Chapter 5 - The Ghost Of The Badlands
The black chopper’s engine roared to life with a deep, thunderous vibration that rattled the loose gravel in the diner parking lot. Jax swung his heavy leg over the leather saddle, his dark eyes scanning the empty highway shimmering under the oppressive afternoon heat. He looked down at Leo, who was clutching the sissy bar behind the seat with white knuckles, his oversized jacket flapping wildly in the exhaust wind.
“Hold on tight, kid,” Jax shouted over the deafening roar of the exhaust pipes. “If you fall off, I’m not stopping to pick you up!”
Brenda stood in the diner doorway, shaking her head in sheer disbelief as she watched the motorcycle kick up a massive cloud of dust and accelerate sharply toward the jagged, sun-baked horizon of the badlands.
The paved highway quickly gave way to cracked asphalt, then to winding dirt tracks choked with mesquite and dry brush. The badlands were a labyrinth of towering sandstone pillars, deep shadows, and treacherous ravines where cell phone signals died and help was hours away. Leo leaned against Jax’s broad back, whispering directions into the wind, guiding the heavy bike through hidden washouts and forgotten logging trails that only a local kid—or someone running for his life—would know.
After thirty minutes of aggressive, teeth-rattling riding, the dense scrub brush began to thin out, revealing the skeletal remains of the old mill against the bleeding orange glow of the descending sun. Rusted corrugated iron roofs hung precariously from charred wooden beams, and towering concrete smokestacks pierced the sky like broken fingers pointing toward heaven.
Jax cut the engine, letting the heavy chopper coast silently behind a dense cluster of towering boulders fifty yards away from the main loading dock. The silence of the badlands rushed in, heavy and oppressive.
“Stay here, Leo,” Jax whispered, unbuckling his hunting knife and sliding it smoothly into his boot. “If I don’t come back out in twenty minutes, you ride that bike straight back to Brenda’s diner and don’t look back.”
Leo shook his head fiercely, tears of panic welling up in his hazel eyes.
“No! Dad said we finish this together!” Leo hissed, his small fingers digging desperately into Jax’s leather sleeve. “Look over there!”
Jax squinted through the deepening shadows toward the loading dock of the abandoned mill. Parked neatly beside a rusted dump truck was a sleek, unmarked black SUV with tinted windows. Standing right beside the vehicle, smoking a long cigarette that glowed like a dying ember in the dusk, was a tall, impeccably dressed man in a charcoal suit—a man Jax hadn’t seen in eight long years.
It was Marcus Vance—the very man Jax had believed burned to death in this exact building on the night everything went wrong.
Marcus turned his head slowly toward the boulders, a cold, knowing smile spreading across his pale face as if he had been expecting them all along.
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“Well, well,” Marcus called out into the quiet desert air, his voice carrying clearly across the yard. “I was wondering when the loyal dog would finally show up to die with his master.”
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