Better Off Dead (22 page)

"Us," Burly said.

He was right. The bikers reached us and
dropped into a circle formation. The noise was incredible as they
whirled around us, shouting, gunning their engines, drawing the
circle tighter and tighter, cutting off escape. They were
definitely trying to intimidate us, at the very least. A couple of
rocks whizzed past, their names for us were getting ever more
personal and a few of the guys started to take turns running their
bikes in at us.

As their circle drew closer, they gouged up
gravel from the clearing and sent dirt and sand spinning. Pebbles
bounced off my exposed ankles like BB gun pellets.

"Assholes," I shouted at them. They probably
took it as a compliment.

"Better not fuck with us," a fat guy in
black leather shouted as he circled by.

"Is this about you?" I yelled to Burly.

"I don't think so. These guys are seriously
pissed off. It's got to be you."

I didn't have time to ponder the
implications of this remark. Because, apparently, Burly was right.
It was about me.

"You fucking bitch," the fat guy yelled as
he swept by again. He must have been the leader. The others fell
silent. He passed by again. "Go the fuck home," he yelled.

"What do you want?" I screamed, holding out
my fork.

"We want you to mind your own fucking
business," he shouted back on his next time around.

His vocabulary, while limited to words
derived from the root "fuck," was nonetheless intimidating. That
rankled me. I don't like to feel intimidated. It tends to piss me
off.

I waited until he was coming at me again.
"Fuck you," I called out in a burst of originality. Then I tried to
stab him in the arm. The fork slid off his thick leather jacket,
but he skidded slightly before recovering. "Maybe you need training
wheels," I yelled after him.

"Casey," Burly's voice cut through the
commotion. "Get back here and shut up."

"No," I said. "They have no right to be
here. This is our space. Cowards." I lashed out again with the
fork.

Bad move. A couple of the riders reached
into their pockets and produced objects that popped open in
well-choreographed malice. Blades glinted in the sunset's
glare.

"Shit," I told Burly. "They've got
knives."

The men held the blades out as they passed,
stabbing their arms forward, trying to draw first blood. One nicked
me on the elbow. It stung like an insect, then started to throb.
"I'm cut," I shouted, somewhat incredulously—then jumped back
toward Burly as another arm lashed out at me.

"This is not good," Burly said. "I've got
nothing on me." He'd gotten a new wheelchair, a stripped-down model
made for rougher terrain. There was no console and hence no gun in
the console.

Burly does not like to be unarmed. "What the
hell are we supposed to do?" he yelled in frustration. "Spit at
them?"

"The noise has to attract someone," I said,
hoping it was true.

The bikers began to take organized turns
darting at us with their bikes, thrusting the front wheels at my
shins and pulling away at the last minute. They were laughing when
they did it. Which really pissed me off. I was about to punch one
in the face—helmet, goggles and all—when the sound of Burly's voice
stopped me.

"I've got it," he yelled. He wheeled
backward, reached under the grill and began dragging a canister
toward him. There was a hose attachment at one end. "Get out of the
way, Casey," he ordered me. "This thing's got some range on
it."

I heard his tone of voice and obeyed. I
scrambled to one side just as Burly pulled the bush burner onto his
lap, aimed the hose toward the bikers, then adjusted the gas
outtake dial. He pulled back a slide mechanism and fire whooshed
from the nozzle in a seven-foot flame as big around as a man's arm.
The biker darting in toward Burly took it in the face, screamed and
pulled away to one side, dropping his bike in the dirt. Bike and
rider slid sideways toward us, sending dirt and gravel spraying.
The bike stopped, its wheels spinning wildly in the air. The rider
cursed and scrambled from underneath the chopper, crabwalking away
from Burly. He was wearing black cowboy boots with red inlaid
tooling. I stared at those boots. If I ever saw them again, he was
a dead man.

"Get him," Burly screamed. “Take it. Take
it. Make them back off." He held the bush burner out and I grabbed
it, tucking it to one side like an action hero toting a bazooka
into the jungle. I ran at the bikers, chasing the fallen rider out
toward the circle. The others swerved to avoid hitting him. The
circle broke rank. I turned the outtake valve, and flames leaped
out at them. If I swiveled the dial back and forth, the release
action catapulted the flame forward in bursts, almost like fire
balls, unpredictable and frightening, burning an arm here, catching
the edge of a leg there, scorching a seat cover.

The bikers backed off. I pushed my luck
further, stepping over the downed bike and rushing at them. The man
on foot shouted to a buddy, who slowed. Before I could turn his ass
into smoked pork butt, the runner jumped on the back of the second
bike, tucked his arms around his companion and shouted, "Let's get
the fuck out of here."

"Good idea," I hollered back, running toward
them.

"Gun," Burly screamed at me. "I saw a
gun."

I heard the sharp pop of a handgun and was
about to hit the deck, flamethrower and all, when a blast rocked
the clearing, the boom audible even above the roar of bike engines.
A shotgun. With some serious firing power behind it.

I threw myself to the ground. The bush
burner's flame jerked to one side and settled on the downed
motorcycle. A flannel shirt wound around the seat back caught fire
and flames licked toward the gas tank. Oh, shit, it was going to
blow.

"Get out of there," I screamed at Burly. He
was only a few yards from the burning bike. If I had to, I'd carry
him out. But Burly was quick. He didn't need my help. He tucked his
head down and started pumping. His arms were a blur as he wheeled
furiously to safety. The riders were in chaos. Who had fired the
shotgun? Another boom echoed through the clearing. Who the hell was
aiming at what?

"Who's firing back?" I yelled at Burly.

It didn't matter. Whoever had pulled the
handgun in the first place had decided they were outarmed. The
bikers were heading straight for the narrow dirt road that led them
out of the clearing and onto the gravel drive back to the highway.
They were giving up.

Bobby D. stood in their way.

He was wearing a shiny blue sharkskin
double-breasted suit that glittered in the coming sunset's light.
His wraparound sunglasses made him look like a villain in a James
Bond movie. So did the shotgun he held up to his chest. He had
reloaded quickly and it was pointed straight at the lead rider's
head.

"Let them go!" I screamed at Bobby. "Just
let them go."

He cocked the shotgun with a savage pull to
make clear it was ready for firing, then held it up in the air,
pointed over the trees, and squeezed the trigger again. Another
blast rent the air. The bikers panicked. They swarmed out of the
clearing and roared down the road. Suddenly, one of the bikers
swerved, his head jerking back. He crashed into the bushes,
snapping limbs and spraying leaves, but emerged miraculously back
onto the gravel a few yards down the road and sped unsteadily
away.

Fanny stepped out from the side of the lane,
a cast-iron frying pan in hand, her face lit up in triumph.

"I got one," she hooted as she waved the
frying pan around like a club.

"Let them go," I yelled at her. "There are
too many of them."

It was a moot point. The last of the bikers
disappeared in a cloud of dust just as Hugo came running down the
dirt path, his face frantic with worry.

Behind me, the gas tank on the smoldering
bike blew. It wasn't like in the movies where a huge blast rocks
the world and a mushroom cloud of flame shoots toward the sky. It
sort of popped, not all that loud, either, and then long fingers of
fire began to lick in a contoured arc around the crank case.

"Put it out," Burly screamed. "Put it out,
put it out." He'd wheeled to safety, but that wasn't his concern.
"We can find out who they are through the bike," he yelled in
explanation.

I scrambled toward the bush burner and
turned off the flame, then grabbed a white plastic bucket and began
to run toward the pond.

Hugo was faster on the uptake. He whipped
off his leather belt, looped it around the burning bike's
handlebars and began to drag it toward the water. I hurried to help
him. We pulled it over the sand and into a few feet of water. The
metal sizzled as oil slicks bloomed on the pond's surface and black
smoke choked my nostrils. We dragged it out further until the
machine sank beneath the surface, bubbles marking the spot. I was
waist-deep in bilge and smelled like a mechanic's wet dream. But
most of the bike was still unscorched.

"Jesus Christ," Bobby D. complained,
trudging through the heavy sand like Godzilla lumbering toward the
ocean. "What the fuck was that all about?"

"Someone doesn't like what I'm doing right
now," I said. "They think I should mind my own fucking business.
That's all I could find out."

"That's all we need to know," Bobby growled.
"You're not going back to Duke. Period. That part of your plan is
over."

Fanny was huffing and puffing behind him,
her face deep red. "Did you see that, Robert?" she shouted. "I
banged a man."

Well, I never thought I'd hear those words
from Fanny's lips.

"Right in the face," she crowed. "With
this!" She held the frying pan above her head in victory. I had to
give her credit. It had probably taken both hands to swing that
sucker. She must have at least broken his nose. I was impressed
he'd been able to keep on riding.

"God," I said, making my way to shore and
flopping down on the sand. "What the hell are bikers doing getting
involved in this mess?"

"Drag it out," Burly ordered from the edge
of the sand. "I want to see it."

Hugo waded back out into the pond, grabbed
the handlebars and wrestled the bike across the beach. I helped him
drag it toward Burly.

"That was a pretty good move there with the
bush burner," I told him.

"Man, if I'd been able to move, they'd be
dead now," he replied. He was as seriously steamed as the bike. He
examined it carefully. "This is a Kawasaki. It's designed to look
exactly like a Harley, but it's bush league." He ran a finger along
the edge of the bar that held the front wheel in place. "Look at
this," he said, pointing out a decal that had been slapped on the
metal. It depicted silver-and-black crossed swords impaling a
yellow heart.

"I think that's a tarot card," I said. "What
club is that? Do you recognize the symbol?"

He shook his head, "No. But Weasel
will."

"You should have let me shoot one," Bobby
complained as he joined us, wheezing, to check out the bike. "I
brought plenty of ammo."

"I'm gonna need you and your ammo," I
assured him. "What I don't need is you behind bars."

"It's okay, Robert," Fanny consoled him. "I
hit my man hard enough for both of us." And I had been naive enough
to think that Fanny would be a good influence on Bobby. Instead, it
was working the other way around. I'd have to be on my toes next
time she was frying up sausage in case she got in the mood for a
little target practice.

"Why would a bunch of bikers be involved
with professors at Duke?" I wondered out loud.

"Hired," Burly said. "They're probably some
loser outlaw band with bad-ass aspirations who hire themselves out
to intimidate."

"Well, it worked," I admitted. "I'm
intimidated."

Hugo was starting up the road at a run.

"What?" I yelled after him.

"We left Helen alone at the house," he
called back.

"Oh, shit." He and I began to sprint toward
the house.

She was safe. The bikers had passed her by.
But she was in no way okay. We found her slumped in the hallway on
the other side of the front door, crying inconsolably.

"I couldn't even get out the door," she was
sobbing. "I couldn't even turn the handle." Her muffled voice broke
and she cried even harder. "I wasn't any help at all. I'm no good
to anyone. I may as well be dead."

I knelt beside her and put my arms around
her shoulders. She laid her head against my chest. Her tears
stained my shirt and seeped through the thin cotton. I could feel
the dampness on my skin. "Ssshhh," I soothed her, rocking her back
and forth.

Hugo knelt by her other side and gently
placed a hand on one of her shoulders. He didn't say a word. He
hardly moved. He just let his hand move with her as she rocked back
and forth, lost in her shame.

I'd never heard Helen cry before. The sound
pierced my heart. She seemed so utterly full of despair. I wondered
if she had ever cried about what had happened to her until now. Her
sobs seemed dredged up from some dark place deep inside her soul
that she had never visited before.

I felt someone staring at us. Helen's mother
stood at the top of the stairs, peering down. One half of her face
was shrouded in shadows, the other half masked by a spreading
bruise caused by her run-in with the front door. She stared at her
daughter, her face familiar yet somehow unrecognizable, as if she
were a creature conjured from the fringes of hell. She watched her
daughter sobbing yet never moved. Instead, she seemed to drink in
the sorrow with a rapacious detachment, as if storing it for use on
the stage one day. Then she slowly turned her head away and,
without a single word, walked back into the darkness of the second
floor.

If it wasn't about her, I realized, Miranda
just didn't care.