Helmet Head (3 page)
CHAPTER 5
Demon Eye
Fagan pulled to the side of the road and kicked out the stand. His tires rested in weeds. Only the kickstand touched asphalt. He got off his bike and turned to face the oncoming biker, arms folded, Sam Browne belt, official in his white, blue and gold helmet and mirrored sunglasses. The red headlight dipped beneath the horizon as the biker descended the roller coaster road.
Sound reverberated through the tunnel of trees like thunder, only louder. Straight pipes. Dude was in violation of the noise ordinance. Fagan flicked on the light bar on the rear box. Red and blue strobed the sides and ceiling of a tunnel of rain-slick leaves. At least the rain had let up for the moment. The sound of the unmuffled engine grew, shaking tree limbs, causing leaves to fall and sending pebbles skittering. What the hell was he riding? A freight train?
Fagan stood with his hand out like a traffic cop fully expecting the biker to comply. The biker had to know what was waiting over the next rise from the red and blue flashing off the trees. With a thunderous crescendo a monstrous mechanical centaur erupted out of the depression. Fagan registered danger. The rider wore a shiny black carapace surmounted by a black, beetle-like helmet; his right arm extended up, back, and in that instant Fagan threw himself backward over the seat of his ride, bending so far his body formed a horseshoe. The blade snicked overhead with a whistling sound.
The shriek of engine peaked and passed with a Doppler effect carrying the demon around a curve and out of sight. Fagan stood gasping and leaning on the bike. What just happened?
Some creep with a samurai sword nearly took off his head. Now Fagan knew what had happened to the Road Dog. There’d been no mention of this freak. How did the killer control his ride with his left hand? All motorcycle throttles were on the right. He could have used a throttle stop but that was insanely risky on twisty little roads like this. Unless he’d modified the bike so the throttle was controlled with the left hand. Who does that? Why? Fagan knew why. But still, the effort and for what? Effect? The vics were dead—they didn’t have much time to admire the effect.
Fagan knew he was dealing with a real sicko.
Lightning flashed through the trees. Fagan tried the radio. White noise. He listened. Wind and thunder—and something else. Those shrieking cylinders. Fagan caught a glimpse of red light recrudescent through the trees.
The black biker was coming back.
Fagan withdrew his S&W, jacked one into the chamber and thumbed off the safety. He didn’t think about his record or how this would look to the Firearms Discharge Review Board. The black biker had already tried to kill him. Well now he was going to get perforated.
Fagan crossed the road and braced his forearms on a branch, all but invisible in leaf and shadow.
Bring it on freak
.
Red light splayed across wet branches followed by the demon eye, bike bent like a storm cellar door, right arm held high. He came right at Fagan. Fagan began pulling the trigger when it was twenty feet away and didn’t stop until it was almost upon him. At the last instant he ducked and rolled and
swish!
The blade cut through the four-inch elm like string cheese.
The giant motored over the crest and disappeared. The sound barreled away in a diminishing howl until it was almost gone.
Fagan got up, his uniform soaked. He listened. The engine—how many cylinders? It almost faded away. Almost. There. It was gone.
Thank God.
Fagan held his breath, heart pumping like a tweaker. Raw terror beat coffee every time. Fagan bent over with his hands on his knees searching for breath. No one would believe him. If he got an All Points out within the next couple hours they might stand a chance. Unless the demon biker went to ground.
Fagan headed diagonally across the road to his bike. On the other side of the road he paused.
He listened.
A tiny buzz.
It waxed louder.
Fagan saw four slugs penetrate the giant’s black leather jacket. Why wasn’t he dead? If he were wearing body armor why hadn’t the 160-grain slugs at least knocked him off the bike? Was he jacked up on PCP?
What was keeping him up?
Lightning flashed. Rolling thunder joined the ascending howl of the killer’s bike. Fagan sprinted to the Harley, thumbed the starter and took off, kicking up the stand in motion.
The motherfucker was returning for another pass, like it was a bullfight. No use trying to divine the motive of a homicidal maniac. Fagan had been a biker long before he’d been a cop. Riding a bike wasn’t like driving a car—your sensory awareness was heightened ten-fold. You couldn’t be bothered with chitchat, text messages or music. You needed total concentration to stay on the road. In the rain, chased by a killer.
Fagan held it just this side of panic as he goosed the big Harley up to fifty on roads that weren’t designed for anything over thirty-five. He felt the rear tire slip in the corner and catch as his heart stopped and restarted, floorboard banging against the pavement sending a shockwave to his knee. Somehow he kept the 800 lb. bike upright. He headed southwest, certain the road would connect with either 123 or 38.
This can’t be happening to me
.
He almost laughed. It would almost be funny if it weren’t so insane. Out of the frying pan into the fire. As he topped the next rise he saw the red demon eye pop over the crest eighty yards behind him. Fagan willed himself not to tense up and start shivering, consciously keeping from crushing the handgrips as he guided the heavy road bike faster than it was meant to go. He kept scraping the floorboards.
Where was 123? Where was 38? Come on, come on. The freak gained on him. Fagan looked down. He hit sixty. The giant had to be going eighty or better. By the laws of physics he should have planted himself in the trees by now.
Ahead through the trees Fagan caught a glimpse of desultory traffic—a pick-up truck, a bus. Had to be 123. Had to be.
Please God don’t let this freak follow me out onto the highway.
He could see motorists switching on their wiper blades. Rain smacked and went away like a harlot flicking a handkerchief.
He was close to panic, like a small animal with a giant predator breathing down its neck. He glanced in the mirror. The demon’s eye almost blinded him, a mere quarter of a football field behind. They’d taught him never to ride in a panic but no one had envisioned these circumstances.
Fagan held the throttle flat out as the big bike accelerated to ninety, crested the top of a hill and went briefly airborne, landing with a clank. The red demon eye was right behind him. Fagan heard its strange engine thrashing and humming like something at war with itself.
Fagan rushed the highway—a T-intersection—the road didn’t go through. There would be no time to stop. He prayed that the relatively light-used state highway would be deserted.
A faint demented scream penetrated his consciousness. Fagan realized it was the creature itself, turned his head and the fucker was right there on the backswing. Fagan slammed his head down to the right of the tank and felt a jarring shock as something struck his fiberglass helmet. He felt wind in his hair.
Gripping the bars Fagan looked up to see the black biker hit the highway and grab two feet of air off a discarded sheet of plywood resting on a log.
Good! Maybe he broke his neck!
Then Fagan was out in the open sliding sideways like on a dirt track, struggling to keep the Harley on its tires. The sky was a mottled, shifting gray/purple with flashbulbs erupting behind screens and constant crosscurrents of thunder. The scabbed black highway was little wider than the country trunk he’d just left, wet as an otter. He crossed both lanes and the Harley’s rear tire slipped onto the beat-down highway grass and Fagan put a foot down to keep it upright, twisting his ankle and juddering to a stop in sixty feet. He quickly pulled to the side of the westbound lane and straddled the bike on the shoulder.
He leaned on the bars, breath a jackhammer. He looked up and down the highway.
The freak was gone.
An insensate mechanical bellow erupted from a fire trail beyond the eastbound lane. Fagan stared in disbelief, spine shaking like a flag in a hurricane as the red eye reappeared, blinking in the brush waiting for a farm truck to lumber by.
Fagan gassed his bike feeling a high-pitched animal whine in his throat.
***
CHAPTER 6
The Kongo Klub
He thought he heard a tornado siren but he was seventeen miles out of town. It could have been the wind through the trees or the shriek in his throat. He looked ahead to where the road disappeared in mist. It was as deserted as after a nuclear disaster. What happens when lightning strikes a biker? Would the rubber tires insulate him from grounding? Not in the wet.
That was the least of his worries.
The trees on either side of the two-lane highway flickered red and blue from his light bars and red from the demon eye, engine roaring like an avalanche nipping at the Harley’s rear tire. Fagan hunkered low on the bike with the throttle flat out and watched the Speedo creep past a hundred. The blazing red eye remained steady in his rearview, thirty feet back.
Some kind of intersection coming up fast—123 and 38. Fagan made the mistake of looking in the mirror and saw the upraised sword, the maniac’s front wheel adjacent with the Harley’s rear.
The maniac swung.
Fagan threw the bike down on its side and skidded next to it down the highway at ninety mph, his ballistic jacket, boots and helmet shredding leather and carbon fiber like cheese on a grater, the big bike kicking up sparks as it rotated and skidded. Fagan felt heat building through the carbon fiber. Slower and slower he scraped and spun until he came to a halt in the middle of the westbound lane, his bike skidding off the road to the right and striking the base of a utility pole like an eight hundred pound wrecking ball.
The utility pole, one in a series carrying power and phones to the hinterlands, cracked like a breadstick and trembled, momentarily held up by the power lines stretching in three directions. The third direction was to the one-story log cabin roadhouse with the neon signs advertising Schlitz and Dixie. “Kongo Klub” flickered in neon orange above the door.
Fagan lay on his back for a moment, staring at the roiling sky. He recognized the signs of shock. Carefully he tested his limbs and concluded nothing had broken although he’d look like an eggplant for several days. Ever so slowly he raised his head and looked around. He sat up.
His arm buckled. Still no traffic.
The maniac was gone. Fagan tried to listen but his ears rang like a school fire alarm. He had to get out of the middle of the road. A crack of pure white light struck the top of the utility pole. The thunderclap was instantaneous. Momentarily blinded, unable to hear, Fagan realized he was sitting in a pool of cold water and the utility pole was coming down.
Every joint a roundabout of pain, Fagan scurried backwards on his ass like a spider until he was out of the pool. He struggled to his feet and hobbled out of the middle of the road seconds before the pole touched down with a horrendous crackle and a cloud of angel fire that followed the downed line to the next pole. Fagan stopped at the parking lot, put his hands on his knees and searched for breath. He fell on his ass. He slapped around. He still had his pistol and radio.
He thumbed it. Of course it was dead. He went through his little rituals, feeling his arms and legs. The back of his head felt cool. He unstrapped his helmet. The sword had cut a perfect circle at an angle on the side of the crown, a monk’s helmet. It looked like half a jawbreaker. He scratched his scalp.
The Harley was down but it weighed a ton and had highway bars so it still might be rideable. Not that Fagan had any intention of trying. He could barely walk. He had to talk to HQ and was pretty certain the KK had a landline, if it hadn’t just been knocked down by the storm.
Fagan looked up. The clouds seemed darker and angrier like a mob working itself up to a confrontation. He scanned the road east/west once more but there wasn’t a sign of traffic. They must have warnings out on all broadcast media.
On hands and knees Fagan turned toward the roadhouse. A series of faces regarded him through the steam-misted window, in and around the neon beer signs. He staggered to his feet. Five rat choppers out front, three with apes. One had a Stihl chainsaw bungeed to a cargo rack. The bikes dripped with skulls, grim reapers, Grateful Dead symbols, tiny bells, packets and ephemera. Bikers were more superstitious than gypsy wives. Three of the bikes appeared to be Harley-based. The other two were of unknown provenance.
He looked up. Smoke curled from the old brick chimney as from the College of Cardinals. As he watched the lights went out. Shouts and curses from inside.
The Kongo Klub was made of brown logs, possibly telephone poles, held together with white mortar. A railed porch ran the length of the club, about forty feet. There were a half dozen white plastic chairs and two round white plastic tables, the kind you buy at Wal-Mart. Fagan went up two steps to the stout brown door with a scratched square window smack in the center. Seconds later the sound of a generator starting up reached him and seconds after that the lights flickered back on.
Fagan heard scuffling and scraping furniture as he approached the door. He pulled it open and stepped inside. Pain radiated like a high red whine from his arms and legs. Five hairy bikers—three at a circular table decorated with empty bottles and two more at a square table in the back flipping cards. The card players were old. They would be Doc and Curtis. What was that like, to be an old biker with no health insurance, three teeth in your jaw and a stinking trailer somewhere?
The room smelled of beer, tobacco, marijuana and testosterone.
Two behind the bar—a grizzled homunculus and a fresh-faced blond who looked as out of place as a chrysanthemum in a coal bin. Eyelashes like crow’s wings. Had to be fake. She wore a man’s white shirt tied around her taut midriff and hip-hugger jeans. There was a tat of Gaiman’s Death on her bicep. They all looked up. It would have been unnatural if they hadn’t. But there was nothing natural about the forced bonhomie of the bikers doing their best to appear nonchalant.
That lasted three seconds.
The biggest biker, a slab of beef with a full beard, gold earrings and a gold tooth slammed a Bowie knife the size of a PT Cruiser into the scarred wood table causing the bottles to dance.
“MACY! WHERE THE FUCK’S MY BURGER!”
With a frightened expression the blond angel disappeared behind the bar.
All for Fagan’s benefit.
The youngest, a wiry hillbilly with a Dennis the Menace cowlick and a wide grin, said in an adolescent twang, “Well look what the cat dragged in.”
***