore. A taste of the way life was.”

  “And might be again,” Kane says, pointing to the sky. He burps and takes another slow swig.

  They drink in silence, savoring the warm sweetness, each of them in their own private world. When the bottles are drained to the bottom, Kane carries them to a flat stone twenty paces away and places them upright, two inches apart. The two glass bottles stand and reflect the sunlight.

  Kane returns, slingshot in hand. He loads a stone in silence. Then he plants his legs akimbo, turns the knot of the cord round his left ring finger and grips the release cord between thumb and the second knuckle of his forefinger. He pauses and looks at the bottles.

  Neither boy says a word.

  Kane swings. Three lazy arcs above his head. One…two…three…

  Then more. Getting faster and faster. Seven or eight revolutions per second.

  One last vicious swing and—ka-whup!—Kane releases. The sling’s braided cord makes a loud CRACK! And the stone missile shoots out.

  The first pop bottle doesn’t just crack and fall, it explodes in a shower of glass. In a blur, Kane loads another stone.

  “Hell!” Adam exclaims. “That bottle didn’t just break, it doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Kane squints at him. “Seen you carry but never use your sling. You’ll hit the bottle, I reckon…if you shoot the way you ride.”

  Adam shakes his head.

  “Might’ve got you out of trouble,” Kane says. “If you’d known how to use it before.”

  Adam hears the creak of rope, sees Nate hanging upside down in the tree and a pair of shabby boots and dirt-stained jeans before him. “I know how to use a sling.”

  “Thing about a sling,” Kane says, ignoring him, “you gotta trust it, like you trust a brother.” He gazes down at the cord in his hands and gives a rueful smile.

  Adam stoops to collect a stone from deep in his own stone bag. He chooses a walnut-sized pebble, round, gray and smooth.

  Kane nods. “River stone’s always best. That’s a good one. I’d say one-inch thick. About a half-ounce. Perfect.”

  Adam tests the weight of the stone in his hand, worries it around in his palm until the stone is warm against his skin. He places it in the sling pouch and his fingers play with the knot.

  “Hold a sling like you hold a woman,” Kane says. “Loose. And strong at the same time.”

  Adam looks at him. Kane shakes his head. “You ain’t done that either, have you?”

  “I know what I’m doin.”

  Kane grins. His wolf eyes shine.

  Adam hauls out his sling and swings it in loops, first above his head and then to the side of his body. He allows his arm to ease into the momentum, to feel the tug of gravity. He waits…he waits…and waits. Propellers his arm faster and faster, then…

  CRACK!

  The snap of the sling booms loud and the stone flies.

  A miss. Nowhere close. If the glass bottle were an enemy, Adam would be in serious trouble. He clamps his jaw shut and fetches another stone from the pouch.

  “Sling won’t work with anger,” Kane says. “A sling needs tenderness.”

  “How do you f
igure a slingshot needs tenderness?” Adam snaps.

  “You gotta relax. Same as riding. See the flight. The stone’s path all the way. See it hit the target. See it all in your head first. Trust the sling. Trust it to do what your brain is telling it. What it knows how to do. Breathe easy now. See it done.”

  Adam nods. This actually makes sense to him. He stares at the remaining bottle, charting the course to it in his head, the arc of a traveling stone. He calms himself. Fixes on his breathing.

  In…Out…In…Out…

  He begins swinging again. He closes his eyes and gets into the rhythm of the swinging. Gets into the zone. Now he opens his eyes again, concentrates hard, eyes trained on the target, all around him a wall of silence. No movement. He keeps swinging. Still slow. Then faster.

  Much faster now. A blur, and…CRACK!

  Explosion. A mist of glass. The top half of the bottle smashed. The bottom section still standing on the rock.

  “Nice.” Kane walks to retrieve the stone missiles. When he returns, he hands the stones back to Adam and grins. “Feels good, huh?”

  Adam nods and takes them both. He slips one into his pocket, pouches the other and practices swinging again, enjoying the weight of the stone in the cradle, the resistance of the hemp and Voddenite cord, the tug of gravity, the fluid movement of his arm. He could get used to this after all.

  “ADAM STONE!” a voice yells.

  He jerks his head up, releases the sling and the entire thing flies from his hand—slingshot and stone together.

  “Sadie Blood?”

  She sits on a rise astride a jet-black Sandeater that looks mean as hell. A Sandeater is a byke built to do just that—swallow up the desert. Sadie, like her byke, is layered in a powdery dust. Her goggles perch on top of her head and her hazel eyes have a glaze to them. Her jaw is tight.

  “Sadie Blood,” Adam repeats. “That was you out there?” He stands with his hands dangling at his sides, staring at her.

  Kane takes a step towards her. “Hell are you doin here?”

  Sadie blinks and licks her lips. She looks exhausted. “I saw you pitch camp behind me. Figured I’d double back. See who you are.” She glances at Adam. “Just to be safe.”

  Sadie darts a look behind her, over her shoulder.