Throttle (Kindle Single)

because it was the furthest thing from work. He wondered idly if Race was ever really at ease with himself and what he was doing.
    Vince heard the grinding thunder of a big engine behind him and took a long, lazy look back over his shoulder just in time to see the truck come bearing down on them. Like a lion breaking cover at a watering hole where a bunch of gazelles were loafing. The Tribe was rolling in bunches, as always, doing maybe forty-five down the switchbacks, and the truck was rushing along at closer to sixty. Vince had time to think, He’s not slowing down , and then LAUGHLIN slammed through the three running at the back of the pack with an eardrum-stunning crash of steel on steel.
    Bikes flew. One Harley was thrown into the rock wall, the rider—John Kidder, sometimes known as Baby John—catapulting off it, tossed into the stone, then rebounding and disappearing under the steel-belted tires of LAUGHLIN’s truck. Another rider (Doc, no, not Doc) was driven into the left lane. Vince had the briefest glance of Doc’s pale and astonished face, mouth opening in an O, the twinkle of the gold tooth he was so proud of. Wobbling out of control, Doc struck the guardrail and went over his handlebars, flung into space. His Harley flipped over after him, the hardcase breaking open and spilling laundry. The truck chewed up the fallen bikes. The big grille seemed to snarl.
    Then Vince and Race swung around another hard curve side by side, leaving it all behind.
    The blood surged to Vince’s heart, and for a moment there was a dangerous pinching in his chest. He had to fight for his next breath. The instant the carnage was out of sight, it was hard to believe it had really happened. Hard to believe the spinning bikes hadn’t taken out the speeding truck, too. Yet he had just finished coming around the bend when Doc crashed into the road ahead of them. His bike landed on top of his body with an echoing clang. His clothes came floating after. Doc’s sleeveless denim jacket came drifting down last, ballooning open, caught for a moment on an updraft. Over a silhouette of Vietnam in gold thread was the legend: WHEN I GET TO HEAVEN THEY’LL LET ME IN BECAUSE I’VE ALREADY BEEN TO HELL IRON TRIANGLE 1968 . The clothes, the owner of the clothes, and the owner’s ride had dropped from the terrace above, falling seventy feet to the highway below.
    Vince jerked the handlebars, swerving around the wreck with one boot heel skimming the patched asphalt. His friend of thirty years, Doc Regis, was now a six-letter word for lubricant: grease . He was facedown, but his teeth were glistening in a slick of blood next to his left ear, the goldie among them. His shins had come out through the backs of his legs, poles of shining red bone poking through his jeans. All this Vince saw in an instant, then wished he could un -see. The gag muscles fluttered in his throat and when he swallowed, there was a burning taste of bile.
    Race swung around the other side of the ruin that had been Doc and Doc’s bike. He looked sideways at Vince, and while Vince could not see his eyes behind his shades, his face was a rigid, stricken thing . . . the expression of a small kid up past his bedtime who has walked in on his parents watching a grisly horror movie on DVD.
    Vince looked back again and saw the remnants of The Tribe coming around the bend. Just seven now. The truck howled after, swinging around the curve so fast that the long tank it was hauling lurched hard to one side, coming perilously close to tipping, its tires smoking on the blacktop. Then it steadied and bore on, striking Ellis Harbison. Ellis was launched straight up into the air, as if bounced off a diving board. He almost looked funny, pinwheeling his arms against the blue sky—at least until he came down and went under the truck. His ride turned end over end before being swatted entirely aside by the eighteen-wheeler.
    Vince caught a jittery glimpse of Dean Carew as the truck caught up to him. The truck butted the rear tire of his bike. Dean high-sided and came down hard, rolling at fifty miles an hour along the highway, the asphalt peeling his skin away, his head bashing the road again and again, leaving a series of red punctuation marks on the chalkboard of the pavement.
    An instant later the tanker ate Dean’s bike, bang, thump, crunch , and the lowrider Dean had still been making payments on exploded, a parachute of flame bursting open beneath the truck. Vince felt a wave of