FB - Motorcycle

Rambo roared the bike down Center Road. Wind was stinging his face and chest, his eyes were watering in the wind, and he was afraid he would have to slow to see what was ahead. Cars were stopping abruptly, drivers staring out their windows at him naked on the cycle. People all along the street were turning at him, pointing. A siren started far behind him. He revved the cycle up to sixty, racing through a red light, barely able to swerve in time to miss a big oil truck lumbering across the intersection. Another siren started far to his left. There was no way a cycle could outrun police cars. But a cycle could go where police cars couldn't: the mountains.

The street dipped sharply and then rose long uphill, and Rambo sped up it, hearing the sirens. The one on his left had swung over to join the one behind him. He hit the top of the hill so fast that the cycle left the pavement, jolting back down, forcing him to slow and catch his balance. Then he was racing again.

He passed the YOU ARE NOW LEAVING MADISON sign, passed the ditch where he had eaten his hamburgers that afternoon. The fields of brown corn swept off on both sides, and the sirens were closer, and the mountains were off to the right. He swerved that way onto a dirt road, almost spilling when he turned sharply to miss a dairy truck. The driver leaned out his window, shouting at him.

Now he was throwing up dust behind him, holding his speed at fifty to keep from skidding on the loose gravel. The sirens were behind him to the right, then directly behind him. They were coming too fast. If he stayed on this dirt road, he would never lose them in time to get to the mountains; he had to leave this road for someplace they could not go. He dodged to the left through an open gate down a narrow wagon road, its ruts deep and yellow in the ground. The corn remained on both sides, the mountains were still off to the right, and he was searching for a way to get over to them. The sirens louder, he reached the end of the cornfields, turning right onto a field of wilted grass, the cycle heaving on the uneven ground, dipping and rising, whipping through the grass. But the police cars would still be able to chase him this way, and then he heard their sirens louder, yet, directly behind him again.

A stout wooden fence ahead. He sped closer, frantic from the sirens, seeing cattle. What must have been a hundred. They were in this field, but they were moving out ahead of him, ambling through an open gate in the fence and up a slope toward trees. The roar of his cycle started them galloping before he got to them, Jersey brown, bellowing, heaving three abreast through the open gate and up the slope, their milk sacks swinging full. They loomed larger the closer he came behind them, scattering, hooves thundering as he pushed through the gate with the last of them and raced up the slope. It was steep, and he had to lean forward to keep the front wheel from tipping up. Past one tree, then another, the mountains close, and then he was off the slope, speeding onto level ground. He leapt the bike over a narrow stream, almost upsetting on the other bank. But the mountains were wonderfully close now, and he steadied the bike and revved the throttle to its limit. Ahead a line of trees, then thick forest, rocks, underbrush. At last he saw what he was looking for — a draw between two slopes up into the rocky hills — and he steered that way as the sirens began dying close behind him.

That meant the cruisers had stopped. The police would be jumping out now, aiming at him. He concentrated on the draw. A crack of a gun, bullet zipping past his head, whunking into a tree. He bore fast into scattered trees, zigzagging toward the draw. Another crack of a gun, but the bullet nowhere close, and then he was into thick forest, out of sight up into the draw. Thirty feet ahead a tangle of rocks and upturned trees blocked his path, and he slid off the cycle, letting it roll crashing into the rocks. He scrambled up the dense slope, sharp branches digging everywhere into him. There would be more police after him. A lot more. Soon. At least he would have a little time to climb high into the mountains before they came. He would head for Mexico. He would hole up in Mexico in a little coast town and swim every day in the sea. But he had better not ever see that sonofabitch Teasle again. He had promised himself that he was through hurting people, and now that sonofabitch had made him kill once more, and if Teasle kept pushing, Rambo was determined to give back a fight Teasle would wish to God he had never started.


- First Blood, Part 1, Chapter 13