400 Horsepower of the Apocalypse
Chapter 5
The bandages weren’t as effective as real riding gloves, but a couple of hours later, I was too excited to care if my fingers fell right off into the road and got run over by a tractor.
Not that there were tractors here… I leaned over my handlebars and grinned up at the jagged city skyline. Leo and I were driving through Oklahoma City. It wasn’t as big as Paris or Los Angeles, but Oklahoma City was a thousand times bigger than Crayhill. There were people here that had never met each other, who never would. I could walk into a bar in Oklahoma City and not know everyone sitting at the counter, and every one of the three shitty beers on tap.
There were whole new shitty beers here!
I wished we had time to stop and try one of them, but Leo was in a hell of a hurry and raced through Oklahoma City with barely a glance. I supposed that it was all pretty dinky compared to Chicago, but still… If I didn’t have a job to do, I would have been gone in a flash, riding away through the shiny office buildings of the downtown commercial district. Bright, hot sunlight flashed off the glass and turned every skyscraper into a silver blade of radiance.
But I did have a job to do, and just trying to stay close enough to do it was proving a challenge. My Bonneville’s engine put out sixty-two horsepower, which wasn’t bad at all. A Packmaster had somewhere between eighty to ninety, maybe about a hundred if you threw EPA regulations out the window. It’s not that much of a difference, but I struggled to keep up with Leo through Oklahoma City. Every few minutes, his motorcycle growled thunderously and surged ahead of me.
By the time we were driving out the other side of Oklahoma City, Leo had signaled for me to ride single-file again. I fell back with a frown and followed him at a distance. Okay, I was worried about Leo losing control of his motorcycle and side-swiping me, but what about him? If the throttle stuck and he couldn’t brake, he was going to end up a biker-sized smear down the center of Highway 44.
Was Leo in that much of a hurry, or was his engine surging again? Making sure that his bike didn’t crash itself or its rider was my job. And I needed gas, so I accelerated up beside Leo and raised one hand, gesturing for him to pull over. He nodded tightly and took the next off-ramp.
We stopped at a filling station on the western edge of Oklahoma City — that’s a gas station if you’re from the coast. It was the middle of the day in the middle of the week, and we were alone at the row of pumps. I parked in front of the first one, then ran inside the little convenience store and threw a ten-dollar bill on the counter. The man behind it collected my money and then flashed me a thumbs-up.
I hurried back outside as Leo was climbing off of his motorcycle. The Packmaster’s extended tank probably wasn’t as low as my Bonnie, but filling up was usually a good idea.
“What’s going on with your bike?” I asked.
“Sorry,” Leo said. He removed his helmet and ran one gloved hand through his hair. “My engine was surging.”
“I’ll take a look while we’re tanking up.”
“Thanks, Jaz.”
Leo pushed the gas nozzle into his Packmaster’s tank, then punched the button on the pump with one elbow. He pulled out his phone, ignoring the urban myth about cell phones setting fire to gasoline fumes, but he growled something in Spanish and jammed the device back into his pocket.
“Still nothing,” Leo said. “What pump are you on? One?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“I’ll go square us up.”
“Wait, I’ve already–!” I began, but Leo had turned away and was stalking off in the direction of the store to pay.
Oh, well. I doubted that my Bonnie’s little gas tank was going to cost much more than ten bucks to fill, anyway. So instead of chasing Leo down over a couple of dollars worth of top-off, I hunkered down and squinted at the Packmaster, trying to pick out some clue about whatever the hell was causing those weird surges of speed.
Leo must have paid, because the gas pump clicked and then the hose started to hiss softly as gasoline poured into the motorcycle’s tank. But just a few seconds later, the pump let out a loud ka-thunk and then cut off. I looked up at the display. Only half a gallon… At the next pump, my Bonnie was still thirstily sucking down fuel.
Huh. What the hell? I reached up and gave the gas handle a tentative squeeze, but it thunked and stopped again.
Like the tank was already full.
I tapped my knee, thinking. Perhaps something was leaking into Leo’s tank, something besides gas. That might account for the weird surges, if it was burning in the engine at a different rate than properly rated gasoline. Was there a crack in the tank?
I was hesitant to touch the Packmaster again, so I carefully pulled out the fuel nozzle and sniffed the tank valve. I didn’t smell anything other than gas… but the whole station reeked of the stuff, so it might have been masking any useful scents.
Well, if there was a breach in the Packmaster’s gas tank, then the fuel would be leaking somewhere. I inspected the tank, the seat behind it and the engine beneath, but there was no sign of dripping or oozing gasoline. Everything was shiny and perfect.
Fuel line, maybe? A hole in the line could cause surging and sputtering, but that would empty the tank, not leave it so full that Leo couldn’t gas up. I considered popping the air cleaner cover to take a look inside, but while a blocked-up filter might explain the gas tank not draining, the Packmaster wouldn’t even be running.
I was about done with Leo’s damned mystery bike. I enjoyed a brief fantasy of hosing the motorcycle down with gasoline, then tossing a cigarette at it over my shoulder like in the movies. There was an automated chiming noise as Leo walked out of the station store, holding his cell phone up to his ear, and I suddenly wanted to burn that thing, too. And Leo for good measure.
Whoa, Jaz, I told myself. Easy… No need to go all murder-happy over a glitchy motorcycle.
“I haven’t heard from my Knights since yesterday,” Leo was saying into his phone. “Can you call me if you find anything?”
So he had managed to contact someone, but it didn’t sound like one of his people. Leo nodded at whatever the other person said, even though I was the only one who could see it.
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks, tío. Bye.”
Leo ended the phone call and then hurried back to his bike. Arson was a little extreme, maybe, but my hackles were still up. I knew that my new employer was a criminal and we hadn’t talked about that at all. My ass was sore from riding, my cut hand hurt, and Leo’s Packmaster was pretty much my mortal enemy. I tried and failed not to frown.
“Finally got in touch with somebody?” I asked.
I hoped I didn’t sound as suspicious as I felt and doubted it. I’ve never been a very good liar. But Leo just nodded at me.
“I called my Uncle Carlos,” he said.
“The one in San Diego?” I asked.
“Yeah. My mother’s brother. He didn’t raise me or anything, but I wish he had. Everything worth knowing in my life, Uncle Carlos taught me.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that… I suppose even hardened criminals had loved ones and people who were important to them. Leo took something out of a jacket pocket and tossed it to me — a candy bar.
“Thought you might be hungry,” he said.
I caught it and then smiled at Leo. The candy bar had the same branded brown wrapper as the one I had been eating at the garage yesterday. It wasn’t my favorite or even high up on my candy list — yeah, I have a candy list — it was just the best on offer in GTA’s crappy vending machine.
But Leo didn’t know that.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Still no word from my friends, though,” Leo told me. “What happened with the gas? I barely had to take out my wallet.”
“Your bike only took half a gallon,” I said. “It won’t fill and I can’t figure out why.”
I summarized my gas-related theories — and why they didn’t make sense. Leo frowned down at his bike.
“What the fuck?” he asked. “Does it have anything to do with the engine surges?”
“No idea,” I admitted, crossing my arms. “I swear I’m actually good at my job.”
Leo ran his hand along the curve of his Packmaster like he was petting a horse. I skipped the horse phase that most little girls seem to go through and jumped straight to motorcycles. So had Leo, apparently.
“And I swear I’m actually a good rider,” he said, then patted his bike. “But this big guy seems to have other ideas for both of us.”
I laughed and tore open the candy bar Leo had given me. I wolfed it down in three bites while Leo closed his gas tank and pulled on his helmet again.
“If we hurry, we can make it out to Arrow,” he said. “That’s in Texas. Arrow’s a big enough city that we should be able to buy some new shock springs for that Bonnie. My treat.”
“You really don’t have to do that,” I said. “I can get my own shocks. You did pay me for this job, after all. You know, when I actually manage to do it.”
Leo shrugged. “We’ll split the cost, if you like. But it’s in both of our best interest for you to have a smooth ride. You can’t fix my bike if your hands are trashed.”
“Alright, deal,” I said. “And I need some gloves of my own. I’ll buy those myself.”
“Then let’s get moving. My friends were heading for Arrow last night and with any luck, we’ll be able to catch up to them by tonight.”
Leo’s friends. His gang. I swallowed the rest of my candy bar in a huge lump of chocolate, caramel and nougat.
“Yeah,” I said. My mouth was suddenly dry. “Let’s go.”
I tossed the empty wrapper in the trash and hurried back to my motorcycle. I replaced the fuel nozzle and put on my helmet, then straddled the Bonneville. Leo gunned the Packmaster and pulled out of the filling station, driving smooth and straight.
For now.
