“You good?” I asked.
She nodded, but wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I turned, keeping myself between her and the noise. “Let’s get gone before the other half of that gene pool figures out how to walk again.”
We moved fast, no looking back, her grip white-knuckled on my wrist. The fog had finally burned off, leaving the world raw and bright. As we cleared the cemetery gate, I heard the scrape again—someone getting up the nerve to follow.
I glanced over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of Baldy, the ringleader, hunched and bleeding, eyes fixed on Melissa with murder and something nastier.
She saw him too. Her breath hitched, and I felt her body go rigid.
Pride was dead. Survival was in.
This wasn’t over. Not even close.
We didn’t run, but we moved like people who remembered how. The sky had gone raw, almost metallic, and the fog was a bad memory in the rearview. Melissa kept her head down, hair curtaining her face, but her steps matched mine stride for stride. When we hit the main path, she veered left, clocking the gate. I steered her right, toward the iron fence and the bike waiting beyond it.
She hesitated when the Harley came into view, as if it might eat her alive. The chrome caught the sun and spat it back in her face. I saw her posture shift—shoulders up, weight on the balls of her feet, ready to run if I turned out to be the bigger monster.
“Look,” I said, keeping my voice soft, “we can hoof it. But we’re two miles from the nearest civilization, and there’s still a guy back there who’d love to finish what he started.”
Melissa glanced over her shoulder. “Think he died?”
“Baldy? Too dumb to die. He’ll rally.” I tapped the seat of the Harley, the universal language of let’s fucking go. “This is the only safe play.”
She eyed the bike, then my hands. The Glock was holstered, but I let one palm rest near it. Just enough to reassure her—maybe keep her scared, too. Trust is a slow-cooked meal.
She hovered by the gate, a few yards out of reach. “How do I know you’re not just going to—”
“Kill you? Fuck you? Sell you for parts?” I grinned, mean on purpose. “I’m not a morning person, but I’m not that ambitious before coffee.”
“Funny.” She didn’t sound convinced, but she took two steps closer.
“I’ll take you wherever you want,” I said. “No strings. And if you want out, you can jump at the first red light.”
Melissa studied my face, like she was searching for a weak spot. Finding none, she kicked at a patch of clover and said, “Fine. But you don’t touch me.”
I held up my hands. “You do the touching. That’s how you stay on.”
She looked at the Harley’s backseat like she was prepping for a pap smear. I swung my leg over and fired the engine. The sound shattered the morning, set every bird for a half-mile into flight. I didn’t look back as I waited for her to climb on.
It took a full ten seconds, but finally she mounted, stiff and awkward, hands clutching the seat behind her instead of me. I didn’t move. I just revved the engine and let her get a taste for the power.
“You’ll fall,” I said over the noise.
She glared, then gave in and looped her arms around my waist—barely, like I was a sack of radioactive trash.
“You ever ride before?” I yelled.
“No.”
“Good. I like virgins.”
Her hands tightened a notch. We pulled away from the cemetery, the rear wheel chewing gravel, and hit the main road at a roll. She stayed rigid for the first few hundredyards, but as I leaned into the turn, she pressed closer, her hands moving up to my ribs for leverage.
The highway was empty except for the ghosts of roadkill and a few reckless crows. I punched it, and the wind peeled the last of the cemetery stink off us. Her body, all angles and tension, fused against my back. The warmth seeped through both our clothes, slow but relentless.
Half a mile in, I realized my jaw was clenched hard enough to crack a tooth. Not from the ride—this was routine—but from the jolt I got every time her fingers dug in. I’d taken enough passengers in my life to know how it went: terror, surrender, then boredom. But she didn’t move through the steps. She just clung like she expected the world to try and kill her at any second.