The Brotherhood of the Wheel (11 page)

“Hey, you fucking asshole!” Cole shouted at the rider. “What the hell is your problem, man! You nearly fucking killed us, you psycho!”

The rider was tall, well over six feet, and gaunt. He was dressed head to toe in heavy black riding leathers. His full-face helmet and visor were black as well; so were his heavy leather gloves and thick, steel-toed boots. He regarded Cole silently, unmoving.

“Hey, dickhead!” Cole said, moving toward the rider. “I'm talking to you! See what you did to me? Did to our fucking car?”

“Cole,” Ava said, running to his side. “Baby, please don't! He looks crazy.”

Gerry, Lexi, and Alana joined the couple. The rider's helmeted head turned to regard each of the five silently. When the dark visor turned to Alana, it felt as if ice water were filling her intestines. She looked down. The rider held Cole's gaze the longest. Cole glared back.

“Come on!” Cole shouted, Ava grabbing at his arm, trying to pull him back. “Fucking puss!”

“Someone call the PoPo,” Lexi said softly.

“Can't,” Gerry said, looking at his smartphone. “No service.”

Alana quickly looked to see if she could spot some kind of identification on the rider's antique bike. She didn't see a license plate, no stickers or adornments.

The rider turned his gaze from the group, twisted the throttle on the handlebar, and the bike's engine went from a low growl to a thunderous snarl. The rear tire squealed as it bit into the highway. The stench of burning rubber was everywhere as the rider aimed the bike in the direction he had been riding and lifted his foot off the road. The bike lifted him and he tore off down U.S. 36 into the deepening night. In seconds, his diminishing silhouette merged with the darkness and was gone from sight.

“Well … shit,” Lexi said. “I didn't know Charles Manson rode a bike.”

“Fucking wimp,” Cole said, still staring off into the growing night. “Kick his ass.”

“You're lucky that psycho didn't shoot you,” Alana said, moving Cole's hair aside and looking at the scalp wound. “Be still.”

“Anybody got service?” Gerry asked, tapping his phone and shaking his head, “because we are going nowhere in my car. We are currently a three-wheeler. Shit, my parents are going to freak! This will make their insurance go up. They will fucking kill me!”

“Your parents?” Ava said, frowning, “Seriously, Gerr?”

“Okay,” Alana said to Cole. “It's ugly, but it's not deep. Maybe a stitch or two. Get a shirt or something to hold over it until the bleeding eases up. When we get to a hospital, they may want to check to make sure you don't have a concussion. You're going to be fine, Cole.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Cole said. “Okay, anyone's phone working?”

“No,” Lexi said. “This sucks.”

It was almost dark. Everyone went back to the SUV. Cole used a bottle of water to clean his wound and wash his face and hair. He removed and wrapped his T-shirt around his head to stanch the blood. Lexi watched him covertly as he pulled his shirt over his head. He was beautiful, perfect. His muscles rippled under his tattooed skin.

“Do we have any road flares?” Alana asked Gerry, who was sitting behind the wheel, the driver's-side door open, busy drinking another of the rapidly dwindling supply of beers. He shrugged.

“Don't know,” he muttered. “All I know is this whole day has sucked and I'm out of smokes.”

“And,” Alana added, as she headed to the rear compartment of the Honda, “you're getting drunk and being useless. Stick to your strengths, Gerr.” Alana lifted up the compartment that held the spare tire. There was a canvas bag with a funnel, some oily tools, and a couple of flares. Alana wrapped the greasy flares in part of a roll of paper towels and dropped them into her tote bag. She also snagged a small plastic case that was a simple first-aid kit, hoping to find something to dress Cole's head wound.

Cole and Lexi passed a joint back and forth in the backseat and drank beer. Ava sat in front, next to Gerry, and played some game on her phone. The radio had produced nothing but static, so the CD player was softly playing “Interstate Love Song,” by Stone Temple Pilots. Alana walked out onto the road where the rider had stood and looked down U.S. 36 in both directions. Nothing. Night had come, and this was the deep country. No lights, no sounds save the hum of the nocturnal insects arising with the death of the sun. Alana sighed. She took one of the flares out and read the instructions by the light of her cell-phone screen. She twisted the plastic cap on the flare and removed it, then struck the end of the flare to the coarse side of the cap, like a huge match. The flare hissed to brilliant life. She gingerly placed it squarely in the middle of the highway. Anyone who came by this godforsaken stretch of highway would have to stop now, she thought. They might be pissed, but at least they wouldn't just drive on without helping.

“Hey,” Gerry said. “Did you know we aren't too far from the center of the lower forty-eight?”

“What?” Ava asked, looking up from her phone.

“Yeah, up the road is Lebanon,” Gerry said, slurring slightly. He paused to drain his PBR and then crush the can. “It's the geographical center of the contig … con-tig-uous United States … kinda like ground zero. They got a little pyramid shrine with a plaque there and everything.”

“Great,” Lexi said, taking the joint, now a roach, from Cole. “So we really are in the middle of nowhere.”

From the west, the direction the motorcycle had come, a pair of high beams stabbed out of the night. “Guys!” Alana shouted. “Car!” Everyone climbed out of the SUV, crowding near the white line at the edge of the road. Alana stood by the flare, watching the headlights get closer.

“Alana, get over here!” Ava said. “You could get hit!”

“They're going to stop, damn it,” Alana said and held her ground. They could hear the engine now, a wheezing, coughing clatter. It was almost comical. The vehicle came into view, a hulking shadow behind the bright lights. It slowed, the brakes making a horrid metallic scraping sound. It stopped a few feet from the crimson, hissing road flare with a shudder and a gasp. It was an old Ford pickup from the fifties, maybe even older than that, with a tow winch mounted in the bed. On the side of the doors, in faded and scraped paint, it said S
CODE'S
G
ARAGE,
E
ST. 1932
F
OUR
H
OUSES,
KS; beneath that was J
EREMIAH 12:14
. Two men climbed out of the truck. One looked late thirties and was broad and muscular, dressed in a greasy undershirt and a torn flannel button-down. His jeans were covered in rips and grease stains, and his work boots were dirty. He had an unruly mop of curly black hair and about a week's growth of beard. His eyes were dark and sullen. One of his eyelids drooped. He had a buck knife sheathed on his belt. The other one, who exited the passenger door, was younger, maybe in his twenties, skinny and shorter. His dark hair was greasy and slicked back from his face. His ears and nose were prominent, and he wore a dirty blue mechanic's shirt with a white oval patch over the left breast that said T
OBY
in red embroidery. A tire-pressure gauge poked out of his shirt pocket, and his jeans were baggy, held up by a fiercely tightened belt, and as dirty as the driver's.

“Your car,” the driver said. His voice was harsh, almost snarling. “We can tow you to the garage. Fix it up.”

“Really? Gerry said, smiling. “Aw that's great, man! Great!” The tow-truck driver looked at him as if he were an insect from another planet. Gerry's smile began to fall from his face. “Um … How far is the garage? I can't afford a lot for the tow. Sorry.”

“Four Houses,” the skinny one said. His voice was higher in pitch but equally aggressive. “We'll tow you. No charge as long as we do the work on the car? Sound square to you?”

“I … I guess.” Gerry looked over at the others for guidance.

“Yes or no,” the large driver grunted. “It's got to be a yes or a no. So what is it?”

“Y … yes,” Gerry said. “Sure, man. Thanks!”

“Hey, isn't Four Houses, like, that old historical place?” Ava said. “Over in Wyandotte County, near Kansas City? It used to be an outpost or something a long time ago.”

“Nowhere near here,” Alana said.

“Nah,” Toby, the skinny tow-truck mechanic said. “That's just an old story. The real Four—”

“Shut the fuck up, Toby,” the burly driver rumbled.

“Sorry, Wald,” Toby muttered, looking down.

“Let's get them hooked up,” Wald said. He turned to the group. “Girls can ride in the cab, boys in the bed. Grab your shit out of the car.”

Everyone grabbed the bags from the back of the SUV while Wald and Toby hooked the Honda up and hoisted it out of the ditch.

“Yeah,” Gerry said, standing next to Wald as he worked the winch levers, “some asshole on a bike ran us off the road, man.” Wald looked at him with his one hooded eye, twitching slightly, but said nothing.

Alana checked Cole's wound. She applied a thick square gauze bandage to the cut. “These guys are creeping me out,” she said softly as he put his bloody shirt back on. “I don't think we should go, Cole.”

“Gerry may be scared of the
Deliverance
boys, but I'm not,” Cole said. “I'll keep you guys safe, no worries, Doc. I got a gun. It's in my bag.”

“What the hell, Cole?” she whispered. “Are you really that drunk, or did you crack your skull harder than I thought, you idiot?”

“Relax,” Cole said, picking up his gym bag. “It's a little .380. I always carry a piece on trips, in case shit like this happens. My dad hunts; I know my way around a gun.”

“Great.” Alana sighed, putting the first-aid kit back in her tote. “Come on, Ted Nugent.”

The girls huddled together, cramped in the small bench seat in the back of the tow truck's cab. Cole and Gerry sat on either side of the winch arm, their backs to the rear window of the truck cab. The truck groaned as it pulled onto U.S. 36 and headed west. The engine made a hollow, choking
pock-pock
sound as it struggled to drag the weight of the SUV. Wald jerked the long gearshift, wrestling with it for a moment; then the truck lurched into gear, and the engine began to hum with renewed strength. The stars were out now, brilliant and endless. The fields and the patches of woods, the silos and the windmills and the barns were dark, featureless shadows. The only light came from the piercing brights of the old Ford. Toby snapped on the radio in the cab, and to the girls' surprise a radio signal came through. It was scratchy AM, but it was music—Patty Loveless's “Nothin' but the Wheel” sounding lost and tinny in the bottom of a well—but it was better than the silence of the road.

“We couldn't get any signal out here at all on our radio,” Lexi said.

Toby nodded and looked back at her. His eyes drifted from her face to her short skirt and legs. “It's the only station we can get out here,” he said. “The signal even comes in sometimes in Four Houses.”

“Mind your hole, Toby,” Wald said, keeping his eyes on the road. Toby was silent and kept his eyes forward. “Everyone just shut up. We'll be there soon.”

The tow truck turned right onto Route 281. It was getting colder. Gerry and Cole both huddled as close to the back of the cab as they could and slid lower to avoid more of the biting wind. Inside the truck, the girls were leaning on one another for warmth and as pillows. The rhythmic hum of the engine and the gentle sway of the truck combined with the long day, the beer, the pot, and the stress to lull everyone to sleep.

There was soft music hissing from the radio, playing some big-band music from the thirties, maybe Tommy Dorsey, Alana thought, her eyes fighting to stay open. She looked over and saw Ava and Lexi both asleep. Out the back window, she saw the boys huddled and still. A peaceful memory of childhood—asleep in the backseat, safe, headed home—wrapped itself around her. Alana looked out the window at the dark countryside drifting by. For a moment she thought it was raining, that raindrops were running down the glass, smearing and distorting her view of outside, but it wasn't raining. The dark fields were blurring and warping, as if she were looking at them through a curtain of rain. There was a huge dark mountain off to the left. In her half-awake state the incongruity of the mountain, which seemed closer now, seemed irrelevant, and, anyway, a few moments later, when she opened her eyes again it was gone. She felt a thrill of panic struggle to come to the surface, to wake her, but it was too little, too late, to keep her eyes open or her mind from slipping away. Alana slept, and the old truck hummed down the road, her rusted cradle.

“Get up.” Wald's harsh voice broke the spell. “We're here.”

Alana blinked, forced her eyes to open wide—a trick she had learned during long nights at the ER, to chase sleep away. She was cold, shivering. It was deep night, and the truck was shuddering down an empty two-lane. There were buildings on either side of the main road, mostly squat and dark. To her right, past a few slumbering houses and trailers, she saw a low, long one-story building with a sign in the window that proclaimed it B
UDDY'S
R
OADHOUSE
in red neon. A smaller sign in blue glowed O
PEN
.

A little farther up the blacktop and on the left was a once grand old house on a low hill that appeared to have been burned down to its rotted skeletal remains. The shadows of a deep forest were already beginning to encroach on the ruins. Alana felt a wave of sadness and loss pass over her as she looked at the dying old mansion. She didn't understand why.

“Where are we, exactly?” Lexi said, yawning and rubbing her eyes, smearing her mascara wings. The tow truck passed abandoned houses, mobile homes, and antique cars, squatting on cinder blocks in weed-covered fields. Under the buttery light of a sodium-light streetlamp—the only apparent one on the road—Alana saw a group of hoodie-wearing kids huddling, their faces dipped in shadow.