Doing ‘the ton’ on a big bike is exhilarating, and doing 220’k’s side by side it awesome,
but Felix and Joan (or Lazaark, as she was sometimes known) had become so
competitive for the ‘Home Hearth Trophy’ that racing two abreast was no longer
anything special.
The deal was; they cooked a batch of pills for ‘someone’. It took a week for their fully automated little factory they had in the garage of the old farmhouse to produce a half-kilo of unmarked amphetamines packed in separate plastic sheets; just like a pharmacy.
Each Tuesday they would pack the drug into special compartments built into their bikes and deliver the load to their contact 400’s away and pick up the loot.
What happened, for the first two trips at least, was that after the deal had been done they would proceed to a pre-booked hotel and sleep for twelve hours. To speed that got them there was stalled by an even more thorough downer.
When they were woken at midnight they’d drink just water and juice and then shoot-up some of the ‘pure speed’ they’d made. They knew it wasn’t just speed, it was something similar but with an unpredictable, usually euphoric twist, and when they rode on it they sometimes imagined they could see into the future.
The intensity concerning the ride back was two-fold. Firstly, they were not carrying drugs, and the money had already been sent to themselves, so they could ride as fast as they dared, but secondly, they rode especially fast because awaiting them on the mantlepiece back at the old house were two cocktails.
Both of them were essentially straight JD but one was spiked with ecstasy and LSD, while the other was mixed with heavy downers like nightshade. Whoever got there first drank of their choice!
For the first two trips Felix had won, first time by more than fifteen minutes and Joan had woken twenty-four hours later battered and bruised. Who knows what had happened? The second time the difference was only four minutes because Joan had learnt the road and took a few more risks in the traffic. 1000cc’s will move you past a semi in no time at all but once again she had been left the bad mix and she’d woken feeling so strange that she wasn’t sure she could shake off the nightmare that clung to her like an octopus made of spiders. Felix was still unconscious and the room was wrecked. What had gone on during the night, or nights? She hadn’t yet worked out the time of day or date. How far were things going?
On the next trip the deal went as smoothly as ever and after their sleep Lazaark checked her bike thoroughly while Felix showered. It was in perfect order. She adjusted her leathers so that no seam was out of line. She was warm and the visor, for which she carried a spare, was new and clean. It was well after midnight as she whipped dust from the headlight lenses.
Felix backed out and locked the door. He always left the lights on. “Ready Babe?” he said with a tone that reflected their dual roles as lovers and racers. Their bikes were the same black ninja, and their skill in different mixtures was much the same.
“I’s ready!’ said Zaako.
One touch on the starter had them rolling out of the carpark as a pair. There wasn’t much traffic but they played it cool. Stopped at red lights, everything. They both knew that the race began at the city limits, at the 24-hour Shell station about ten k’s from the hotel.
Joan’s bike was feeling nice and it just wanted to go! Hanging around on four grand in fourth was aggravating her and her bike so as soon as she saw the Shell sign far ahead she wound the bike up and bent over the tank with her eyes above the fairing. Felix was OK once he got into her slipstream but he worried about the premature hyp-out from Joan. The freeway quite often had cops and couple of bikes doing 200 would blow them away!
Nevertheless, they cleared the city and for the next two hours they raced through the foothills and mountains. Felix could catch Zaako sometimes but when he did she pulled such desperate tricks under brakes, and overtaking maneuvers, that he felt it was best to just sit in behind and use her lights. There was still a long way to go.
After the mountains there was a long stretch through the state forest. Felix usually pulled back to about one sixty through there because of the kangaroos, and sometimes even wombats. Joan had been behind him before and kept in formation but this time she was pulling away at speed Felix estimated to be about twenty klicks so he had no choice but to screw his bike until he nudged the red line in top gear just to get her back in sight.
After four hours they hit the coast. The moon was out and the ocean could be seen crashing on the rocks below but Joan has said she really liked that bit, ‘because the salt air is pumped down my throat.’ Whatever it was, Felix was scraping pegs just trying to stay with her.
He was surprised, he was even proud, that she’d learnt to master such a daunting machine, but for her to win, “NO!” that was not going to happen! He liked to win and choose the cocktail because he knew their marks and it would always be his perverse pleasure to have her cringing in fear of imagined and real evils while he was in complete control, directing his consciousness from somewhere in the human mind not usually open to communication. Somewhere in the stem where the DNA had witnessed the birth of magic and the first inklings of awe.
Felix was from the past. He had always acknowledge that to himself, but he’d few chances to live anywhere but the present, except when he and Zaarko were in the room together, end he handed her the brew which would make his time return.
Neck and neck they rode, each taking greater risks as the K’s flashed by. At sunrise they crossed the Myingle bridge which meant they had less than a hundred K’s to race. Through the town they jurtled at seventy. It seemed like walking out they both knew the local cop was eager and unpredictable, but as soon as they reached the long curves through the cow pastures not for their lives was an inch given.
Joan had found a power, a power within herself, and harnessed it to her bike. Applying every milligram of concentration she fused into a blend of speed, power and intelligence with which Felix could hardly contend.
On a couple of straights Felix pulled over nine thousand revs and gained some ground but he couldn’t keep punishing his bike like that. “anyway, a cow, a roo, even a decent size bandicoot and we’re shit!” he murmured. But he had no choice but to persist.
A new emotion rent Felix as they went through inside a Frigmobile on a sharp right hand turn, ‘I’ve never liked being beaten! And when this lab scam came along I knew I would always be a winner.
He wasn’t going back down to old bombs and small change, especially now that he had the chance to regularly perform the ritual with Joan. Ritual which could never be described in words cause Felix’s ritual was his own and who knows of it but him and the ghost that existed in the drugged body of Lazaark.
Across the Douglas Ranges
For a while they had a lot of trucks and Felix was glad Joan chose her timing as accurately and decisively as he did because he was often committed to following her past several trucks at once. Lazaark made no mistakes and when the road was free she used it all.
‘Has she realized I know which make is which? Is that the reason for her insane speed? My chalice is marked with a sign only bats and beetles know; yet it calls to me. A clear voice comes from the one I wish for. The brew that will lather me in ecstasy.”
And how good it felt for Felix to reach out and ‘choose’ as though it didn’t even matter, and leave for Joan the bowl of poisons. The mixture of stupefying, awful, downbringing drugs. Yeh! Felix was evil! There was no doubt or reason for debate about that. But the thing we shouldn’t forget, what was important right then, was that Lazaark was twelve k’s from the house and Felix was having trouble keeping sight of her. She was hot, going for it, and giving Felix something to think about.
From there they both knew every bump, every hole, every off-camber curve. They switched off their lights and continued into the morning as one. A farmer checking weeds in a paddock heard two gear changes together, and simultaneously the power was on the ground as soon as a way could be seen out of each and every corner.
On a short straight Felix lay down on the tank and pulled out everything. “Could there be a farmers truck doing 50 k’s just around the bend? Ignore it! The only thing, not life nor death, is to catch her and win!”
Obviously a case of fatigued thinking on Felix's behalf.
Joan was maintaining her lead but she as doing it in a conservative manner. Trying not to take too many risks now that she was so close and after all the hazards she’d already dodged; the tractor with no lights, that patch of oil! Felix’s idea of making the extra headlight adjustable had been a good one. With four k’s to go Felix was beginning to feel her slipstream. His bike had always used a bit more fuel than Joan’s and now that his tank was getting very low the slight weight advantage she had was evaporating.
Those last few k’s were something that should have been recorded on film, if it had been a movie instead of real life because each of them knew that road as well as each other’s faces.
Around along left hand sweeper Felix leant on the outside of Joan. It was unsuccessful attempt at getting into the next corner first, but it was a desperate move that only served to show his respect for her talent as a racer.
Next they were braking hard in preparation for a right-hander that went down across a concrete causeway about twenty meters wide. Zaako and Felix were getting into each other’s way; there was no doubt about that.
The bikes touched pegs, the tyres were inches apart, when one used the slipstream then the other would do the same but neither had the advantage to open a lead or press ahead.
Two k’s to go! A long straight piece of road beneath trees with a steel fence down one side all the way to the crossroad which they went through so fast it was mathematically impossible for them to have hit anything. A fast left and a flip-flop dog-leg put them side by side again, heading towards a crest that each previous time had caused them to be airborne for at least twenty meters down another straight to the final junction which would take them home. It was Felix's last chance! He had to beat her and choose the chalice! Any other possibility eluded him.
They were a mirror image of one dominant will to win. In a second they should back-off for the hump, for the sake of their machines and generally as a good idea; but neither did! So side-by-side like circus stars the two bikes with Felix and Lazaark aboard became airborne on a flat trajectory at about four hundred millimeters above the road. It had been a test of skills and wills and Zarko was winning, she had won already really, in that sense, but in life generally, I mean just everyday co-incidences or humorous situations, she was only there in the frame; just like Felix.
They’d both meant to lock up that black bitch they’d somehow adopted, some kind of Labrador cross, ‘a Pal munching pain in the arse’, Felix had called it.
And there she was, just eighty meters ahead. Their minds were on line and focused instantaneously. Yes, it was ‘their’ dog, and another just as black and big. Actually, their bitch and someone else’s other dog, jet black with white embarrassed grins. They’d been copulating and had become temporarily adjoined, apparently an undignified position for two canines to be found in, but there they were, now forty meters ahead of the airborne bikes, both tugging in the opposite direction.
Arh! Arrrh. Felix sat up straining for breath thinking he’d overdone the downers. “Shit I had the worst bloody dream. We hit the fuckin’ dog of yours!
“Where is that stupid mutt anyway? he continued, "I’m gonna tie it up right now.” Felix slanted as he moved toward the door. “I feel very strange. What day is it? Was that last night? How did you manage to choose the right one?”
“It sang to me as it has to you my love, for singers sing for them they see will keep them singing.” Lazaark answered in a monotone.
“But I can’t remember getting here or anything,” mused Felix as he shook his head full of cobwebs, “Where is that black bitch anyway?”
He tried to open the door but the knob only moved back and forth for a fourth of a turning. Huh! There’s something wrong with this door. Felix tried again, then with two hands. For some reason it bothered him more than it should have. He shook it. “What’s happened? Has someone locked us in from outside?” he said turning to look at Joan who had walked up behind him. Uncomfortably Felix looked onto the gaze they transferred between two people whose pain and anger hadn’t fully subsided. He didn’t expect an answer to the locked door riddle in a facial expression – but he could see something fascinating, his dream, it was there in her eyes, “Don’t stare at me Felix! You know it gives me the shits!”
“Just let me look in your eyes. I could see the dream in there, continuing. We were side by side coming down that last long straight.”
“Don’t you remember, Felix?” she chuckled, “Those two fucking dogs! It must have been warm there and added to the experience. Who knows? Two black dogs tail to tail and each trying to get the nearest side of the road. It would make a great logo for something never to be invented.
Anyway, look into my eyes if you want to. It doesn’t last much longer, but don’t waste your time trying to open that door.”
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