Tritium Gambit

  Chapter 39. Max

  I had run my first mile when a car pulled over in front of me. I slowed to a walk and approached cautiously. The driver rolled down a window.

  “Hey, do you need a lift?” a female voice asked.

  I walked closer and saw a wispy college age woman with long brown hair and glasses. She was tapping her steering wheel impatiently.

  “You know that it’s not safe to pick up strangers?” I asked.

  She looked me over. “I think I could take you.” She smiled brightly at me. “Come on, hop in!”

  I sighed. I looked down at my arms and chest. Even with all the Weight Gainer, I probably wasn’t more than a hundred forty pounds.

  I walked around to the passenger door and got in. “Thanks for the ride,” I said. “My name is Max.”

  “I’m Carla. Where are you going?” she asked as we accelerated into the darkness.

  “I have to meet my partner in Cloquet,” I said.

  She glanced over at me. “Wow! You were running to Cloquet just to see your partner?” she asked. “That’s so sweet. Well, I’m only going to Duluth. So you’ll have to find your own way from there.”

  “Duluth would be great. What do you mean by ‘sweet’?”

  “Well, my boyfriend won’t even drive across town to see me, let alone run across the state. By the way, I’m on Team Edward, too.”

  I looked down at my shirt. I tried not to groan. “Oh, yeah. He’s the best.”

  “Sure, Jacob has all those amazing muscles, but Edward is so much deeper. In the movie, you can just see the anguish in his eyes. So hot!”

  “Yeah, look. I’m not really…”

  “Did you read the books first or did you see the movie first?”

  “I read the…”

  “Oh, good! Because the movies were kind of a disaster, other than the eye candy.”

  “Do you mind if we listen to some music?” I asked.

  “Sure thing,” she said. “How about some oldies?”

  “Whatever you have. Thanks.”

  She pulled out her iPhone and started fiddling with it as she was driving. A crash was unlikely to kill me, but I was afraid for her life as she weaved about. She seemed to be enjoying the luxury of all the lanes while nobody was really using them.

  The car speakers whined rock lyrics.

  I hit the off button. “Maybe we should ride in silence for a bit.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said. She sounded hurt. “You don’t like Chicago?”

  “Chicago is fine. I’ve been there many times.”

  “I meant the band. If you want, I have Night Ranger and Aerosmith?”

  “I haven’t slept well lately. Do you mind if I doze off for a little bit?”

  “Oh, I get that way whenever I’ve been away from Tom for a while and we’re going to see each other again.”

  “Who is Tom?” I dared to ask.

  “My boyfriend. You said you were going to see your partner. I just thought maybe that’s why you haven’t slept so well.”

  “Yeah, it’s been torture,” I said darkly. “I’m going to nod off for a bit.”

  I woke up when I felt a gentle nudging on my arm.

  “Hey, lover boy! We’re here.”

  I sat up, blinked, and looked around. We were at a gas station in a town, Duluth I assumed. I opened my door and stepped out. I stretched. I had really slept hard, even if it had only been for half an hour. I noticed though that I had put on some muscle. That Weight Gainer really worked. I walked around to the driver side.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said. I pulled out forty dollars and handed it to her. “Here’s for gas.”

  “Such a sweetheart. You’re boyfriend is so lucky,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  She waved as she rolled up her window and drove off.

  As the car pulled off into the night, I realized that I really needed to pee. The thing about regeneration is it takes a lot of fluid, and having a pumped up filtration and immune system means that my body doesn’t use it all up. Maybe drinking a few gallons of milk and a carton of orange juice wasn’t the best for traveling. When I went inside, I had to get the key from the cashier, who eyed me suspiciously.

  The restroom floor made a squelching sound as I walked, and there were dark yellow-orange stains on the floor near the urinal and the toilet. Somebody had busted the toilet seat right off and left it on the floor. The mirror didn’t show a reflection, just a bunch of etched messages informing me where to have a good time, who liked Trina, and possibly all the names of the local graduating class and the years they immortalized themselves on the mirror. It didn’t look like the place had ever been cleaned. I was really careful not to touch anything. I would have washed my hands, but I thought I’d only make them dirtier.

  I bought a small bottle of Purell, two dozen protein bars, and a dozen bottles of apple juice. I used the whole bottle of Purell to wash my hands before I took two steps out of the gas station. I put the juice and all but one of the bars in my backpack and began walking down the street. Only twenty miles to go. No problem.

  I made it about a dozen steps when I heard the rumble of motorcycles. Six guys in leather jackets pulled into the gas station on very loud bikes. It was late and I doubted their volume was appreciated by the neighbors. I kept walking though, as I had a schedule of my own to keep and couldn’t stand around gawking all night. Before I turned around, I noticed the gas station cashier come outside. He pointed at me. I wondered what that was about. Very odd people in Duluth.

  The motorcycles roared again, and I heard some of them peeling off around the block while others were driving up behind me. I glanced back at them, mostly out of curiosity, though I knew bikers were the type of people who were intentionally eccentric because they wanted to be noticed but would pound you in the face with a brick if they caught you looking. I could take a pounding, and so I looked.

  The guy slowly riding toward me was holding an aluminum bat in one hand. No shit! When he saw me looking at him, he accelerated straight toward me. I studied him for the moment it took him to approach. I didn’t recognize him from any of my previous missions, and as far as I could tell, he was human. He swung the bat with enough force to bust a human’s body. I caught it and grabbed it tight, pulling him off his bike. Sure, it broke a few bones and stung a little, but he’d eventually recover. There was another biker riding at me. I flipped the bat in my hand and caught the handle. I was never much of a baseball player, but I gave it a good swing and cracked the oncoming biker in the chest. I heard a satisfying series of cracks and he went down hard. A third biker stopped short and stared me down.

  He was huge, over seven feet tall and three hundred pounds or so, a real hulk. He pulled a huge wrench out of a satchel on his bike and stepped off. I could hear the roar of the other bikers coming around the block behind me.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” I said, which was a lie by this time. I was holding the bat and practically begging for trouble. I was used to ridiculous odds all the time, and it was nice to be facing down regular old humans for a change. Besides, I had not been involved in a violent confrontation for hours now.

  The guy I had taken the bat from moaned and crawled away from me. I realized that I might have hurt him worse than I meant to. The guy I had hit in the chest wasn’t moving, and I was starting to wonder if I killed him. “Humans are so fragile,” I mumbled.

  “Too late,” the big guy said, responding apparently to my previous assertion about not wanting any trouble. He pointed at me. “I’m sending you back to your boyfriend in a shoebox.”

  I sighed. “So you must be from Team Jacob.”

  His grin was missing a number of teeth, and the few he had left were rather green and fuzzy. “Nah, I’m from Team Die-Motherfucker-Die.”

  Three motorcycles came to a screeching halt behind me, but I didn’t look away from the big guy. Even if they had guns, I’d be fine if they didn’t shoot me in the head or all four hearts at the sa
me time. I finished eating the rest of my protein bar.

  “I don’t have time for this crap,” I said and walked toward the big guy with the wrench. I gripped the bat in two hands. The guys behind me pulled forward, but I didn’t turn my attention because they were obviously trying to use the sound to distract me and get me nervous. They had no idea what they were in for.

  I leapt forward with an overhead smash of the bat. The big guy blocked my strike with his wrench, but I could see the force rattled him a little. I reversed and unleashed a series of swings that landed with crushing force. He dropped his wrench when I broke his wrist and held his shoulder, which was now broken in a few places.

  “Get him,” he shouted at the others.

  They hesitated, but only for a second. They charged me. I smiled as I whirled into action. I jumped, I swung, and I bashed fingers and arms and knees.

  “Game’s up,” the big guy said as he pulled out a pistol and aimed it at my chest.

  I shook my head. “Don’t be an idiot.”

  He pulled the trigger and shot me in the chest three times. I coughed and staggered a little. “Ouch,” I said.

  He walked closer thinking he was about to finish me off. He looked surprised when I used my bat to break his jaw, nose, and eye socket. I smashed the hand holding the gun and then laid into his knee with shattering force. He collapsed.

  I hopped on his bike. “You don’t mind if I borrow this, do you?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. I pulled out more protein bars and pulled away from the gas station, finishing them before I reached the city limits. I cranked the throttle to see what the bike’s top speed was. When I reached one hundred twenty-five, I grinned. If traffic cams took pictures of me, at least I was smiling.

  I was at the southern edge of Cloquet a few minutes later. A river ran through Cloquet and flowed to Lake Superior, and knowing how much the Wendigo feared water, I expected he hadn’t found his way over it yet. That led me to believe he was probably northeast of the city, and so I rode through town at the speed limit to avoid attention. I crossed over the river on a bridge and kept driving until there were trees on both sides of the road. I hid the bike in the woods, figuring it might come in handy later. And if anybody was looking for it, they wouldn’t spot it immediately. I tossed the shirt into the woods while I was at it. Sorry Edward.