by Ben Zackheim
So, I’d told Scarlett to bury Rebel somewhere with a view.
“Scarlett,” I said into the long-range walkie. I was doing 60 on a country road.
“Yeah,” her voice came back.
“What do you have to drive besides the motorcycle?”
“That’s it,” she said.
Dammit. I was hoping we could find a better way to travel the last leg of the trip. A good truck would have been perfect. I figured it was Rebel’s last joke on me. I’d have to wrap this thing up on a bike.
“Fine,” I yelled at no one. “Then I’m riding your bike, Rebel!” I felt her near me then. If yelling at her would give me moment or two like that, well, she was in for a lot of flack from me.
“Uh, Kane?”
“What Scarlett?”
“Fox is gone.”
“What do you mean he’s gone?”
“He’s not here. His bike is gone. His bag, too.”
It didn’t make any sense. We’d left him in a dark room that Scarlett had prepared just for him. The plan was to hit the road that night and make it to the mountains before sunrise. Maybe he’d gone ahead. Maybe he was scoping things out. But without leaving a note?
Fox had bailed on us. I didn’t have much time to think about it, though.
It was time to say goodbye.
Scarlett had scoped out a spot for my partner. It was on the west side of a hill with a narrow slope. It looked comfortable and the view of the sunset would be something else.
“I’m off,” I said to the pile of dirt in front of me. I almost left it at that. Short and bitter. She would have liked that. But I rarely did stuff she liked. “It was Cannon. Best I can tell he set the bomb off remotely. Fucking coward. I think he has the twins. Don’t worry I’ll get them back in one piece.” Lying to a dead person is tougher than lying to a living one. I got the sense she was in my head, like she could see every nook and cranny.
So, I confessed.
“I could have taken him out tonight but, well, he got the advantage by making me think I had the advantage.” I half-expected a hand to dart from the dirt and strangle me. “Rookie mistake. Sorry.”
“So I’m going to finish this fucking mission and then I’m going to think about what’s next. It’s…” I stopped. She was dead but I still found it hard to say what I felt out loud. “It’s tough to think about doing this without you.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Scarlett stood at the bottom of the hill, waiting for me.
“Okay, so, bye, Rebel. I’ll come back and say hi when this is all over. Or, hey, maybe I’ll see you in Hell.” Didn’t sound half-bad right then.
I walked down the hill. I felt weak. Tired. Gravity grabbed my legs and forced me forward.
It was the longest walk of my life.
Chapter 39
Scarlett and I had worked out the plan for the last leg of the trip. There was danger ahead and it would have Cannon all over it.
I was betting that he’d stay out of the way because he didn’t want to interfere with my progress. My theory was that he wanted me to get to the end so he could snag the sword as soon as I pulled it out of the portal.
As if I’d let him do that.
“You know Cannon?” I asked Scarlett. My voice cracked from the fury I had to shove back down my throat. I wanted to take it all out on Scarlett. Still.
“I met him a few times. He likes this town. Why? Have you?”
“Just did.”
“Shit. He’s in town.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“You know the rumor about the army that follows him everywhere? It’s not a rumor.”
“Yeah, I met them too.”
“I doubt it. You probably saw his bodyguards. They’re human.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. I’d heard about Cannon’s army of ghosts. I’d seen a lot of weird crap in my life but I never saw a ghost. I sure as hell never saw a ghost who could hit me or shoot me.
“I saw them once. Right over the ridge there. Cannon was staying with a friend up in Luomanzhen and passed through here with a caravan. A local kid threw a firecracker at one of the cars and I saw them.”
“Did they go boo?”
“They killed him. Hundreds of them came out of the ground and swarmed over the poor kid like a flood of bugs. I ran to help but when I got there the corpse didn’t even look like he was human. He was just…”
“He was just what?”
“Stripped. Melted. I don’t know how to explain it. The army faded away. The cars just kept going.”
“It could have been a weapon of some kind.”
“The shapes that trampled him were human.
“Never heard anything like it.”
“I know what I saw. You need to be careful if you want to make it to Nyingchi.”
“How do you get ready for ghosts that can melt you?”
“Practice running like hell?”
Scarlett rode her bike. I rode Rebel’s.
We were one night’s drive away from Nyingchi, in Tibet. If we didn’t run into any trouble. Which we would if past was prologue.
“Where’s the sword anyway?” Scarlett asked over the mic.
“None of your business.”
“Fine. But if you die then I can’t finish the mission for you.”
“The less you know, the better.”
“Why?”
“The less you know, the faster they’ll kill you. The more you know the slower you die.”
“Oh, that’s pleasant, Kane.”
“That’s reality, Scarlett.”
It was a long ride. Probably longer for Scarlett. I was in no mood to talk, much less make friends. We got the nice view. China always has the nice views. But they felt duller now. I couldn’t enjoy them.
We were a few hours into the trip and the end was in sight when everything went south.
Our bikes reached the top of a hill with a straightaway that ran for a dozen miles ahead. Straight as a bullet. I spotted some moving lights on the horizon. I thought it was a truck at first but it was no truck. In fact, there were no cars at all.
That should have been the first sign that there was trouble.
As we got closer to the light, it got closer to us. It was on both sides of the highway and it was getting taller. At first it was blue, then orange, then white.
“What is it?” Scarlett asked.
“I don’t know. It looks like something is coming up out of the ground.”
“We should get off the road.”
“Yeah, follow me,” I said. I slowed down enough to pull onto the shoulder. I started to make my own path through the rocky terrain. There was a patch of field about a hundred yards downhill. We could cover a few miles if we rode through it. Probably piss off some farmers but you can’t save the world without breaking some rice paddies.
We almost made it to the field when we got a good view of what was happening on the highway.
A wall of flame, fifty feet up, rose from the edge of the concrete. Both sides of the highway. The road was encased by it. The flame was laced with fiery symbols. Runes was my guess.
I didn’t get a chance to react before the wall veered off the highway and came after us. I let go of the brakes and took the hill full throttle. It didn’t do me any good, though. The walls shot past us on both sides and then folded in on each other about twenty yards ahead. We were trapped in a tunnel of fire, and we’d reached the end.
“Well, this sucks,” Scarlett said.
We didn’t really have a choice. I turned around and drove back to the highway. Whatever this thing was it wanted us to go a specific direction.
The wall didn’t give off any heat when we were in the middle of the road. But when we got close it started to burn hot.
“What are all those runes for?”
“I don’t know. I don’t speak Runish.”
“I didn’t know Runish was a …”
“It’s a joke. Stay behind me. Let me know if you see anything else unus
ual. Anything. Understand?”
“Yeah, understood.”
The feeling of riding down a highway with two massive fire walls looming over us, guiding us, was not one I enjoyed. I didn’t know if it was coming from a friend or a foe. Was it protection from Skyler? We were reaching the end, so he may have triggered the wall as a defense against sabotage.
But the actual answer came when ten motorcycles appeared a half-mile ahead of us, blocking the road with a straight line of black leather and sunshined chrome.
“We have company,” Scarlett said, stating the obvious.
“Get ready.”
“I’ve never been in a fight.”
I took my helmet off and strapped it to the back of my seat.
“Hope you’re a fast learner then.”
Chapter 40
They revved their engines, sending the noise down the fiery tunnel. It echoed around us, making the kind of racket you’d expect a fifty foot high, three-mile long flame to make. But the hellish thing was eerily silent as it bore witness to the massacre about to occur.
The massacre that I was about to lay down at its feet, to be clear.
I revved my engine back at them.
“Join in,” I said to Scarlett. “It’s fun.”
Her shaded helmet turned to me and I knew she was looking at me like I was crazy. That’s how I handled stress. A little humor. A lot of bravado. And, if my body behaved, more action than all of that combined.
Rebel would have joined in the fun.
The din died down and we went into standoff mode. They were gauging my threat level and I was doing the same. Anyone else would look at our situation, compare, contrast and run screaming in the other direction. But I saw an opportunity or two to end this quickly.
All ten of them were armed. They gave no sign of taking their helmets off. I hoped they would keep them on.
“Take off your helmet and get ready to go,” I told Scarlett. “Fast.”
“Take my helmet off?”
I gave her a look.
“Okay, okay. Should make for a fast death.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said. “Now give me your gun.”
I could understand her hesitation. The bikers revved their engines again. They were getting ready to ride at us. I kept my hand outstretched. She handed it over and I slid it into an open holster. The other two I held onto tight.
The bikes started coming at us. The screeching tires and engines were deafening. I hopped on the back of Scarlett’s bike.
“Go,” I said. She popped a wheelie, by accident I think, and managed to pull off a pretty straight line. Until they started firing at us.
“Shit!” she yelled.
“No, I think they’re bullets,” I said, firing back. My first shot hit the front biker. His handgun flew from his hand and bounced off the wall of fire. I noticed one of the back riders was about to shoot something much bigger.
I needed to take him out.
But there wasn’t a clear shot.
Four bikers were in front of him.
He was a couple of seconds away from getting a peg on us so I did what any pool player would do.
I shot at the wall. It banked perfectly right into the helmet of the back biker. His ride skidded across the pavement and slammed into one of his buddies. The jammed wheels exploded off the bike and knocked over another rider who flew into the wall and burst into flame on contact.
“Don’t touch the walls,” I yelled in Scarlett’s ear.
“Thanks for the tip!”
Scarlett was veering left and right to make us a tough target to hit, but the blanket of bullets was getting thicker and it was about to find the sweet spot. I raised both Glocks and laid my elbows on Scarlett’s shoulders to steady them.
“Stop steering! Just keep it steady! Go straight!” She finally did what I told her to without trying to start a discussion.
I had one chance to get this right. There were seven left. I aimed for the gas tanks of the front two bikes.
Two shots. Two booms.
Chunks of the machines shot in every direction. Chunks of bikers, too. That was five down in two shots.
Two guys shouldn’t be tough. But I got cocky. I didn’t see the flaming tire spoke that was arching toward us. It bounced off our front wheel.
Scarlett grunted and her left shoulder jerked back.
“Dammit!” she yelled. She’d been shot. I took the handlebar on the left side but managed to keep a hold on my gun.
“Keep it straight and when I say go, let go of the handlebar.”
“You like giving orders!”
I had to trust that she’d actually listen to me. I could hear and feel the bullets whizzing past our heads. I’d done it plenty of times before but it was usually only me on the bike. I didn’t know how well I could pull this off with someone else driving.
“Go!” I yelled. She let go and I pulled right on the handlebar.
I got off two shots with my left hand, now free from steering.
And I reached over the screaming Scarlett to hit the brake.
Our bike slid to the side. We both instinctively scrambled and lifted our legs so they wouldn’t be crushed. We slid across the pavement, backwards at first and then we started spinning like a top. The two remaining guys passed us at 60mph. They’d have to slow down, turn around and reach us again.
That gave me about five seconds.
I shook my head. The two bikers actually looked like six guys. I was seeing triple. I had to guess which ones were the right ones.
They both slowed and lifted their own guns. They aimed it at me. They had a damn good bead on me.
I fired.
They fired.
My chest burned and I was thrown back. I was sliding on the pavement again. The Gods of Throwing People Around were enjoying themselves that night.
I managed to look up and see Scarlett running for me. The two bikers were down and out.
We did it.
Then I saw the lineup of ten more bikes at the top of the hill. Same outfits. Same bikes. I blacked out while thinking, “Oh, well.”
Chapter 41
When I woke up I saw Skyler’s wrinkled face sagging over me.
He wore a leather vest with turquoise buttons. His tan face, white hair and big nose made him look like a Santa elf on vacation at a dude ranch.
At first I thought it was a nightmare but then he smiled, knelt down next to me and said, “You look like shit.”
I smelled his breath, that cross between decades of pipe smoking, complete lack of dental hygiene and coffee. It can bring a dead man back to life. I assumed it just had because I felt like the dead come back to life.
And I wanted to be dead again.
“I feel like your kidneys,” I said to him.
He laughed. “That’s not a good place to be.”
“Rebel is dead,” I said.
“I know, kid. I’m sorry about that.”
“And your Vampire ditched us.”
“Scarlett told me. I hope he shows up before we reach the end because we’re going to need him.”
“Why do we need him?”
“Oh, no reason.”
I wasn’t going to play games with him. I wasn’t in the mood. “What happened here?” I asked, trying to sit up and thinking better of it.
“I saved your ass, as usual. You had three more groups of ten bikers waiting over the hill there. They were just going to line up and keep on coming until you were overwhelmed. You didn’t do too bad but I kicked their asses.”
I looked at Scarlett for verification. She nodded. “It was awesome, actually,” she said.
Scarlett helped me sit up while Skyler looked on, not raising a finger. The top of her arm and shoulder were wrapped good and tight.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Better than you.”
Carnage. I was surrounded by carnage. All around me were body parts blanketed by bits of black leather.
My best guess from th
e evidence was that they’d been blown to smithereens over the hill by a very powerful missile.
“Blew them up with a missile over the ridge there,” he said. His eyes were misty and his voice suddenly got soft. He missed the moment already.
“What are you doing here, Skyler? We were supposed to meet at the mountain. You were going to team up with Belch and do some thinking.”
“I did it! Lots of thinking. Well, lots of peyote. But I’m all done with that for the year. Few years maybe. Have to regrow some brain cells from the feel of it.” He shook his head as if he were checking to see if there were still any left in there.
“And what did you get out of it?”
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”
“Jesus. Fine. Help me up.”
Scarlett lifted me to my feet. Her hands felt good on my back and shoulders and it occurred to me that she…
“What?” she asked. I guess I was staring.
“What, what?” I said, trying lamely to cover up my interest.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Oh, uh. Are you a healer?”
She smiled, realizing that her touch had made me feel good. For a split second I felt bad about the way I’d treated her. But I caught myself.
“What the hell are you waiting for? Heal me.”
The smile left her face and I felt bad again. I stared straight ahead, hoping the feeling would pass. But as the energy from her hands moved through my body and made everything feel new I let out several moans of relief. There may have been a little pleasure in there, too. But I tried to cover those moans with a lame cough. It wasn’t fooling her at all. I spotted her smirk a few times.
Then I looked over at Skyler who was watching us like we were a porn movie.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” I barked.
“Aw, don’t stop! Hot stuff! Hot stuff!” he yelled, delighted. “Yer such a mood-breaker, Kane.”
I walked past him, making sure he had to back up to avoid getting run over. I found Rebel’s bike. Or what was left of it. It had crashed into the fire wall and blew into two big pieces. Charred and pitiful pieces.
“Sorry,” I muttered to her.
I scoped the road for a bike that might run. I spotted one of the bikes that the leather guys rode. I propped it up and marveled at the tech on the Honda Fireblade. It was super light with the works. It had a steering damper and a Power Commander to refine its handling. That thing was top of the line ahead of its time.
