Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede - Bradley Denton (best thriller books to read TXT) 📗

the north. Pete killed the Kamikaze’s lights and tried to back up, but it was too late. The first of a gang of fifteen motorcycles and pickup trucks had already turned onto the pumper’s road, and there was nowhere for us to go.

Gretchen grabbed her tire iron and jumped out of the car as it stopped. “If I die because of you, Vale,” she yelled, “the ghost of Buddy Holly is gonna be the least of your worries!”

Pete shut down the Kamikaze and smiled in the glare of the approaching headlights. “She’s a bitch,” he said. “I like her.” He got out, and I followed.

The gang’s lead vehicle was a monster Harley. It stopped twenty feet from the Kamikaze and sat idling, pinning us with its beam. Several more bikes and three pickups crowded behind it, and their combined noise was like the growl of a tiger the size of a 747.

Gretchen swung her tire iron as if she were warming up for batting practice. “Come on!” she yelled. “None of you weenies needs a head anyway, right?”

I stepped forward, hoping to intervene before Gretchen could get us shot, or worse. “Listen,” I shouted to the gang, “I know that everybody blames me for what’s happened, but I’m innocent! Have you seen The Ox Bow Incident? Same deal!”

“Piss on that!” Gretchen yelled. “Wimp!”

A massive shadow detached itself from the Harley and strode toward us. “Where’d you find her, Vale?” a booming voice asked. “She seems fuckin’ dangerous.”

“Come a few steps closer, shitheap, and find out how much,” Gretchen snarled. She raised the tire iron.

Pete reached inside the Kamikaze and turned on its lights, and then I saw that the man who stood before us—his red hair wild, his crescent wrench gleaming in the bib pocket of his overalls—was Boog Burdon.

“Heard a rumor on the radio that you were heading this way again,” Boog said, “so I thought I’d bring fourteen of my closest friends to give you an escort, if you want one.”

“Rave on!” a voice behind the cluster of headlights cried, and a dozen others answered, “Rave on!”

“Throwback city,” Gretchen said, lowering her weapon. “What have we got here? A bunch of middle-aged beer-guts who all think they’re Fonzie?”

I moved between her and Boog. “Boog Burdon, meet Gretchen Laird and Pete Holden.”

“Fuckin’ pleasure.” He squinted and looked from side to side. “Hey, where’s the Ariel?”

My chest twinged. “The last time I saw her, the Bill Willyites had her.”

Boog scowled. “Some of those snake-handling pud-knockers are having a prayer meeting at the drive-in a few miles north. That’s why I wanted to find you. You either need to have some protection or avoid ‘em altogether.”

I considered. I didn’t want to deal with another mob of folks who thought I was the Antichrist, but whatever secret was hidden at the theater was tugging hard now, as if it were the magnetic heart of the planet and I were the needle of a compass. I had to go there.

“I’ll take the protection,” I said. “If I can get into SkyVue, I think I may be able to help Buddy.” Although I didn’t know how.

Boog’s eyebrows rose. “Bitchin’. Me and the boys ain’t been in a good fight for three or four hours.”

I turned toward Pete, who was sitting on the Kamikaze’s hood. “I can ride with Boog from here. You’ve done too much already, and your kids are going to wonder what the hell’s happened to you. And, Gretchen, well, you’ve got to get on to Houston. I’ve messed up your life enough.”

“Big of you to admit it, roadapple,” she said.

Pete entered the Kamikaze through the windshield gap. “Oliver,” he said as he buckled himself in, “I trust Laura and Mike to take care of themselves. I’m not turning back until I see you dead or in jail.”

Gretchen rolled her eyes. “That could take hours. I’m not going to stand here and wait.”

“So let’s rock ‘n’ roll!” Boog shouted.

“Rock ‘n’ roll!” his gang roared back.

“Bunch of microcephalic sixties goobers,” Gretchen muttered.

She and I joined Pete, and the Kamikaze followed Boog’s Harley to the county road. The other vehicles fell in beside and behind us, and we accelerated toward El Dorado.

If I survived SkyVue, I told myself, I wouldn’t mind going to jail… because if I lived that long, I was sure to have found some answers.

If, on the other hand, Boog and his brigade couldn’t keep the Bill Willyites from burning me at the stake—

Then that would be the will of Fate, or of whoever was in charge. Maybe John. Maybe Elvis. Maybe Sam. Maybe Buddy. Maybe, baby. In that case, I was ready to go to the Spirit Land. Mother could fix a pot roast. I had my army and my gods around me, and despite the loss of Peggy Sue, I was no longer afraid. No more crying. No more waiting. No more hoping, I had indulged in enough of that for one life. Now it was time to do something.

SHARON

Notes, continued…

Bruce drove as if possessed, but so did the man on the motorcycle. The one time that we almost caught up, a Datsun cut across the median in front of us. If we had not been wearing our safety belts, both Bruce and I would have gone through the windshield. A man leaned out of the offending car and shouted at us, but I could not hear what he said over the things that Bruce was shouting himself. I suspected that the people in the Datsun had recognized Oliver’s motorcycle and had decided to pursue it, either for a reward or for the opportunity to do Oliver physical harm.

Soon thereafter, Bruce thought that he saw the motorcycle leave the interstate for a two-lane highway; in any case, the Datsun did so. Although I had not seen the Ariel, I decided not to protest Bruce’s decision to take the exit. He had become a wild man. His face was peppered with black-and-blond stubble, his hair was tousled, and his eyes were wide. I hoped that I would not have to restrain him from killing Oliver when at last we encountered him.

We zigzagged up and down highways and back roads until well after dark. I could see the Datsun’s taillights, but nothing from the motorcycle. Bruce insisted that it was just out of the range of my vision.

“I can count all seven Pleiades,” he told me in an excited rush when we stopped for gasoline. “Trust me, baby, that bike’s there. And we’re gonna get it.”

I wanted to ask whom he thought he was calling “baby,” but I was busy running for the rest room. When I came out, Bruce stuffed a twenty-dollar bill into the nozzle of the gasoline hose, dropped the nozzle to the pavement, jumped back into the car, and was accelerating before I had both feet inside. The entire refueling stop, including my trip to the rest room, had taken perhaps forty-five seconds.

“Too long!” Bruce cried, pounding his fist on the steering wheel. “We’ll have to go ninety to catch up!”

He proceeded to go ninety, and I wished that I had stayed in Topeka and let Oliver take care of himself.

We encountered the stopped Ariel on a desolate stretch of road in Kansas. The Datsun had apparently gone on.

As we pulled up behind the motorcycle on the dirt shoulder, the machine itself was all that could be seen. I feared that the occupants of the Datsun had captured Oliver.

Bruce left our car idling and stepped out to have a closer look at the motorcycle. “The engine’s still hot,” he called. “Maybe he’s just taking a whiz in the field.”

As Bruce spoke, the driver’s door of our car opened, and a bald man got inside. He must have been hiding on the other side of the road. He was not Oliver. I shouted.

The bald man produced a pistol and pointed it at me. The greenish light from the dash instruments gleamed along its barrel. “Out,” the man said.

I exited the car. Bruce had noticed that something was wrong and was starting back, but it was too late. Our Chevrolet started toward him, forcing him to jump into the ditch, and then sped off to the north.

After he climbed back to the road, the first coherent words out of Bruce’s mouth were, “Was that your little piece of shit friend Vale? If it was, he’s a goddamn dead man.” In the dark, I couldn’t see Bruce’s face, but I imagined that it looked like that of an enraged anthropoid ape.

“It wasn’t Oliver,” I said. “But he was bald, so it was him that we saw on the motorcycle.”

“Oh, gee, really?” Bruce said, bitterly sarcastic. “Tell me something I don’t know, like why did the son of a bitch stop here?” He went to the Ariel and sat astride it, turning on the headlight.

“I would guess that he either had engine trouble or became too cold to ride farther,” I said.

“Well, his ass is grass,” Bruce said. “We’re gonna get the cocksucker.” He began kicking the Ariel’s starter.

“I think you should see a colleague of mine when we return to Topeka,” I said.

“I’m not going back to Topeka,” he said, breathing heavily as he continued to kick the starter. “Not until I get that ball of putrid spit.” He stopped kicking. “Hah! The damn thing’s just out of gas!”

“I fail to see how that’s any better.”

“It’s better,” Bruce said, “because that dickhead didn’t know jack about bikes. The reserve tank’s good for twenty or thirty miles, so as soon as I find the valve—hah!” He kicked the starter three more times, and the engine sputtered to life.

“Since when did you know anything about motorcycles?” I asked.

“Since before law school, baby!” he cried. “Since before I started my life of crap! Now get on or walk!”

I was wearing a skirt, so I had to hitch it up. I climbed onto the seat behind Bruce and put my arms around his waist, hating what was about to happen.

The motorcycle accelerated hard, and I almost fell off. The wind cut through me like icicles. My only saving thought, my mantra, was that the town of El Dorado was less than twenty miles ahead. Bruce would have to stop there for gasoline, and then I would end our pursuit. Bruce’s firm’s Chevrolet had been stolen; Bruce himself had reverted to his white trash ancestry; civilization was crumbling; and Oliver could be anywhere from Lubbock to Topeka.

I was going to cut my losses and call it quits. Even being a good psychologist has its limits.

RICHTER

He had almost killed the man and woman in the Chevrolet, but now he was glad that he hadn’t wasted the bullets on either them or on the Datsun that had whisked past earlier. Judging from the sight ahead of him, he might need all three of his extra clips.

The motorcycles and pickups were spread out over the width of the blacktop so that he couldn’t pass, but when one of the pickups shifted so that he could see the white Barracuda, he was content to stay behind the cluster. He had overtaken his quarry. No matter what his superiors believed, he was still the best. The thought warmed him, driving away the chill he had caught on the motorcycle.

Richter counted three heads inside the Barracuda. One of them was Vale’s. It was too bad that he couldn’t get a clear shot now, but if he had been able to wait this long, he could wait a little longer. El Dorado was not far ahead. He hoped that they