Kick (The Jenkins Cycle Book 1) (2 page)

“Hi, I’m Dan. What’s up?”

“I’m thinking of getting some lunch—I’m kind of starving.”

She meant it as a suggestion, but looking at her full-on threw me into fight-or-flight mode, dashing all my practiced smiles and clever replies to smithereens. Also, she had on peach lipstick.

“Oh, ok.”

“Are. You. Hun. Gry?” What’s-Her-Name said.

“Me? Yeah.”

“Uh huh. Did you wanna go now?”

Shortly after succumbing to my smooth moves, Sandra and I started dating. But beyond the exciting get-to-know-you part, there weren’t many good times. Sandra was a nice girl, and I played the part of a normal person long enough for our routine to turn into a poisonous, unbreakable habit. In time, she dumped me.

There’s more to the story, all of it bad, but I’ll hold off there until you’ve gotten to like me more. Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt her. No, I killed myself instead. I may have been a creep in college but at least I wasn’t physically abusive. Or worse, a murderer. Otherwise, I doubt I would have ended up in a place as dull as the Great Wherever.

After dying that first time in college, and every time since, I arrived in a place where sight and sound do not exist, stranded without a body in which to experience anything physical. Describing it as a “place” is more for my convenience than anything else. Instead of trees and lakes, I’ve only my thoughts and my memories. Awake and aware and incredibly alone.

It was there in the Great Wherever, years before, where I discovered the change in my capacity to remember things. At first I thought I’d botched my suicide and had fallen into a coma. Only after I found I could recite the Declaration of Independence flawlessly from memory was it clear something much more profound had happened.

The way it works is I remember everything perfectly up until the last time I died or got kicked out of a body. Take Jake, for instance. I’d looked at the menu tacked up outside before going into the diner. But when Helen came over to take my order, I’d needed the menu she gave me to tell her what I wanted. Normal memory, nothing special. But on my next ride, whoever that was, I could go to that same restaurant and order it all again—without the menu. Backwards, if I wanted to. A hundred rides later and I’ll still remember that menu.

Some might think it’s a gift of some kind, and if I weren’t on the receiving end I’d think so too. But rather than the simple, sanitized recollections of a healthy mind, instead I’m assaulted by memories so vivid that if I had eyes they’d weep with sadness or happiness from the countless remembered moments of my life. How can I convey what it’s like to remember my mother’s face and the perfect miracle of her love, overlaid with the bitter knowledge that she and everyone I’ve ever known are gone forever?

Some gift.

Chapter 3

After killing Jake McDowell in that diner, I waited impatiently for my next ride to Earth. I wondered if I’d get another serial killer. Surprisingly, there hadn’t been many of those. No, my usual rides were your common everyday dangerous criminals with guns, wanted for murder or assault or some other dumb thing. They were always adult men, English speakers, and so far, physically located in the United States.

This rather specific pattern has left me with the impression there’s an intelligence behind these back-from-the-grave adventures. Aren’t women capable of murder? Don’t some killers live in other countries? And if I had to return as a bad guy, was it too much to ask for a rich drug cartel boss living in a mansion on a tropical island? With afternoon massages, refrigerators stocked with food and cowering servants to cook and take care of everything? Because I think I’m witty, I call the being that handles my itinerary the “Great Whomever.” If he’s God then he should say something, but so far I’m still waiting.

I should probably clear something up. I’m not the heroic type. Just ask Sandra. I’m not in this to rid the world of bad people—though who likes bad people, right? For me, the whole return to Earth is precisely one thing: a chance to live again, even if that means coming back in the body of a ruthless drug addict who likes to break into houses, kill or rape as his fancies dictate and steal whatever he can carry away.

Time in the Great Wherever doesn’t track with the timeline of the physical world. So I couldn’t tell how many days had passed since my Satanic exit from Pony’s Diner. Two days, three? A month? Eventually, though, I sensed what I’d felt that first time, years before: a sudden hole in the emptiness.

One moment I was alone, adrift in my memories, and the next it felt like sitting in a movie theater during a dark scene when someone opens a door. In a sense, that’s what it was: a doorway to a person somewhere on Earth. And all I had to do was mentally reach out to it, this hole in the Great Wherever. Then I could do everything a living person could: sleep, run, eat, laugh, read a book, go swimming—anything at all.

So I reached.

And then I was yelling something loud and long with lots of mixed-up vowels and extreme punctuation, all nerves and energy and frightened out of my mind. Then I started to laugh. The wind on my face felt magnificent, and the roar and vibration massaged my body and soul in paralyzing waves of bliss. Going from the Great Wherever to the seat of a motorcycle speeding down an interstate is a little like graduating from caffeine directly to crack cocaine dipped in radioactive PCP.

The bike wobbled dangerously, and it was all I could do to keep the front wheel straight. With too much to process at once, my grip started to slip off the accelerator, causing the bike to slow. A quick glance I couldn’t really afford showed plenty of cars on the road. Luckily, the driver behind me noticed something wrong and eased back.

I managed to pull the bike over onto the gravely side of the road without losing control. There, in a fit of inspiration, I squeezed the front brake and found myself slowing—only to have the bike give an unhealthy sounding cough, turn off unexpectedly, and skid to a shuddering stop. I nearly flipped over the handlebars, just barely holding on, but that was the end of my good fortune. In slow motion, I watched the ground rise up to receive me in a jarring crash, bashing my right side hard against the hot, sandy grit and pinning my leg beneath the bike. Desperately, I gasped for breath but couldn’t draw anything.

In no time at all, the euphoria of the ride transformed into this curiously excruciating pain that started from my stomach and ended in the vicinity of everywhere else. In a way, it felt great—it’s wonderful to be alive. No matter how bad it gets, just open your eyes a little wider, that’s all I can tell you.

After freeing my leg, I clambered shakily to my feet and looked with something like wonder at the motorcycle heaped in front of me. A Harley Davidson—all black and chrome and leather and altogether badass. It had gold scrollwork on the side of the gas tank that read, “Whiskey Singer.”

Pulling up a memory from a summer spent in the country, where some kids from a neighboring farm taught me to ride dirt bikes, I realized what had happened: I’d hit the brake without disengaging the clutch. Just like a stick shift, you can’t leave a bike in gear and slow down like that, not without stalling.

It felt warm out. Pure sunlight, eighteen-wheelers roaring past in a gale of diesel fumes and a hint of tall, dry grass…

Come on, man, focus.

“Hey there, you all right?” someone said. A white guy, middle-aged, walking along the highway from a parked, black Mercedes. Apparently a Good Samaritan.

“Thanks,” I said. “Yeah, I’m ok. Just a little spill. Happens all the time.”

“Do you need me to call anyone? Is your motorcycle all right?”

He stood close now, looking alternately between me and the bike. He seemed oddly cautious. He meant well, but I didn’t want him calling an ambulance. For all I knew my ride had warrants out on him.

“No, I don’t need any help—thanks. I think the bike’s fine. Very nice of you.”

“Well, if you’re sure …”

Nodding, hoping he’d just leave, I said, “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll just hang out here a bit till I get my wind back. I’m still learning to ride this thing. Thanks again.”

“Learning to ride, huh?” He forced what may have passed for a laugh in a Russian bread line. “Ok then, take care.”

I watched him scoot back to his car. Once, he cast back a covert glance, as if afraid to turn his back on me. Something didn’t seem right. The entire time, he’d worn that smile you learned to give when someone points a camera at you and makes you say “cheese.”

For the first time since my arrival, I looked myself over. I stood medium height, white but tanned and about fifty pounds overweight. I had on a black t-shirt, a worn leather vest covered with patches, black leather chaps over blue jeans, and leather boots with pointy silver tips.

“I’m in The Village People,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

I limped back to the bike and hauled it up. It weighed a ton, but I managed to right it and engage the kickstand.

A look in one of the mirrors revealed a forty-something face with a long, devilish-looking blond goatee. Fascinated, I watched an unfamiliar hand brush back a streak of thinning hair, then back along thicker sides grown ragged and long. I inched closer to inspect my face: hard, weathered. Someone who lived rough, judging by faint bruising around my left eye that smarted when I rubbed it. Not ugly, exactly, just ax-murderer scary looking.

I closed my eyes and took an inventory. No toothaches, thank God. Full lung capacity. I bent at the waist and did some quick knee bends—nothing wrong there. I seemed healthy enough.

I started out riding in the breakdown lane before I felt comfortable adding more speed. Even with full memory from my days on the farm, that little dirt bike may as well have been a ten speed compared to the Harley. As my confidence grew, I eased onto the smooth edge of the right lane, trying to balance the Harley’s bulk with its frightening power. And then I was fine. The trick is to not care if you die.

It didn’t take long before I fixed my location: heading west about fifty miles outside Memphis, Tennessee, on Route 40. Memphis seemed as good a destination as any, but I needed to handle a few things first. I took the next exit with a gas station and parked next to a clunky-looking air machine with an OUT OF ORDER sign taped to it.

I removed my vest and examined it. On the back snarled a ferocious wolf’s head with a flaming tongue and the word “Howlers” written above it in lurid, blue, Gothic letters. Underneath the wolf’s head were the initials “MC.” I sifted my memory for anything about biker gangs and immediately recalled secretly flipping through an Easy Rider magazine as a teenager when nobody in the store was looking. Throughout the magazine were various references to motorcycle clubs. Bikers don’t refer to themselves as gangs, but rather as clubs. To me, belonging to a club sounded a whole lot less intimidating than a gang, but I’d never belonged to a gang or a club so it’s not like I was an authority. I did know about the Mickey Mouse Club.

On the front of the vest flew two sets of disembodied wings: one green and one purple. There were other patches, but a skull and crossbones patch with the caption “Respect Few” written above it and “Fear None” below stood out as the scariest. Just looking at the evil little thing gave me an exposed, spooked feeling.

Moving on, I pulled out a wallet connected by a chain to my belt and began emptying the contents onto the seat. I found a Maryland license and learned my ride’s name: Mike Nichols. I also found a couple of credit cards, a social security card, some nude pictures of various women with phone numbers on the backs, a business card for an attorney in New Jersey, some pieces of paper with names and phone numbers written on them and $2,500 in new, hundred-dollar bills.

Mike also had a cell phone with an extensive collection of contacts, nearly all of them obvious nicknames: Toad, Stump and Joker, to name a few.

Inspecting the bike again, I discovered a double satchel straddling the back wheel, secured by thick leather straps and two medium-sized padlocks. I tried all the keys on my keychain and when none of them fit I tried again, just to be sure. Then I checked my pockets and patted myself down—no luck.

“Screw it,” I said. I’d worry about it later.

Since I’m a positive sort of person, I noticed the gas tank floated half-full, so I filled it up at the nearby gas island using Mike’s credit card. Then I went into the adjacent Gas Mart and picked up a quart of whole milk and some personal-sized apple pies.

The pimply kid behind the register said, “Those things’ll kill ya.”

“Nah,” I said. “When I die it’ll be a shootout at a gas station, mark my words.”

That got a nervous laugh from the kid—a little louder than it deserved.

I sat outside next to my new Harley and downed the milk and pies with lusty enthusiasm. There’s nothing in the world like junk food on a road trip. It’s the ultimate affirmation of freedom. Though unhealthy and a leading source of heartburn, for that brief few minutes it’s just you and your pie and a million miles behind you, with the promise of more miles and more pie to come. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Almost as an afterthought, I checked my new cell phone and noted the date: July 16, 2007, 2:37 p.m. Two weeks had passed since I’d murdered Jake.

“Time pies when you’re having pun,”
I said, laughing at my own joke. I was a real riot.

Stomach now happy, triglycerides raging, I got back on the road to Memphis and began puzzling over my new circumstances. I had all the money needed to make the most of my three weeks on Earth before Mike Nichols kicked his way free. I loved the motorcycle, so I quietly hoped for a longer trip this time. I’d get around to figuring out what Mr. Nichols had done warranting the attention of the Great Whomever later. Maybe next week.

For now, I fully intended to enjoy myself.

Chapter 4

I crossed into Memphis and started looking for a likely place to stay. While exiting Route 40, I nearly crashed into a lady driving a dented SUV who didn’t think she could make the red light in time, whereas I and the driver of the minivan behind me did. I realized my attention had been wandering for about the last ten miles. On top of that, I had a familiar tightness in my chest with a strange connection back to my mouth. Not good: ol’ Mike had a serious nicotine addiction. I’ve never much enjoyed tending an open flame with my lips all day, but I’d have to do something about it or go crazy.