Maddy straddled her bike on the sidewalk, rummaging through her bag and feeling the contents. Checking off each one in her head as her hand found it … pump, extra tubes, tire tools, collapsible baton, the book, tablet, solar charger, journal, pencil, campus ID, pepper spray … She slapped the flap closed on the bag and slung it around behind her.
It wasn’t a long ride to campus and she wasn’t running late, but she wanted to get some miles in before class. She turned the bezel on her watch and checked the time. She had 45 minutes. She settled on the north loop out to the old turnpike.
She kicked off into the street and started pedaling. She headed down Third toward Perkins, spinning fast, keeping her effort easy while she warmed up her legs. The nicked-up computer atop the handlebars flickered to life and began feeding her information about cadence and speed. She had wired it up to the solar panels on the bike’s top tube last year after finding it in a pile of old gear in Finn’s bike shop. He’d let her have it for a couple hours work. Garmin. GPS was one of the few things still functioning, though no one knew how long the old satellites would last.
She swung left onto Perkins road, heading north, and pushed her speed. She couldn’t help but marvel at the expanse of blacktop and imagined what it must’ve looked like littered with cars and trucks. It was plenty wide for her bike, even if uneven. Her eyes scanned ahead for holes and cracks, debris that might pop one of her knobby tires.
Finn told her the bike was made for riding gravel roads, but its geometry had been taken from that of racing bikes, sort of like a Mustang wanting to be a thoroughbred. She pushed the speed up to 18 as she crossed McElroy. Not for the first time, she wished the road were smooth enough to kit out her bike with road tires to reduce her resistance, see how fast she could really go.
Her speed crept up to 20 as she passed the old movie theatre and her quads started to burn. She smiled, pushed harder. She came up out of the saddle and sprinted for a moment, busting past 28, then eased back down into something she could maintain for a couple of miles without killing herself on some random bump.
The bike devoured the road ahead of her, all the way to the turnpike’s edge. She glanced at the broken green sign for Tulsa before turning west toward Highway 117. She was two minutes ahead of pace.
She wasn’t worried about her test.
Not much, anyway.
***
She saw them the moment she crested the hill before Airport Road. It wasn’t unusual to see people about in the old apartment complex, but it was strange to see a group of them on bicycles hanging out in the driveway. Something about them looked off. Unfamiliar.
She swung her bike to the opposite side of the road, kept pedaling. Her brain began running scenarios. What she would do if they tried to stop her. How she’d get the baton in her bag. Or the pepper spray. No, not the pepper spray. Six was too many for the pepper spray. It’d have to be the baton.
She looked down at the computer. Three minutes ahead.
And then there was no more time to speculate. One of them hopped on his bike and rolled into the road, casually, as if he had no idea she were coming. Another started wheeling his after the first. She almost locked up the brakes.
Instead, she pedaled harder, keeping her line. The first rider looked toward her and smiled. She noted he was missing one of his front teeth. Half his head was shaved, the other half a couple weeks’ worth of stubble, and he had some sort of tattoo on the bald part. He was wearing camo fatigues and ratty basketball shoes, and he had …
And then she was on top of him. Focus on the moment. Keeping her cadence, she pulled the bike hard left, dove between Gaptooth and the second rider, missing his back wheel by less than a pedal width. She tucked in low behind her bars, and climbed the hill in a sprint, checking ahead before looking back over her shoulder. One of them whistled. A tall rider wearing mirrored shades and a black nylon flight jacket waved at her.
She turned her attention to the road and headed for campus.
skepticlysm 