1
Augustine
The engine kicked under me, a pissed-off animal caged in chrome, loud enough to make the pre-dawn nothingness snap to attention. The highway was just a gray vein carved across the high desert—Los Alamos straight ahead. The wind knifed my face, sharp and cruel.
Leather creaked across my shoulders with each lean. My patch—Bloody Scythes MC, red and bone white against the black—caught the morning's first finger of light. It was stitched onto my cut by hands steadier than mine would ever be again. I gunned the throttle past a tractor-trailer hauling gas to god knows where, and the air yanked at my hair, at the sweat glued to the small of my back, at the pieces of me that might’ve flown away if I let them.
Somewhere past exit 112, my mind flickered—just a glitch at first. Then the old tape spooled up, hi-def and merciless:
Twelve years old, voice cracking like an old vinyl, standing with bare feet on the cold tile of a rental house that stank of bleach and things you couldn't clean. My father, sleeves rolled to the elbow, hands shaking even though the bottle of Wild Turkey on the counter was still three fingers from empty. My mother, fists balled at her sides, staring him down over a battlefield of overdue bills and empty pill bottles.
He told her, “You’re poison.” She told him, “You’re weak.” The words didn't even bounce off the walls—they just hung there, limp and permanent, the way fog hangs on the river in winter.
He went to the drawer. Pulled the gun, the big one. She flinched, but didn't move. Neither did I. I didn't even have the sense to run. You don't, the first time someone points a weapon at you.
He pressed the barrel to her head. Said something I didn’t catch, or maybe I just didn’t care to remember. Pulled the trigger. The sound ripped the world apart. She dropped, neat and straight. Blood splattered the pale carpet and the baseboard heater, and the stack of library books I was supposed to return that afternoon. He lookedat me, just for a second, and I saw the hole the world had drilled through him. Then he turned the gun and kissed the barrel like a prayer.
Second shot. Louder than the first. He fell sideways onto her, a red Rorschach across the linoleum and the family photos nobody had ever smiled for. The gun hit the floor, spun twice, and stopped, like it had finally figured out gravity.
I stood there, maybe five seconds, maybe forever. Took in the silence, the warmth slipping out of the room. Saw my reflection in the microwave door, a scrawny kid in Batman pajamas with a wet stripe down one leg and red freckles up his arm. My hand reached out for the counter, like I might steady myself on the edge of the world.
The tape snapped. My vision went black, then blue, then back to gray. I was on the Harley, leaning hard into a curve, the engine’s growl turning to a howl as I let the memory flush through and out the pipes. The tires chewed up the shoulder. For half a second, I wanted to just let it go—ride the machine straight into the ravine and splatter what was left of my story all over the rocks.
But I didn’t. I kept it pinned, the back wheel chattering on the rumble strip, knuckles white on the bars.
The sun burned up over the ridgeline. It found my patch again, the red and white sharp. I didn’t slow down. Not forthe memories, not for the ghosts, not for the cop hiding in the turnout behind the next cactus.
All the things that should have killed me had only taught me how to ride faster, meaner, closer to the edge. That was my real education. The rest was just noise.
Los Alamos shimmered on the horizon, a mirage, a lie, maybe a destination. I didn't care. All that mattered was the next mile, and the one after that, and the one after that, until the world finally ran out of road.
I blew past the “Welcome to Los Alamos” sign at 87, maybe 92, but who’s counting. The letters looked like they’d been sandblasted by a thousand New Mexico mornings—just like everything else in this godforsaken town.
Up on the mesa, the labs squatted behind fences and cameras, all hush-hush and cold calculation. Down below, the real city woke up to gas station coffee and the flavorless misery of public school. The only things alive at this hour were the crows and the addicts, both hungry and both mean. I knew exactly where I belonged.
The city line was still hanging in my rearview when my hand started to ache, the knuckles stiff and puffy from a bar fight that wasn’t even mine. I flexed my fingers, and the pain cracked open a memory—fourteen years old, thecolor of milk and cigarette ash, standing in Uncle James’ rusted garage with a Glock 19 pointed at my nose.
James never went for the “Uncle.” Too corny. He was just James, or “You little shit” if you caught him sober. He stood three inches taller than my old man but had zero of the self-pity and all of the violence, concentrated and filtered like prison hooch.
“This is not a fucking toy,” he said, shoving the grip into my sweaty palm. “You want to hold it, you learn it. You want to learn it, you listen.”
I nodded, mouth dry and eyes stinging from the motor oil vapor in the air. The Glock was heavier than I’d expected, real and cold and indifferent. My finger shook on the trigger. I told myself it was just the weight.
James put his hand over mine, guiding my wrist. “Center mass. Heart or lungs, doesn’t matter. None of that movie bullshit. You get one chance, so don’t be cute.”
He cocked his head at the old milk jugs lined up on the cinderblock wall. “Fire.”
I hesitated. The safety was off. My heart slammed into my ribs, begging for a second opinion.
James waited maybe half a second, then squeezed my shoulder so hard I almost pissed myself. “Fire, Augustine.”
The shot went wide, pinged off a rusted toolbox. I flinched like a dog. He didn’t laugh. He took the gun back, racked it, and gave it to me again.
“Again.”
By the third shot, my hands stopped shaking. By the seventh, I stopped missing. By the end of the box, I was cocky enough to try one-handed. The slide bit into my thumb and drew blood. James grinned, then handed me a rag.
“Good. Now you won’t forget.” He nodded at the red trickle, like it was a diploma. “Real education’s always bloody.”
