Badlands Escape

Denny James rolled the throttle a hair and let the big touring bike settle into the lane. Highway 89 stretched ahead in a pale ribbon, two lanes of heat-warped asphalt cutting through red stone and empty sky. The engine hummed under him, a low, even note he had come to trust more than most people. Anna rode behind him, her arms easy around his waist, visor down against the glare.

They had mapped this stretch through thirty-two years of Kevlar and squad car coffee for him, and twenty-eight years of Anna scrubbing betadine from under her nails at dawn. Now the asphalt belonged to them. He felt her double-tap his ribs through the heavy leather jacket, their old roadside shorthand to back off the throttle. The speedometer dipped down from sixty-five. Canyons opened on both flanks, stratified like red iron plates under the noon sun.

"You still breathing back there?" he called over his shoulder when they slowed for a curve.

Her laugh came through the helmet intercom, dry and close. "Better than I have in a decade. No pagers. No drunks with knives. Just you and a machine that doesn't argue."

"Give it time. This thing still talks back if you ignore the oil."

"Then don't ignore the oil, Sergeant." She squeezed him once, her fingers pressing into the thick leather above his belt. "We're retired. Remember? You said that twice this morning."

"I remember."

He meant it. The badge was in a drawer at home, wrapped in an old oily rag alongside his commendation pins and three spent shell casings he had never found a reason to toss. The radio was off. The world of dispatch codes and perimeter containment had shrunk down to the rumble between his knees and the rhythm of his wife's breathing against his back. Heat pressed heavy through the black leather of his shoulders, prickly and relentless against the nape of his neck, but out here it was just weather.

Up ahead, a wooden marker leaned against the bleached dirt shoulder, its paint blistered by decades of dry wind: Red Mesa Scenic Overlook. They took the turnout without talking it over. Denny eased the front brake, guided the heavy machine off the macadam, and let the tires crunch over red gravel until he found level footing near a timber guard rail. He eased the kickstand down on packed dirt and killed the motor.

The sudden quiet was huge. It washed over the rim rock like water, broken only by the tick of cooling metal and the faint whisper of scrub brush catching the updraft from the canyon floor. Heat climbed off the pavement in waves, bending the horizon into shimmering bands of copper and dull zinc.

Anna swung her right leg over the pillion first. She unlatched her modular helmet, pulled it clear, and shook out a ponytail gone dusty at the edges. Silver threaded through the honey brown of her hair, catching the hard noon light. Her green eyes narrowed against the glare, sweeping the vast drop of the amphitheater below before turning back toward the highway they had just left.

"Water," she said, her voice dropping into the calm, clipped cadence she used when prioritizing a busy triage board. "Then you check that rear tire. It felt a little squirrelly on the last washboard."

"Yes, ma'am."

Denny unclipped a stainless bottle from the tank bag and handed it over. She took a long, measured swallow, wiping her chin with the back of a dust-stained glove before passing it back. He drank, the water tepid from the road heat, but it washed the grit from his teeth. Sweat tracked down his spine under the leathers, cool where it pooled against the ballistic pad in his lumbar spine.

He stepped around the rear pannier and dropped onto one knee in the dirt. His joints popped, a dull protest earned on linoleum squad rooms and gravel shoulders. He ran his thumb across the tread of the heavy rear tire, checking the sidewalls for blistering or sharp rock cuts. The rubber was hot enough to sting his palm, but the pressure felt solid. A light accumulation of shale dust coated the spokes, nothing worse.

"Pressure's fine," he said, squinting up at her. "Might just have been the road groove catching the rain sipes back near the pass."

"Keep an eye on it anyway," she said, leaning back against the weathered informational sign that detailed the geological strata of the mesa. The wood behind her shoulders was gray and split by frost. "I don't fancy patching a flat thirty miles from a payphone."

"No payphones left, Anna. Just dead zones."

"Even better reason not to walk." She smiled, the faint lines around her eyes deepening. She unzipped the front of her jacket three inches to catch whatever draft moved off the lip of the canyon. "Look at that drop, Denny. How deep do you figure that wash is?"

He stood, brushing the red sand from his knee. He stepped up beside her, resting one gloved hand on the split-rail timber. Five hundred feet down, a dry riverbed wound through the sandstone like a dried snake, choked with pale boulders and scrub juniper. Beyond it, the mesa walls rose in sheer red terraces, banded with chalky white limestone. It was empty country, wide enough to swallow a county and quiet enough to hear a hawk flap its wings two ridges away.

"Three hundred yards to the first shelf," Denny said, his eyes tracing the terrain by default, noting the dead angles and the narrow coulees that bled into the main basin. "Another two hundred down to the sand. You wouldn't want to lose footing."

"I don't intend to." She bumped her shoulder against his. "We have reservations in Moab, remember? Soft sheets. Air conditioning that doesn't sound like a diesel tractor."

"Moab isn't going anywhere."

Down on Highway 89, the silence tore open.

A sharp, high-rpm whine drifted up the grade, followed immediately by the deeper roar of a heavy V8 engine under hard throttle. Denny's chin came up. His eyes snapped to the ribbon of blacktop winding through the notch two miles south. Out here, the canyon silence usually held everything—miles of heat and empty stone unbroken except by the steady, lazy hum of long-haul traffic, not this ragged, pushed-hard shriek.

A motorcycle blasted into view around the lower bend, leaning hard into the curve, running seventy or eighty miles an hour. It was a heavy touring machine, dark paint, hard bags mounted on the flanks, carrying a solo rider hunched low over the bars. Right on its rear fender rode a black SUV, a late-model Tahoe with tinted glass and heavy off-road tires that clipped the yellow center line without slowing down.

The bike wobbled as it straightened from the turn, its engine screaming as the rider tried to open distance on the straightaway. The SUV didn't back off. It closed the gap to half a car length, aggressive and tight, pushing the bike toward the gravel shoulder before both vehicles flashed through the shadow of the mesa wall below.

Denny leaned forward, his pupils contracting against the sun glare. Arizona commercial plate on the SUV, last three digits ending in seven-four-bravo, mud splattered across the lower tailgate. The bike had an out-of-state plate, obscured by road film, luggage straps dangling loose near the rear axle.

"Somebody's in a hurry," Anna said, her tone flat, all the light teasing gone from her voice.

"Too close," Denny muttered. "That truck's trying to ride him into the ditch."

He watched the taillights shrink into the shimmering heat distortion down the canyon floor. The engines faded, swallowed by the red stone until the badlands reclaimed their stillness. For a second, a familiar itch prickled between his shoulder blades, the old reflex to reach for a mic on his left lapel and call out speed, direction, and reckless endangerment to a dispatcher who wasn't there.

He let out a slow breath and looked down at his empty hand. There was no radio. There was no cruiser idling behind him with light bars waiting to ignite. There was only his touring bike, the ticking exhaust, and the quiet desert.

Anna watched his face. She reached over and touched the back of his wrist, her bare fingers warm against his pulse.

"Not our circus, Denny," she said gently. "Not anymore."

"I know." He managed a short, dry chuckle and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Old habits die hard, that's all. Guy's riding on a prayer if he thinks he can outrun four tons of steel on an open grade."

"Then pray for him while we ride," she said, pulling her helmet back over her ears and fastening the chinstrap with a crisp click. "Let's put some miles behind us before the sun gets right overhead. I want to hit the junction before my boots melt."

"All right." Denny pulled his gloves snug, working the velcro closures around his wrists. He checked the straps on their gear bag once more out of caution, making sure the rain cover was tight and the spare fuel bottle was locked in its bracket.

He swung his leg over the saddle, the leathers creaking under the movement. The bike dipped slightly under his weight, then settled as he brought it upright. He turned the key, watched the instrument cluster sweep through its diagnostic cycle, and thumbed the starter. The engine barked to life, settled into its deep, rhythmic idle, and drowned out the mesa's silence.

Anna climbed on behind him, her hands settling naturally into the familiar hollow of his waist. Her chest rested against his back, solid and steady.

Denny clicked the transmission into first gear, eased off the clutch, and guided the bike back toward the edge of Highway 89. He glanced left, then right, checking the empty stretch of heat-warped macadam. The road was clear, the sky was wide and empty, and two lanes of sunlit red stone waited ahead to take them north. He rolled the throttle, and they dropped down into the shimmering canyon.