When We Seared The Sky

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Until Dawn

Rad White fumbled with his mobile phone, his fingers trembling on the buttons as he keyed in the digits nine-one-one.

“Rad, seriously… I don’t think you need to call the cops,” his friend sighed, pushing her long, dark hair over her shoulder. She couldn’t stop the slight shaking of her hand as she did so, and she admitted to herself that she was a little more frightened than she would like to have been. “Come on – a talking motorbike? They’ll think you’re crazy.”

“You saw it too!” he pointed out indignantly, holding the cell to his ear. “You can stop them dragging me off to the asylum.”

She shook her head as he spoke into the phone, demanding the attention of the police at once. A shiver ran through her at the thought of the clone of Rad’s motorcycle that had spoken so viciously to them, and given Rad a bruise that was already flowering, deep and purple, on his stomach. She ran a hand across her sweating forehead and swallowed hard to quell a wave of nausea. What had just happened had been both terrifying and disturbing, and she felt a little faint.

Rad was gesticulating wildly. “Yeah, and then it just drove off!” he was recounting to whoever was on the other end of the line. “No, I’m with a friend of mine. Yeah, it hit me pretty hard, I’ve got a bruise the size of Texas on my ass and an even bigger one on my stomach, but – oh, uh… in Kicktail Park, in the Tranquillity suburbs – you know it?”

The young woman’s hand strayed to a delicate necklace bearing a dolphin-shaped pendant, which hung around her neck, and she fiddled with it tensely as Rad spoke with the officer on the phone. After finishing his conversation, he flipped the phone shut. “They’re sending someone to pick us up,” he explained and she sat down heavily on the ground, pouting slightly. “What?” he complained, raising his eyebrows. “Jade, we just got attacked by a motorbike. We need to report it.”

“Rad, I’m telling you, they’ll put us away. For good,” she added for effect.

He ran a hand through his hair and sat down opposite her, his blue eyes nervously darting around for the killer bike. “Jeez,” he muttered, shuddering a little before he wiped a sleeve across his upper lip. “What in the hell just happened… you did see it, right? I wasn’t just dreaming?”

“No, I saw it,” Jade confirmed, “Although I sort of wish that I hadn’t.”

The two of them sat in silence for a few moments, remembering the threatening roar of the motor, the cruel, heartless voice. Rad lifted the edge of his shirt with visible trepidation to study the bruise on his stomach, which was blackening rapidly. He groaned, and Jade winced when he saw the purplish hues spreading across his skin. “Wow,” he sighed, lowering his shirt again. “That’s gonna hurt in the morning.”

She nodded. “Hmm,” she agreed absently, chin in her hand and her eyes on her sneakers. She was trying to remember what the bike had said to them – something to do with being their worst nightmare, but he – it – had said something else too.

“Anyway, what were you saying about Carlos before we were attacked by the vehicle from hell?” he asked, obviously trying to take his mind off the still night and the creepy, shabby park around him that suddenly seemed like a scene from a horror movie. The swing creaked loudly and she flinched, seeing Rad do the same. She went and sat on it to keep it quiet, and he stood next to the framework.

She removed a blue kerchief from her head to run her fingers through her streaks of blonde at the front of her hair. “I said his mom is annoying the hell out of me,” she reminded him, “She’s mental – you should have seen the mouthful she gave Sam Witwicky earlier when he accidentally brushed past her. I shouldn’t have taken Spanish.”