From pyramid!oliveb!apple!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!husc6!rutgers!att!ihlpa!fish Fri Mar 31 12:23:10 PST 1989 [Synopsis: Renouncing the solitary, alcoholic life of a mountain hermit, Spike returns to his native Chicago to track down a serial killer who preys on bicyclists. Upon arrival, he recovers an old cache of weapons and sublets an apartment to use as a base. His problem is to locate his quarry while maintaining a low profile. The World still believes Spike Bike is dead, and order has been restored in post- Corporatist America. Somewhat...] It had been a hot, sultry summer in Chicago. At 9:00 in the morning, the temperature had already risen into the mid-eighties, and the afternoon promised to be positively infernal. I wondered if it was keeping my adversary indoors. For three weeks I had been riding nearly a hundred miles a day, randomly criss-crossing through the southwest suburbs where all of the attacks had occurred. All had been quiet so far. Motorists passed by without so much as a tight squeeze or even an angry horn. Riding on city streets was less unnerving than it had been even in the pre-Act days, back in the Eighties. Perhaps the new laws were doing some good, or perhaps the excesses of the Act had shocked these people into better behavior. It was almost disappointing. With the temperature in the nineties nearly every day, the weight of the heavy weapons I carried made itself ever- apparent. I was particularly aware of it now. I first saw the lone rider as I headed into what used to be the Palos Hills Forest Preserve. It was now a maze of abandoned construction sites strewn with rotting building materials and rusting machinery. The roads, however, were pretty good, so it wasn't surprising to see somebody training out here, or it wouldn't have been, had not the scare kept so many bikies off the streets. I decided to pursue. I hadn't ridden with anyone in years, and I found myself longing for company. To my chagrin, whoever this was didn't seem to want any, or was at least playing hard to get. After chasing the rider for nearly two miles, I had closed barely half the distance between us, and I was panting and drenched with sweat. O.K., maybe I was on an overweight mountain bike. Maybe I was thirty-five years old, and maybe I had been drunk every night of my life for over a year and a half. But dammit, I had still trained every day. I'd once beaten Alexi Grewal. I'd never had so much trouble trying to catch up with a woman! She knew I was there. Several times, she glanced back, flashed a smile, and dug in. It was only after she had to slow down over some broken pavement that I finally closed the gap. When I pulled beside her, I had to catch my breath for a few beats before I could speak. She saved me the trouble. "Hi! I'm Annie." She turned her head, and I could see that she was nearly as wilted as I was from the race. She was also very pretty. She had nice teeth, and the niceness sort of continued in all directions from there. "You can call me Mike." She could have called me anything, I wouldn't have minded. "You know, you're pretty fast." "You're not so bad yourself, considering. What have you got in those things, anyway? You touring, cross-country?" She indicated my full panniers. I liked her, but I didn't want to burden her with the details of their contents just now. I don't think it would have made a good impression. "Just day touring, but I like to be prepared. You know, tools and things." "Tools? Looks more like you've got a whole bike shop in there", she laughed. "You do any racing? Off-road?" "On-road, back, oh, ten or twelve years or so ago. Before the Act." "Gee, you don't look that old." It was bad enough that she was gorgeous. Did she have to be ingratiating, too? "Chalk it up to clean living. You race?" "I just started this year. Got a crit Sunday. Registration's still open. You wanna come?" "I'd love to," -- and I would -- "but I've got some things I have to do." Which I did, and it was something I was beginning to really regret. Riding here beside my new-found companion, I felt more alive than I had in years. I'd forgotten what living had been like. I'd been close to no one, lonely. Damn, she was pretty. She was young, twenty, twenty-two, maybe. Long, light brown hair streamed behind her from underneath her helmet. She wore black lycra shorts and a light jersey, much as I did, but on her it looked a lot more interesting. She was tall. I think "leggy" might be the word, but there was no awkwardness, at least, certainly not in the way she rode her bike. I thought she might be holding back for me and my fat tires and my grey whiskers, and I began to wonder if she hadn't purposefully allowed me to catch her. I got the feeling she could break away at any time, and there wouldn't be much I could do about it. I was glad she didn't. I found myself thinking what a beautiful day it was. For the first time in many, many years, I remembered why I had started cycling in the first place. There was her, the warm sunshine, the rush of wind, the singing of the wheels underneath. I momentarily forgot what I had come here to do. Just for a minute. It was a minute too long. Too late, I heard the roar of the engine, the howl of the tires. I jerked my head around and he was on us, close enough for me to see the bugs on his radiator. A blue Ford mini-van. I had nothing in my hand but a water bottle. * TO BE CONTINUED * [Yes, she's beautiful. No, I'm not going to put any cheap, gratuitous sex in this story. -- Fish] -- __ / \ Bob Fishell \__/ att!ihlpa!fish