survivors: Lemmy, Peaches, Roy. And the truck was closing in again.
They could beat it on a rise—in a heartbeat—but now there were no rises. Not for the next twenty miles, if his memory was right. It was going to get Peaches next, Peaches who was funniest when he was trying to be serious. Peaches threw a terrified glance back over his shoulder, and Vince knew what he was seeing: a chrome cliff. One that was moving in.
Fucking think of something. Lead them out of this.
It had to be him. Race was still riding okay, but he was on autopilot, face frozen, fixed forward as if he had a sprained neck and was wearing a brace. A thought struck Vince then—terrible but curiously certain—that this was how Race had looked the day in Fallujah that he drove away from the men in his squad, while the mortar rounds dropped around them.
Peaches put on a burst of speed and gained a little on the truck. It blasted its air horn, as if in frustration. Or laughter. Either way, the old Georgia Peach had only gained a stay of execution. Vince could hear the trucker—maybe named Laughlin, maybe a devil from hell—changing gears. Christ, how many forward did he have? A hundred? He started to close the distance. Vince didn’t think Peaches would be able to squirt ahead again. That old flathead Beezer of his had given all it had to give. Either the truck would take him or the Beez would blow a head gasket and then the truck would take him.
BRONK! BRONK! BRONK-BRONK-BRONK!
Shattering a day that was already shattered beyond repair—but it gave Vince an idea. It depended where they were. He knew this road. He knew them all out here, but he hadn’t been this way in years and could not be sure now, on the fly, if they were where he thought they were.
Roy threw something back over his shoulder, something that twinkled in the sun. It struck LAUGHLIN’S dirty windshield and flew off. The fucking machete. The truck bellowed on, blowing double streams of black smoke, the driver laying on that horn again—
BRONK-BRONK! BRONK! BRONK-BRONK-BRONK!
—in blasts that sounded weirdly like Morse.
If only . . . Lord, if only . . .
And yes. Up ahead was a sign so filthy it was only barely possible to read it: CUMBA 2.
Cumba. Goddamn Cumba. A played-out little mining town on the side of a hill, a place where there were maybe five slots and one old geezer selling Navajo blankets made in Laos.
Two miles wasn’t much time when you were already doing eighty. This would have to be quick, and there would be just one chance.
The others made fun of Vince’s sled, but only Race’s ridicule had a keen edge to it. The bike was a rebuilt Kawasaki Vulcan 800 with Cobra pipes and a custom seat. Leather as red as a fire alarm. “The old man’s La-Z-Boy,” Dean Carew had once called the seat.
“Fuck that,” Vince had replied indignantly, and when Peaches, solemn as a preacher, had said, “I’m sure you have,” they all broke up.
The Tribe called the Vulcan a rice-burner, of course. Also Vince’s Tojo Mojo el Rojo. Doc—Doc who was now spread all over the road behind them—liked to call it Miss Fujiyama. Vince only smiled as though he knew something they didn’t. Maybe he even did. He’d had the Vulcan up to one-twenty and had stopped there. Pussied out. Race wouldn’t have, but Race was a young man, and young men had to know where things ended. One-twenty had been enough for Vince, but he’d known there was more. Now he would find out how much.
He grasped the throttle and twisted it all the way to the stop.
The Vulcan responded not with a snarl but a cry and almost tore out from under him. He had a blurred glimpse of his son’s white face, and then he was past, in the lead, riding the rocket, desert smells packing his nose. Up ahead was a dirty string of asphalt angling off to the left, the road to Cumba. Route 6 went past in a long, lazy curve to the right. Toward Show Low.
Vince looked in his right-hand rearview and saw that the others had bunched and that Peaches still had the shiny side up. Vince thought the truck could have taken Peaches—maybe all the others—but he was laying back a little, knowing as well as Vince did that for the next twenty miles there were no upgrades.