400 Horsepower of the Apocalypse
Chapter 19
That’s how I found myself creeping along the main road of Jasper in the middle of the night with Leo, who pushed the busted Packmaster down the street. At least waiting until nightfall had given us the chance to find a laundromat and run a few loads while we ate dinner. I had bought some new clothes, too, including a couple of t-shirts silk-screened with the name of the town and pictures of the Petrified Forest. I looked just like all the other tourists now.
The evening was cold and clear, but I was still sweating right through my nice clean clothes. Every time a car cruised past, I had to fight not to flee from the headlights. All this badass renegade stuff didn’t come very naturally to me, but Leo didn’t flinch. He just kept pushing his motorcycle down the road. Either he was that used to this kind of thing, or else he was too tired to give a shit. This was Leo’s second night without sleep and he had drunk an entire pot of coffee with dinner.
We checked the address a few times, but Jasper wasn’t a large town and before long, we stopped in the Chain Gang parking lot. It was a plain cinder-block building that looked almost identical to the Golden Touch Auto in Crayhill, with a small lobby and a pair of roll-up aluminum doors that were shut and locked. We studied the garage from a distance first, but there was only a single light on in the lobby and no one moving around inside. I didn’t hear any tools or music going in the back, either. Everyone had gone home for the night.
I had bought a baseball cap, too, and another one for Leo. We approached Chain Gang with our heads lowered, hopefully obscuring our faces from any watchful security cameras. But we didn’t see any and I felt a little silly.
Closer now, Leo inspected the front door — a worn wooden frame inset with glass bearing the garage’s name and a picture of a dirt bike. A sign hanging in the window had been flipped over to CLOSED. I tried the doorknob, but it didn’t turn. Locked, of course.
“Uh, do you know how to pick a lock?” I asked.
Leo shrugged, glanced back at the road — which was dark and empty — then smashed a leather-clad elbow through the window next to the door. There was a loud crash and shattered glass rained in glittering shards all across the lobby floor. The CLOSED sign swung wildly for a moment, then fell off its hook and out of sight.
I flinched again as a sedan drove by, but either the driver didn’t see us and the broken window, or else didn’t care. I turned back to Leo.
“Aren’t you worried about alarms?” I asked.
“Looks like the door has one, but not the window,” Leo said. “Give me a second.”
He pulled on a pair of riding gloves — full ones this time that covered his hands in leather — and carefully brushed glass out of the frame until he could grip it, then vaulted over and into the darkness inside. I waited outside, nervously fidgeting, and then jumped when I heard a loud metallic scrape. A chain rattled and Leo heaved up one of the rolling doors.
“Let’s get the bike in here fast,” he said.
I hurried into the parking lot to the spot where Leo had left his motorcycle. I grabbed the handlebars and started pushing, but the brakes engaged and the handle on my side hit me in the stomach.
“Ouch,” I said. “Leo, it’s not moving.”
He swore and came jogging over to take the motorcycle from me. The brakes didn’t release, though, and the tires squealed as he yanked his bike across the asphalt.
“Come on…” Leo grunted.
He pushed, shoved and then finally heaved the Packmaster into the garage. I rolled the door shut as Leo collapsed against a cinder-block wall, breathing hard. He swiped sweat from his forehead.
“That thing really doesn’t want to be fixed,” Leo panted. “So let’s do it.”
You should not repair Death’s steed, Uriel told me.
Give it a rest, would you? I asked. I need to focus.
This is my purpose, Uriel said. And your purpose, too. You were chosen for this. You are unique, Jaz. Special.
That’s flattering. Right now, though, I’m just especially annoyed.
But I felt Uriel’s unhappiness inside me. The angel was truly uncomfortable with what we were doing here.
Look, I thought, Leo’s bike… I mean, Death’s uh… steed… doesn’t want repairs. So by fixing it, I’m doing the opposite of what Death wants. Is that good enough for you?
Uriel considered for a moment.
Yes, the archangel answered.
Leo and I made a quick search of the garage. But lucky for us, Chain Gang hadn’t spent very much money on their security system. There were no motion detectors or lasers to trip, and the building was just as empty as it had appeared from the outside, so we didn’t have to deal with an awkward hostage situation.
At least something was going right.
We turned on the lights in the garage and lit up the row of five lift tables — battered metal plates painted yellow and welded to hydraulics that would raise them so mechanics didn’t have to work hunched over.
“Alright,” I told Leo. “Let’s get that monster of yours on a lift.”
I pointed and Leo wrestled the resisting Packmaster onto the largest lift table. We strapped it into place and I raised the platform. I reached toward the engine, then hesitated.
“Okay, don’t let it… bite me or anything,” I said.
Leo grabbed the steel fork that held the bike’s front wheel and nodded. “I’ll try.”
Uriel had healed the gash across my palm and my severely bruised trachea from the night before, but I wasn’t in a hurry to repeat any of those injuries. I selected a hex wrench off one of the workbenches and slowly approached the possessed bike. It creaked in the thick nylon straps and Leo tightened his grip.
“Hold still, you cranky beast,” Leo growled.
The big motorcycle yanked against the straps again and Leo’s muscles tensed to keep it in place as I got to work.
Packmasters have a wet clutch, which means that the enclosure is filled with a lubricating fluid that I had to drain off before I could open it up and replace anything inside. I slid an empty plastic tray under Leo’s bike and opened the valve. Primary fluid gurgled and then began streaming into the tray.
I hastily covered my mouth and nose when the smell hit me. There was a sharp burnt scent — which wasn’t surprising with a fried clutch — but it was worse than that. The smell was more like gunpowder and sulfur… Or brimstone, as the bible likes to call it.
And blood.
The primary fluid was thick and red, and it stank like something dead. I jumped back and almost needed a tray of my own as my stomach threatened to return dinner in a more liquid form.
“Holy shit,” I gasped.
Leo didn’t let go of the Packmaster, but he stared. He might not have been a mechanic, but he was a biker and clearly knew that was not what primary fluid should look or smell like. I inhaled the graveyard scent and gagged.
“That… that just needs to drain,” I said. “Have you got things handled out here?”
“I think so,” Leo answered.
I left him to watch over his motorcycle and found my way to the stockroom. Not only to escape the stench — though that was certainly a benefit — but because I needed parts. If Chain Gang didn’t have a clutch kit that would fit the Packmaster, then we were back to hoping and praying that Leo could talk Death into healing the bike itself.
The stockroom wasn’t large, but the sheetmetal shelves were stacked with boxes and bottles. Chain Gang was a sports shop and I found plenty of kits for Kawasakis and Hondas, but as I wound through the close-packed storage room, I began to despair of finding anything bigger. Just short of giving up, I finally spotted a dusty box crammed into the back of a shelf.
I crossed my fingers and pushed a few import clutch kits out of the way, rescued the one behind them and blew off the dust. It wasn’t specifically for a Packmaster, but I opened the box and inspected the clutch plates inside. They looked the right size and should do the job in a pinch. Which was exactly what we were in.
If Leo’s motorcycle complained, it had only itself to blame.
I chose a bottle of non-blood primary fluid and carried it all back out into the garage. Leo’s tattooed skin shone with sweat under the lights as he held the Packmaster down. The motorcycle revved and ratcheted on top of the lift table.
“Got what you need?” Leo grunted.
“I really hope so,” I said.
I grabbed another plastic tray, filled it with some of the new primary fluid and got the replacement plates soaking to prepare them for installation. The tray under Leo’s motorcycle was full of blood, so I removed it.
Uh, now what? I wasn’t sure if the weird demonic blood was safe to wash down the sink. The last thing we needed was it getting into the water supply and mutating the wildlife. I didn’t want to run over some demon-armadillo down the road, so I found a funnel and poured the bike blood into an empty jug. It was one of those big containers for recycling oil and I left it on the workbench to deal with… well, probably never.
With the blood sealed up inside thick plastic, the smell improved a little, but I wasn’t really excited about cracking open the clutch enclosure. I pulled down the wrenches I would need and pointed at the Packmaster.
“If you give me any more crap with bolt sizes,” I warned the bike, “I’m going to tell on you to Leo.”
“Um, I’m right here,” Leo reminded me.
“Well, you’re still its boss.”
The bike heaved to one side in the straps and Leo groaned as he struggled to hold it upright.
“Yeah… I’m not so sure about that,” he said.
I fitted a socket wrench over the first bolt. It took me a couple of tries, but the tool fit and after a lot of swearing, pushing and shoving, I managed to remove the bolts. By the time I got the casing off and pulled out the spring retainer, I was sweating as hard as Leo.
I peered into the enclosure and grimaced. The clutch plates inside had been some of those nice expensive carbon-fiber ones, but now they were nothing but blackened, shattered shrapnel. No amount of feathering your clutch did that to the plates. Leo looked over my shoulder and whistled.
“Damn…” he said.
Damnation. Yeah, that was pretty close. I went back to the workbench and found a pair of gloves, then pulled them on before removing the ruined plates. I had no desire to touch them with my bare hands if I could avoid it.
Look, I had no problem with engine grease up to my elbows and smudged all over my face. But gunpowder-smelling demon-bike blood? Hard pass.
The pieces of the broken clutch plates were small enough to dump into the jug of blood-slash-primary fluid. I used some rags and paper towels to clean out the Packmaster’s enclosure, then stuffed them into the jug, too. I screwed the cap on as tight as I could, then wrapped it in a couple layers of engine tape for good measure. And wrote DO NOT OPEN — TOXIC AF on the side in big block letters with a felt-tip pen.
Well, that was the best I could do there. Now time to get the Packmaster up and running. I carried the new clutch plates over to the motorcycle, picked them out of the primary fluid and silently said a little prayer to the patron saint of mechanics as I began pushing them into place.
They fit and I breathed a sigh of relief. A short one, though. When I maneuvered all of the plates into position and reconnected the cables, I closed the casing up again and then refilled it with fresh primary fluid.
How long would it stay recognizable? The bike was changing. As Death grew stronger, it became less and less a motorcycle and more the horseman’s steed.
I paid for my momentary distraction as the engine enclosure went suddenly hot under my fingertips. I yanked my hand back as the metal glowed red and a chemical-smelling smoke curled up from the nylon straps.
“Stop!” Leo shouted. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”
The engine gunned and the exhaust pipes backfired like a rifle shot. Leo snarled at his bike.
“She’s already changed your fucking clutch,” he said. “That’s enough!”
The enclosure flared with ember light for a moment longer before flickering and finally snuffing out.
“Jaz, are you alright?” Leo asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I was wearing gloves.”
I reached out toward the bike gingerly, but didn’t feel any heat. I finished tightening the bolts and the drainage valve, then stood up. Leo glared at his motorcycle.
“Is that it? Should it run now?” he asked.
“In theory,” I answered. “But I can’t promise much if your steed here decides to fry the clutch again, or throw a piston.”
“It’s my job to make sure it doesn’t,” Leo said.
“Well, let’s check that I did mine properly.” I gestured over to another machine in the corner of the garage, a large one with steel rollers set into the baseplate. “Can you put that big bastard on the dynamometer? I want to check my work before we try to roll out of here.”
I lowered the lift table again and we carefully unfastened the smoking straps that held the motorcycle in place. Leo grabbed it firmly by the handlebars and pushed his bike over to the dynamometer, then up onto the rollers. There were some more straps that I used to lash down the front wheel, but the Packmaster’s engine turned over and revved threateningly.
“Would you smack this thing on the fender with a rolled-up newspaper or something?” I asked.
“Easy there,” Leo said, like he was gentling a horse. “Easy.”
I bet Leo would have looked great riding a horse. Along a beach… Shirtless, just on general principle. But the Packmaster wasn’t impressed and growled in a lower gear this time.
“We’re only going to make sure you’re still working and see how strong you are,” Leo said. “Settle down.”
The motor throttled back to an idle. I had no idea if that boded well for my work, but it didn’t sound like the Packmaster was about to bite off one of my fingers, so Leo and I positioned the rear tire on the dynamometer’s roll assembly.
When everything was in place, I turned on the computerized display. An orange progress bar flashed on the screen, and then several rows of yellow buttons. I selected the basic settings and pointed to the Packmaster’s throttle. Leo nodded and twisted it slowly, bringing the motorcycle up to speed and cycling through the gears.
I watched the readout and realized my mouth was hanging open.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Or maybe more like unholy shit…”
“What’s wrong?” Leo asked.
I blinked and squinted at the dynamometer. There was no way that these numbers could be right. I had been a slightly unwilling passenger on the Packmaster long enough to know it was far beyond factory specs, but this…
“A… a normal dual-cam engine gets about fifty horsepower at the wheel,” I told Leo. “Which comes out to around a hundred at the crankshaft. On a custom bike like yours, I would expect another twenty or thirty.”
Leo’s dark eyes narrowed. “That’s not what you’re getting on the dyno, is it?”
“I’m reading four hundred horsepower,” I said.
The Packmaster revved and roared in Leo’s grip. The best racing bikes in the world had only half that kind of power. Leo’s motorcycle was way, way beyond street legal. But it was already breaking pretty much every physical and mechanical law… so why not a few mortal ones, too?
“Is everything working?” Leo asked.
“Better than it should,” I said.
“Then let’s get on the road. We lost a day of driving to this shit.”
Leo turned off the engine and hauled his motorcycle off the dynamometer while I shut down the machine. I left Leo to keep an eye on his bike while I wiped down and put away all of the tools. Yeah, I know we broke in and I was a hardened criminal now, but it was habit and I’m not an asshole.
When I was done, Leo took a stack of money from his jacket pocket and I kept nodding until he had fanned out about two thousand dollars. It was more than enough to pay for the broken window, one clutch kit and a bottle of primary fluid, but it still might come up short on therapy bills if someone got curious and cracked open the bloody jug we were leaving behind.
Well, I couldn’t solve every problem. I couldn’t even solve my own problems at the moment…
I swept up the shattered window glass in the lobby and then left the money on the workbench that I had used in the back. By the time we finished, the first violet light of dawn was creeping over the eastern horizon.
“Do you need something to eat before we go?” Leo asked.
The smells of blood and brimstone were still sharp in the air, and I shook my head.
“No, I’m a little queasy,” I answered. “Are you okay to drive? You haven’t slept for two days now.”
“I’ll be fine,” Leo said. “I mooched a couple of sodas from the break room fridge and wiped the door down when I was done.”
“Why?” I asked. “Did you spill something?”
“Fingerprints,” Leo said.
Guess I still had a lot to learn about being a real criminal. I had cleaned off all the tools and worn gloves most of the time I was using them, but I wiped a paper towel over the chain of the rolling door while Leo pushed his motorcycle outside again.
When we closed up the garage as best we could — we might have broken in, but no need to invite more thieves to do so — Leo swung a leg over his bike and started up the engine. The exhaust smelled like gunpowder and the big Packmaster growled. Leo shushed the motorcycle, trying to soothe it. But when that didn’t work, he just growled right back.
Is it weird that it was kind of sexy?
I cannot say, Uriel answered.
I wasn’t asking you.
Death has chosen a strong vessel, the archangel said. A horseman’s steed acknowledges no other master. But it only grows stronger as Death does. Leo cannot hold it at bay forever.
What about you? I asked.
You have been a worthy opponent, Jaz. But in the end, I will have control of this vessel. I must.
And here I thought we were becoming friends, I said.
Uriel sifted through the thoughts and memories of my life, childhood and adolescent friends flashing through my mind like the pages of a book flipping by too fast.
Yes, the angel said. We are becoming friends. To my regret.
