Earthblood

It was Jed who drew the short straw.

He was cycling a little ahead of his comrade, freewheeling down a steep, winding grade. Thoughts of caution and potential danger left him, with the exhilaration of the wind through his hair, the pavement unrolling beneath the wheels.

He took both feet off the pedals, head back, whooping at the top of his voice.

Leaning into the sharp curves, feeling the adrenaline rush of danger as the tires slithered on loose gravel, he was riding on the far edge of control.

He never even saw the section of road where the fault had worked its malign magic, turning a fifty-yard stretch into a corrugated washboard with jagged cracks and humps.

The bike left the ground, and he felt himself tumbling sideways. A moment of flying and then the impact. A grinding crash and a splintered vision… spinning sky and earth and sky and earth and earth.

He could hear the faint sound of a wheel spinning and, somewhere, a bird singing.

“Jed, you all right?”

“Think so. Down here.”

“I hit that road section. Fucked my front wheel and bent the frame. I came off.”

“Yeah, me too.” Jed fell quiet, realizing that this was a foolish thing to say. “Guess you know that, Jeff.”

“Saw you going for earth-break orbit. That was why I fell off. Lost concentration.”

“Sorry. I’ll try and come off in a different sort of way.”

Now he could focus. He had fallen fifty feet down a steep slope, his bike only a yard away from him. As he looked at it, the wheel stopped spinning.

Jeff was standing above him, silhouetted against the skyline.

“Want a hand?”

“Yeah.” He checked out his vulnerable knees and felt the hilt of the kitchen knife digging into his hip and reached around to shift it. They’d both taken good blades from the first unlooted house they slept in. Not much use against rifles, but better than nothing.

Jed’s had a narrow blade with a serrated edge to it. Jeff had picked a long, broader knife, honed so sharp it almost sang.

It was a struggle to heave the bike up onto the buckled highway.

They stood together, Jeff shaking his head. “Mine’s gone to buy the farm, Jed.”

“Still if we’re lucky we can pick up another one. We’re close to tens of thousands of houses. They won’t all have taken their bikes with them when they upped and ran.”

“Yeah. Guess so. Least we both got away with a scratch and a bruise.”

Jed nodded, straightening the front wheel on his machine.

The bullet came out of nowhere, ploughing a furrow in the pavement just to their left.

“Behind us,” said Jeff, dropping to the ground, the bike tumbling beside him.

They were near the crest of a hill, with the road sloping down ahead of them. The shot had come from the rising ground at their backs.

“Look.” Jed pointed ahead, where he’d spotted a dozen dark figures scrambling agilely across the pink scrubland toward the highway. Setting up to cut them off from that avenue of escape.

Another shot rang out, this time missing them by a wider margin.

Jed looked at Jeff, holding on to the saddle of his bike then at the other machine, wrecked and unridable in the dirt.

“It won’t carry two of us.”

Jeff nodded. “Not with both our packs. Not even without them.” His voice was high and strained, the words tumbling over each other in their eagerness to escape from his mouth. “Won’t say sorry, as I’m not, Jed.”

“What?”

His head still whirling from the fall, Jed Herne found that life had suddenly become utterly, bizarrely inexplicable.

Jeff Thomas had slugged him one, followed by a searing blow to his ribs, making him actually stagger a few steps, his fingers losing hold on the golden Engesser. But it was all right because Jeff had grabbed the crossbar and was holding it.

Getting into the saddle.

Another shot rang out, this time closer, kicking dirt and grit into his face as he lay on the highway. But he didn’t recall lying down.

“I’m down, Jeff,” he said, wondering why his voice sounded so thin and far away. Like a cartoon voice. The thought made Jed smile.

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