Junkyard Riders #11
Flipping the thumb switch, I put the bike in full stealth mode.
I could still be seen, because I wasn’t in camo-capable armor, but bent over the bike, the light-diffracting paint and war-time tech gave me partial invisibility.
Muters drinking the bike’s battery power, I raced for the hill near the diner.
The hillside where Jagger and Jacopo were waiting came into view and I peeled off the road before the diner was in my sights.
Moments later I was behind the hill. I killed the bike, kicked the Jiffy stand down, and took off my helmet, repositioning comms and headset and putting on my orange lensed 2-Gen sunglasses.
Thrusting themselves out of the saddlebags, the cats leaped from the panniers in wild arcs of youthful acrobatics.
“Spy,” I called, my voice pitched to not carry.
The gray cat stopped and turned inquisitive eyes on me.
“Bad guys at the diner. Good guys on the way. Anything y’all can tell me would be great. ”
She showed me her teeth and raced out of sight.
Belly crawling to the crest of the low hill, I took my place, stretched out on the ground between the guys. My nanobots settled into near quiescence at Jagger’s nearness. This was good. This was where I was supposed to be.
Jagger was monitoring the diner through his binocs.
There was a pair in front of me. And Jacopo was observing the diner through the scope of a long-range rifle, the kind snipers use, with distance gauges, wind estimators, and all the bells and whistles the war effort had given to industries dedicated to killing humans.
I focused on the diner. Out front were twelve riders, sitting on their bikes. The front door of the diner boasted a closed sign, no lights, and, through the front window, a rat sitting on the table closest to the entrance. Lovely.
“Why aren’t they open?” I asked.
“Saw a hint of motion out back when the riders showed up,” Jagger said. “I think the cook took off out of self-preservation.”
“Smart move,” I said.
The high-tech bikes were sleek, matte black, and had built-in weaponry.
The riders were all dressed in black riding gear.
Not military uniforms. But not-not military.
Like, they screamed trouble and danger and hard-core machismo, the dark kind that didn’t know how to lead or think, only how to follow orders blindly and kill as needed.
The kind that enjoyed hurting others because they could.
I said, “I have an idea.”
Jagger and Jacopo both groaned.
“Seriously,” I said. “I think it’s a great place to get intel on the bad guys.”
“And . . .” Jagger drawled.
“I think I should I go in.”
Jacopo extended a hand without losing control of his weapon. “Pay up.”
“Over beer,” Jagger said.
“Only a woman could ride in, blend in, offer a helpful hand, and get intel. And I’m the only woman here.
I’m hard to kill,” I added. And if I needed, I could take the DRs over.
Make them mine. It would take time. It would screw up my sense of morality.
But to save myself, I’d do it. The guys didn’t reply.
The bet said they had known what I would be proposing going in.
My bits-and-pieces comms came on line with scattered background noise.
Cupcake said, “Amos and I are on site. Coming up on your six. Do me a favor and don’t shoot us.”
My nanos settled even more and I said, “Cupcake and Amos are joining us.”
Jacopo said, “Cats are on site. Somehow they got into the diner. The gray one caught a rat in mid-leap.”
“Spy’s the best hunter-cat in the destruction,” I said, proud of the young female.
Footsteps sounded behind us. Cupcake stretched out beside Jagger. Amos took a seat near Jacopo, saying, “Logan Jagger, she’s mine. Hands off.”
Jagger chuckled but said nothing. Amos had ridden with the HA as supplemental support until he met Cupcake. He knew just how much to needle a National Enforcer, and how much to stand back.
Over EntNu and the patchwork comms, Mateo said, “Going dark. Will drop off gear at the bottom of your hill and take up a location on the hill behind you.”
“Copy that,” I said. And Jagger said. And Jacopo said. We were a chorus of agreement.
There were a lot of chiefs and not a lot of troops. I said, “Cupcake, how well do you think we can pretend to be a cook and waitress.”
“And flirt,” Cupcake said.
Amos growled. Like—a real bear-growl or wolf growl. A “hands off” growl.
“For intel, Big Man,” Cupcake said, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “I bet we can be pretty damn good,” she added to me.
Mateo said, “I’ll be in place, two clicks away from your twenty, in ten minutes.
I can block all long-range transmissions except the channel Jolene and I are on, and tie into everyone’s on site.
Jolene, drone is now on site and able to listen in on enemy chatter and regurgitate it to me. The DRs are hungry and want breakfast.”
“Four cats have reconnoitered inside and are now outside with the DRs,” Jacopo said. “All on visual.”
Concentrating on Spy, I reached for that mental thing she did with me sometimes, where I could see through her eyes. I got nothing. Either she was being difficult, as cats often are, or she had nothing to share.
I scooted away from the crest of the hill and stood, dusting off my clothes, removing my kutte, and fluffing my hair.
I put on fresh orange lipstick and unbuttoned the top buttons of my shirt.
Cupcake fluffed herself too, running her fingers through her blond hair and batting her blue eyes at me the way she did with Amos.
It was her best flirting move. She was wearing a blue shirt that showed cleavage and she smeared on bright pink lipstick.
I unloaded all the weapons from my body and my bike, leaving only a Laser Target Designator for Mateo to home in on in case we needed something blown up, and small ancient handgun dangling by a strap on the handle bars.
No one carried a weapon this way, and it made us look stupid which was the goal.
I made sure the safety was on, so I didn’t shoot one of us by accident.
“My bike,” I said, to my friend. “You’re bitch seat.”
“Of course I am,” she said. “I’m the pretty one.”
She was right. I was a five, maybe a seven on a really good day, with makeup.
Right now I had road dust and helmet hair, even with the finger ruffling.
Jagger rolled over partway from his prone position and met my eyes.
That electric something flashed between us.
It was heated, and intense, and more than I wanted to inspect.
I set the helmet on the ground, pulled my orange sunglasses over my eyes, and straddled my stripped-down ride.
Keying on the bike, Cupcake settled in behind me, her thighs around mine.
“No helmets?” she asked.
“No. We want them to think we’re locals and not real bright.
” On the fly, I made up a tale. “We found the bike near a dead rider. The body was pretty well eaten by the time we found it. My brother Joe repaired the screamer so we can make it to the diner for work. Joe’s a great mechanic, but a pain in the ass. ”
“I think he’s cute,” Cupcake, said, as I gunned the engine toward the diner.
“Whatever,” I said.
We reached the diner. I braked to a stop about thirty meters short of the matte black motorcycles, and killed the engine.
Raising my voice, I said, “You boys here to eat and pay or sex traffic?”
One of the guys, a slim brown-haired guy swaggered toward us. “We have money for food and safe passage. Though your friend could make a lot in the trade.”
“Piss ant,” Cupcake murmured in my ear. “I bet his penis is only seven centimeters long.”
I swallowed my giggle, turned on the bike, and made my way closer to the diner. And remembered I didn’t have a key. “Key?” I whispered to Cupcake.
“Devil’s dangles,” Cupcake swore.
I nearly giggled again. Nerves.
“Go around back and see if the cook left it open,” Cupcake said. “I’ll entertain them.”
“Don’t be too cute. Amos will take their dangles and wear them for earrings and we’ll never learn anything.”
Cupcake hopped off the bike and I motored around back, turned it off, and tried the back door. “Open,” I said into comms. “Coming around front. Hope they have eggs. That’s the only thing I know how to cook.”
“Shinning Sugah,” Jolene said into my ear. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you can’t cook. Even eggs.”
It wasn’t true. I made a great canned seafood chowder and peerless coffee.
I made my way through the diner and unlocked the front door, turning the oval sign to “Open.” Men began to enter, and Cupcake joined me in the back.
She showed me how to turn on the big griddle thing that she called a flat-topped grill, and it started heating immediately.
She indicated the commercial toaster, the small oven, and pointed to the walk-in refrigerator.
Then she went up front to make coffee and chat.
Cupcake was full of chatter about how the cook wasn’t in, which was weird, and that she and I were the waitresses, but that we could make a mean breakfast, and we would fix them up right and proper with eggs and toast and pancakes. She said to them, “The coffee’s pretty shitty. Just saying.”
I’d had the diner’s coffee. It took the term swill to new lows, but it was all we had, and it did at least smell like coffee. A little.
Then she started in about my brother Joe, with whom she was madly in love and that Joe and my boyfriend were coming for breakfast, but she would make sure the motorcyclists were served first since they had to wait. No one attacked her and the DRs took seats.
Pulling the cuffs of my riding gloves to snug them on my fingers, I found a bucket of lard. Scooping out a generous portion, I tapped the lard from the spoon to the grill where the fat instantly began to melt. So far so good.