'To us? Pfft.'
But still, but still… It was tense, as we passed them by, and Moto stared back at them – through the square porthole above the rear gun mount – for long minutes afterwards.
Moto and Nike kept themselves to themselves, mostly. The former was a well-built young man with startling white hair and an almost perfect face. I figured before The Cull he was maybe a model in cologne commercials, or a male escort, and he looked simply wrong – out of place, somehow – in the midst of all us raggedy bastards in the back of the Inferno. Actually, scratch that: he looked almost out of place. His one concession to chaos and ugliness was worn proud on his cheek. A mess, shredded and rippled in all kinds of gravely keloid contours, so that his lip and eye were all but joined by the matted tangle of scarring. He'd been whipped with barbed-wire, Spuggsy told me later with an indecent grin. Held down by a bunch of thugs and whipped carefully… lovingly, almost, by Nike. He didn't say why.
Towns went by. The QuickSmog came down, hid the distant rooftops and tree lined avenues, then went back up again.
Denville.
Roxybury.
Netlong.
Hills and gorge-blasted roads, the weak sun, the Inferno rumbling ever on.
That scar on Moto's cheek, I figured it was like a brand. Like some jealous tribal elder, maybe, defacing his young spouse to dissuade all thoughts of adultery. Maybe it was punishment. Some quiet misdeed, some jealous retribution. Fucksakes, who knows? The types of people out there these days, for all I knew Nike might have done it to improve the poor kid's face according to his own twisted tastes.
Either way, it was a mark – a signature – left by Nike, that said loud and clear:
Mine.
Moto said pretty much nothing to anyone except Nike for the whole journey, and when he did it was quiet and deferential, and he turned his face to one side so that all anyone ever saw of him was the scar. He seemed quite happy. They seemed quite happy.
Love, huh?
Nike, by comparison, was tall and skinny, quite old, I'd guess, and a perfect gentleman in every way. He nodded and smiled, and passed the time of day, and traded dirty songs with Nate. Towards the end of the first day, when Malice swapped with Spuggsy for a kip, Nike chatted to me about what sort of state London was in. He told me how he used to be a teacher – American history – and collected model aircraft for a hobby.
Everything about him oozed calm, rational, intelligent, polite decency.
And then you happened to glance at Moto, staring like a devoted dog at the older man, face all fucked-up like that, and you wondered.
We stopped for a bite to eat on the freeway, just outside a place called Knowlton. Nate cooked, giggling and dancing annoyingly. The Inferno carried a heap of supplies as part of the cost of rental, and amongst the tins and rats there were three actual chickens and a genuine, freshly baked loaf of bread. If it's possible for your tongue to have an orgasm, mine did.
Mostly we sat by the fire – silent – though Tora stayed on the roof of the Inferno, keeping one eye on the road, and the man who called himself Hiawatha took it upon himself to perch, cross-legged, some distance away. He looked like he should have been meditating – communing with some indefinable infinite – but instead was smoking an enormous spliff and starring at the sky, nodding or shaking his head at random intervals. I still wasn't too sure what to make of him.
Earlier on, when all my questions were exhausted and his enigmatic bullshit responses were getting right on my wick, I'd got bored and asked him where he got the weed from.
He smiled mysteriously and said it wasn't just weed.
Moron.
'Surely,' I said, with just a tiny guilty hint of pomposity, 'there are more important things to be growing?'
'Yes,' he said. 'We grow them too.'
I left him to it, after that.
It was around then that Malice decided she'd had enough sulking and sat down next to me, only slightly frosty. She offered me a flask of water.
'Ta.'
'Your friend,' she said, too quiet for anyone else to hear. She nodded towards Nate. He was picking gristle out of his teeth, fiddling with the red case he'd had with him ever since the Wheels Mart.
'What about him?'
'He okay?'
I scowled, glancing at him again for any obvious signs of damage. It occurred to me that in all the excitement and strangeness of beginning this weird journey, I'd barely spoken to him. Certainly I hadn't asked him if he was sure he wanted to come along. He just… had.
'He looks okay,' I said.
'I mean… is he trustworthy?'
I stopped chewing and stared at her. Skin prickling.
I don't know why I didn't blurt-out 'of course he is' straight away. I don't know why I didn't tell her he'd saved my life a bunch of times since I'd met him, had expected nothing in return but a few condoms and a pot of dog food, and was even more in danger from the fucking Clergy than I was. I don't know.
'Why do you ask?' I said, intrigued despite myself. Was she getting it too? That feeling. That sense of…
Not quite right…
''Cause the motherfucker's been outta his tree all day on whatever shit he's got in that pack and he ain't slowing down.'
I scratched my chin, brain flopping over. 'There a problem with that?'
(Actually, there was a problem with that. Two problems. The first was, I hadn't noticed. Hadn't being paying attention. Too busy watching the road, watching the others in the group. Letting myself down.
The second was, where the hell did the sneaky old bastard get it from?)
'No,' she said, wobbling the harness on her shoulders. 'No, I guess not. Only he keeps staring at my baby. All the time. All the time.'
I told her not to worry.
Highway 80.
We hit Pennsylvania pretty soon afterwards. It looked a lot like NJ.
Towns. No longer paying attention. Letting the names roll together, like some great American gestalt; an obese vehicle with a thousand names that used cheeseburgers for fuel and liposucked fat for tyres.
I get surreal when I'm bored, and boy was I bored!
Stroud.
Kidder.
Black Cross.
Out across the fields, unlikely contraptions wobbled and smoked and steamed; hybrids of a hundred combine harvesters tended by hordes of miserable locals. At one point a bunch of guys on motorbikes overtook us, not even slowing to stare or glare. They wore strange silver puffer-jackets and jauntily-positioned bowler hats, gunning Harleys with hair flapping behind them. Each vehicle had skulls bouncing in its wake, like cans tied to the back of a bridal limo, and a smattering of guns hoisted on its pillion.
Tora tracked them the whole way over the horizon.
Hiawatha, who hadn't moved from his corner since we came aboard, except to roll and smoke occasional joints, twisted his whole head to watch them go by. I wondered what he was seeing. I wondered how he'd even known they'd been there in the first place, when he wasn't sitting anywhere near a window.
Actually, there was a lot I wondered about that boy.
He said he came from a place that was once called Fort Wayne. He said, actually, it was just outside the city; the rolling plains of Ohio where the Haudenosaunee convened once a year, with all its scattered lodges coming together to plan and barter and talk.
He used long words that I'd never heard before and didn't understand. All the time.
