SYNOPSIS
Love, solitude and their timeless link with the misplaced loyalties and friendship of life are what run through the tale of Brandon. As he rides out to save the iconic father figure of his misspent adulthood, his distracted mind sets like stone over the difficulties and the heartaches of his own relationship with Priscilla, the love in his life and the catalyst for a violent
return to his sordid and heroic drug-soaked past. A past which quite literally rides out to greet him and which will pull him down into the dirt and the dust of the desert. A vast and beautiful landscape that so easily and so poignantly contains the speed and the adventure of the motorcycle as it is pitted hopelessly against the endless road. Mile after speeding mile, on roads that will captivate the riders with their moonscape beauty, and with only small tough desert towns to play host to the tale, the past becomes ever more real and the reality of the present even tougher. Brandon is pushed to such extreme limits of pain and endurance and eventually, to the very depths of utter regret and re-invention.
Papa, the god-father figure of his past, is back. Unwanted and unlooked for and into a life that does not recognise him. Old and faded like a rapidly dying meteor far out in the blackness of space, he is now a sad reflection of all that both he and Brandon were. The drugs and the life they sought taking their toll on him.
And Mary, so infamous in her past and so psychotic in her present and also now just as faded but still so steely strong and intent on righting the wrongs and injustices of her past. She battles with the male domination of the world in which she has grown, and fighting her own addictive chemical ghosts, she is set to bring the story to a bitter end and rid herself of her part in that past and her demons, living and imagined. Her grip on her own mortality as shaky as her grip on the realities of her own life.
Finally, the so-called Sniper. The evil maverick that has always been there and has always haunted all their lives. Intent not just on revenge but on keeping alive those very demons that haunt them all, with his own idealistic succession to the supposed throne of a weary Papa.
So it has to eventually happen that the leather-clad speeding players in this story must come together and must inevitably clash. To end the hurt and to expel the myths and the monsters that have been spawned on a lifetime’s legend of drugs and violence.
But then there is Angie, who chills through this tale like a wraith. Her part in the past is only just beginning, and her heart in this present beats loud and strong, like a storm that rolls across a black desert sky.
Excerpt from CHAPTER 4
The two bikers gave each other a filthy grin through their bug splattered faces and pushed their bikes hard in formation along the highway. The lone bike up ahead in the distance had held their attention long enough and in unison they charged after it.
Up ahead they could see that the bike was not hanging around and that the rider had pushed up the speed. Every now and then they would see some welding-shower of bright magical sparks as he put the footrests hard over onto the road, pushing hard round the sweeps in the ribbon like desert road as it clung to the desert’s lusty contours. Now they too wound open the throttles of their chopped Harleys to match the pace, until, having exchanged silent conformation that it was time they took their bikes to the limit, their engines roaring with gusto, like only big motorcycle engines will.
Slowly but surely the gap between them and the lone rider lessened, each white, speeding, pulsing road marking
thrumming past and bringing them closer to their pray. Quarter of a mile, nearer and nearer they came, up ahead they saw the lone rider stiffen as their engines gunned aircraft loud and solid. A few hundred yards and they noticed him look around as if to sense the change they made to the peace and tranquillity of his space in the warm nights air.
Then, as they saw him look behind and take in their presence, they knew they had him. His bike leapt forward as he wound it up to full power, its frame snaking and weaving as the brutal torque kicked out by the engine tried to twist it from the road. But they and he knew that it would not be enough. The first of them reached for the small and insignificant little candy red button on the handlebar of his bike and hit the Nitrous. With the second doing the same, all living mechanical hell broke free as they thundered forward in an almost uncontrollable burst of gas induced, arm tearing acceleration which held the bikes’ front wheels aloft from the blacktop.
Brandon had wondered for an instant if the damn exhaust on his bike had come loose again. Bloody thing, he muttered to himself as the noise around him tricked his senses. Turning in the saddle and looking back he saw the two bikes charging hard up to him and he knew, instantly, that he was lost. The only way any bike could catch him that fast at this speed was with Nitrous pouring into its engine. He cursed himself for not fitting it to his faithful old Harley and remembered the amount of times that he had talked about doing so. Close up now he saw the grim smile on the faces of the two followers, set fast and determined, and wound the throttle on his own bike round to the stop. The road ahead was deathly straight as the desert’s deep dark horizons poured away from him like sand through a glass, and he knew that what was about to
happen would not be good. If only he could make it to the twists and turns that he knew would eventually lie ahead, he might have had a chance. Brandon was a good rider and he knew he could out-handle anyone around the twisty stuff. He knew that then, the Nitrous would have had to be shut off and they would be back at least on equal terms.
The first biker in a fantastic rage of Nitrous fuelled acceleration careered up to Brandon with a length of bike chain and whipped him across his back, nearly loosing control of his own machine as he veered dangerously onward and out into the night. The second caught Brandon with a devastating blow to his face with a similar weapon, lashing out at him as he sped past him.
Brandon winced from the blow of the first rider, and noting the speed with which he had been so easily passed
straightened up in the saddle going hard onto the Harley’s brakes, only to catch the second full on the side of the face.
At one hundred miles an hour the ensuing weave of his motorcycle as he lost control was devastating. The big Harley bucked and weaved, and then as his front wheel caught the desert sand at the road’s unforgiving edge, it spat Brandon off. Thrown from the bike, he was sent searing down the road, sparks reflecting from his mortally wounded bike lighting up the desert night sky as it skewed death-like along the road’s metalled surface. The road’s once comforting asphalt ribbon ripped through his leathers and tore into his flesh. Rolling and sliding off the road he finally came to a bloodied and dusted halt laying in the desert’s dust, as still as a noon-day dog; seeing, with his remaining strength as he did so, the sad grating and tearing of chrome and steel as the Harley continued on into its beautiful and hypnotic death slide, spewing out its life’s blood of oil and gas...
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