Chapter 52 - Ride to Freedom
I awoke to sunlight streaming on my face, a high pitched thrum of tires on the highway and throaty bellow of a Harley nearby. It must be midday by now. And it smelled like the desert, dry and sandy. I thought Apoc and I must be in some sort of a mini-trailer. Freshly drilled holes in a row along the top. It wobbled when I stood up, and my claws skittered on the plastic shell. I leaned up to look out. We were in a converted motorcycle side car. I could see Tank sitting happily behind what appeared to be Red. Red wore Hell’s Angels leathers, mirrored aviator glasses, a skull face mask, a black helmet, and sat atop a gleaming black chromed Harley.
He glanced over at my movement and gave a little two-fingered wave. Tank looked the other way.
The wind made a funny whistling noise that shifted as the winds in the desert did. We were in the middle of nowhere, just sky, sand, volcanic rock and and occasional scrub cactus. I was guessing Nevada somewhere. I realized that there were bikes in front of us and behind us their tires thrumming along with ours and their deep raspy voices rumbled as distant thunder.
There was a small water bowl in the trailer. So I helped myself and licked a little onto Apoc’s dry nose. He started awake and looked at me a long moment. I wondered again what went on in that head behind those beautiful luminescent blue eyes. What was he thinking? Does he even think like me with all that hardware in his head? Our ability to think and imagine is directly linked to our language, what sort of language did he have in there? I mean how do you think about something that you don’t even have words to describe?
I realized again that he was staring and I was staring and I would swear for the millionth time he was smiling at me. He licked his nose and turned to the water bowl.
I looked out the holes again, savoring the crisp clean smell. It was still winter, cool even in Nevada. The sun was overhead and to the right so we must be headed south.
Apoc laid down and sighed deeply. I looked down at him. He was watching me again with those eyes. He put a paw on my chest playfully and nipped at my leg.
Now you want to play? I looked at his foot. He withdrew his paw, and stretched again sighing deeply. I stared back out and down the endless desert road.