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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
About fifty miles south of Eureka, Eight and Cooper led the convoy off the Pacific Coast Highway, east into the hills and forests of Humboldt County. Again, Duncan was dazzled by the landscape. Redwoods soared into the sky, and every turn of the mountain road seemed to open to a new valley vista that went on forever. Eucalyptus and pine scented the air like Mother Nature was burning incense.
And goddamn, the ride was fun. The PCH had been beautiful and fun as well, but some spans along the coast were downright treacherous. A long span around Big Sur had actually been washed out, the route detoured inland, but several other stretches brought the road right up to the cliff edge. Here, it was easier to open up the throttle a little and really enjoy the twists and turns—and dodge the massive trucks hauling lumber.
Jay rode at Duncan’s side; every time they looked over and met each other’s eyes, they laughed out loud—and they weren’t the only ones. Riders whooped and laughed around every turn. Yeah, they were riding toward violence, possibly war, but right now, life was just good.
They rode past tiny communities and homesteads that had the familiar look of people just scraping by. The people in these mountains were obviously not the same kind of people who lived in those cliff-edge seaside homes made of glass. These properties looked more like the kind of homes they found in rural Oklahoma. Not a lot of quinoa-fed Birkenstock folks in these mountains.
Eventually, about ten miles past a little scrap of a town that was mainly a roadside bar and bait shop (with a huge mural on the side of the building proclaiming it the Bigfoot Capital of the World), Eight and Cooper turned onto a narrow dirt lane and led the club into the forest itself.
They rode through thick brush over a lane that was barely more than a trail until they came up on a heavily reinforced gate with a big security rig, camera and intercom.
As Eight pressed the button on the intercom up ahead, Duncan sat astride his bike and looked around at the dense forest surrounding them. Pinpricks of anxiety stabbed at his nape; danger seemed to loom somewhere within the seemingly peaceful scene.
Then he saw something in the brush. He reached out and slapped at Jay’s arm.
Obviously feeling the same thing, Jay didn’t speak. He gave Duncan a look that said, What’s up? and Duncan nodded at the bit of sheen he’d glimpsed in the brush. There was a sturdy metal—and electrified—fence concealed among the eucalyptus, manzanitas, and redwoods. On a pole rising up from a fence post was another camera.
This guy felt he needed some hardcore security.
A buzz sounded, then the clunk of a latch disengaging, and the gate swung open. Duncan and Jay fell in with the rest of the club and pulled through.
Inside the gate, the lane continued just as narrow and crowded as before. They rode another few minutes like that, then went around a sharp turn. Everything opened up on the other side of that bend, and before them was a crowded, cluttered property, a crazy quilt of ramshackle buildings, trucks, bikes, cars, old appliances, weathered picnic tables, rusting lawn chairs, broken toys. It was as much a post-apocalyptic obstacle course as a down-on-their luck family home.
A wall of greying hay bales at one side, at the edge of the forest, was a makeshift shooting range. At the other side was what looked like a clothesline, but the ‘laundry’ was a row of about a dozen rabbits and hares, throats cut and bled into a metal trough.
At first, it looked like no living humans were around, but as the Bulls pulled up and parked, several rough-looking men piled out of the largest building, a double-wide mobile home with a massive, amateurish American flag—Betsy Ross version—painted on the siding.
A short, round man with a bald head and a bushy beard like steel wool came down the steps of the wooden deck, leading four other men, all but one of a similar age.
“Welcome, my brothers!” Brillo-Beard called out in a harsh rasp. “Hope you’re hungry—we’re about to get the grill going!”
That was such an unexpectedly friendly greeting in this decidedly unwelcoming place, Duncan laughed.
Jay grinned at him. “I guess it’s always grilling season in California. Even January.”
That wasn’t why he’d laughed, but Duncan nodded. Yeah, California weather was amazing. The day had been sunny since a morning fog had burned off, and the high temperature was in the low fifties. That was spring, by Oklahoma standards.
