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~oOo~
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The weather was great, with clear skies and air the perfect early-fall temperature. They’d handed off the cargo. The Nevada old ladies had served up a huge, filling breakfast. And this run crew was hardy enough to ride long without more of a break than a quick refueling. They pushed a little farther east before they stopped for lunch, passing by their usual stop.
Jay had pulled van duty first thing and he was meant to switch up with Duncan at lunch, so he would have preferred to stop earlier and get on his bike, but every mile was a little closer to home. Maybe they’d stop for the night later, too, and get into Tulsa early.
Riding up front, Dex, the senior Bull on the run, signaled a pull-off at one of those desert off-ramps where there was nothing at all among the tumbleweeds but a truck stop.
Really, though the faded sign atop the rusted forty-foot pole declared it Smokin’ Joes’ Truck Stop, that was an aggressively rosy-glasses view of the joint. This was nothing but a gas station and a burger stand.
But it was doing decent business. Three of the four gasoline pumps were full, and both big-truck diesel pumps. There was a line at the burger shack, and most of the peeling picnic tables were occupied.
Dex stopped on the burger shack side of the lot, which was a combination of cracked concrete and dirt mixed with the scruffy remains of a layer of gravel. Everybody followed suit; Jay put the van at the end of their row.
As they all met behind the bikes, Fitz looked around. “I don’t know, Dex. This is Shadow Bears territory. They don’t like us.”
The Shadow Bears weren’t bikers, but they were an outlaw crew. Their membership was entirely Indigenous. Jay wasn’t sure if they were all from the same tribe—just as in Oklahoma, there were several different tribes in the area—but he was pretty sure at least some of them were Navajo. Or, wait. Caleb said they didn’t call themselves Navajo. There was another word they used. Jay couldn’t remember it. It started with a D, maybe?
Whatever. They didn’t play in the same league as the Bulls, running big-ticket cargo. The Bears stayed local, but they defended their territory fiercely and were not friendly to non-Indigenous outlaws.
“I’m on fumes,” Dex answered, also looking around. “Me and my bike, both. And I gotta take a leak.”
“Yeah, the van’s low, too,” Jay added. “The light’s on. This part of the ride, I don’t know if it’d make it to another stop.”
“You should’ve said something earlier, JJ,” Simon chided.
Jay glared at Simon. “I did. When we were riding on the left as the usual stop came up, I asked if we were stopping. Dex said he wanted to push it. And we made it here. Fitz should’ve said something if this is a bad place to stop.”
“Can we not?” Dex barked. “It’s fine. We’ll piss, grab some burgers, wolf ‘em down, gas up, and head out. Everybody look sharp, behave yourselves. Don’t give anybody a reason to get their back up.”
Dex looked right at Jay as he said the last part. It pissed him the fuck off. What was the point of trying to be better if nobody ever thought he was anything but a fuckup?
“Should we go low-pro and put colors away?” Duncan asked. He gave the area a scan, too. “I mean, it’s almost all moms and pops and kids, but just in case?”
Dex shook his head. “No point. Our bikes make us. Yours especially, with that flashy fucking decal. Besides, we’re on club business. We represent. We just avoid trouble.”
With Dex’s final word on the situation, they headed off to stake a claim on one of the last remaining picnic tables. The whole side of the shack was the menu, hand-painted on the siding, each slat its own line. Everybody studied it for a few seconds—that was all they needed; the options were few and standard: hamburger, cheeseburger, grilled cheese, chicken tenders, French fries, onion rings, soda by the can, soft serve ice cream, chocolate and vanilla shakes.
Then Dex turned to Jay again. “JJ, Dunc, you go up to order.”
Jay suppressed a groan. They were the low men on the run, so they were the errand boys. He knew it, expected it, and hated it.
Duncan opened the notes app on his phone like a good little soldier.
“I’ll take two cheeseburgers, some rings, and a Coke,” Dex said, and Duncan keyed it in. The others told Dunc their orders, and the two of them headed to join the line in front of the window.
They’d been standing in line for five minutes or so when something on the road caught Jay’s ear—the sound of two or three engines going hard. He turned just as two big pickups, a Chevy Silverado and a Ford F250, both about Nineties vintage, tore onto the lot. Both had two men in the cab and four or five in the beds.
Jay had never met any of the Shadow Bears, but those men all had dark, straight hair, most of them had long hair, and they looked exactly like men in a hurry to assert their position.
“Dunc,” Jay said.
“What? Oh, shit.”
“I think somebody called the Shadow Bears and told them we were here.”
“We should go back to the others.” Duncan stepped out of line.
