“Wow, look at these things,” Adam said. He walked along a line of shiny motorbikes parked in front of the roadhouse.
Rachel was already peering in through the dirty window and shaking her head. “Oh, good choice,” she said sarcastically. “It’s a biker place.”
“Sounds like fun,” Gabriel said.
Adam shrugged. Stepping past Rachel, he pushed open the door. “Who cares as long as the burgers are good.”
Inside, the roadhouse seemed to be lit solely by the neon signs that hung above the bar. The floor was sticky with a thousand spilled beers, and the smell of fried onions was just about winning its competition with the stench of sweat and motor oil.
“Nice,” Rachel said.
They walked over to the counter and hitched themselves up on to stools. A young woman whose arms were covered with tattoos slapped menus down in front of them and went back to her conversation with a man at the end of the bar. The man was probably in his late forties and was dressed in a fringed leather jacket and torn jeans, with a battered cowboy hat on his head from beneath which multicoloured dreadlocks hung down to his waist. Rachel smiled at him when he glanced her way and got an oddly blank look in return. She turned on her stool and looked over to the far corner, where a group of bikers was gathered around a pool table, drinking beer. One of them – a stick-thin figure with a long grey beard – grinned at her, showing teeth that were all either gold or black, but the smile was neither warm nor welcoming.
Rachel turned back and looked at her menu. “Well, if they don’t kill us, the food probably will…”
They ordered burgers and Cokes. Adam, knowing very well that ID would not be a problem, thought about asking for beer again, but he could see that neither Rachel nor Gabriel thought it was a good idea. He could see their point. It was probably sensible to keep his wits about him.
“What do you think we’re going to find when we get there?” he asked. “In Alamogordo, I mean.”
“God knows,” Rachel said. “Dad, maybe.” She knew it was a long shot, but there had to be some reason why they were being guided there; why their grandmother had sent a letter for them. “Answers, if we’re lucky.” She looked at Gabriel, hoping he might offer an answer of his own.
He did not look up from his plate. He finished a mouthful and wiped his fingers before saying, “Something that belongs somewhere else.”
“The third Triskellion, you mean?” Adam asked.
“Maybe…”
Rachel did not need to see Gabriel’s face. She could hear the darkness in his voice and sense the anger that was fizzing inside him. He had his own reasons for making the journey but, as always, Rachel knew that she and Adam were vital to whatever he was planning to do when they got there.
“Hey, darlin’!”
Rachel turned to see one of the bikers from the pool table staring at her. He was bald with a thick moustache and a smile that was even more disconcerting than the one Rachel had received from his skinny friend. He held up a bottle of beer and beckoned her to join him.
Rachel turned round again and found herself staring at the girl behind the bar. The girl ran her fingers through her long black hair and stared back at Rachel with dead eyes. “Must be your lucky day,” she said. “Looks like Chopper’s taken a fancy to you. You and your pretty dress…”
Rachel looked down at the dress she had “bought” at the vintage store in New York. She had never felt less pretty in her life. Wolf-whistles rang out from behind her and she was aware that Adam was now turning round to look at the bikers.
“Let’s just go,” she said.
“Come over here, sweet thing,” the bald biker called Chopper shouted.
Adam got to his feet. “Hey, shut up!”
“Leave it, Adam,” Rachel said.
“I’ll deal with this,” Gabriel said.
It was the skinny one who came at him first, waving a pool cue above his head like a Samurai sword and roaring like a wounded animal. Gabriel turned and his hand was round the biker’s throat before the man could lower the cue. Gabriel lifted him clean off his feet, walked him back across the room and threw him crashing down on to the pool table.
Then all hell broke loose.
As the others rushed forward, Adam did likewise to help Gabriel, stepping in front of Chopper as the big biker came at them with a beer bottle, unaware that several of the gang had already produced knives.
“Adam!” Rachel screamed.
Her cry was lost among others as Gabriel calmly snapped the wrists of two bikers. Their weapons clattered to the floor, and Adam wrapped his hands round Chopper’s bald head, driving it against the side of the bar, before turning to take on another of his friends…
Those bikers who could still walk were slowly hobbling out of the roadhouse. Others were being carried out and several still lay, unconscious or groaning, amid the shattered glass and broken furniture.
The man who had been sitting at the end of the bar raised his glass to Gabriel and Adam. “You guys are good,” he said. “You guys are out of this world.”
“We’re stronger than we look,” Adam said.
The barmaid was screaming at the injured bikers. She turned to scream at Rachel and the two boys, telling them to get out and never come back.
“You OK, Adam?” Rachel asked, ignoring her.
“Sure,” Adam said. But his face was pale and he was leaning a little awkwardly against the bar.
“My name’s Honeycutt,” the man at the bar said. “You can call me BB.”
“Nice to meet you.” Gabriel casually picked up a French fry from his plate and turned to Rachel and Adam. “We should go,” he said.
“Adam?” Rachel stepped next to her brother, and at that moment he fell forward into her arms. She laid him gently on the floor and then bent down to lift up his T-shirt. The meal she had just eaten rose back up at the sight of the blood, and she shouted for Gabriel.
“I’m fine,” Adam said, weakly.
Honeycutt knelt beside him and looked at the wound. “We need to get him to a hospital,” he said.
“No hospitals,” Gabriel said. He looked hard at Rachel and spoke with his mind. There’ll be records. They’d be able to find us.
He knelt next to Honeycutt and placed his hand on Adam’s stomach. Blood flowed from the wound between his fingers. He closed his eyes. “It’s missed all the major organs,” he said. “He’s going to be all right.”
Honeycutt looked at their faces and saw that there was little point arguing. “Well, at least let me help get him cleaned up. I know what I’m doing, OK?”
“Where can we go?” Rachel asked, instinctively feeling she could trust him.
Honeycutt smiled. “I’ll take you to Nirvana.”
Honeycutt’s smallholding was twenty kilometres or so west of Tulsa. His pick-up truck bumped over the potholes, and Adam winced in pain every time they hit a rock.
Rachel sat in the front with Honeycutt and looked worryingly back at her brother lying across the bench seat, his face slick with perspiration. The blood had spread and now formed a dark wet patch from his chest to his groin. Gabriel sat by him and held his right hand over the wound.
“Trust me; he’s going to be OK,” Gabriel said.
Rachel was glad Gabriel was so certain, but part of her still felt furious with him. Once again, he had got them into unnecessary trouble. “Maybe if you hadn’t attacked those butt-holes, this wouldn’t have happened.” But even as she rebuked him, she knew that she was not being completely honest with herself. Back there in the biker bar she had felt a surge of affection when Gabriel had stepped forward to protect her.
“Perhaps,” Gabriel said. “But you can’t always let these situations take control of you. You have to stand up and be counted. If you don’t resist harmful forces, they will destroy you.”
Rachel turned and stared forward. She did not want to see the smug look on Gabriel’s face for fear she might lose her temper and punch him.
“I think it w
as a lucky escape,” Honeycutt said. “Those punks are notorious around here. Personally, I’d have run.”
They came to a fence at the end of a rutted track and Honeycutt got out of the car and unlatched the gate; a sign painted on its slats read NIRVANA. It opened on to small fenced field, with a horse, a few goats, chickens and beehives.
“You keep bees?” Rachel asked.
“Name like mine, it would be rude not to,” Honeycutt said, with a smile. “Make my living selling honey.”
They pulled up outside the house and Honeycutt helped carry Adam in. He held him under the armpits while Gabriel lifted his feet, and they carried him across the wooden veranda and into the main room. They lay Adam down on the sofa. He grunted with pain as they adjusted his position.
“You OK?” Rachel asked. She had had a burning in her lower gut that she took to be a sympathy pain ever since Adam had been hurt. She was feeling a little of what Adam was feeling.
“Been better,” Adam whispered.
Honeycutt brought in hot water and dressings, and tore away Adam’s shirt. He cleaned the blood from around a hole that was about the size of two fingers, the flesh puckering at its edges. Rachel felt a warm surge of love spread through her, and Adam smiled weakly. Ever since they had been tiny Adam had always been in the wars. If something bad was going to happen to someone, it would happen to Adam.
“Let me take away the pain,” she said.
Rachel put her hand over the wound and concentrated. She felt her palm grow hot as she drew the pain from her brother and into herself; she felt the gnawing in her gut grow stronger and sharper. Shutting her eyes, she visualized the pain as a black ball that in her mind’s eye she pushed out of her body like a tumour and sent flying out into space. Then it was gone. Rachel felt nothing more and Adam’s face relaxed. She wiped the sweat from his brow.
“You guys are full of surprises,” Honeycutt said. He gave them some cotton bandages and Band-aids, and Rachel began to dry the cut and dress it.
“You should put some of this on it,” Honeycutt said. He passed Rachel a brown glass pot and a small vial containing yellowish liquid.
“Royal jelly?” Gabriel asked.
“Yep, from the queen bee. Best medicine there is.” Honeycutt grinned and Gabriel nodded his approval. “And there’s propolis in the other one – bees make it themselves from tree resin and gum. It’s a powerful antibiotic…”
Rachel smeared the edges of Adam’s stab wound with the royal jelly and rubbed a little of the waxy propolis over it, before dressing the area with a cotton swab.
“The beehive’s a totally sterile environment, did you know that?” Honeycutt began to arrange logs, paper and kindling in the stone grate of the fireplace. “It’s nature’s pharmacy.”
Within minutes Adam was asleep in front of the fire, and Honeycutt put bread and honey on the table, along with plates of cheese and glasses of beer. As they ate, Honeycutt began to tell them about the problems he was having; making honey for a living was hard enough, he said, but when more than half your bee colony had disappeared in a single year, it was almost impossible.
Rachel had heard a lot about Colony Collapse Disorder from, among others, Salvador Abeja, the beekeeper who had befriended them in Seville, but she had yet to hear two theories that matched. “So what do you think is happening to the bees?” she said.
“Most people in this part of America think it’s due to crop-spraying. You know, all the new sorts of chemicals being put into the ecosystem.” Honeycutt dipped his finger in the honey and put it in his mouth. “Others say that importing bees spreads disease that certain species don’t have the resistance to fight off. You know, in the same way that introducing the common cold to an Amazonian tribe would kill them all.”
“But what do you think?” Gabriel asked.
Honeycutt looked from one to the other as if he was about to say something stupid. “You won’t believe me if I tell you,” he said, stifling a laugh.
“Try us,” Gabriel challenged.
“Bee Rapture,” Honeycutt said.
Rachel had not heard the phrase before. “Bee what?”
“Rapture,” Honeycutt repeated. “I don’t think they’re actually dying off; I think they’re going back to where they come from.”
“Where?” Rachel asked, incredulous.
Honeycutt pointed skywards. “I seen them, in the evening. I’ve been out in the yard, feeding the chickens and the goats.” He began to paint pictures with his words in a voice that was very deep and appropriately honeyed. “Just as the sun is going down, you know when that golden light hits everything and makes it look warm and magical, you can hear a buzzing in the sky, and you look up, and there’s a black column flying above. At first you think it’s birds way, way up, but then you see they’re closer – and the buzzing gets louder. Then they stop. They hover over the farm like a dark cloud and I see other bees … my bees, join them, spinning up into the sky in a spiral and the whole thing spins like a black tornado. Faster and faster, louder and louder, and then” – Honeycutt clicked his fingers – “they’re gone. Vanished.”
“Where?” Rachel asked again.
“To the land of milk and honey, I guess.” Honeycutt smiled. “And who can blame them? It’s like they were here to do mankind good and we do nothing but damage them and mess them around. So, they are withdrawing the privilege.”
“You may be right,” Gabriel said.
The sun was lowering in the sky by the time they had finished talking and the golden light that Honeycutt had spoken of flooded across the fields. He insisted they stay the night. Adam still slept soundly by the fire and the colour had returned to his cheeks. Gabriel took a walk outside and across the prairie, studying the big Oklahoma sky, while Rachel offered to help Honeycutt feed his goats and chickens.
She had taken an immediate liking to this warm and relaxed man. She envied his life. She could see herself ending up somewhere remote like this – feeding livestock in the pale evening light. It was unlikely to happen for some time, though, she thought.
Given her current situation.
“So I guess you and your brother are from New York or somewhere like that?” Honeycutt said.
“That’s right; we’re New Yorkers,” Rachel said.
“Have to say you’re nice and polite for New Yorkers,” Honeycutt said. “They’re usually up their own butts, pardon my Spanish.”
Rachel chuckled. “Maybe. We’ve spent time in England and quite a few other places, though.”
“I can see that. You look like you’ve … seen things.”
Suddenly, Rachel wanted to tell this man everything; to confess it all would have been a huge relief – but she knew she couldn’t, even though she sensed that he would understand.
“Where’s the other guy from, though?” Honeycutt narrowed his eyes. “Gabriel?”
“I don’t know for sure. We met him in England.”
“Hmm. He’s smart. I can see that. He’s got something else about him, though – but I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Yeah, he’s like that,” Rachel said. “A bit of a mystery.”
Honeycutt hesitated a moment and looked out to where Gabriel stood in the cornfield. “And you like him, right?”
Rachel was about to contradict him, but felt herself redden and knew there was little point.
“That’s nice,” Honeycutt said. “Just don’t let him get you into any more trouble.”
Rachel was silent. Trouble of any sort was the last thing she wanted, but with Gabriel around they seemed to draw it to them like a magnet. “Thanks, BB,” she said quietly.
They had driven down to the lake in the blue Packard.
Eleanor had gone to spend a couple of days with friends in Albuquerque and Gerald had leave to take the boys off to swim and explore around the lagoon thirty kilometres away from the base.
They had eaten a picnic by the side of the lake and then Gerald had instructed the boys to run along and play. Only when they
could see the boys splashing around in the middle of the lake, silhouetted in the bright sunshine, had Gerald dared to lean over and place his hand on Celia’s bare leg and kiss her lightly on the lips. “Don’t worry; they can’t see us,” he said.
Celia and Gerald had been lovers for nearly a year now. Their relationship, even back in Triskellion, had had the feeling of something forbidden about it. Now that feeling was even stronger, and Celia lived with the guilt of it every moment.
No one had done more than Eleanor Wing to make her feel at home in Alamogordo. She had enjoyed the confidence and the kindness of this woman and had then betrayed her by stealing her husband.
“Please, darling,” Celia said, pushing Wing’s hand away. “I really don’t feel comfortable here. Let’s just talk.”
Wing fell back on his lounger and shielded his eyes from the sun with the back of his hand. The lunchtime wine had made him feel unusually talkative. “I need to tell you something really important,” he said. “You are the only one who will know what it means. It will enable you to understand why I was never allowed to write; why I had to keep this secret.”
Celia looked over at him. She could see that beneath his hand a tear was trickling down his cheek. She wiped it away. “Tell me, darling.”
“It was ten years ago,” Wing said. He spoke quickly. It was as though he were afraid his nerve might fail him; as though he were desperate to reveal a secret he had kept for far too long. He kept his hand over his eyes. “Nineteen fifty-five. I had just come back from Korea and the Yanks had recruited me into the test pilot scheme here. I was only twenty-four, so breaking the sound barrier on a daily basis during peacetime was very appealing.” He paused, took a breath. “It was a perfect June morning and I had taken a new Super Sabre up to do some altitude tests over the desert. I remember it so vividly because it was a perfect flying day; the sky was clear as far as the eye could see. Once I got above the clouds everything was so bright and blue I felt I could have been in heaven. I was still in radio contact and they told me to climb higher still to really test the kite. I must have been doing seven hundred miles an hour or so – just subsonic…” He paused for a moment in his story, his voice cracking a little.
Triskellion 3: The Gathering Page 13
