Truth be told, I hate flying, and I don’t remember the airport or much of the flight, beyond looking down at the roads in one place as we took off, and seeing new roads bisect the landscape as we came into land.
We arrive in the dark and the cold, the air not as frozen as TSA. Outside the glistening temple airport, I find myself a taxi and show him the address on the tag attached to the keyring. We drive in silence. The driver has no way of knowing why I am here. Maybe he can feel the reverence. A riot is going on in one part of town. Instead of finding another route, the driver takes us between smoldering police cars, the reek of burning paint and tires seeping in through the vents. To one side, three police officers pin someone to the ground with their shields and beat his legs until the skin bursts and the bone glistens in the flames. We drive on.
The garage sits next to an empty lot, surrounded by dereliction. I pay the driver, keeping the gasoline pungent notes.
“This isn’t a good part of town,” he says.
“I remember this town,” I say, turning my back on him. “No part of it is good. That’s why we always found the roads out.”
“You’re not from here, though,” he says, pressing the conversation, even though he’s been paid. Maybe he feels like he is responsible for me, or thinks he might get questioned by the police if I was careless.
“No one is,” I say, kneeling down in the dust and fitting the key in the padlock, wrenching it free against the rust. When I look around the taxi has gone and I am alone.
The garage door opens overhead and I grope around for a light switch. A lot of years have passed since I last stood here. This is the first time I am here alone.
From somewhere behind me flames erupt, engulfing the sky with vitality before dying back. I do not move, watching the shadows creep back in. A thick layer of dust across the floor is bisected by tire tracks leading out from the left side of the garage. I walk across to the motorbike on the right. Instructions sellotaped to the fuel tank tell me where to go. I already know. Holding the handlebars, I shake the bike. Someone has recently filled it with gas. I sit down on the seat and lean back against the sissy bar, closing my eyes, and hoping when I wake I will be back in my terraced house in England. But the world is still filled with the sound of sirens and the scent of the city burning.
• • •
“It’s all about the open road,” Palace said, as he backed the Knucklehead out of the garage. I wasn’t interested in the open road though. I was interested in the dead ones. Stillborn routes littering the deserts and mountains. Aborted ideas that went nowhere.
The day was already too hot and I backed the Shovelhead out alongside his chop, wiping the sweat away from my forehead for the fifth time.
“You’ll be fine when we’re on the way,” he said, stretching, then he took out a packet of tobacco and rolled us both cigarettes. I lit mine and checked the saddlebags to make sure my cameras were secure, checked the fuel was turned on, then kickstarted the old V-twin to life.
I was writing a book about abandoned roads, and when my editor saw my first draft with a focus on Europe, he insisted I needed to include some US highways.
“How can you have a book about abandoned roads and not write about Route 66?” he shouted down the phone.
“Because other people have done it better, with more care, and devoted whole books to it,” I didn’t say, before agreeing that, yes, I should go over and photograph some highways for the book. I never told him which one. That’s when I started hearing rumors of the I-3.
• • •
Sat in an old office chair, the attendant is tweaking, cheeks hollowed so much the dead would reject him. I hand him a bill, waiting while he rings it up and hands me my change. I smell the bills in my hand, the sodden paper ready to combust if a flame comes too close.
“You have anything dryer?” I ask, leaving them on the cracked Formica counter.
“Nice bike.” He ignores my question, pushing himself up on the chair arms. “Evo?”
“Shovelhead,” I reply. “’72. Hardtail Paucho frame, Swedish style front end.”
“Tank that size, guess you’ll be stopping at a lot of these.”
Flies as large as mice hover lazily around the top of the food display case.
“Guess I will.”
The gas-soaked money has not moved from the counter between us. I pick it up and make a show of shaking it dry.
“You really need to fix your watch too,” he says, nodding at my wrist. I look down at the shattered glass, the hands twitching underneath.
“No,” I say. “I really don’t.”
• • •
For the first couple hundred miles the hitchhiker didn’t say anything, just chewed, though I smelled no tobacco on his breath. The sound of enamel scraping on enamel behind me.
To begin with, he held onto the sissy bar behind him, then after the first fuel stop, his hands creeped around my waist and dug into my belly. He leaned his head against my back. I smelled the bourbon on his breath, and he began to whisper. It was hard to catch the words, but I heard some phrases. The dereliction of the desert by the holy. The King of the Fences return, and the choir of the flayed in the playas. I paid little attention, even when his voice seemed to swirl around in the engine sound and the desert beyond. I felt his fingerbones weld themselves to my ribs. The sensation passed and I realized how long we’d been riding without a break. I pulled level with Palace and nodded to the side of the road. He pointed ahead of us.
“We’re nearly there,” he said, then something I did’t catch, his words lost in the noise of our journey and the sound of scratching enamel.
• • •
Inside the diner, most of the tables are full of older couples, not talking to each other. I order eggs and bacon and when it comes it’s biscuits and gravy. The coach party all eating the same, liquid dripping down their chins, staring into the desert like they’re waiting for it to turn to glass and reflect back the sun. There are no easy deaths out on the road. They are broken boned and burning slow agony, watching your skin blister and feeling your brains seep out of a cracked skull.
After I finish, I carry my plate up to the register and place it with my money on the counter. The waitress doesn’t look at me, staring out the window like the customers. I glance out but cannot see what they see. The bell above the door disturbs the silence as I leave, then stills once more.
• • •
I-3 was small enough I could stand by the concrete building, and see both ends of the abandoned highway without turning my head.
“This what you were looking for?” Palace said. I could smell him, the hours on the bike marked with sweat and oil and fatigue. I had no illusions. I didn’t smell any better.
“This is it,” I said. “I’ll need to set up for photographs. Check light levels.”
“Not now,” Palace said. He spat into the sand by his feet but nothing hit the ground. “A storm’s coming in. Will wreck your cameras. Better we shelter for now and rest.”
“What about him?” I said, nodding at the hitchhiker. He never told us his name. His white suit glistened in the desert sun and I wondered how long he’d been wearing it.
“He’ll need cover too. The dust will choke him as quickly as anyone.” I wasn’t sure about that, but stayed silent. Palace nodded toward his Knucklehead.
“Help me get my bike inside. We’ll do yours next.”
• • •
I pull in at a motel, unsure until I get to the office whether it is still open. The roof tilts at an angle that suggests dereliction, and from the doorway I hear the sound of animals. Parking up, I walk into the reception to find it empty. I ring the corroded bell on the counter.
After a few minutes, the receptionist emerges from a backroom. I hear a film playing, the sound of power tools and screams. Fantasy violence does not worry me. He is my height, slim and healthy.
“I need a room for the night,” I say.
He nods, and without speaking pushes a key across the counter, nods at a yellowed sign advertising the room rate. I hand over the money, avoiding the astringent bills in my wallet. The receptionist points toward the far end of the motel. I walk away. Behind me, a door closes, but does nothing to lessen the sound of screaming.
Outside is a swimming pool, the tiles stained green and the last bit of water swilling about in the bottom is the same color. I walk around it carefully, check the number on my key and find my room. The other rooms are silent. Walking back to the Shovelhead, I ride it up to the door, kill the engine and, angling the handlebars, push it through. Then I park it on the worn carpet next to my bed.
• • •
“The desert used to be sacred. Holy,” the hitchhiker said. I couldn’t see his face, just his suit glistening in the dark. He looked decapitated. “Saints were created here. Gods.”
His voice rose above the sound of the storm outside. Neither myself or Palace spoke.
“The holy used to starve themselves, see visions, amputate limbs to bring themselves closer to the gods, and now the desert is bisected by scars. All for this.” In his hand was a length of rubber tubing. Against the paleness of his suit I could see the banknotes. I knew where he’d got the money. I heard movement from Palace, but when I turned around he was still sitting in the same place. The smell of gasoline wafted across from the hitchhiker. In one hand he held a little bottle, pouring fuel over the pile of money on the floor. “You’ve got to free yourself from the money, otherwise you’ll never be venerated.”
• • •
I roll the bike out, and go to the reception. There is no sign of the receptionist, even when I ring the bell. I can hear the sound of a television behind the door. The sound of power tools and screams.
The Shovelhead does not start right away, and when I am on the verge of cleaning the air filter it finally kicks to life. As I ride past the pool, I see something floating in the bottom. Through the dust it looks like a body, but when I stop, I am no longer sure. I pull around the front and the receptionist is standing by the door watching me leave. We were the only ones there, I remind myself. We were the only ones there.
• • •
I hadn’t seen the hitchhiker get up or walk to the door. He faced away from us and opened his mouth to the storm. When he turned back around, his lips were split and blistered, his swollen tongue licking away the blood. I saw then, his teeth were little more than stumps.
“You can consume them. Feel them writhe and coagulate in your throat and stomach. Make the storm your eucharist. Taste the holiest of deaths and call the martyred to you.”
• • •
I consider leaving it. I cannot. I started this journey with the bike and I need to finish it with the bike. Standing on one side, I grip the handlebars and begin to push
• • •
“We need to make the desert sacred again,” he continued. “Fill it with the devoted. Raise sandstorms to be worshipped, and nail bodies to trees so that they can see devils and deny them. The world is too infected for the holy to return to the city streets, but the desert scours itself pure again and again.”
The money on the floor before him filled the air with gasoline fumes. I didn’t see him reach into his pocket, but I did see the lighter flare, and fall onto the stack of paper.
• • •
Palace has already killed the ants. They lie across the sand and concrete in their thousands. Some are still twitching and I wonder if they feel each other’s death throes. Agony multiplied over and over and over. They crunch beneath my boots and smear into each other.
The concrete interior is decorated for Mardi Gras though we’re six months and two thousand miles from any celebration. A record plays in the corner of the room, a little too fast, distorting the horns and trumpets.
“Can you sort that out so we can at least enjoy the music?”
Palace leans forward in his chair but I can’t see his eyes.
“It’s not for entertainment. It’s a clarion call.”
I stand in silence by the door. When the record comes to the end, Palace leans over and drops the needle back onto the vinyl. He misses the beginning, the groove catches the connection and plays from the first chorus.
The figures arrive one by one, crowding the room. The first carries their eyes on a tarnished plate, optic nerve stuck to the metal with dried blood. Another walks in flayed, their skin draped over their arm and dragging along the floor, scalp collecting dust and carapace between the dry hair.
Someone has broken the concrete floor, I kneel down on the edge and peer in. Skinless fingers run through my hair, and massage my neck, leaving strands of wet muscle against my skin. I start to dig.
The hut is built on sand and I struggle to pile it away from the hole. There are fragments of glass, too smooth to cut me. Someone is stroking my cheek. Not Palace. He is still sitting in his chair, face in shadow. I can tell when the sand becomes wood ash, but not when ash turns to powdered bone. Both stain my hands white. Voices from severed vocal chords sing. I cannot recognize the words. Spit hits the back of my neck and runs down my collar. Hands are helping me out of my clothes. I am naked before the martyred, but still feel dressed compared to them, with their severed tendons and tongueless mouths.
Not all of the body is burnt and the bones that remain are brittle. Beneath them are strips of dirty white fabric, the frayed edges melted by a fire long since extinguished.
“He was no martyr, making the choice himself,” Palace says. “But you? The choice has been made for you. The desert will become sacred once more as you rot.” Hands push me gently into the hole, and I see Palace stand. He is carrying something heavy and sloshing, and he struggles with the weight. My back is damp. Banknotes tumble in after me, sticking to my arms and legs. The skull and ribs below me finally collapse under my weight. I hear a click and the world goes bright and stays bright forever.
