Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [37]
The smoke Zak had noticed in the distant hills had grown in volume, and the sun had sunk low and was lighting up the scattered pink clouds on the horizon, painting them umber at the edges, a filigreed brownish purple higher up.
The narrow, twisty road had been blasted out of the mountain, leaving a base of solid rock—a pity, since Giancarlo hadn’t brought along the plastic knee and shin pads, the rib protectors, or arm braces he wore when he did serious downhilling. He was taking chances. So was Scooter, because if either the bike or the truck slid off the road, it could easily lead to a fatality, which made the entire affair something just short of insanity.
“We shouldn’t be doing this. It’s plain nuts,” said Zak.
“I’m game unless you want to call it off,” Giancarlo said.
“You want me to call it off?”
“I kind of want to fuck these guys over. They’re getting on my nerves.”
“Anything happens, it’ll be on all of our heads, but I’m not going to stop it.”
“You hate that Scooter guy, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And he hates you, too. I saw that right off.”
It didn’t take long for both parties to agree on a set of rules. The track was tight and treacherous enough that everybody agreed the race should be run as a time trial; Giancarlo would go first because he would throw up less dust, then fifteen seconds later Scooter would leave in Chuck Finnigan’s truck. They would race from where they were standing to the middle of the bridge that spanned the North Fork, a distance of roughly half a mile, all precipitously downhill.
Zak thought the Ford was a poor choice because it was high and prone to tipping, but the consensus in the Jeep camp was that it had more rubber on the road than any of the other vehicles and thus would hold the track better. Fifteen seconds seemed like too short an interval, but the Jeep camp refused to concede any more than that.
There would be stopwatches at the top and the bottom of the hill, everyone in communication via walkie-talkies the Jeep people had brought with them. If the truck caught the bicycle, that would speak for itself, but otherwise, in order to win, Scooter had to reach the center point of the bridge less than fifteen seconds behind Giancarlo.
While Scooter talked to Chuck about the Ford’s quirks and Giancarlo went back up the hillside to get his bike, Zak, accompanied by Nadine and one of her friends, walked partway down the roadbed.
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Nadine.
“I know. I know.”
Kasey, Jennifer, Stephens, and Morse piled into Kasey’s Porsche and drove to the far side of the bridge to do the officiating at the bottom of the mountain. As they passed Zak, Kasey leaned out the open driver’s window and said, “This is going to be a slaughter.”
Stephens was in the shotgun seat, talking to somebody in the back. Zak caught just enough to realize he was explaining the difference between mountain bikes that were built specifically for downhill runs and the cross-country bike Giancarlo would be riding, a generalist bike built to do almost everything but with no particular specialty. Downhill bikes were heavier, the extra weight helping to buffer the jolting. They had beefier shocks, larger brakes, and were designed to make a rider feel comfortable going down a hill, often with a smaller rear wheel to tip the bike to a more level position.
It took surprisingly little time to get everybody into position, Scooter in Chuck’s Ford, revving the motor, and Giancarlo with his helmet, heavy gloves, and, just in case, a pair of long pants tied at the cuffs so they didn’t catch in the chain. If he crashed, the pants might save some skin.
Officiating up top would be Fred and Chuck, Zak, Nadine, one of her girlfriends, and Hugh.
The road dropped steeply for the first 150 yards—so steeply, most people wouldn’t ride a bicycle down it at any speed—then curved slightly to the left. It straightened out for an eighth of a mile, and