Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Afternoon
River didn’t want to kill the bikers but that changed when the first knife swished past his head. They tried to surround him but he darted this way and that, forever elusive, leading them deeper and deeper into the terrain. They got more desperate, trying to get him in the middle. River bided his time and waited for his move.
Then it came.
One of the guys tripped over a rock and went down. River kicked him in the face, wrestled the knife away and stabbed it with full force into the side of the asshole’s head.
The woman screamed and charged.
River backed up as if escaping then suddenly closed the gap with a leap forward and punched her in the face.
She went down, bloody, and curled into a ball.
Now there was one, the one with the chain, the big one.
“You’re going to die, asshole,” he said.
River pointed his index finger at the man and then moved it in a come-here motion.
“Come on and do it,” he said.
The man charged and swung the chain with so much strength that River didn’t dare grab it. He skirted it and got his footing.
The woman was getting to her feet.
“Stay down!” River said.
Her face was covered in blood.
The only clean part was the whites of her eyes.
She didn’t stay down.
She couldn’t.
She was insane with rage and charged.
River grabbed her, wrapped his arm around her neck and held her in front of him-a human shield. “Put the chain down and I’ll let her go,” he said. “We’ll finish it fist to fist.”
The chain didn’t drop.
The man didn’t move.
“Do it!” River said. “Do it or I’ll snap her neck!”
“Screw you and screw her!”
He charged and swung the chain.
River dropped and forced the woman with him. The chain passed over their heads. Before the man could get it cocked again River got a hand on his arm and swung him to the ground.
A punch landed on his face with the force of a rock.
He tried to shake it off before another one came.
It didn’t work.
A second one landed, so hard that the inside of River’s head exploded in colors.
Then a third landed.
He was dying.
A few more and he’d be dead.
He made a desperate move to close the gap and get the man in a bear hug.
It worked.
The fists kept pounding but they were more on his back than his head and weren’t full force. River kept the man locked in position until the explosions in his head softened, then he wrapped his arm around the man’s neck.
At that second, they locked eyes.
The man made a desperate move, trying to twist.
It partially worked but not enough to get away.
River rolled and jerked with all his might.
The man’s neck snapped, then he twitched for a few seconds and stopped moving.
River rolled onto his stomach and closed his eyes.
The darkness felt like water.
Cool, cool water.
Blood was in his mouth.
The taste was strange but not necessarily bad.
He didn’t mind it.
He’d earned it.
He sat up to see how far away from the road they were, which he guessed to be fifty or sixty or seventy steps, it was hard to tell. It was close enough that someone driving past could have seen the fight if they’d looked in this direction. They might have been able to tell that one of the fighters had long hair.
He didn’t remember hearing any cars during the fight.
That was good but not conclusive.
Obviously he wasn’t focused on the road.
Right now, in any event, there were no cars around. If someone had looked over they didn’t bother to hang around.
The biker woman was still on the ground, watching him with fearful eyes.
River walked over, extended his hand and helped her up.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, and headed for the road.
She fell into step.
Then she stopped and said, “Wait a minute.”
She went back to the closest man, pulled a wallet out of his pants pocket and stuck it in hers. Then she did the same with the other one, the one with the chain. She hovered over him for a second, narrowed her eyes and then dropped a mouthful of spit onto his face.
“Okay,” she said.