Stone Rider

by David Hofmeyr

  Kane smiles weakly and shakes his head. “Yep. But not that way.” He squints at Adam, as if trying to convey some idea in his head. “Thought you had it figured,” he whispers.

  “Had what figured?”

  Kane rolls his head, looks away. Turns back to Adam. He reaches out a hand from under the covers—quick despite his condition. He grips Adam’s wrist. “What are you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know, I…”

  Kane shakes his head. “Say it. What are you gonna do?”

  “Find her, I guess,” he mumbles.

  “Say it again.”

  “I’ll hunt ’em down. I’ll find her.”

  Kane coughs. “Again! Like you mean it. Loud.”

  “I’LL FIND HER!”

  A horn blasts outside. Long and sharp. It stops abruptly, leaving a trembling silence.

  “Damn right you will,” Kane says hoarsely.

  A roaring cacophony of bykes carries to them through the window. Shouts and muted voices. The floorboards roll and a rattling metal cart careens sideways across the room. A bottle topples and crashes to the floor. It shatters, spilling a red liquid.

  Adam looks at Kane. “It’s started.”

  “Take the Drifter,” Kane says. “Fastest byke there ever was. Best way to get her back.”

  “The Drifter? Hell, I can’t ride the Drifter.”

  “Told you before…she’ll let you. Let her guide you. Listen to her. Feel her.”

  “But the Longthorn, I—”

  “I’m not asking. Go! I’ll ride the Longthorn after.”

  Adam looks at him. “You’re hurt bad, Kane.”

  Kane smiles. “Hell. This ain’t nothin.”

  “But—”

  “One more thing…Under my byke seat you’ll find a small package. Bring it to me.”

  Kane’s Drifter. It feels like stepping inside someone else’s body—what it must feel like—sliding inside his skin, inside his mind. Adam tries to manipulate the byke, but he can’t. His hands shake and weird tremors run through him. Riders gun past him and leave him cursing in their dust.

  He starts the engine and she stalls. He kick-starts her again and she stutters and lurches. Adam sweats and his stomach turns. Another Rider barrels past him. A blast of noise and sand. Adam squints and coughs in the dust.

  Hell was I thinking? Drifter will never work for me.

  He knows the byke has speed, if he can harness her power. No byke is faster. Not on the Circuit. Not anywhere. If he can hold it together…if he can just fuse his legs to the Drifter…will her to move…imagine the byke’s frame an extension of his own body.

  He starts the motor and she runs. He rides in a jagged, ill-defined way until he senses something. Remote. Vague. A throb in the back of his head.

  Adam feels the byke pull and he feels himself drift away. The air is thick as water. The desert begins to warp. Now he’s floating, far away.

  He’s swimming in the deep. Not the lake. Somewhere else. The water is cold. A strong current pulls at him. He’s not swimming. He’s sinking. Going down fast. His legs are heavy, weighted at the feet. He holds his breath and feels panic rise in his chest. Down he slides through the water, pulled to the depths by dead men on a chain. He hits the bottom and the sand churns. Under the soles of his bare feet, the soft flesh of the dead and the dying.

  A shadow snakes by, smooth and silent in the black. He sees teeth, clawed feet and a scaled back. It’s huge. A behemoth. It disappears with a powerful flick of its tail, leaving a whirlpool swirl of current. He pulls at the chain, frantic, feeling his lungs burn. He stares up to the moonlike sun beyond the surface. An impossible distance away.

  Instinct tells him to turn. And he sees it coming. The monster, sliding in the deep. With its rows and rows of bone-crunching teeth. He shuts his eyes and he waits for the pain.

  But what he feels instead is the grind of sand. The dirt beneath his wheels. He feels the coarseness of the ground. He feels rubber grinding rock. And some other feeling…an aloneness…a wildness. No pity. No remorse. No fear.

  And he knows—he knows—whose echo he feels, whose uneasy skin he inhabits.

  That’s when he feels the buildup of energy, a connection between him and the byke. He feels the wind, scouring him. The sun, scorching him.

  Adam expands his consciousness to become the byke. He transcends his body and merges with the machine. A singular, symbiotic organism—Rider and byke—one entity.

  He shifts gear and the Drifter growls and moves. Oh and how they move—loose-limbed and ferocious.

  The way a wolf moves.

  —

  Adam rides hard. He lost valuable ground struggling with the Drifter, but he begins to make up time. He cuts past Riders. Hauls them in and leaves them trailing in the dust.

  He comes to a place of long grass, bleached by the sun and beaten flat by the wind. He cuts a path through it and keeps his eyes dead ahead. There’s no sign of life. Alone in his helmet. The byke vibrates.

  A bleak wind cuts across his path and he’s caught in a shower of stone shrapnel. He leans into the wind. Grit gets between his teeth and crunches between his molars. His eyes stream with tears and his throat burns. He scans the broken terrain.

  I let Frank down. Let Nate down…Kane, Sadie…Let ’em all down.

  No more. Not ever again. I’m coming, Sadie.

  He squints into the dust. Someone out there, not moving. A figure.

  He flicks up the helmet visor. The figure materializes from the murk, no more than a shadow. Adam has the sling in his hand. He pouches a smooth stone and swings it in a steady arc above his head. The figure stops. Holds up both hands. The sling whines in the air.

  “Speak!” Adam calls to him. “Or die standing.” The threat is swallowed in the choked air.

  “Thakrar Kush,” the voice says. “Byke’s been totaled and my gear got stolen.”

  “Nobody steals gear.”

  “Those bastards took mine.”

  Adam stops swinging the stone. He keeps it pouched and hanging at his side, ready to strike if needed. He steels himself for deception.

  “Who? Scorpions?”

  “The same. They’ve got no respect.”

  Thakrar Kush stands with the hood of his jacket over his head, to protect him from the sand. He coughs intermittently. Adam can’t see his eyes.

  “They have a girl with ’em?”

  Thakrar Kush pauses. “Might’ve done. Hard to say.”

  Adam grips his handlebars. Under normal circumstances he would have disappeared into the sand long before getting close.

  Keep your head down. Stay low. Say nothin. That’s how you survive.

  But these are not normal circumstances. And he is not himself.

  “Say…you don’t have water, do you?” Kush says. “I’d be grateful. Hydro-pills were snatched with the byke. I figure two hydros will do me till I get back to camp.”

  Adam watches him.

  “Listen, I’m not a threat,” Kush says. “You’re the one on the byke.”

  Adam pops a flap on his breast pocket. He removes a pack of six hydro-pills.

  “I’m asking for charity,” Kush says. “Lead off with that fine Drifter and I’ll die here.”

  “People die,” Adam says. But he flings the pack at Kush anyway. “Take ’em.”

  Kush drops to his knees and snatches up the pack. He rips it open and pops a blue pill, throwing his head back to swallow it with spit. Then he stands with the pack in his hand, watching Adam. “You ride alone,” he says.

  It’s not a question. It’s a statement.

  Adam has a bad feeling. “What Tribe are you?”

  “Tribe?” Kush stares at Adam with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m standing here alone.”

  Then, in a way so subtle it seems not to happen at all, Kush tilts his head. The vaguest gesture. A slight inclination. Enough to make Adam’s stomach twist.

  A signal!

  Beneath the hood…his skin…alabaster-white skin…plum-c
olored lips. Eyes painted…

  Deads.

  Deads are never alone; there are always…

  ZZZLICK!

  Adam flinches. The stone zips past his ear, so close he feels the displaced wind on his cheek.

  GO!

  Adam doesn’t hang around. He opens the throttle, pulls the front wheel of the Drifter back in a huge wheelie and guns it straight for Kush. As he does this, he hears them. The others. And he sees them in his peripheral vision, closing in at speed from each side. Exploding out of the dust.

  Frank’s voice leaps into his head.

  If you have to fight, fight dirty. No kind of clean fighting left.

  In front of him, Kush does a panicky jig, trying to preempt Adam’s next move.

  He gets it wrong.

  Kush sidesteps right into his path. Adam doesn’t bother swinging the sling. There isn’t time. The byke seems to take over. Heading straight for him. But—right at the last second—Adam swerves.

  I’m not Kane. I’m not Levi.

  Kush gives a strangled cry and disappears under the Drifter’s wheels. Adam feels the byke leap and jolt. A sickening crunch. Then the wheels take and he spurts forward. He looks back.

  He sees Kush limping. Wounded. But alive.

  —

  He keeps well ahead of the Riders for roughly five klicks. There are four of them. All Deads, he sees now. They look familiar. Might be the same Deads they encountered on the plain after the Nakoda camp. They come hard after him, bent on some revenge, or just to knock him out of the Race. It doesn’t much matter.

  The landscape changes. The ground is black and hard. Fissures and cracks open in the earth. There isn’t a tree in sight, not a blade of grass. In the distance, a black, conical shape looms. A mountain. A gray billow of smoke from the summit. Not just any mountain. A volcano.

  El Diablo!

  The Race end is near.

  Adam glances over his shoulder, acknowledges the Riders still coming. The Drifter is fast and he’s opening a progressive lead, but not enough. By nightfall, when the bykes lose their power, they’ll be close enough to make an attack on foot.

  Something occurs to him as he rides. Back there, when he rode clean through that kid, he did it without thinking, without panic. And he didn’t feel the Blackness. Any other time like that, the Blackness would have risen and that would be him…gone. Blacked out.

  But he’s different now.

  He is not afraid.

  He will find her.

  He will do what he needs to do.

  He will become what he needs to become.

  A Stone Rider.

  Adam squeezes both brakes, releases the front one and leans low, kicking out the back wheel so that he slides out and turns, using the force of his momentum to spin himself upright and whip the byke round to a dead stop, facing in the opposite direction. A one-eighty-degree stop.

  The Riders, specks in the distance, keep coming. Clattering over an earth remade from fire.

  Adam opens the throttle and the Drifter throbs. A perfect sound. He releases the brakes and the byke jerks forward, throwing him back in the seat. The Drifter eats the ground, rips a fat-wheeled track under him.

  All four see him come at them and continue onwards, their pace unchecked.

  He sees them grow in size, rising from specks to machines, to Riders.

  Chicken it is, then.

  Adam removes the sling from his belt with his right hand. With his left, the damaged hand, he pushes down on the handlebar to keep the byke steady. His heart beats a calm rhythm. The braided cord feels good in his hand. It feels like it belongs there. It feels part of him. One fused organism: byke and boy and sling.

  He unleashes the first stone in a dreamlike state. The sling crack is loud and startling. A Rider wobbles, falls, tumbles backwards, and the Riderless byke careens away from the pack, then flips and somersaults, tearing up chunks of earth.

  One down. Three to go.

  Stones whistle overhead, the overturned byke whines, the Deads scream obscenities, but Adam doesn’t heed them. He ducks down, flattens his body against the byke’s frame…and charges.

  The Dead in front of him swerves, eyes wide and white, fixed on Adam coming at him low and hard. The Dead leans left and rips the throttle back.

  Too little, too late.

  The Drifter’s front wheel mounts the slope of the angled byke and Adam is launched skyward, using the Dead’s byke and body as a makeshift ramp. In midair, he unleashes another stone from the sling, whirring above his head, and the stone finds its target.

  Two down. Two to go.

  Adam blasts out across the lava ground, in the opposite direction to the two Deads left. They brake and loop round. Adam does the same, wheel-spinning round so that he comes to face them again. He opens the throttle and roars towards them.

  “WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO!” he screams, loosing stone after stone. “YOU CAN COME AT US AND KEEP COMING, BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE US!”

  Each bullwhip crack reminds him of the barrage of blows that rained on Kane. They remind him of Frank’s head hitting each step as he dragged him to his grave. And they remind him of Sadie’s plea to him.

  Adam! Do something!

  The Deads see the intent in Adam and they check and swerve right, cutting up dirt tracks as they veer across the open black ground…away from Adam.

  “I’M NOT ALONE!” he shouts at their backs. “YOU HEAR THAT? I’M NOT ALONE!”

  Adam comes to a breathless stop and sits astride his byke, staring after them. He’s filled with a weird, heart-thumping thrill, an after-shot of adrenaline. But he has another creeping feeling in him. Revulsion. Horror at the violence.

  He rides into the night, watched by a gathering of indifferent airships. He rides until the Drifter—depleted of its store of heat energy—shudders and peters out.

  He builds a fire to hold the cold at bay and kneads his stomach with a fist to stave off hunger cramps. He tips back his head to take one of his remaining hydro-pills. Then stares at the Drifter, at the flames reflected on its silver sides.

  He sees himself mirrored there, behind the flames. A ragged-looking kid with a killing weapon gripped in each of his clenched fists. In one hand, a sling. In the other, Nate’s blade. Kane slipped it to him in the infirmary.

  He looks beyond the byke to the dim, moonlit plain. In the half-light, Adam can just make out the shadow of a mountain. A black hole cut out of the night. The dark smudge of El Diablo.

  —

  At first light, before setting out, he drains his canteen of water and throws it away. Then he stands looking at his Race pack. Taking a few running steps, he hurls this away too, as far as he can manage. He doesn’t need anything. Just his body and the byke and the sling.

  Nothing between him and what he needs to do.

  Adam is stripped down to the core. Driven by one thought only. Revenge.

  But, as he climbs onto his byke, he senses a competing voice. Telling him to be careful. To remember who he is.

  Not to lose himself.

  —

  In the shadow of El Diablo lies the final obstacle course—the remaining man-made challenge. One last test before a straight shoot home to Blackwater. Adam reckons there are at least half a dozen Riders between him and the winning flag. And one of them is Sadie.

  What have they done with her? Is she bound? Gagged? Beaten?

  Adam rides hard. Fueled by rage.

  In the sky above the course, a wake of vultures hovers—waiting for the carnage. Adam glances up at the airships and at the trykes, high on the slopes of the volcano, casting long shadows. They won’t care about his personal circumstance. Or Sadie’s. They are motivated by one thing only.

  Blood.

  But it won’t be my blood. Not today.

  Adam shakes his head and catches sight of a flash of metal. A Rider, midcourse. He watches the racing line of the solitary figure.

  The Rider is skilled and he maneuvers his byke with artistry, but too fast.
He’s riding against time. Adam finds himself rooting for him. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know the Rider, he doesn’t recognize his riding style or his dark blue byke, but the moment is stark and beautiful. A lone Rider, pitted against stone and dirt.

  Adam looks up at the airships, wondering if they know something the Rider doesn’t.

  A sharp cry comes from the course, and without having to look, Adam knows what the cry means. But he does look. And hates himself for it. He sees the Rider fall.

  The Rider drops backwards from his byke; at the apex of a jump, he plummets back with his arms upflung and…and from his chest, thin lines extend.

  Arrows.

  Adam has heard of this type of sabotage. Sky-Base has rigged the final obstacle course with triggered arrows.

  The trick with arrows, Frank told him once, is to ensure your racing line is pure. If a Rider veers from the optimal path—by inches—the arrows fly.

  It was here, on the black slopes of El Diablo, where Frank lost his leg. Beyond saying where it happened, Frank never spoke of the incident. It was taboo. Like Pa’s suicide, like Ma’s death from the lung sickness before that. All taboo.

  Adam arches his neck back and searches the sky for some purpose in all this. “Where are you, Frank? You up there watching?”

  Silence. Frank’s echo doesn’t inhabit the Drifter’s metal skin.

  —

  Now Adam descends into the obstacle course. The Drifter purrs and he rides with his head up, watchful and aware. He engages the transfer engine and the byke ratchets up into a jumping position. He opts for goggles instead of helmet, with his filter mask feeding him clean air.

  Stay light. Stay free.

  The course is steep with furrowed lanes, fierce turns and six massive jumps.

  He slips into the first narrow channel and concentrates on getting his racing line right, on taking every corner at the right angle, on keeping his speed well checked, not too fast, not too slow. Bursts of speed when he needs it. Control is the key.

  He reaches the first jump in a hurry and he swoops up and leaps skyward. Down the other side. Beautiful. Perfect.

  A familiar thrill runs through him. His vision becomes tunneled. He sees nothing but the track in front of him, the next turn, the jump coming. He’s back in the zone, riding by feel, unconscious to the world outside the course. It feels good. It feels natural. It feels like coming home.