EPIC

EPIC

Electric Wolf



I was just standing there alone and bewildered, when a lone figure emerged from the smoke and flames, and walked toward me like some kind of superhero that nothing could touch. But no one was watching, for there were too many other distractions.
The girl who came through the smoke and flames, thunder and flashing lightning, and the torrents of rain, was something of a rebirth. There was that tiny leather top that bared her shoulders, crossbow that emitted a neon green laser beam for aiming and wild tattoo on her back that just seemed to be watching you from behind, but now there were spiral brass armlets that coiled like snakes, and neon green lasers which extended out from her left arm in two separate “blades” like swords. It was Chloe, alive and supercharged!
She came up to me and put a gentle hand on my face, then as she turned toward the burning wreck, I could see her tattooed back, on which was the same as that elaborate ice sculpture in front of the casino.
“But you're alive!” I said.
"I guess that proves my invincibility," she said, smiling like a jokester, but not like someone who’d just been resurrected.
"I'll need to know more about who they are and what it will take to defeat them,” I said, thinking about her superhero preoccupation again.
"I can tell you what I know,” she said, with an uncertain glance at me. "Their top men are from Moscow."
"Then we'll poison their vodka," I said, as I stared at the drawing on her card. It was her in profile, looking downward, her medium length black hair tied back like it was an afterthought and her wild bangs hanging forward into her eyes. There was that ever-present glowing green crossbow.
"It won't work," she said. "They're not going to let anyone get the better of them. They'll come back to kill you and everyone you ever knew."
I paused in thoughtful dismay.
"You want a way out? It will mean destroying a couple more motorcycles, but I think I have one way that will work. Have you ever heard of jumping the cliff?" I said, with a smile and not serious at the moment.


I'd been keeping a tight pack of motorcycle racers at a fifty foot distance but their lead was increasing and when they began to fade beyond the scope of my headlight, I gave it more throttle to try to catch the increasingly distant taillights ahead.
We were picking up speed heading north on Rainbow at three am, and my helmet was giving me a GPS display of the race route. According to the instructions, I needed to go "three point eight miles ahead, take a right on West Anne."
“It's about time I try to help you understand, Wolf,” Chloe said, coming onto my headset.
“Yes. Do that,” I replied curtly.
“We're stuck in some kind of web,” she said.
"What's that mean?” I said.
"Compared to what they promised me, racing seemed like the only viable alternative," she said, sarcastically.
"What did they promise?"
"Sudden death. You may feel safer at a hundred miles an hour," she said.
"Are you in then?" I cried, getting annoyed by the philosophizing.
"I'll be joining you momentarily. I'm entered as Mr. Jones. As long as they can't identify me, I'll have a fighting chance."
At eighty miles an hour, I was still well behind the rest of the pack and trying to catch up without going off the rails.
"You have a plan?" I asked.
"With a crossbow. You're right where you need to be. Now let me ease in," she said, just a voice on the intercom for now.
"How do you propose doing that?" I asked
"A slow creeping roll," she said as my surroundings passed by in a blur. I was increasing my speed to the point where it was almost too dangerous and then going a little faster.
"Many bets have already been wagered against you. Have you been attacked yet?" she said, and like she'd anticipated it, I could clearly hear a bullet hit the ground to my right.
I cursed as I made a sharp turn onto West Ann, just barely staying up on two wheels. Nine miles into the race according to my GPS, and I was being forced to open up throttle.
"Try to survive until I can get to you. I'm entered as Sleeper Jones," she said, breathing heavily in my earphones.
"Jones? I need you. Where are you?" I asked, urgently.
"I’m rolling slowly in and not attracting attention," she said.
“The attention is all on me,” I noted, hearing a bullet ricochet at my left.
Pouring on the speed, I passed through a pack of six motorcycles, then just beyond them were the two front runners. The red laser beam of the gunman occasionally settled on one another of the racers as they concentrated on what was ahead. Whoever had us in his sights, had us from behind.
With seven other riders moving along in a pack ahead, the gunman was sometimes distracted. That gave me a slight advantage, which I quickly lost when he aimed his pistol's red beam at my back tire. The shot hit the ground behind me, missing by a foot and I slowed to cut him off, forcing him to recover his balance. He recovered quickly enough though, which gave me a few extra seconds of breathing room.
Chloe came back on my radio, her voice clearly full of excitement.
“The boys are probably having the time of their lives. smoking cigars and drinking brandy, and enjoying the race from their world-class monitoring facility. I’ve seen it. It looks like mission control for NASA. There is a bank of five computers and three flat screen monitors mounted high on the wall, the center one of which has a map of the route. Thats the computer that feeds us the directions like a GPS. They see everything, Wolf,” she said, all rapid fire, like she needed to talk.
"But do you see?"
I swerved away from a another gunshot and it became evident she was nearby when I spotted a green beam.
"I see you now," she said.



It was such a relief to hear Chloe say: "I see you."
I was on a motorcycle going approximately eighty five miles an hour on streets designed for half that speed and trying to avoid being killed by someone behind me whose aiming beam was red.
Her aiming was done with a green beam. Since we were racing around the perimeter of Las Vegas and might have escaped notice, even if our speed, if one of one of my attacker's shots hadn't gone astray and hit the plate glass window of a Ferrari Dealer, the police wouldn't have been alerted to put a stop to our deadly race.
"I hope you see whoever has been shooting at me. You've got to do something about this jerk."
"I will. Red beam, right? I'm getting in position now," she said.
As we continued over from West Ann for another few to the sharp turn on Lamb, I fell back to avoid his deadly aim and ended up killing some other poor bastard instead. The victim crashed in a spectacular explosion.
Our speeds now fluctuated between eighty five and a hundred miles an hour, as we played touch and go with someone who couldn't quite get his aim and a text message appeared in the area where I was getting GPS instructions.
"Police roadblock two miles ahead," was the warning. I wondered if Chloe was seeing it.
"This guy blew it and now he's gotten the police involved,” Chloe cried from the amplified earpiece in my helmet. “I don't know if we can even finish the race now.”
"What are you suggesting?" I asked, anxiously.
“Go out in front of him and distract him for a moment,” she said, pulling out an arrow from her quiver and inserting it in a crossbow that glowed green. "I'll ram this right up his tailpipe to make certain he stops."
The plan sounded so good, that I decided to try it. So with the flashing lights of an all-out mobilization of police ahead of us, we instituted a risky plan which I thought might just have a chance of working.
"Let’s hope he falls for our bait,” Chloe said. “Because if we don't get him, he'll get us.”
Chloe McCloud was a biker goddess by reputation only. She'd never actually shown what she could do in a race. The word of mouth about her seemed to be based solely on her ability to win casual street races and knock off tricks like standing on the seat of her bike while it was going down the road at a slow speed or getting it up on one wheel while going quite fast. But one thing she was sure of was: our nemesis attacker thought he was invincible. That was his weakness.
"You ready?" I asked Chloe.
"Yes. Go for it!" she cried, sounding revved up.
So I pulled out in front of the killer's red 1190RS and slowed just enough that he touched my back tire. Aware, that he was taking aim squarely on my back, I tried to keep him there long enough to stay long enough within Chloe’s sights.
What happened next was a surprise to me. I wanted to give it a little throttle to get out of the killer's way when Chloe blew him up. The explosion rocked me and heated me from behind. Then, without any prompting on my part, an enormous amount of torque went to my back wheel. It would have been enough to have thrown a less experienced rider, but I held on, trying to force the throttle back from redlining.
“Whoa!” I shouted, laughing aloud as the front tire came off the ground and stayed that way for about four seconds. I was off like a flash, heading west in a blur toward the roadblock.
“What the hell are you doing!” Chloe shouted.
With my throttle open all the way, and the scenery blurring around me as the enormous g-forces took over, distorting the very contours of my face, the police roadblock came with a flatbed truck that may have had it's ramp down to load up motorcycles. But I hit it at over a hundred and ten miles an hour and I went airborne. My attacker wasn’t so lucky.
At the roadblock, and in a ball of flames, he flipped up and over the row of police cars and didn’t come down on his wheels on the other side. He rolled and finally exploded against a wall.
Going north on Las Vegas Boulevard past the police, I started to see that there was only one way this could end: tragically. I sized up the visual ahead. I’d gone from East Cheyenne to cut over to North Nellis. This was the longest stretch of straight road. In no time I was nineteen miles south past the beltway. When Chloe caught up with me we were jetting by the Manadlay Bay, Luxor, Excalabur, Tropicana, MGM Grand, New York New York, Paris and Bellagio, faster than any vehicle has ever gone past them in history.
"Tell me," I asked. "How did you know about this killer?"
"I dated him and I was the one who broke it off. He never forgave me."
"Oh," I said, thinking of my own ex and how upset she'd been that Chloe was in my life. I'd seen the killer with my ex, together and they'd regarded me like an ant they could crush.
Now having Chloe in my life, was as much of a choice as it was having the sun rise everyday.






It was one for the record books, in the city that never sleeps, that there were still a few who were watching avidly at a quarter after four in the morning as two motorcycles came roaring through the main part of the strip, side by side, at over a hundred miles an hour. Admittedly, some of those out there had to be watching because they had their money bet on one or the other crashing and burning.
Chloe stayed beside me, pacing me like she actually wanted to race me.
“I can’t stop,” I heard her panicky voice say in my earphone.
“I can’t either,” I admitted crazily, though it made no sense.
“We’ve lost control of our throttles!”
“And the shifting and brakes,” I cried.
When I considered who I might direct my anger at, I thought first about the only guy I knew who had a collection of remote controlled cars and motorcycles on his wall. He could never look you straight in the eyes and answer a question. But then there was my mechanic friend. He was always tinkering with the motorcycles in his garage. And what about my slighted ex-girlfriend? She’d proven herself a vengeful spirit when she sat there beside me in her car and threatened me.
"I want to know what the fuck is going on!” I yelled at Chloe.
“You've heard about pulling strings? Try to pull some wires,” she said, but I couldn’t free my hands from the handlebars at this speed, not for more than a second. Even if I could pull them, the wire harness had a shield around it.
Fort Apache into Durango, the Beltway and finally to I-15 for the final stretch north. It all went down too fast.
“Stay with me,” I said to her, almost crying.
We continued to roar into the night, side by side, thankful there were only a few cars along the way.
“I love you,” Chloe cried, something I never expected her to say. But since she said it, I figured she didn’t expect to survive tonight.
“If we go off the grid, will we be out of their range?” I asked.
“That would be a guess. But -” she said, but the rest of it was obliterated.
I glanced over at her straight black hair blowing freely in the wind, her spiral brass armlets coiled like snakes reflecting the colored lights all around us, a tiny leather top that bared her shoulders and a glimmer of neon green lasers which extended out from beneath her bike in two separate “blades,” her crossbow and I wondered if this was the end.
And I saw the road ahead like it was all as clear as day.
“Carpe Diem. Enjoy the moment without concern for the future,” I cried, remembering the cliffs that Hunter and I had jumped off of as kids.
As we screamed off north at a blistering speed into the night, I felt like everything was clear now. We'd been victimized by greed. Anger was our copilot.
“I think I know how we can get off this crazy ride. It's very risky," I said.
“How?” she said, still clearly not believing we'd walk away from this ride.
“We’ll have to go off the fuckin cliff.”
"That’s your best idea?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never done that,” she said, pessimistically.
In theory we’d go off the road for only a matter of seconds before we headed up a hill and then falling down alongside the cliff, we could grab a hold of a branch extending out from it. It sounded crazy but I hoped that she'd be angry as I was about avoiding our impending end.

We rocketed at well over a hundred miles an hour on Route 15 North, the city receding behind us now, the only girl who’d actually said she loved me about to die, just because we couldn’t slow down.
Another racer had been the first to try to kill us. That had been hard enough to avoid, for from the beginning it had been a game of cat and mouse with him. He’d had a gun with a red laser sight and was certain he couldn't miss, but he’d missed every time. So now, a madman with a remote control might be calling the shots from a recliner, because all bets were off regarding our survival when we’d reached a speed to the point that we could barely hold on any longer. There were no more roadblocks, no more misses, just hits and the open road ahead of us out into the desert to our demise.

It took every ounce of our courage to hold it together at this point, since we were doing well over a hundred miles an hour on roads designed for forty. Sure, we were used to doing tricks, but at continuous speeds like this, it was a trick just staying alive.
"We've got to survive, just so we can get our hands on the sick bastard whose doing this to us,” I said, just before she shot an arrow into my gas tank, puncturing it and sending gas flying out.
"What did you do that for?” I cried, as she got close enough to toss me her weapon. After I grabbed it, I said: "I don't even know how to use this!"
“Just pull the fuckin' trigger!” she wailed. "I loaded an arrow. Running out of gas may be our only option."
I did so, but my aim was off and an arrow whizzed by in the dark.
“This isn't going to work!” I cried. “We'll just have go down in the books as being the craziest fuckers ever.”
I threw away the bow and all of a sudden my life flashed before me, thinking of Hunter and me growing up together. My pet wolf and the quiet life back at the reservation. Among the memories was of us jumping off the cliff. We’d done that so many times and survived it. It shouldn't have ended up like this!

We crossed over into the desert almost simultaneously at over a hundred miles an hour, going off road and uphill.
“Now, hold on!” I yelled.
“I'll never let go!”
“You can do it kid,” he said in my imagination. “I was always your friend. But the road to freedom is a hard one.”
Just as the motorcycle went free, I rolled off it, tumbling and falling, and grabbing for a branch, and getting a precarious grasp on one high up on the cliff, I bounced twice, losing my grip at first but then getting a tenuous grasp on a branch lower on the cliff than I'd expected, as the beautiful new Viper that had never been mine exploded far down at the bottom, followed by another explosion at the bottom on the rocks below.
At the point where Hunter would usually say: “I won,” since I’d fallen down further than he ever would. But there was one consolation. At my right side, about fifteen feet away, was Chloe.





“Is that the game, Buck? To hold on?” was what she said, semi-hysterical as she hung on beside me on another branch, seemingly too far down the cliff to climb up.
“No, the game is to climb back up,” I said, happy to see her, although I knew our trouble was just beginning.
I estimated that we were short by about twenty feet down on a vertical cliff. We were holding on to branches, and knew that either my strength or the branches would give out soon.
“I wonder if this is what they wanted all along, for us to crash and burn. The improbability of the two greatest racers crashing and burning, it a bet that could make someone rich," she said.
“So all we've got to do is to find out who placed the bets against us,” I said, although knowing that now was not the time to think about how to see the race’s principal gamblers taken into custody.
“It’s not easy!”
“I’m just glad you’re alive,” I said.
“Hunter told me about this game,” she said, smiling weakly. “I didn’t know it would be so hard to climb, though.”
I smiled back, wondering how much time we truly had left.
“We don’t have any way to climb out of here,” she said, like someone who was drowning and needed a saving.
“We can do it,” I said, not knowing how we’d do it until I saw a rope was dropped down to pull her up.
She grabbed the rope and started climbing like an expert, while I continued to hang on. I could see Hunter’s face looking down at me from the top of the cliff, as Chloe went over the top to safety.
“Now me?” I asked, but there was no answer
At the surface I heard them talking. She sounded relieved.
“And now me?” I asked, wondering.
“I don’t know. He’s been a bad boy,” she said, mischievously.
“Stop fooling around and –“ I shouted, then I spotted the rope drop down beside me. They both had a big laugh as I climbed.

The first thing we did was to embrace. We were both in one piece and on solid ground. We stood only feet from the edge of the canyon that we'd almost died in.
"Come on you two weary travelers, get in my truck. You are both officially dead now. Do you know that?”
"That’s right. What do we do?” I asked.
Hunter smiled patiently, understanding that we hadn’t thought any of this out.
"You go back to the reservation. That’s what. I’ll drive you back. No one will look for you there.”
So we walked back down the hill toward Hunters truck and we headed out into the darkness, away from the bright lights of Vegas, hopefully for good.
"And that's all, folks," he said in a Looney Tunes voice, as we drove in the cab of his Ram pickup with me in the center.
"You two are now officially off the grid and dead in the world’s eyes. That gives us some time. But we won’t have forever.”
"Who are you, really Hunter?” I asked.
"I’m your best friend, Wolf.”
"Something you didn’t know about Hunter,” Chloe said. “He’s FBI now.”
“That’s right. I took the classes while you were away and was accepted. My first case happens to be this gambling syndicate.”
“Do they know?” I asked.
"No. And Wolf, I'd suggest you wear a big hat and a beard so you won't be recognized."

After eating some of the pre-prepared food Hunter had left us, we went right to the bedroom of my plain family house lost in the Moapa Indian Reservation. The idea of making love for about half an hour, seemed like the ideal way to wind down.
She laughed when I said: "It's going to be alright."
The laugh made perfect sense as we took our lovemaking from the shower, to the bed and then after going through at least five of my favorite positions.
Then we fell asleep, certain that it would be awhile before we awoke.