Lone Biker
This road didn’t lead to hell. It was hell itself. I had no memory of turning onto it, nor any way of measuring how far into its pit I had driven. There were no markings, no warnings, and only the terror of driving over the ground I’d already covered keeping me from turning around to escape the eternal torture at the end of it (that might be better than being on the road anyway at this point).
The radio had been turned off hours (or maybe minutes?) ago when the static became more regular than any tune could be. Thankfully, the sun wasn’t directly in my face and seemed content to hang just in my blind spot of the windshield, sometimes peeking around the metal frame to remind me of its presence, ready to burst out and blind me any moment.
The droning sound of wind whipping past the windows, the bleak landscape with hardly any trees and only small mountains in the distance, the sun steadily going down so slowly sometimes I wondered if it was moving at all either…all of it seemed designed to push someone into their own head. Unfortunately, that was the last place I wanted to be, especially in the middle of nowhere, just before twilight, with no way and no one to contact if anything happened.
“This is OK. I’m OK. It’s going to be OK,” has been a constant refrain that sometimes slips past my lips nearly unconsciously as I try to keep my mind on the road ahead, keeping my tires between the faded lines and a close eye on the gas gauge. Thank God I filled up in the last town, even when the run-down appearance made me question if I should wait for the next one.
I want to stop, desperately, and get a few hours of sleep. But I also want to put as much distance between me and my past as possible. Maybe not all the way on the opposite coast, but anywhere other than in the same air that had become so suffocating. More than that, I want to wake up in a space that doesn’t look like the beginning of some movie where the hero was stranded by his enemies and will have to fight his way back for vengeance through blood and sweat.
“This is OK. I’m OK. It’s going to be OK,” It slips out louder this time when my mind drifts again, allowing the barest jerk of the wheel back to center. Out of any options that would even include turning around, getting into a crash, there could not be one. I only had one number memorized and even though I knew he would answer, he was the one person I wouldn’t want to.
Even as the sun finally began to touch the horizon and I started to think that I might have to camp in the car and hope that bandits weren’t a thing anymore, another traveler on this hell road appeared. I didn’t notice him at all for a long time. He was on a motorcycle, going at a more leisurely pace than I was, so I was almost on top of him before I realized now I really had to pay attention.
If the rider was surprised that there was another traveler, he didn’t show it. The closer I got, the more he pulled to the side, apparently happy to continue at his own pace (further confirming there was nothing worth getting to at the end of this road). He only turned back once, barely taking a glance before returning to what I could only assume would be the same morbid thoughts that haunted me. What else could anyone think on such an abandoned road?
Neither of us seemed to be in any hurry, so it still took a few minutes to pass, but for just a moment as I passed, the rider looked over. He was an older, sturdy man with a short scraggly white beard. Maybe he was a little gaunt in the face, but there was still plenty of life in the deep gray eyes as they locked with mine.
I’ve never believed in the saying: “The eyes are the windows to the soul.” At most times they seemed to be like marbles that might be pretty to look at, but ultimately I couldn’t see or understand what was hidden under the murky colors. For this one time, I really did look through a window.
There was a weariness behind those eyes. Like they had seen too much for too long and didn’t have it in him to be moved by anything anymore. Maybe he hadn’t for a long time, whether by choice or necessity, but they jolted something inside me that had also been long silent.
Something in his sad gaze matched the heaviness I’d been struggling to push off my own soul for the last few miles. Could it be we really were on the last road before reaching Hells’ Gates? If I kept going would I really end up in a place of no return with others who had made wrong turns?
I shook my head roughly, shaking away that image, while also cursing myself for recently trying to reread Dante’s Inferno. Of all themes to have on rotation in your head in this kind of setting, that’s not the one to have when meeting a total stranger on an isolated road. With the broken contact, I continued moving left, giving him a wide berth. That should have been the end of the entire encounter.
I moved past with no further incident, and forced my thoughts back on the road. Back into a reality where I was escaping one hell and the other was still a long way off, but not at the end of a road I could get to in a Chevy. Hopefully.
If I had never looked up, never felt the need to watch that lone figure disappear in the twilight, maybe I would have found what was at the end of that road. Maybe it would have been a happier ending than my morose thoughts were leading me to believe. Maybe there would have been Gothic gates guarded by gargoyles with a skeletal guardian asking to weigh my soul.
Instead, in the rear view mirror, I watched as more motorcyclists suddenly appeared behind the one I had passed. I was a long way away now, but part of me was somehow glad that at least someone on this lonely route would have company.
Until the new lead rider held his arm out, and the one I passed suddenly dropped to the side like he’d been hit by a battering ram. I watched in horror as he went airborne while his motorcycle flipped off the road. My mind seemed to take a screenshot of that exact moment, replaying it over and over while my body stayed frozen, unable to stop watching, but unable to think that I should slow down.
It wasn’t until I heard the thunder of multiple bikes pulling close that I realized the danger that had met my rider was now coming toward me, and fast! In perhaps the fastest thinking I’d ever had in my life (and what I later realized might have been the stupidest), I pulled out my phone and started pretending to scroll through the first app I could open.
As the bikes drew near, I pretended to be totally engrossed in the app, scrolling actively with only quick glances specifically in front of me. When they pulled around me, I lowered it slightly with what I hoped was an annoyed glance at the surrounding bikers, who all had faces covered and dark jackets, but were very obviously checking what I was doing. There were three, but with their dark presence on either side of my car, I’d never felt more intimidated.
When they finally pulled ahead, seeming to be satisfied that I cared nothing about them, I let out a quiet breath, almost scared they would change their mind and aim at me from the front. Even as they pulled away, I kept scrolling, not seeing anything on the screen. I didn’t dare change my speed, didn’t dare take a good look.
It wasn’t until I saw them fully disappear around a slight bend around a large rock that I dared slow down. When they still didn’t come back after counting to sixty, I slowed to a stop. When I reached two minutes, something in me said that I needed to go back. When I still didn’t hear engines, I turned the car quickly around and sped off back to the lone rider, hoping my subterfuge hadn’t cost him too much time.
Praying that his attackers kept going down the road to hell.
