“He left.”
“Where’d he go?”
“He was gone when I woke.”
Adam shakes his head. “He’s a ghost. He appears and disappears. Like the damn rain.”
Sadie stares out of the window, as though expecting to see him there. “Who is he?”
Adam feels a stab of jealousy in his heart. “Hell should I know?”
“It doesn’t matter. We have to go.” She turns to him. “Can you ride?”
He stares at his bandaged hand and doesn’t answer.
“You can’t quit,” she says. “They’ll Unplug you.”
“They’d never find me. I’d disappear.”
“Don’t be an idiot. They’d do it remotely. They wouldn’t need to find you. You saw what the Colonel did. Just pushed a button and—”
“The Plug deactivates. Everyone knows that. After the Race is over. Frank told me. He—”
A loud bang interrupts them and they turn and see the door flung wide open. A swirl of grit flies into the room. A silhouette figure stands in the doorway, a bright sky behind him.
“What are you doin?” a voice barks.
Sadie leaps from her chair. Adam fumbles for his sling.
“Better kill me quick,” the voice says.
The glare outside is fierce and Adam visors his eyes with a hand and squints into the light. He feels an ache where his thumb should be. His eyes adjust to the brightness.
“Kane,” he says. “Hell you been?”
Kane moves into the room, dipping his head under the door frame. “Scouting.” He lifts a foot-long, rusted knife from a dust-strewn counter. Runs a finger along the edge. “So. Planning on leaving without me?”
He grins and throws the knife from one hand to the other.
“They took his thumb,” Sadie says, still standing.
Kane nods and looks away. “Wolves are liable to do that.”
“Is everything a joke to you?”
Adam sees Kane smile in the mottled window reflection. “Why are you riding the Blackwater?” he says, turning to Sadie. “Don’t you have a Bykemonger Station to look after?”
Sadie shakes her head. “Colonel took it back the same day Levi came around.”
“I’m sorry,” Adam says. “I should’ve—”
“He’s an animal. You saw what he did at the start. And Levi is just like him…maybe worse.” Her voice falters. She clamps her jaw shut and stares out the door.
Kane flings the knife across the room into empty space. It embeds itself in the wooden wall of the hut with a startling thud, shuddering there. “Enough. Time to ride.”
The desert bakes. Layered in a film of dust, they labor across the sand. The barren landscape blurs and swims in the heat. Adam squints into the sun, shielding the glare with his bandaged hand. He feels exhausted. Light-headed. The effort required to ride is overwhelming. Sweat runs from his temples. Each stone under his byke delivers a jarring ache along his spine.
He leans forward. A sharp pain rips through his hand. His thoughts are haphazard. The ground tilts. He looks at the bedraggled bandage and pulls it tight with his teeth.
The wound is a problem. He’s not worried about infection—the cauterizing would have stopped bacteria taking root—it’s his balance. His natural rhythm is upset. The rhythm he’s always taken for granted.
It’s gone.
He feels unsteady on his byke. Out of control. With no opposing thumb for grip, his hand keeps slipping. Nothing is the same. He glances at the others and he can see by their sidelong looks that he’s holding them up. They haven’t said anything. But he knows.
Sadie drops back and rides next to him. “All right?”
“I’m fine.”
“We can stop, if you like. We’re—”
“I said I’m fine.” He accelerates and pushes beyond her, feeling foolish, riding close behind Kane, who doesn’t acknowledge his presence. He feels his face flush hot.
Gotta find a way. There’s no growing a new thumb.
He concentrates. Pushes down the panic in his chest. Searches for the old zone feeling. He grips with his right hand, his good hand. With his injured left, he pushes the heel of his palm against the handlebar. He almost shrieks. The pain is fierce and quick as whiplash. He clenches his jaw and feels tears spring to his eyes.
Where are you, Frank? I need you.
—
They come to rest in the shade of a screwbean mesquite. Kane stretches. He leaps up, hangs on a branch and performs ten quick chin-ups, his body rigid, his back arched. Sadie rolls her neck and watches him. Adam drops to the ground and sits with his legs crossed, not speaking.
“What do you think?” Sadie says, unfolding her Race pack map. She flattens it out on the ground, flicking away stones and tan-colored, twisted seeds.
Kane swings from the tree. He crouches and consults the route with her. Adam watches them.
Sadie plants her forefinger down on the map, pinning it to the ground. “I reckon we’re about here. On the edge of the Valley of a Thousand Dead Sons.”
Kane leans across her to study the map. Adam drags himself closer.
Sadie moves a slender finger along the route. Her skin is dark and her fingernails pale. She indicates an area near Camp Three. “Race leaders will be here.”
Kane nods. “So we’ll take the third obstacle course. That removes the fourth from play.”
Sadie points to a spot where the contour lines come swirling together. “But taking the third course means we’ll be forced through this area.”
Adam looks at the bunched up contour lines. “That’s a ravine.”
Kane tilts his head. “A steep one. No way down most likely. We’ll have to jump it.”
Sadie slides her finger across the ravine and meets the dotted line of the Trail. “On the other side, we’ll connect with the main track to Camp Four. The last camp.”
“Right,” Kane says. “It’s a massive shortcut.”
Uncertainty flickers in Sadie’s eyes. “But…no Riders in their right mind will take that route. We’ll be alone.”
Kane stands and brushes the dust from his black riding suit. “You afraid?”
She shakes her head. “No. There’s no other option.”
“They say you go in there, you don’t come out. Might as well be a black hole.”
“Why?” Adam asks.
“Because that’s Nakoda territory.”
Nakoda. A word seared into Adam’s brain as a boy. The worst kind of people anywhere. Witches, sorcerers…and cannibals. “They don’t exist,” he says.
Kane grins and saunters over to his Drifter. “Course they don’t.”
Adam stands. Too quickly. He waits for a sudden head rush to fade.
Then he turns to Sadie. “Sadie, I—”
“Don’t worry about the Nakoda. We’ll outride them…if they even exist.”
“It’s not that. It’s…When we found you…you were alone. Why? After you gave me a hard time for riding alone.”
She folds the map, stands and looks at the horizon. She fixes the red bandanna on the perfect dome of her shorn skull. “I wasn’t. I was riding with two kids from the shop. It’s just me now.”
“I’m sorry. About everything. Your shop. I can’t believe the Colonel took it back. After all the work you put in. What you did for my byke…”
He leaves the sentence adrift and watches Sadie fight with the straps of her pack, tugging at them in frustration.
Adam kicks at the dirt. “Why didn’t the Colonel…your pa…ever use his money and power to get up to Sky-Base?”
Sadie turns and glares at him, pulls the straps tight. “He was offered a place. For him and his kin…D’you know what he said? He said he’d rather stay. Stay and run Blackwater the way they wanted. He condemned us all to short lives. That’s the kind of man he is. Kin is nothin.”
“Yeah, like my pa.”
“No. Nothin like your pa. Your pa ever force your brother away?”
Adam kno
ws about Sadie’s oldest brother. Joe Blood. They say the Colonel treated him so mean he up and left one day. Just walked out. Into the desert. Didn’t even take a byke. He never returned.
“Pa might as well have taken Frank away. He’d still be here if Pa hadn’t killed himself.”
Sadie shakes her head. “You don’t get it, do you? Your pa loved you. He worked the mine for you. He cared about you. My pa? He’s a murderer. Only thing he cares about is himself.”
—
The riding is no easier. Adam sweats and struggles with his grip. His missing thumb is beginning to look like more than just a liability. It’s beginning to look like a disaster.
He fights the Longthorn. And the byke fights back. It’s as if the byke is annoyed with him. And on top of that Frank’s echo has abandoned him. He’s alone. Even Sadie and Kane seem to have separated from him, riding side by side up ahead. Adam curses under his breath. Fatigue and bitterness take hold. He shuts his eyes.
How much longer can I last?
That’s when he feels an unsettling prickle along his skin. A shift in the air density. Then the sudden, unmistakable presence of someone with him on the byke. A voice enters his consciousness. It shudders up through the machine. Not Frank. Someone else.
I’m with you, Adam.
The nearness of the echo is profound. Adam can almost feel breathing on his neck.
He flicks open his eyes. “No! You don’t have the right to be here. You left us.”
The voice moves through the machine. It vibrates in his head.
I didn’t leave. I’m right here.
Adam pushes down the heel of his left palm. Ignores the flash of pain. Holds his breath in anger. Why are you afraid? Stop fighting. Go to that place you know. Breathe.
He shakes his head and grits his teeth, but takes a deep breath anyway. He feels the pull of the hot wind. Listens to his heartbeat. Drifts away.
Warm skin. A shout of joy. Spring desert flowers. The smell of cedar. A red kite in a pale sky. It dips and snaps. Loops manically. They follow the kite through a field. His hand in Pa’s hand. Frank running ahead.
The day and all its sensations flood back to Adam. That’s when he feels the byke again. All the infinite vibrations of the Longthorn. A byke passed from his pa to his brother to him. Carrying with her all their memories and feelings, like strands of DNA. He feels their power and their strength. He feels their frailty.
And he falls into a new rhythm with the byke. He goes to a place of light where the byke syncs with him. A secret collusion. A different dimension. He opens the throttle and goes like the wind.
He’s in the zone.
—
Airships. Floating over the desert. It can mean only one thing: the third obstacle course. Here they see a scattering of Riders, plowing into the entrance. Watchers up above like vultures at a kill. They have arrived at the nub of their decision, an hour’s ride after Kane hauled out the map.
The course is lethal. Adam can see that at first glance. A series of tight turns and radical dirt jumps, leading into a narrow, perilous section, built on towering stilts, high up in the air. A thin, snaking wooden bridge, wide enough for one byke only, with no barriers either side.
The fall? Fatal.
As if to prove his thinking right, he sees a Rider, alone, high up. They watch him navigate the narrow wall with skill. A good pace. Not fast. Not slow. Then painfully slow, grinding almost to a standstill.
He applies his front and back wheel brakes to control the byke, hopping from one narrow angle to another. Then disaster. He misjudges. The byke wobbles.
The Rider struggles to compose himself.
He falls.
There. Gone. All in seconds.
The fall is soundless. Rider and byke together, through the air. No scream. No shout. Nothing. Absolute silence. Just an object, plummeting through space.
Then a puff of dust. A faint thud. Another life taken.
“The hell with this!” Adam yells.
He charges towards the entrance, gunning the Longthorn’s motor hard. Sadie and Kane burn after him, their bykes swift and slick in his wake. First Sadie. Then Kane.
The first jump they hit through the chute entrance is a giant, fin-shaped wall. It curves up at an angle, almost reaching ninety degrees. Adam leaps into space and lands with a punch of his shocks. Perfect. They rip through a deep channel and fly into the next jump, a showpiece booter—about forty yards long, with a fifteen-yard-tall lip and a twenty-yard-tall landing slope.
Adam shunts down the slope—floats in the air—looks below, midjump.
The forty-yard space between jump lip and landing slope is embedded with wooden spikes. A Rider impaled below. Adam looks back over his shoulder.
Sadie is up and over. Then Kane. He boosts up and wrenches the Drifter backwards, executing a radical backflip. Insane. No fear. He lands with a slight wobble, pulls the byke straight and keeps going.
Adam looks forward. Head down, going hard. The course is fast. They blaze through at massive speed. Adam’s bandaged hand jars and the pain is fierce. But he feels stronger, more connected to the byke. The Longthorn has learned to compensate. She pulls harder to the left now, guiding his injured hand. Almost taking over. Controlling his body in the sharp left turns.
They twist into the raised platform section. The pace slows. They snake along the narrow wooden path. Adam sweats and keeps focused. The drop on either side is terrifying.
He slows to a crawl, applies the brakes. Hops from one section to another. Every sense tuned to the moment. He turns a corner and sees Sadie, behind him. Her front wheel teeters an inch from the edge. She slips.
“SADIE!” he shouts into his helmet.
She brakes. Comes to a complete standstill. Then she pulls her byke back on track. Adam watches her edge across the wooden bridge section. The planks of the bridge lurch and sway. Each movement of her byke causes a ripple along the length of the platform.
Adam cruises through the last few bends. The path widens. He’s out!
Sadie comes sailing through. Kane is a length behind. Then he’s out the other side.
They drop back down into a steep dirt chute. The byke roars under Adam. He hits top speed coming into the final jump. He swoops into the lip and launches high into the air, maneuvering the byke under him. He sees it, a subtle glint in the sun. A line running straight across the landing slope. Waist high.
This time he’s ready. This time he’s focused. This time he thinks about the Rider behind him. And the one behind her.
“WATCH OUT FOR THE WIRE!” he bawls, his voice snatched away.
Adam closes his eyes. He lands with a jolt and he looks back.
Inches. That’s how close he came. If he’d hit the jump any slower, it would have taken him. No question. Sadie flies over the wire and disappears in a scarf of dust. She makes it. And so does Kane.
The three Riders burst out of the far side of the obstacle course, whooping and hollering. They slide to a stop and look at each other, eyes filled with light.
“Hell!” Adam shouts. “Nate would’ve got a kick out of that!”
“Who’s Nate?” Sadie asks, breathing hard.
He looks at her, feeling a surge of relief and adrenaline pumping through his body. And something else. Camaraderie. A slow bloom of belonging.
“Just some kid,” he says. “Some kid I liked.”
—
They blaze north, into a shimmering heat that bends trees. They ride through a white haze and come to a plain strewn with desert flowers by the millions—cantaloupe-colored, mustard and fuchsia—blooming despite the heat, somehow surviving.
Adam floats. The desert is quiet. The kind of stunned quiet he knows at the height of a jump, that in-between state.
They ride up beyond the flowers onto a high, arid plateau with scattered rocks, strewn like gray teeth. The wind moans. It hauls up dirt and flings it at them. In the distance, they see a wall of copper-colored sand. And the light turns amber, then bras
s-colored.
Warning lights flash red on their instrument panels. Bad weather. A rotten egg smell carries to them.
“Sulfur storm!” Adam shouts. He pulls out the map to get his bearings and a sudden gust snatches it from him. All three watch it dance away, like a paper airplane. No one says a word.
They flounder forward, into the wind, and are swallowed in dust.
Now the wind settles and dies altogether. The air is close and hot. They drift through the sulfur dust, leaving swirling vapor trails of yellow smoke. Adam concentrates hard. His focus is absolute.
Dust hangs in the air, thick as fog. The sun is an obscured halo and sounds become distorted, as though they’re making their way across a body of water. There’s a weird expectancy in the silence.
The desert waits. Adam’s instincts kick in and he waits with the desert.
The ground climbs under him. His instincts crackle and spit. A bad feeling crawls in his neck. The same bad feeling he got just before shooting over that jump with Nate. The jump that hid the gut-wire. This time Adam listens.
He jerks the Longthorn to a sliding, wheel-spinning stop. Two shadows, next to him, do the same. The dust billows.
“What’s the matter?” Sadie yells.
Adam stretches forward, over the handlebars, and points.
They squint through the settling dust and they see it. A yawning chasm. Their bykes not five yards from a drop that disappears into absolute darkness.
Adam dismounts, boots a stone over the edge and leans forward to watch it fall. It vanishes without a sound. They wait and they hear nothing.
“The ravine,” he says.
“How did you know?” Sadie asks him.
Adam shrugs. “I just knew.”
He follows the edge and sees a strip of land, like a peninsula, jutting out from the edge, extending over the void. The ground of the peninsula rises steeply to a lip—a natural jump.
“Might be big enough to launch us over.”
“We can’t even see the other side,” Sadie says.
“We can make it,” Kane says, squinting into the dust. “We’ll go together.”
They turn and ride back sixty yards. Then they bring their bykes around and wait, trying to pierce the gloom.
Stone Rider Page 14