Conference noted::bicycle

Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Path: decwrl!ucbvax!ucsd!rutgers!att!ihlpl!ihlpa!fish
Subject: Spike Bike RE-RUN #1
Posted: 2 Feb 89 22:16:23 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
 
 
As I promised (or threatened, as the case may be), I will be re-posting the
entire Spike Bike series throughout the month of February.  As there are
a total of 14 installments in the series, I'll be posting one article
about every other day.
 
For those of you who have already seen the stories, I hope you don't
mind a few re-runs; I've had enough requests for reprints and email
copies to warrant posting them again.  The stories are the same as the
ones you've read, save that I've cleaned up a few typos and errors of
style that I let out the first time around.
 
In the event you are reading these stories for the first time, a word of
caution: the stories are bitter and violent, what one  of my detractors
called "the paranoid ramblings of a sick mind." This was one of the two
readers (among those who bothered to reply) who did not like the Spike
Bike stories.  The rest of you paranoid ramblers loved them.
 
Now, without further fanfare, I present:
 
                  The Adventures of Spike Bike
                        by Robert Fishell
 
1. Fighting Urban Sprawl
 
     [The year is 1998.  The Federal  Government  is  the  puppet  of  a
consortium of the 20 large corporations which run the country. State and
local governments  have  been  completely  taken  over  by  real  estate
developers,  whose  goal  it  is  to  turn America into one giant suburb
consisting of subdivisions, apartment  complexes,  shopping  malls,  and
office parks.
 
     Bicycles have been all but outlawed.  The Bicycle Act of 1992  made
it  illegal  to appropriate tax dollars for bike lanes, paths, etc., and
included a provision that "those persons riding bicycles on public roads
do  so  entirely at their own risk."  The law was originally intended to
stem the flood of imports of Japanese bikes before foreign trade was cut
off entirely in '94.
 
     However, the ramifications of this law were much more serious. If a
cyclist  were  to be injured or killed by a motorist, the motorist could
not be prosecuted or even sued. It is open season on cyclists.  One  man
fights back....]
 
----------
     A cloud of brown dust stretched as far as the eye could  see  along
old  route  126. From my vantage point behind an old barn, I watched the
grim parade. For the third time in less than a  minute,  a  huge  gravel
truck  rumbled  past,  spewing acrid, black smoke and kicking up more of
the brown mud-dust and spreading it all over everything.
 
     Including me.  I'm Spike Bike.  I hate cars.
 
     Taking out a tractor-trailer rig isn't easy.  You might be able  to
get  a  grenade  into  the  cab,  but  if it bounces back at you, you're
finished. You can sometimes shoot out  all the tires on one side of  the
tractor  and the truck will jackknife, but it takes at least half a mag,
and half the time you won't get all the tires. I had to face  the   fact
that a MAC-10 submachine gun and a few grenades just weren't going to do
the job against these monstrosities.
 
     My weekly raid on the old Joliet Arsenal yielded what I needed:   a
bazooka and a couple of crates of armor-piercing rockets.  As usual, the
morons the Army has watching the place didn't  see  anything.   All  the
approaches  to the arsenal are pretty well guarded, but nobody expects a
guy on a mountain bike sneaking up from the river  bank.   I  slung  the
bazooka  over  my shoulder, stuffed all the rockets I could carry into a
set of panniers and a backback, and slipped away unnoticed.
 
     Back in the garage, I set about converting the bazooka and some old
Reynolds tubing into a bikezooka.  When I was finished, it looked pretty
much like any other fat-tube bike,  except  your  every-day  Kleins  and
Cannondales aren't capable of firing antitank rockets out both the front
and back ends.  The bike handled a little funny, but I wasn't  going  to
do any criteriums on this baby.
 
     I had to ride along 126 for a couple  of  miles  before  I  got  an
opportunity  to  test  it.  There  wasn't a gravel truck in sight, but I
spotted an enormous flatbed carrying a bulldozer.  Both  the  truck  and
its  cargo  were  filthy,  covered  with mud and chipped paint, just the
thing to make my blood boil.  He tried to run me into the ditch, but I'd
expected  that,  and  I dodged him easily as he rumbled past.  He gave a
blast on his air horn that meant "I'll get you next time!"
 
     There wouldn't be any next time.  I waited until he was  about  200
feet  ahead and let the first rocket fly.  It scored a direct hit on the
rear axles and blew the wheels clean off.  The truck  collapsed  on  the
roadbed  and the 'dozer broke loose from its restraints to lurch forward
and crush the cab.  My second shot ignited the truck's fuel tank and set
both the machines ablaze. I had a weapon!
 
     My first opportunity to take out one of my primary targets  came  a
few  minutes  later, when I spotted a gravel truck a quarter mile behind
me.  It was big and ugly and loaded  with  dirt  --  a  fat  hog  to  be
butchered.   I  loaded  a  rocket  into  the nose and flipped the firing
mechanism over so I could launch the round out of the back of the  bike.
I waited until he got closer, almost too close. I heard him downshift to
get more power as he headed straight for me. I let  him  have  it.   The
missile  struck  the  radiator  just  above  the bumper.  The entire cab
exploded and  blew   off  the  undercarriage.   With  the  steering  box
destroyed,  the truck promptly and violently jackknifed, turning over in
the ditch and spilling its entire cargo of dirt, rocks, and  debris  off
to the side of the road.  It lay a smoking ruin as I pedaled on.
 
     I'd only brought along four rockets for this test run.   I'd  hoped
to  get  a  chance to hit another truck, but it was after 5, and most of
the truckers had gone home.  The remaining rocket didn't  go  to  waste,
though. On the way home, I spotted a big, gaudy, new Pontiac pulling out
of one of the myriad construction sites along 126.  A foreman, maybe; he
smoked  a  cigar  and  wore  a yellow hard-hat.  He roared up at me from
behind, hoping to clip me in the side, but he didn't realize who he  was
dealing  with.  I feinted towards the ouside lane, then quickly cut back
to the shoulder, and he missed me entirely.  I could see him flipping me
the  bird out the back window as I fired the final rocket.  There wasn't
time for his expression to change, but I'll bet  he  saw  the  backblast
just  before  the  warhead  blew his car to small metal scraps. I had to
carry the bike over them for sake of the tires.
 
     It had been a long day.  I headed home and went to bed  early.  The
construction crews start at dawn.
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish
 
========================================================================
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Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Path: decwrl!labrea!rutgers!att!ihlpa!fish
Subject: Spike Bike RE-RUN:#2 "The Beginning" Part 1 of 2
Posted: 6 Feb 89 17:29:18 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
 
 
Note: this story is out of  sequence  from the original series.  It made
more sense to put the stories in this order this time around.
 
Fish
 ---
 
     [In the year 1998, one man fights the tyranny of the automobile...]
 
     "DROP YOUR WEAPON AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP!  STAY WHERE YOU  ARE!"  An
amplified voice roared from somewhere beyond the blazing wreckage of the
delivery truck I had just taken out.  I instinctively fired a burst from
my  MAC-10  in the direction of the squawking and sprinted off.  Bullets
grazed off the pavement behind me, and I winced at a loud ping from  the
rear  wheel. The bike swayed crazily and went down as I tried to lean it
around the corner of a warehouse building. I scrambled  down  a  loading
dock  to  reach the only cover available, a narrow, filthy space between
the building and a large dumpster. Several cars screeched to a halt as I
dove into the gap. The voice I'd heard earlier squawked, "THROW OUT YOUR
WEAPON! WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!" I answered with a burst  of  submachine
gun fire.
 
     My situation was grim, but it could  have  been  worse.   I  had  a
defensible  position,  two  and  a half mags of ammo, and four grenades.
They wouldn't get me without paying dearly.
 
     They weren't real cops, of course.  There  weren't  any  real  cops
left,  just  private  security  guards  employed  by  The Twenty. Cities
contracted with  the  goons  to  patrol  the  adjoining  roadways.  This
supposedly  saved  tax  dollars,  but was a laughable system. It was all
these idiots could to to keep from shooting each other; cooperation  was
virtually  nonexistent.   This  was  one of the reasons I'd been able to
operate for so long.  But now they had me in a spot.  Perhaps  it  would
all end here. How had it all begun?
 
 ...
 
     I was born Spiro Bikopoulis on  February  14,  1965  in  Oak  Park,
Illinois.   My  father  was a prosperous importer of foods and specialty
items from his native Greece. I  played  football  and  soccer  in  high
school,  then did a stint with the Marines,  where I taught hand-to-hand
combat and automatic weapons  at  the  U. S. Naval  Academy.  After  the
Service, I picked up degrees in Physics and Metallurgical Engineering at
Caltech, where I started building bike frames as a  project,  and  later
for the racing team I captained.
 
     As a bike racer, I moved up rapidly, particularly  after  word  got
around  that  bumping  me  on  purpose was a mistake.  I even got to the
Olympic trials in '92, but I was disqualified  when  a  California  race
official detected traces of Tylenol in a surreptitiously obtained sample
of my urine.
 
     "I had a headache," I told him.  "besides,  I  took  it  after  the
race!"
 
     "Don't serve me a plateful of irrelevant arguments, you fool!"  the
official countered, "it's right here on page 387 in volume 3 of the USCF
rule book (revised 1992).  You're out! Finished!  Disqualified!"
 
     I left the race official with volume 3 of his rule book stuck in  a
most  uncomfortable  place,  and  quit  sanctioned  bike racing forever.
[Note: if you were not following this newsgroup in the summer  of  1988,
you'll have missed the significance of this inside joke. -- Fish]
 
     That was when everything  started  to  go  to  hell,  anyway.   The
Economic  Holocaust  had begun, first with import restrictions, then the
repeal of anti-trust and conflict of interest laws.  What had  begun  in
the  1980's,  with  leveraged  buy-outs and insider trading, ran rampant
once government "interference" was out of the  way.  A  group  of  giant
corporations  known as The Twenty soon emerged, crushing all competition
and gaining a strangle-hold on the Government.
 
     In 1992, the Corporatist-controlled Congress passed  all  kinds  of
ridiculous laws designed to curb the demand for Japanese goods. One such
was the Bicycle Act, which cut off federal highway money  to  any  state
that  didn't  strip  bicycles of any claim of right of way on the public
roads. Shortly after it was passed, reports of  bicycle  fatalities  all
around  the  Country  rose  sharply.   The  same hotheads, rednecks, and
hell-raisers who once merely harassed cyclists had upped the  stakes  to
what  amounted  to  legalized murder. The nation's roads became a living
Hell. As The Twenty expected, bicycle sales, and hence imports,  dropped
off  to  nothing.   The  nation's  highways  were  ruled by motor-driven
hooligans who killed for sport. It had to stop.   I,  Spiro  Bikopoulis,
alias Spike Bike, would make the roads a living Hell for _them_.
 
     My old Marine uniform and some forged orders got me into the Joliet
Arsenal,  where  I  learned  the  place's weaknesses and  established my
secret entrance. I soon had an extensive collection of military ordnance
--  and  I  knew  how  to  use  it.   I  began  my campaign around rowdy
roadhouses and construction sites in my native Illinois, leaving a  wake
of  blood, fire, and destruction, as driver after driver, trying to turn
me into road kill, discovered too late that I wasn't defenseless.   Soon
the  attacks  diminished,  not  only  on  me, but on the die-hard, crazy
cyclists who still braved the roads all over the Chicago area.  Word was
out. It wasn't a game any more.
 
     That was 5 years ago.  Since then, I've been all over the  country,
hitting  areas  at random, leaving my grisly signature on roads in every
state, and everywhere I've been, brave souls have ventured out on  bikes
again, to find that drivers give them a wide berth, knowing that any one
of them could be me.  Bicycles have  become  a  symbol  of  the  growing
Anticorporate Movement.  It is the beginning of the end for The Twenty.
 
 ...
 
     Unfortunately, it could also be the end for me.   Crouching  behind
the  dumpster, my reverie was shattered by a volley of gunshots clanging
deafeningly against the heavy steel.   Four  of  the  goons  charged  my
position, concentrating their fire to keep me pinned down.  I pulled the
pin of one of my grenades and lobbed it into their midst.  I  heard  the
blast,  yet  the gunshots stopped for but a second.  The hail of bullets
resumed and shadowy figures stirred through the smoke. How many of  them
were there?  And where was I?  A sign on the loading dock door confirmed
my worst fears:  I was in a facility  belonging  to  the   Chrysler-Ford
General  Motors  Corporation.  The delivery van I took out hadn't chased
me in here by happenstance. I'd been set up, and I'd fallen for  it!   I
fired  wildly  into  the  smoke, enraged as much at myself as any of the
uniformed hooligans out there.  How many were there? How many?
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish
 
========================================================================
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	id AA03014; Mon, 6 Feb 89 19:19:10 PST

     [Synopsis: pinned down behind a dumpster by armed security  guards,
Spike  recounts  his  past:   his  origins as Spiro Bikopoulis, son of a
prosperous Greek importer; his military service; his bike racing career;
and  his  emergence  as  a guerrilla when the ruthless Corporatists took
over the Government, stripping cyclists of all civil rights, making them
targets for every "hothead, redneck, and hell-raiser."
 
     In the year 1998, one man fights the  tyranny  of  the  automobile.
Now he fights for his life...]
 
     Bullets rained against the heavy steel of the dumpster and  chipped
away  the  concrete  of the wall next to it.  I was inbetween, in a two-
by-six foot pocket of cover which would be my coffin when  my  ammo  ran
out.   I  lobbed  one of my three remaining grenades over the top of the
dumpster at where I thought the fire was coming from. I must have gotten
lucky,  for  the  onslaught  broke  up.  I took advantage of the lull to
chance a peek around the corner.  Through the  smoke,  I  counted  seven
bodies,  two  of which were moving some, and spotted two more men diving
for cover behind parked cars. Perhaps six  more  of  the  grey-uniformed
goons  received  them there, crouching with pistols drawn and pointed in
my direction.
 
     My situation seemed hopeless.  I'd taken out almost  half  of  them
with  just  two  grenades and a few rounds of ammo, but they wouldn't be
foolish enough to try a frontal assault again. They were  too  far  away
for  me to get a grenade behind their cover without exposing myself, and
I could not slip away unseen.  They would  wear  me  down,  or  keep  me
besieged,  awaiting reinforcements armed with something heavier than the
.38 revolvers that were standard CFGM Security issue.
 
     CFGM -- The Chrysler-Ford General Motors Corporation,  largest  and
most powerful of The Twenty, and the most ruthless.  They controlled all
transportation in America, including cars, trucks, rails, ships, barges,
and  airlines.   Their  CEO was also President of The United States, and
lately, I'd been on his agenda.  I'd  been  hitting  bigger  and  bigger
stuff,  like  that  fleet  of construction trucks back home, and I was a
huge embarassment to CFGM and the Government.  Last  week,  a  group  of
demonstrating Anticorporatists rode bikes around the White House, and no
one had touched them. Iacocca must have given the word to get me at  all
costs.
 
     That must have been how this bunch had  trapped  me.   I  suspected
that  CFGM  Security  forces all over the Country had been instructed to
lure or chase  bicyclists  onto  CFGM  property,  where  they  could  be
apprehended  and held for questioning.  This bunch just got lucky  -- or
so they must have thought.  Luck had run out  for  a  truck  driver  and
seven  security guards when they'd tangled with me. It was the remaining
eight, watching the dumpster through the sights of their pistols, that I
had  to  deal with now. A thought occurred to me:  they wanted me alive,
if they could get me that way, although I'm sure they'd been told to get
me any way they could.  Perhaps I could parlay that into an advantage.
 
     I tore a sleeve away from my white jersey, and  waved  it  gingerly
past  the  edge  of the dumpster.  I heard a voice ordering the goons to
hold their fire.  An  instant  later,  the  same  voice  came  over  the
squawk-horn.
 
     "THROW OUT YOUR WEAPONS AND  COME  OUT  WITH  YOUR  HANDS  UP,"  he
ordered.  Didn't he have anything else to say? He was beginning to annoy
me.
 
     "Stick it, Butt-brain!"  I shouted back,  "Just come and  get  your
wounded.   I'll  hold  my fire!"  A few moments passed in silence. "Come
and get them, they're bleeding to death!" I insisted, and  added,  "Just
leave that bike where it is!"
 
     My bicycle, its back  wheel  collapsed  after  a  stray  round  had
fractured  the  hub, lay near the top of the ramp, among the fallen men.
There were eight more grenades, a .44 magnum, and several  magazines  of
ammo in the panniers,  one of which had ripped open to partially display
its contents.  If I could get to it, I could hold out much longer, maybe
even  blast  my way out. But if they got to it first, they could take me
out with my own grenades.
 
     After a moment, two men emerged, empty-handed, from behind the  row
of  ugly  grey Plymouths the guards drove.  They made motions toward the
wounded man nearest them, but then quickly darted for  my  ruined  bike.
One  man  scooped  it  up while the other produced a gun from behind his
back and opened fire on my position. As they retreated, the others fired
to  keep me pinned down.  The wounded men lay unattended on the asphalt.
The two who'd ventured out ducked  back  behind  the  cover  with  their
prize.
 
     Long ago, I'd vowed I wouldn't be taken alive,  and  that  I'd  get
whoever  and  whatever  got  me.   To that end, every bike I built had a
little extra weight: two pounds of C-4 plastic  explosive  in  the  down
tube, with an electronic detonator linked by radio to a monitor strapped
to my chest.  If my heart stopped,  the  bike  became  a  bomb.   I  had
flipped  the  arming switch during my encounter with the delivery truck.
All that remained was to make the bike think I was dead. I drew  as  far
back into my hole as I could, put my head down, reached under my jersey,
and ripped the monitor away from my chest.  Within seconds,  a  powerful
blast shook the ground, and debris rained down all around me.  There was
no gunfire as I emerged from the filthy hole that  had  nearly  been  my
tomb.
 
     I surveyed the havoc I'd wreaked.  The row of cars  my  adversaries
had  used for cover lay twisted and blazing in a disorderly array around
the smoking crater the bike-bomb had made.  One of the wounded men who'd
been  abandoned  by  his  comrades  was  still  alive.  He groped weakly
towards his fallen pistol, but I sprayed it with a burst from my MAC-10,
driving  it away like a leaf before a garden hose.  The man looked at me
with terror in his eyes. I looked at him with pity in mine.   He  was  a
conscript,  no  doubt,  some  poor, dumb slob who couldn't get an honest
job. I holstered my weapon, removed his belt to make  a  tourniquet  for
his  leg,  made  him  comfortable, and picked up a small object from the
ground to stick in his shirt pocket.  It was the hand-tooled silver head
badge of a bicycle, twisted and charred, but still intact. It was inlaid
with the caricature of a bulldog with a steering wheel clenched  in  his
teeth.  The name on his collar was "Spike."
 
     "Give this to your boss," I told him softly.
 
     Sirens approached from the south.  I found  an  undamaged  security
car  and  made  my getaway.  30 miles away, I rendered it to scrap metal
and walked the rest of the way to the  airport.   I  would  go  back  to
Illinois,  rest  up for a few days while my road rash healed, and outfit
another bike. I had much to do.
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

 
                      _Showdown in the Wilderness_
 
     [In the year 1998, one man fights the tyrrany of the automobile...]
 
-------
 
     The image of a white  panel  truck  grew  ominously  in  my  helmet
mirror.   The  vehicle's  speed and the faces of the two men inside left
little doubt as to their intentions.  As they got  closer,  I  saw  what
they  had in mind.  The passenger had a four-foot section of heavy water
pipe stuck out the window, intending to play a little  polo  with  Yours
Truly's  skull.  This would call for perfect timing, but then, it always
does.  I faded towards the right shoulder, and the  van  did  the  same.
But then, at the last  possible moment, instead of going off the road, I
darted in front of the van and went off on the left shoulder,  into  the
grass, throwing the bike into a controlled skid.  The driver reacted the
way I'd hoped.  He cut the wheel sharply to the left,  still  intent  on
having  his  pal brain me, and lost it when he hit the brakes to avoid a
utility pole.  The van skidded wildly, rolled onto its side, and slid to
a  halt  100 feet down the road.  I picked up the  bike and rode over to
the wreck, tossed a grenade through a shattered back  window,  and  sped
away.   The  explosion  was  spectacular,  as  the  grenade  touched off
something, a propane tank, maybe, inside the truck.
 
     It gave me no satisfaction.  This was the third one today, and  I'd
only  been out a couple of hours.  My mood blackened,  just as the smoke
from the plumbing truck blackened the sky. When would it  end?   "Spike,
m'boy  (I  said to myself), you need a vacation."  I headed home, packed
up a few things, and caught the next flight to Calgary.
 
     I needed to pick up a couple of Dura-Ace  gruppos,  anyway.  Canada
had  no  Bicycle Act and no Japanese trade restrictions, unlike what was
left of the States, and I was really looking forward to  getting  to  my
cabin  and  putting  in  a few days of mountain biking without having to
bring along an arsenal.
 
     After a couple of hours of tearing up and down the trails, I  found
myself on the road, heading down the mountain and into town.  I could do
with some breakfast.  I heard a roar behind me, the  unmistakable  sound
of  knobby  tires.  I  looked  back  to  see  a  jacked-up Jeep Cherokee
following me down the twisting, gravel road.  Nothing to worry about,  I
thought, this is Alberta, after all.  I hadn't lost my instincts though,
and I kept an eye on it.  As soon as it was close enough for me  to  see
the  Illinois  plates, I sprang into action, heading for some rocks near
the edge of the road.  He barely missed me, and put some big  gouges  in
the side of the Jeep as he sideswiped the boulder I cut behind.
 
     It was two men, American men. Just my luck.  Goddam  tourists,  and
drunken ones at that. They didn't stop to inspect the damage, just threw
a bag of empty beer cans and cigarette butts in my direction,  and  sped
off  down the road.  I didn't have so much as a firecracker with me, and
I stood there, astride the bike, shaking with rage and frustration.
 
     A clear head soon returned, though.  There were no  motels  in  the
little  town  at  the  base  of the mountain, just a grocery store and a
couple of restaurants.  They could only be staying at one or two places,
campgrounds  up the mountain.  They would be back, probably soon. I made
a few preparations down the road and doubled back to the  spot  where  I
first  encountered  them.   No more than 45 minutes passed before I once
again spotted the roaring blue Cherokee coming up the  road,  laden,  no
doubt,  with beer and junk food for another day's revelry.  I hefted the
bag of garbage they'd tossed out before and waited behind  a  rock.   As
they roared past, I hurled the bag at the driver, shouting "hey a****le,
you dropped something!"  It hit him in the head.
 
     As I expected, he slammed on the brakes  and  skidded  to  a  halt,
manhandling  the  jeep  to  get  it turned around on the narrow mountain
road.  By the time he got it straightened out, I was a  good  200  yards
ahead  of  him, which was all I needed. I kept him in sight, making sure
he wouldn't lose me, as I headed down the old fire road from  which  I'd
removed  the  barricades.   The  surface was bumpy, barely navigable for
both me and the Jeep, but it would get a  lot  worse  --  for  them.   I
spotted  them  closing in behind me, nearly bouncing out of their seats.
That's it, butt-brain, watch  me  and  not  the  road.   Just  a  little
farther.   Atop  a  sharp rise, a chasm 10 feet wide and perhaps 40 feet
deep cut accross the old road.  The bridge had long since collapsed, but
I'd  laid  a  foot-wide plank accross the abyss. I shot accross with the
jeep nearly on my back wheel.  As the heavy  vehicle  lurched  over  the
edge,  the plank snapped like a toothpick and it and the jeep tumbled to
the floor of the ravine.
 
     After a while, I peered over the edge.  The only sound  from  below
was  the babble of the little stream at the chasm's floor, which now ran
streaked with red from under the wreckage, carrying away beer  cans  and
little  scraps  of  trash.   What  a  shame,  to pollute such a pristine
wilderness.  Before I headed back to Chicago, I would call the  RCMP  --
anonymously  -- and tell them  about the mess. In the mean time, I had a
couple of days to take it easy, breathe the clean mountain air, and  get
in some more trail riding.  After today, though, I'd tuck my 9mm Walther
into one of the panniers, just  in  case  I  ran  into  some  unfriendly
critters, like bears.  Or tourists from the States.
 
     Damn them.  Couldn't they have let this place alone?
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

 
                      Lord of the Rednecks
 
 
     [In the year 1998, one man fights the tyrrany of the automobile]
 ---
 
     I heard it before I saw it.  An ancient  Cadillac  convertible  was
closing very quickly from the rear.  There was nothing ancient about its
electronics; at least 1000 watts of amplifier power screamed raunchy C&W
from  god knows how many speakers. It sounded even worse for the doppler
shift; he was doing at least 100.  That was stupid.   He  would  try  to
clip me in the side, because people in snazzy cars always try to clip me
in the side, and at that speed, he wouldn't  be  able  to  maneuver.   I
feinted  to  the  left when he closed to within a few hundred feet, then
cut right abruptly when he'd committed himself.  He missed me by a  good
four  feet.  As he roared past, I opened up on the tires with my MAC-10,
shredding them.  The Caddy swerved crazily, rolled over twice, and  slid
off  the  road  upside down. Crazy as it seemed, that godawful music was
still blaring out from the wreckage.  I fired another burst into the gas
tank,  and  the  racket  stopped  as the wreck went up in a huge ball of
orange flame.  The driver's Stetson hat lay in the road perhaps 50  feet
away,  virtually  undamaged -- unlike the driver, who had no further use
for it.  I emptied the rest of the mag into the hat, chasing it down the
asphalt, cutting it to scraps.  Sure as shootin', I was in Texas.
 
     I'm Spike Bike.  I hate cars. I don't care much for C&W, either.
 
     I'd been to Texas before.  The  rednecks  in  these  parts  are  as
stubborn  as  they  are  mean,  and that's meaner than most.  This time,
though, I had come for one man, and it wasn't that bozo  in  the  Caddy.
I'd  never met Earl Josiah "E.J."  Ross, but I'd heard plenty about him.
He was a millionaire oilman who spent much of  his  time  hunting  since
Standard  Oil  bought  him  out.   It  was  said he hunted rattlesnakes,
coyotes, and wild horses.  These days, he also  hunted  bicyclists.   My
Anticorporatist  contacts  in  Lubbock said he'd run down at least 20 of
them, and those were only the  confirmed  kills,  the  ones  there  were
accident reports on.  I'd come to see that there would be no more.
 
     I arrived at the Yellow Rose Cantina at about 11:30 in the morning.
I  counted  three  cars and two pickups in the dusty gravel parking lot,
plus a couple of cars out back.  It was more than I'd expected, but  not
too  much  of a problem.  I leaned the bike up against a crumbling adobe
wall and went inside, bracing myself against the  assault  of  darkness,
smoke,  and  Tex-Mex  blaring from the jukebox.  I paused near the door,
letting my eyes adjust to the dim light,  and  checked  the  place  out.
Three  men  sat  at the bar,  and two more played pool in the  adjoining
room. A tired-looking waitress set out  ketchup  bottles  on  the  empty
tables.  There was a big, middle-aged redneck behind the bar.  I guessed
that there was some one in the kitchen, but I couldn't see much  through
the tiny round windows set in the door.  That would complicate things.
 
     As my vision cleared, I noted that all eyes present were on me.   I
wore  black  lycra  shorts with a red stripe, and a red three-pocket.  I
surmised that this was not suitable attire for this place, but  then,  I
wouldn't be staying long.  I crossed to the bar.
 
     "A glass of beer" I ordered.
 
     "Ain't got no beer, boy."   This  brought  chuckles  from  the  men
seated at the bar.
 
     "How about a sandwich, then?"
 
     "Ain't got no food." Chuckles.
 
     "What time does E.J. show up?"
 
     "You a friend of  E.~J.'s?"   The  chuckles  gave  way  to  raucous
laughter.
 
     "Didn't know the son of a bitch had any."
 
     I casually strolled over to the jukebox, studied it for  a  moment,
and  viciously  yanked the plug out of the wall (Who the hell was in the
kitchen?). The twangy music abruptly stopped.
 
     "Awright, get the fu** out of here, sissy-pants!" The bartender had
lost his grin.
 
     "I said, what the fu** time does E.J. show up?"
 
     "'bout half past noon, but y'all ain't gonna be here that long."
 
     He was out from behind  the  bar,  lumbering  towards  me  with  an
unopened bottle of Lone Star beer in his hand.  When he closed to within
a couple of feet, he brought it up in a wide arc.
 
     "I thought you didn't have any beer" I  commented,  as  I  threw  a
block  to  his  wrist  and  brought  my  knee  up into his groin.  As he
flinched from the pain, I snap-kicked him in the face and he fell  back.
He  and  the beer bottle he'd wielded hit the floor about the same time,
and ended up in  approximately  the  same  condition.   The  sleepy-eyed
waitress  screamed,  dropped  her tray and retreated into a corner.  The
three men from the bar advanced on me, one of them hurling a  bar  stool
in  my  direction.   I  ducked  aside and blocked it away with my wrist.
Coming up from the floor, I fan-kicked the nearest of the three  in  the
jaw,  spun around and threw a fist into the adams-apple of the next man.
Both collapsed.  The third held back, circling, looking for  an  opening
(who was in the goddam kitchen?).  The pool players had entered the room
by this time, brandishing their cue sticks menacingly.  I thrust a  side
kick  at  the third man from the bar and caught him off balance.  He hit
his head on the corner of a table as he fell. A pool cue came around  at
my  head,  and I ducked, grabbed the man's arm, and felt his elbow crack
as I twisted.  The pool stick flew out of his hand to crash into the row
of bottles behind the bar.  The other pool player realized his situation
and wisely dropped his stick, retreating  with  his  hands  out  to  the
sides.
 
     Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flood  of  light  from  the
kitchen door, saw a blur, and heard the sound of a shell being chambered
into a pump gun.  I instinctively reached for  the  9mm  Walther  I  had
concealed under my jersey. In one motion, I chambered a round, took aim,
and fired.  The mercury-filled slug tore through the cook's skull and he
fell  back.   The  scattergun  discharged  as  it  hit  the floor, and a
lighting fixture shattered overhead. I quickly swung around to cover the
people who were still standing, and backed towards the door.
 
     "Tell E.J. Ross I'm looking for him.  I'll be up the road a ways."
 
                        * TO BE CONTINUED *
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

                    Lord of the Rednecks (Conclusion)
 
 
     [In the year 1998, one man fights the tyrrany of the automobile...
 
     Synopsis: Spike Bike has come  to  Texas  in  search  of  one  man:
E. J. Ross,   a  millionaire  redneck  who  has  murdered  at  least  20
bicyclists.  On his way, he has an encounter with one of the  locals  in
an  old  Cadillac,  and after dispatching him, he visits the Yellow Rose
Cantina, a sleazy,  isolated  roadhouse  frequented  by  E. J.  himself.
Inside,  he learns that E. J. will arrive within the hour, but he has to
fight his way out, killing a shotgun-brandishing cook and  injuring  the
bartender  and  several  of the patrons.  On his way out, he advises the
remaining patrons to tell E. J. he's looking for him...]
 
 ---
 
     Two plumes of smoke intertwined in the air above  the  Yellow  Rose
Cantina.  Before leaving the parking lot, I'd fetched my .44 magnum from
the mountain bike's panniers and fired a round through the  radiator  of
each  of the cars and trucks parked around the dump.  Two of them caught
fire as the heavy slugs ripped through  the  engine  compartments.   I'd
taken  care  to  cut  the  phone  lines,  but  I  didn't want any of the
survivors going for help.  The ones I'd left  breathing  would  recover.
The  one  I'd  left with his brains splattered all over the kitchen door
wouldn't be needing help.  Now, I watched the Cantina  through  powerful
binoculars from a mesa half a mile up the road.
 
     My friends in Lubbock told me that every day, E. J. Ross stopped at
this dive for a bowl of Texas chili and a few beers on his way back from
his Lubbock office. The bartender had told me he'd arrive at  half  past
noon.   Sure  enough,  at  12:30 sharp, a cloud of dust near the horizon
portended his arrival.  I took some time to  study  his  vehicle  as  it
pulled into the Yellow Rose's parking lot.
 
     I'd heard about the E. J. Special, but I had to see it  to  believe
it.  It had begun  as an enormous Chevy pickup, but thousands of E. J.'s
dollars had transformed it into a rolling monument to bad taste.  It was
mostly  a glossy black, with elaborate desert scenes airbrushed onto the
side panels.  The windows were tinted very dark.  The grille was from  a
Rolls-Royce,  or  a  good imitation.  Headers protruded from beneath the
running boards, to come together and elbow into stacks that  rose  three
feet above either side of the cab.  The license plate read
 
                               ----------
                               |KICK ASS|
                               ----------
 
All the brightwork was plated in 14K gold.  The antlers of an  authentic
Texas Longhorn steer embellished the hood.  Under that hood, I knew, was
a finely-tuned, 454 cubic inch  V8  that  didn't  bother  with  emission
controls.
 
     E. J. himself was as outrageous as his truck.  He was big, at least
6'4",  and  350  pounds  if  he  was an ounce.  He wore a white suit and
matching Stetson, with mirrored sunglasses, a string tie, a  hand-tooled
Navaho   belt   with   an   enormous   gold   monogrammed   buckle.  His
correspondingly enormous belly hung over it.  On his  feet  were  ornate
Texas  boots  with  gold  caps  on  the  toes.  Gaudy,  expensive  rings
embellished each of his pudgy fingers. A huge stogie jutted out from his
mouth.
 
     I regarded him through the binoculars, wishing for a moment that  I
was  peering  through  the telescopic sights of a .30-06 Winchester; one
squeeze of the trigger and I'd make happy ladies  of  each  of  his  ex-
wives.   No, that would be too easy, too quick.  I wanted him to know it
was coming, and who it was who brought it.
 
     A small crowd had formed in  the  lot  beside  E. J.'s  truck:  the
bartender,  the  frumpy waitress, and a couple of the men I'd dealt with
earlier.  I could not hear  their  conversation,  but  I  surmised  they
weren't talking about the weather.  One of the men gestured up the road,
in my general direction, so  I  thought  it  was  time  I  announced  my
presence.  I fired the magnum at the side of the building, not expecting
to hit anything in particular at this distance, but I was pleased when a
window shattered.  The report echoed several times from the sides of the
nearby hills.  All but E. J. hit the ground  or  scattered.   He  merely
looked  up,  trying to pinpoint my location.  I hoped my red jersey made
it easy for him.
 
     E. J. got into his truck and started up  the  road.   I  stuck  the
magnum  back  in  a  pannier  and hurried down the slope to meet him.  I
waited behind a rock for the E. J. Special to round the bend,  and  took
off  up  the  road,  certain  I'd been spotted.  Timing would have to be
perfect.  That monster could go from 0 to 60 in  less  than  9  seconds,
despite  its size, and it had already killed at least 20.  Surprisingly,
he gained on me very slowly.  So that's how he did it; let them sweat  a
little before the kill.  I let him close to within 50 feet before I made
my first evasive move, cutting  accross  the  center  line  and  darting
through  some  rocks.   I  abruptly  spun  the  back  wheel  around in a
controlled skid as E. J. brought the truck to a halt, and I took off  in
the  opposite  direction.   The truck did not turn around, but screeched
after me in reverse, much faster this time.  As it closed  to  within  a
few  yards,  I sliced off to the left and rode up the steep slope of the
embankment.  At the summit, I paused to make  certain  E. J.  knew  what
direction I took.
 
     The road wound through a canyon cut into the low mesas that  dotted
the  countryside.   I had scouted it carefully earlier, but it was going
to be tight.  I sprinted over the uneven,  rocky  surfaces  towards  the
bend  in the road where I'd hoped to intercept him.  I arrived barely in
time.  planting myself in the middle of the road, I  just  had  time  to
draw  the  MAC-10 and cock the receiving bolt.  The E. J. Special roared
around the curve, 200 feet up the road.  I took  aim  for  the  driver's
side  of  the  cab  and looked for his face, found it, met his eyes. The
huge pickup bore down on me like a  hellhound,  but  I  waited  for  his
expression to change, his jaw to slacken, his eyes to widen in fear with
the shock of realization: that's right, you son of a bitch,  this  is  a
machine  gun,  and you're going to die! He got an arm half-raised before
his face and cut the wheel sharply to the left as I opened fire.  I held
the  trigger  and fanned the barrel in a narrow arc, exhausting the full
magazine.  The  windshield  disintegrated  and  both  the  side  mirrors
shattered before the truck ran aground against the embankment and turned
over on its side.
 
     Five miles down the road, I could clearly see the column  of  smoke
rising  from  the  remains  of the E. J. Special.  A well-placed satchel
charge had taken care of  it,  the  road,  and  part  of  the  adjoining
hillside.  E. J. Ross was no more; 20 lost souls were avenged, and Texas
was just a little safer for bikes now.
 
     Perhaps E. J.  had been the worst of the  men  I'd  faced,  perhaps
not. At least I'd known his name, unlike most of them.  And I'd had time
to hate him.  The satisfaction was fleeting.  E. J.   and  his  ilk  had
always  been  there, murderous intentions just below the surface, hatred
and intolerance  barely held in check.  The real  evil  was  the  system
that  allowed the E. J.s to emerge, and I and all my guns, grenades, and
bombs had no more effect on that than spitting on a forest fire.
 
     All that would change some day.  I had to believe  it  would.   I'd
killed  two  men  today,  and I'd seen their eyes.  You don't forget the
eyes.  You feel them watching you when you  wake  up  shivering,  pillow
soaking  wet,  with the sound of your own hearbeat shattering the night.
How long?
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

     [In the year 1998, one man fights the tyranny of the automobile...]
 
     A cold November rain beat against the window.  The hour grew  late.
Yawning, I had set down my book and started off to bed when a knock came
on the door.  I warily crossed the room to peer through the  door  peep.
It  didn't  look  good.   There  were  two grim-faced men in cheap suits
outside. I caught a glimpse of more men in the  grey  uniforms  of  CFGM
Security just on the fringes of the fish-eye view.  This wasn't a social
call.  My 9mm Walther was in my right hand. My left rested lightly on  a
control panel next to the sill.  I spoke into the intercom:
 
     "What can I do for you fellows?"
 
     "Spiro Bikopoulis?"
 
     "Yes?"
 
     "United States Secret Service.  We'd like to talk to you."
 
     "I'm all ears."
 
     "Open the door, please"
 
     "I can hear you just fine."
 
     I saw the taller of the two men motion to the goons.  Two  of  them
came  into  view,  ready  to  kick in the door.  I threw a switch on the
house's security controls.  Instantly,  a  barrier  slammed  across  the
threshold of the front door, and the house shuddered as similar barriers
simultaneously covered the  remaining  doors  and  windows.   It  was  a
metal-polymer  laminate I'd developed during my years as a metallurgical
engineer.  Inch for inch, it was nearly twice as tough as  armor  plate,
yet  it  weighed  only  a  quarter  as  much.   It,  and  the reinforced
construction of my little ranch house would give me but a  few  minutes.
If  they'd  come  for  the  reason I suspected, they'd have brought some
heavy firepower.  I heard bullets thudding against the other side of the
barrier.  They would try a battering ram next, then explosives.
 
     I ran down to  the  basement.   The  sequence  I'd  set  in  motion
upstairs had already opened the sealed door to the secret room I'd built
five years ago.  I threw aside  my  bathrobe  and  pulled  on  a  rugged
jumpsuit  and  mountain  bike  shoes  that awaited there.  A gunbelt and
flack vest followed.  I hopped on the black-anodized mountain  bike  and
opened the heavy door to the tunnel that led down to the river bank, 300
yards away.  The chill and dank air seized me as  I  entered.  I  paused
inside  and  tapped  out a code on the keypad just outside the door.  It
quietly closed behind me, and I knew  I'd  never  see  my  little  house
again.   The  bike's  powerful headlamp stabbed far into the darkness of
the tunnel, and I sprinted hard into its depths.
 
     Halfway down the tunnel, I heard the muffled explosion  behind.   I
had  set the charges to gut the house without causing too much damage to
the immediate area, or any innocent bystanders nearby.  If,  by  chance,
any  of  the goons had bashed or blasted  their way inside, though, they
were toast by now; those charges had been  high-temp  incendiaries.   In
any case, they would not follow through the tunnel.
 
     Opening the hatch at the tunnel's mouth, I was  nearly  overwhelmed
by  a  rush  of  knee-deep water.  The heavy rains had swelled the river
beyond its banks.  I tried to get the camouflaged  hatch  closed  again,
but  it  was  hopeless,  jammed  with  mud.  The  tunnel would be easily
visible. Hoping to at least cover my tracks,  I rode through the shallow
water for perhaps 200 yards before climbing up from the bank.
 
     I rode along the river for another  half  mile  before  I  saw  the
chopper.   A  powerful spotlight swept across the landscape, paused, and
darted up and down the river bank in the direction I'd come from. They'd
spotted  the  tunnel,  no doubt, and were trying to decide which way I'd
gone.  The chopper turned to and headed my  way.   I  offered  a  silent
curse  and  took off at a right angle to the river, into the back of the
railroad yard.  I needed to get to cover fast.  There! A  freight  train
was  pulling  out  of  the  yard,  and  I  sprinted to match speed, pull
alongside, and catch the open door of a  boxcar.   I  struggled  to  get
myself and the bike inside before the chopper spotted me.
 
     I didn't make it.  The light played over  the  door  and  instantly
returned.   The  powerful  beam  followed  the  boxcar,  and I heard the
chopper descending.  I extracted a drab green cylinder from the mountain
bike's heavily laden panniers, extended the fore and aft tubes, and took
aim at the spotlight. A squeeze of the trigger and the LAWS rocket found
its mark.  The chopper exploded and a huge fireball fell from the sky.
 
     The train did not stop, but continued to  roll  out  of  the  yard,
picking up speed.  It was evidently a robot locomotive, and it would not
stop until it was programmed to do so.   I  didn't  know  where  it  was
going, but any place was better than here right now.  I closed the car's
door and pondered my situation.  In my bike's panniers and packs were my
usual  armament  of  a  MAC-10,  12  grenades,  a  .44 magnum, and extra
ammunition.  But this particular bike had been especially  prepared  for
this  occasion.   I  also  carried two, make that one, LAWS rockets, two
satchel charges, and a sawed-off, 16 gauge pump shotgun.   The  rest  of
its  cargo  was  less  destructive,  but  perhaps  more  essential:  Dry
clothing,  dehydrated  food,  $20,000  in  small  bills,   some   forged
documents,  and  a pint of Jack Daniels.  I cracked the seal on the last
item and took one swig against the chill, replaced the cork, and set the
bottle  aside.   This bike and the gear it carried were now all I owned,
and I had to make the best of it.
 
     I had known they might close in on me some day, but I had to  learn
how.   That  and  many other questions burned in my brain.  But first, I
needed to sleep. I would need a clear head in the  morning,  wherever  I
might be then.  Where?
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
 

                    Armageddon in Detroit (Part 2 of 7)


     [Synopsis: A knock on the door of Spike's home  brings  trouble  in
the  form  of the U.S. Secret Service and CFGM Security.  They know that
Spike Bike and Spiro Bikopoulis are the  same  person,  and  Spike  must
escape.   He  flees down a tunnel built for this purpose, but is spotted
by a helicopter as he, with his heavily-armed mountain  bike,  boards  a
freight  train.   He  destroys  the chopper with a LAWS rocket and seems
momentarily safe as the train gathers speed pulling  out  of  the  yard.
Spike Bike, fugitive, ponders his situation.

     In the year 1998, one man fights the tyranny of the automobile...]
 ---

     I awoke from a light sleep as the lurching  of  the  cars  made  me
aware  the  train was slowing down.  Through the space under the door, I
could see it was still dark outside.  I opened the door  a  crack.   The
weather  had cleared considerably, and it was quite cold. I examined the
skyline silhouetted against the stars: Detroit.   That  was  just  about
perfect;  just get accross the border to Windsor and I could make my way
to my Alberta cabin to decide on a course of action.

     How had they found me?  More importantly, why now?  Corporatism was
finished.  It  had  been a failure on all counts, social, political, and
economic.  The early boom years, when the executive-politicians had  had
the  support  of the people, had been financed by speculation, riding on
false hopes.  Lately it had been  falling  apart.  Economic  growth  had
ground  to a halt, some consumer goods were growing scarce, and services
were deplorable. Dissension was widespread  among  workers  at  all  but
senior  management  levels,  despite  harsh policies by employers -- The
Twenty -- to ensure loyalty.  The "workfare" labor force, which amounted
to  a  pool  of  cheap  conscript labor, could not absorb any more fired
workers, and the threat of losing your job if your  district  voted  the
wrong way became meaningless as the quality of life deteriorated.

     Though the Presidential election was  still  two  years  away,  the
midterm  Congressional  elections  and  several  key gubernatorial races
spelled disaster for The Twenty.  Voter turnout had been  unprecedented.
Despite  lavishly orchestrated media coverage and huge PAC funds, nearly
every  Corporatist  candidate  had  been  resoundingly  defeated.    The
Enterprise  Party, the political party of the Anticorporatists, would be
firmly in control of the  Congress and most of the states  beginning  in
January.   My  contacts  in  the  Party  had  told  me  that impeachment
procedings against the Iacocca  Administration  would  probably  be  the
first act of the new Congress.

     I had rejoiced in the news.  The long nightmare was nearly over.  I
could  soon  go  back  to  being  Spiro Bikopoulis.  Now, that dream was
shattered.  My cover was blown. I'm Spike Bike, now.  I can no longer be
any one else.

     The train had slowed to perhaps 15 MPH.   I  slid  the  door  open,
dropped  the  bike out, and jumped. I was just outside the railway yard,
near a crossing. I decided to take a chance on the road, at least for  a
little  while,  in  order  to cover ground quickly while I still had the
darkness.  It was early Monday  morning.   I  would  have  to  get  near
downtown,  dump the bike and the heavy weapons, taking only the cash and
my forged papers -- on foot -- to the bridge which led to freedom.

     I covered about 5  miles  before  the  morning  glow  made  it  too
dangerous  for me to stay on the main roads.  Now I wound my way through
alleys, through the poor neighborhoods near the downtown area.  I  would
ride for another half mile or so and then change into street clothes and
hoof it for the bridge.

     My hopes were dashed.  A block ahead, a dull grey Plymouth  skidded
to  a  stop, blocking the alley.  Almost immediately, another duplicated
the maneuver at the corner behind me.  I immediately cut accross a  back
yard,  through  the  narrow  space  between two dilapidated garages, and
emerged with the MAC-10 drawn and ready for action.

     This came immediately.  As I rode out into the street, two  of  the
CFGM  Security  cars converged on my position.  I sprayed the windshield
of one, and it changed course abruptly, crashing into a tree.  The other
was  closing fast behind me.  I rode up onto a yard, between houses, and
into the alley paralleling the one in which I'd been spotted.    To  the
west  were  two grey Plymouths, and I cut hard to the east.  I grabbed a
grenade and waited for the cars to close, but they kept their distance.

     Up the alley ahead, I could see the walls of  skyscrapers.   I  was
only  a  few  blocks  from downtown.  As I crossed a street, I saw three
more of the CFGM cars closing in, but the way  ahead  was  still  clear.
Finally, I ran out of alleys beneath the heights of the tallest building
in Detroit -- the CFGM building.  To the  left  and  right  of  me  were
roadblocks.  I  had  only  one place to go, the parking garage under the
skyscraper. I darted inside, my machine gun ready for an ambush,  but  I
found  no  one  waiting.   I   looked around for a place to make my next
move.  I felt a sting in my leg.  Looking  down,  I  saw  a  small  dart
protruding  from  my thigh.  I reached down to pluck it out, but my hand
wouldn't obey.  The world tilted crazily and went black.

 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

     [Synopsis: Driven from his home, his identity known to the the evil
Corporatist  government,  fugitive  Spike hops a freight train bound for
Detroit.  Ironically, the day he has hoped for has nearly arrived.   The
midterm  elections  have  defeated  the  Corporatists,  and it is only a
matter of time before he can live as an ordinary man again.  However, he
must  now  escape to Canada to collect himself and decide on a course of
action. But while attempting to reach downtown Detroit, thence  Windsor,
Ontario,  he  is  intercepted  by  the  grey Plymouth sedans of the CFGM
Security Police and ultimately pursued into a garage in the base of  the
imposing  CFGM  building.   A drugged dart is fired into his leg and the
world goes black.

     In the year 1998, one man fights the tyrrany of the  automobile...]
---

     At first there was only a blur of agonizing light and a noise  like
a  buzz-saw  ripping  through  my  skull.  After a few moments, the blur
became a face, and I realized it was speaking.

     " ---ming around, Mr. Bikopoulis.  Can I offer you a drink?"

     A pail of icy water was thrown into my face, and  I  sputtered  for
air,  choking and nearly throwing up.  It began to clear my head though.
As my vision returned, I observed that  I  was  in  an  opulent  office.
Before  me  was  a heavy mahogany desk. On it were my MAC-10 and a drab-
looking suitcase.  Behind, a panoramic window displayed the city  lights
of  Detroit-Windsor,  seen  from  the  exhilarating  heights  of  what I
realized was the top floor of the 103-story  CFGM  building.   The  last
fringes  of  twilight  glowed in the west. It had been early morning the
last I'd been conscious.

     I was bound to a chair with duck tape, uncomfortably  tight  across
my  wrists  and  ankles.   I  had  been stripped to the waist.  A glance
assured me that my heart monitor was still there.   Looking  around  the
room,  I  saw my specially-equipped mountain bike leaned against a wall,
its armament intact.  My gun belt and flak vest lay beside it.

     "Yes, the bike's here," my host offered, "We know about that little
electronic  gizmo of yours, but we didn't have time to figure out how to
disarm it.  We thought it wise not to fool with anything, in  fact.   It
was  easier  just to keep it in range of the transmitter for now. You're
quite ingenious, Mr. Bikopoulis.  Or is it Spike Bike?"

     "That'll be _Mister_ Bikopoulis to you,  Butt-brain."   A  mistake.
That brought knuckles across my face.

     "You should show proper respect for authority, _Mister_ Bikopoulis.
Don't you know who I am?"

     I knew who he was. Ames Morgan,  Secretary  of  Transportation  and
Executive  Vee  Pee  of CFGM,  Iacocca's right-hand man.  It was rumored
that Morgan was the real boss of the Corporatist government. What was an
important cabinet member doing smacking me across the face?

     "The face and charming manner are  familiar.   You  grunt  for  the
Prez."

     "The President of the United  States  is  rather  upset  with  you,
Spike."

     "The American People are rather upset with him,  so  I  guess  he's
entitled.  But why does he care about me? Senator Crisp..."

     "Joseph Crisp is merely  the  political  leader  of  this  disloyal
rabble.   You're their folk hero.  You inspire them.  You're too much of
a nuisance to have around."

     "Somehow I think it's Mr. Iacocca who won't be around, at least not
much  after  the  3rd of January.  Is it true that they're just going to
impeach him, or are they going to throw his ass in jail, too?"

     "That's rather outlandish, coming from a terrorist."

     "Terrorist? I'm just a concerned citizen, doing my best to keep our
highways free of trash."

     "Terrorist.  Particularly after the little stunt you pulled in  New
Mexico Thursday."

     "I was in New York Thursday, filling out reams of your goddam forms
just to receive a shipment of Metaxa from Greece."

     "Quite the contrary, Spike.  You shot up  a  top-secret  government
installation.   We've got it all on video tape.  Killed thirteen people,
including a janitor and a couple of secretaries,  before  you  got  away
with this."

     He placed a hand on the suitcase sitting on the desk.  He removed a
panel  to  reveal  an array of switches and displays.  Reaching into his
pocket, he extracted a key and inserted it into a slot  in  the  control
panel.  The displays jumped to life.

     "The CIA whipped this up.  Quite clever,  really,  only  thirty-six
pounds, and most of that's the shielding."

     "What is it, a crystal set?  Captain Video decoder, maybe?"

     "I thought you were a weapons expert, Spike.  It's a  thermonuclear
device.   Oh,  it's  just a little one -- thirty kilotons, maybe  -- but
enough for you to do a great deal of damage to this fair  city  and  its
distinguished guests."

     I suddenly saw what he was getting at.  It was monstrous.

     The Enterprise Party had fittingly chosen Detroit's  Cobo  Hall  as
the  site  for its first Transition Planning Conference. Every important
member of the Anticorporatist movement  would  be  in  attendance.   The
conference  was  to  open this evening.  So that was why they'd timed my
capture for this date!  They intended to destroy the cities  of  Detroit
and  Windsor,  and  make  it  look like an act of terrorism, with me the
perpetrator.  A quarter mile in the air, this  office  would  be  ground
zero.   We  were  half  a  mile from the convention center.  None of the
delegates would survive, and hundreds of thousands  of  innocent  people
would perish with them.

     "You're insane!" I hissed. I tugged and jerked  at  my  restraints.
Morgan leaned back in his chair, placed his feet on the desk next to the
Bomb.  His laughter filled every inch of the spacious office.

                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
--
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

     [Synopsis: On the run from the forces of the collapsing Corporatist
government, Spike is captured in Detroit while trying to make his way to
Canada and safety.  Recovering from the tranquilizer dart that  rendered
him  helpless,  Spike  discovers that his captor is none other than Ames
Morgan, Secretary of Transportation, and perhaps the most  powerful  man
in  the  Corporatist government.  Morgan reveals his diabolical plan: to
destroy the cities of Detroit and Windsor with a suitcase-sized  H-bomb,
killing  the  delegates  to the all-important Planning Conference of the
Enterprise Party, whose sweeping victory in the November, 1998 elections
spelled  doom  for the Corporatists.  Furthermore, Spike has been set up
to take the blame.
 
     In the year 1998, one man fights the tyranny of the automobile. Now
he faces a much greater evil...]
 ---
 
     Morgan's laughter died down  and  my  struggles  abated  --  partly
because I'd managed to partially free my right leg, and partly because I
needed a cool head to size up the situation.  I was alive  only  because
of  Morgan's  maniacal  ego.   He'd  conquered  Spike Bike, and couldn't
resist confronting me, just to gloat.  I studied the device on the  desk
before  me.  One  of  the displays on the suitcase Bomb was changing. It
read:
 
                   3:58:21... 3:58:20...  3:58:19...
 
     I had to keep Morgan talking, to find out what he had planned,  and
to divert his attention from my quiet struggles with the leg restraints.
He evidently hadn't realized the strength in a  cyclist's  legs.   As  I
exerted steady, concerted pressure, the strands of tape tore slightly on
the squared corners of the chair legs. Eventually, they would break  and
my legs, if not my arms, would be free.
 
     "You'll never get away with it.  Even Iacocca wouldn't  approve  of
nuking an American city."
 
     "Actually, he doesn't  know  anything  about  it.   He's  mainly  a
figurehead, anyway.  Past the age of retirement, you know.  In any case,
four hours from now -- make that three hours and  fifty-six  minutes  --
your  friends  down there will be radioactive vapor, and the people will
have to look to the only government they have  --  us  --  to  see  them
through  the  ensuing international crisis.  And you, my friend, will go
down in history as the most infamous terrorist of all time."
 
     "The bomb goes off in four hours?"
 
     "10:00 PM sharp.  Senator Crisp should just be finishing his speech
to  the convention around then.  I'll be long gone by then, driving west
toward Chicago. Couldn't take a chance on the  airlines.   You,  on  the
other  hand,  will  be  right  here,  snoozing  away  on another dose of
aneprazine -- that's the stuff we shot you with downstairs.  You'll have
the  whole  building  to yourself.  We gave the cleaning staff the night
off -- not much point in mopping the restrooms in the middle  of  ground
zero, is there?
 
     "Well, Spike, it's been nice meeting you  in  person,  but  I  have
pressing  matters  to  attend to. It seems there's no way to disarm this
thing once the countdown has started -- which it has -- and  Detroit  is
fast becoming a crummy place to be."
 
     He extracted a hypo from a briefcase on the desk. My legs were  not
quite free. I had to stall him a few moments more, fan his ego.
 
     "One more thing.  How did you find me?"
 
     "The computers did it.  Took us a  long  time.   Seems  you  always
traveled under assumed names, paying with cash for your airline tickets.
But you used your family's business shipments to transport your  weapons
and  bicycles  by  rail  and  truck to the areas you hit.  It was just a
routine audit of  our shipping records, anything to get a lead. When  we
found  out  that  Spiro  Bikopoulis,  former bicycle racer, was shipping
merchandise to areas that were shortly thereafter visited by Spike Bike,
we had a pretty good idea who you were.
 
     "That  business  you  pulled  back  in   Illinois   confirmed   it.
Incidentally,  that  was  a  half-million  dollar  chopper  you blew up.
Fortunately for us, the pilot radioed your  situation  just  before  you
smoked  him,  so we had the train diverted here.  Quite a stroke of luck
for us; we got some nice pictures.  The  security  cameras  caught  your
entrance  downstairs  and  got  a  nice  close-up of your face before we
tranked you.  It was not strictly necessary, but it will add credibility
to  the story of the world's first nuclear terrorist. In a few days, the
tape will be on every TV screen in America, along with the stuff we  got
in New Mexico."
 
     "You got a ringer for me."
 
     "Remarkable likeness, at least from a distance. Good with  weapons,
too,  an ex-Marine, like yourself.  Down on his luck, poor chap.  He was
more than happy to work with us after  we  got  him  off  death  row  in
California.  He took to a mountain bike like a natural.  Did a great job
for us in New Mexico.  We need more men like him. Pity  you  don't  work
for  us,  Spike.   Well,  Spike,  I could go on for hours,  but I really
should be going. Have a nice nap."
 
     He prepared the hypo and crossed from behind the desk. My legs were
free.   I would have just one chance. As he drew close to administer the
shot, I rocked back on the chair and kicked up violently with both legs,
catching  Morgan in the rib cage.  The thrust hurled him through the air
several feet, until  his  back  crashed  through  the  expansive,  mural
window.   They  say  that from 103 floors up, you're dead before you hit
the ground.  I always thought it was a  myth,  but  I  didn't  hear  him
screaming  the  whole  way  down,  just  50 floors or so.  Maybe there's
something to it after all.
 
     My hands were still bound.  I lay on the  heavily  carpeted  floor,
alone with the Bomb.
 
                    3:42:01... 3:42:00... 3:41:59...
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

     [Synopsis:  Spike's  identity  is  discovered  by   the   crumbling
Corporatist  government,  and  he  flees  his  Illinois  home only to be
captured in Detroit by Ames Morgan, Secretary of Transportation.   There
he discovers that Morgan intends to explode a suitcase-sized H-bomb over
the cities of Detroit and Windsor, creating an international crisis, and
killing  key  members of the Enterprise Party, who have regained control
of the government in the 1998 elections.   Spike  manages  to  partially
free  himself  from  his  restraints,  and  kills  Morgan by kicking him
through a window on the top floor of the 103-story CFGM  building.   But
he  is  too  late to stop Morgan from activating the Bomb, which will go
off in less than 4 hours.

     In the year 1998, one man has fought the tyranny of the automobile.
Now he must fight to save two cities and a Nation...
---
                    3:41:58... 3:41:57... 3:41:56...


     The silent, flourescent display counted  down the seconds  until an
inevitable 30-kiloton nuclear blast.  Morgan had said the Bomb could not
be disarmed, and he'd had no reason to lie.

     I got myself turned around and managed to get on my feet.  My hands
were  still  bound to the arms of the chair.  I gingerly hobbled over to
the shattered window, through which poured the chilly November air.  The
jagged  glass  cut  through one of my bonds, giving me a gash across the
wrist in the process, but soon I was free of the chair. Glancing down to
the  street, I saw tiny flashing red lights converging on the area where
I knew Morgan's remains must be splattered.  Not good; I'd hoped  to get
out  of  here unnoticed.  The surrounding streets would be crawling with
CFGM Security by the time I reached the ground floor.

     I turned my attention to the Bomb.  Within just over  three  and  a
half  hours,  it  would  have  to  be taken to a place where it could be
detonated with relatively little harm.  There wasn't time.   Morgan  and
his  henchmen  had  kept the theft of the Bomb a secret from the public,
and I could not deal with CFGM Security, which  policed  the  city.   It
could  not  be exploded on the surface anywhere in the populous East.  A
fast military plane might get it to the Nevada desert in time,  but  how
could  I  convince  the  Air  Force  or  the  Navy of the urgency of the
situation?  And how could I trust them?  I had no idea how extensive the
conspiracy  was. Searching my memory, I thought of one place it could be
taken that might suffice: the extensive salt mines under  the  city.   I
knew I would have to take it there myself.

     I retrieved my MAC-10 from Morgan's desk and checked out the  bike.
It  was  undamaged,  and  Morgan  had  been  afraid  to  tamper with its
extensive array of armament.  That was good; I  had  a  feeling  I'd  be
needing  it. I patched up the cut on my wrist and replaced my flak vest.
Then I set about lashing the 36-lb Bomb to the rear rack.  It  was  more
weight  than I was used to carrying, but I was able to maneuver the bike
around the  room.   I  boarded  the  private  elevator  which  connected
Morgan's  office  to  the parking garage under the skyscraper.  A brief,
sinking feeling assured me I was on my way.  On the way  down,  I  broke
all  the  lights  in  the  car's  interior.  I  readied the machine gun,
prepared a grenade, and straddled the bike as the elevator slowed  to  a
stop.   As  the  door  opened,  I  saw  two grey Plymouth sedans waiting
outside.

     I burst through the  doors  firing  in  a  wide  arc.   The  guards
crouched  behind  the cars instinctively ducked, and did not return fire
for a critical  second while I sprinted past the roadblock, tossing  the
grenade as I passed.  One of the guards got off a shot before the blast,
and I felt something  hot  laid  across  my  shoulder.   The  wound  was
superficial,  but  bloody.   I waited for more fire, but none came.  The
next wave would be at the garage's entrance.   There  was  no  time  for
stealth.  Repeating  my  bold move at the elevator, I sprinted up to the
street.  The Bomb's weight slowed my progress up the ramp, but  I  still
burst  out  of  the  door  with  enough  speed to maneuver.  Fanning the
machine gun at the row of grey Plymouths just outside, I cut towards the
alley  I had come out of this morning, right between two of the Security
cars.  This time, none of their shots connected. A second  grenade  went
off behind me and the guns fell silent.  A block away, I knew I had made
the first hurdle, but I could not get far this way.  A mountain bike has
tremendous  advantages  in rough country, but it's not much help on city
streets. I thought for a moment about where I should  go,  and  had  the
answer.

     I wound my way through the alleys toward  the  sea  of  light  four
blocks from the CFGM building.  There was one place in this city where I
might find friends, but there would not be any time to explain.   Firing
into  the  air,  I  burst  forward  into  the  light.  A stretch Lincoln
limousine was just pulling up in front of  the  glittering  entrance  to
Cobo  Hall.  It would do nicely.  Riding up onto the sidewalk, I grabbed
the first person in reach, a terrified woman.  I hated to do it,  but  I
needed  to  hold  off the guards while I got the limousine door open.  I
rolled the bike inside and dove in after  it,  releasing  my  hysterical
hostage.   There  was  a  distinguished-looking  man inside, rubbing his
knee.  The bike had jostled him some.

     "Senator Crisp, I presume."

     "So. I finally get to meet Spike Bike."

     I instructed the Senator's driver to get away --  fast.   The  Bomb
silently counted away the seconds.

                    3:08:18... 3:08:17... 3:08:16...

                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
--
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

     [Synopsis:   Fleeing  the  forces  of  the  collapsing  Corporatist
government,  Spike  is  captured  in  Detroit,  where  he  learns  of  a
diabolical conspiracy to destroy the city with a suitcase-sized  H-bomb,
sparking  an international crisis and  killing the newly elected members
of the Enterprise Party, who have defeated the Corporatists in  the  '92
elections. Spike kills the evil Ames Morgan, Secretary of Transportation
and leader of the conspiracy, but not before Morgan is able to  arm  the
Bomb,  which cannot be disarmed and will go off in less than four hours.
Spike's only chance to save the city and the Enterprise Party convention
is  to take the Bomb to the depths of the extensive salt mines which run
under the city of Detroit. Under fire from CFGM Security forces, who are
unaware  of  his  deadly  cargo,  Spike commandeers a limousine carrying
Senator Joseph Crisp, leader of the Enterprise Party, hoping  to  elicit
his aid in disposing of the Bomb.
 
     In the year 1998, one man fought the  tyranny  of  the  automobile.
Now, the fate of two cities and a Nation is in his hands...  ---
 
     "... and you're sure the Bomb can't be disarmed?"
 
     "We can't afford to try.  We've got less than three  hours,  and  I
have a feeling the people who built this thing won't help  us much.  No,
Senator, the mine is our only chance.   You  have  to  help  me  get  it
there."
 
     The Senator finished bandaging  my  wounded  shoulder.   He'd  been
reluctant to volunteer any help at first, but I had convinced him of the
urgency of the situation. I turned my attention to the limousine driver.
Could he be trusted?
 
     "Your driver, Senator.  Secret Service?"
 
     "Yes, but..."
 
     I held the muzzle of my MAC-10 against the driver's neck.   I  told
him  to  pull the car over and struck him sharply on a well-chosen point
at the base of his skull.  He slumped over unconscious.   I  pulled  his
limp form into the back seat.
 
     "You'll have to drive Senator.  I'm going to be busy back here.  Is
this heap bullet-proof?"
 
     "No, it's just an ordinary limo," the Senator replied  as  he  took
the  wheel  and  sped  off.   I  tied the driver's hands and then busied
myself with smashing out the back window.  Flashing red  lights  pursued
from behind.
 
     "Step on it, Senator!" I implored.  Several CFGM Security cars were
gaining  on us.  I waited until they were just in range and opened up on
them with the MAC-10.  The lead car went  out  of  control,  creating  a
spectacular  smash-up.   Only one car came through the chaos to continue
pursuit.  Bullets struck the limo and I felt it  swerve.   I  turned  my
head to see that Senator Crisp had been struck in the arm. It was only a
scratch, but it proved that our pursuers were not overly concerned  with
the  Senator's  well-being.   I took careful aim at the driver's side of
the Security car and hosed the windshield.  It veered  crazily  off  the
road and crashed into a utility pole.
 
     "Are you all right, Senator?"
 
     "It hurts like a bitch, but yes."
 
     "We've got to get help.  The CFGM Security force is  loyal  to  the
Corporatists.  They'll kill us both.  Is there any one you can trust?"
 
     "Maybe. There's a mobile phone in the back seat. Give  it  to  me."
Crisp  thumbed a number, spoke a few words to the person who'd answered,
and turned to me.
 
     "The Coast Guard is sending up a chopper.  The Base Commander and I
go back a number of years."
 
     I hoped the relationship was a congenial  one.   Up  ahead,  a  few
miles  yet from the entrance to the mine, was a massive roadblock.  More
grey Plymouths approached from the rear.  We  could  not  stop,  and  we
could  not  turn back. I reached into my ATB's bag of tricks and readied
my remaining LAWS rocket.
 
     "Put it to the floor, Senator!"  I opened the door and leaned  out,
took  careful  aim  at  the  center of  the  roadblock, and squeezed the
trigger.  The explosion blasted a hole through  the  roadblock,  setting
the vehicles ablaze and taking out most of the guards who'd awaited with
pistols drawn.  The limo crashed through the inferno and continued  down
the  road  towards  the mine.  I had to hand it to the Senator; he was a
hell of a driver!
 
     A flood tide of red lights was still in  pursuit.   My  MAC-10  was
empty,  and the extra mags were in the bottom of one of the panniers.  I
didn't have time to hunt for them. I extracted the  16-gauge   sawed-off
from  the  bike's  arsenal and took aim at  the center of the parade. It
would not be enough.  So close, dammit, so close.  Another mile  to  the
mine  entrance,  but we wouldn't make it.  I pumped the scattergun again
and again, but they kept coming.  As they were almost on us, a bolt from
the  heavens  struck in front of the lead car.  The Coast Guard chopper!
The Security cars scattered to the roadside and gave up pursuit  as  the
chopper engaged them with rockets and machine guns.  The way to the mine
entrance was clear.
 
     More resistance no doubt awaited at the  mine.   That  chopper  was
busy;  I  had to deal with it myself.  A quarter of a mile from the mine
entrance, I bade the Senator to stop the car.
 
     "Thanks for the lift, Senator.  Sorry about your wheels."
 
     "I think the taxpayers can afford it.  What now?"
 
     "I take the mine.  You've got to get as many people as you can  out
of  this  area.   The mine should contain the blast, but there will be a
hell of a shock."
 
     "Good luck, Spike."
 
     "You're the one who'll need that, Senator. You've got to  put  this
Country  back  together.   All  I've got to do is dispose of some of the
last Administration's garbage, here." I patted the deadly suitcase.  Its
flickering blue display continued the silent, businesslike counting.
 
                     1:58:33... 1:58:32... 1:58:31
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

     [Synopsis: fugitive Spike uncovers a nuclear conspiracy in Detroit.
He destroys the evil Ames Morgan, a high-ranking member of the crumbling
Corporatist government, but not before Morgan starts the countdown of  a
30-kiloton, suitcase-sized H-bomb. It cannot be disarmed.  Spike escapes
with the Bomb and elicits the  aid  of  Anticorporatist  leader  Senator
Joseph Crisp in getting the Bomb to the only place it can be exploded in
relative safety: the vast salt mines under the city of Detroit.  After a
spectacular  auto  chase,  Spike  and  the Senator part company near the
mine's entrance.  Spike must yet engage the Security force guarding  the
mine.  There is now less than two hours left before the Bomb explodes.
 
     In the year 1998, the fate of millions rests in the  hands  of  one
man...]  ---
 
     The Senator sped away and I mounted the bike.  I could not try  the
main  gate,  it  was  too heavily guarded.  I would have to get onto the
grounds some other way and find my way  to  the  entrance  to  the  mine
shaft.   Though  time was of the essence, I would have but one chance to
do this right, so I took my time in careful preparations.  I blacked out
my  face and donned black gloves.  I taped together the remaining MAC-10
magazines and tucked them into pockets in the fresh black  jumpsuit  I'd
obtained from the panniers. Six grenades hung from my belt.
 
     I scouted the perimeter of the grounds until I found a  stream  bed
which ran under the chain-link fence.  It was a tight squeeze, but I got
through, dragging the bike after me.  The area into which I emerged  was
isolated  and  poorly  lighted.  The mine shaft was located on the other
side of the complex.  To get to it, I would have to cross an open  field
and wind my way through huge piles of salt, thence across a brightly lit
yard.  It was not going to be easy.  A force of about 25  CFGM  security
men  guarded  the  mine complex, and they had by now been alerted that I
was in the area. I rode through tall weeds parallel to the fence  for  a
ways,  staying out of the open until I could cross the field to the salt
mounds at the narrowest point.
 
     I spotted a jeep patrolling the perimeter service road, sweeping  a
spotlight  over  the  fence.  I laid the bike down in the weeds and kept
low.  The light did not come near, but the jeep stopped when the  guards
passed  the  breach  in  the  fence.   One  of them got out to look more
closely, shining a flashlight along the stream bed.   He  abruptly  drew
his pistol when he spotted the crushed weeds that betrayed my arrival.
 
     I could wait no longer.  I tossed a grenade at the jeep and  opened
fire  on  the  flashlight.   Both  the grenade and the burst found their
targets, but I no longer had stealth to my advantage.  I  sprinted  hard
for  the  salt  mounds, darting between two of them as I caught sight of
headlights flickering and heard gunfire from several points.
 
     The salt mounds covered an area  of  three  or  four  acres  in  an
irregular  pattern.  It would be easy to get lost winding my way through
the maze -- on the ground.  I shifted into a granny gear and started  my
way  up the steep slope of a large mound.  I took a spiral course around
the mound, staying just out of sight of the grey Plymouths that  prowled
through the grounds.
 
     At the mound's crest, I had a much better view.  I  could  see  the
entrance  to the mine and was able to pick out a course through the salt
mounds.  Below, three  cars  systematically  searched  the  mound  area,
supported  by   half  a  dozen  men  with  flashlights.   I would need a
diversion.
 
     I readied a grenade  and  observed  the  progress  of  one  of  the
security  cars.  As it drew behind one of the mounds adjacent to mine, I
lobbed the grenade over the top with a throw a major  league  outfielder
would have been proud of.  I don't know if it hit its mark, but after it
went off, the searchers converged towards the area of the blast.
 
     I rolled down the mound at a reckless speed, fighting to  keep  the
overweight  bike  under control.  As I neared the bottom, I caught sight
of a lone searcher.  He swung his flashlight in my direction; too  late,
I  was  on  him.  There was no time for either of us to shoot. I ran the
bike squarely towards him, with all the momentum  of  my  quick  descent
behind  me.  At the last moment, I pulled back on the handlebars and the
front wheel left the ground to catch him perfectly in  the  chest.   The
bike  skidded  crazily  as  he  went over, but I kept it up.  No gunfire
followed as I made the first turn through the course I'd scouted.
 
     The last hurdle was yet ahead.  Emerging  from  the  salt  maze,  I
sprinted  for the entrance to the mine.  To the left and right, two grey
Plymouths sped towards me.  I took aim at the windshield of the nearest,
fired, and watched the car spin out of control.  The other car spat fire
from the passenger's window.  I felt something thud solidly  against  my
flack  vest  and nearly lost control of the bike.  Bringing it around, I
fired again, off balance, but I hit one of the Plymouth's  front  tires.
As the driver fought the wheel to regain control of the car, I opened up
on the passenger's window and the return fire fell silent.
 
     I reached the entrance to the mine  shaft  as  the  security  force
began  to  regroup  near  the  salt  field.  I rode straight into to the
elevator, slammed the doors, and threw a switch which I  hoped  was  for
"down."  Reassuringly, the car began to sink.
 
     Several minutes passed before the elevator lurched to  a  halt.   I
wondered  what  awaited  me outside.  I threw the doors open, submachine
gun ready, but saw only a few startled, unarmed men.  I  bolted  through
the door, into their midst.
 
     "Everybody into the elevator! You have to  get  out  of  here!"  To
convince them, I fired a burst into  the air.  Salt rained down from the
high ceiling.  The frightened workers packed the elevator.
 
     "Is this everybody?" I snapped.
 
     "We're all there is. Most of the mine's automated, now. We're  just
a maintenance crew, going off shift"
 
     "Then get the hell out of here!  And  don't  bother  punching  out.
You won't be working here tomorrow."
 
     The doors closed and the elevator  began  to  rise.   The  adjacent
shaft  would bring  the  other elevator down, teeming with armed men.  I
would not be able to deal with them directly.  I set one of  my  satchel
charges at the bottom of the shaft and rigged it to explode when the car
contacted it. In the mean time, I had more urgent business to attend to.
 
     I saddled up and headed down a tunnel.  There was  a  fairly  steep
grade;  good,  I  was  getting  deeper and deeper into the earth.  After
perhaps half a mile, I reached a large chamber at the tunnel's  end.   I
did  not know if this was the deepest part of the mine, but it would do.
I detached the suitcase-Bomb from the bike, set it down, and examined my
surroundings.   This  was  evidently a center of operations.  There were
tracks and conveyers leading through various  tunnels,  and  there  were
crude offices set up.
 
     That's where I found this terminal.  The mine, like everything else
these  days,  is run by computers.  This one has an operating system I'm
familiar with, and it was fairly easy to get an outside link  to  access
the  main computer at Bikopoulis Imports. I brought up my diary file and
began typing.
 
     This, you understand, will be my last entry.  I heard  the  satchel
charge  go off a few minutes ago. It had to be done in order to seal the
mine shaft and contain the blast. It also leaves  me  with   a  problem.
That  was  the  only  elevator.  When the Bomb detonates in thirty-nine,
make that thirty-eight minutes,  Spike Bike will be no more.
 
     Men like me are, I suppose,  an  inevitable  consequence  of  harsh
times.   But when the times change, we are out of place in the World.  I
am a killer.  The men I've killed were trying to kill  me,  but  they're
still  just  as dead.  The Bicycle Act freed them to act on their basest
instincts, but it allowed me to do the same. I hunted them, baited them,
and  killed  them without compunction.  Some kind soul may argue that my
motives were noble, that the ends I achieved were for the greater  good,
that what I did was for the benefit of everybody who claims the right to
ride a bicycle.  I told myself all of this often enough.  But the  quest
for justice isn't enough to make a man kill.  I am driven by a rage that
is neither good nor evil, but animal.  Again and again I  have  felt  it
boil  over, surge through my nerves, and burst forth in a stream of fire
and lead. It sickens me now.  I am sick of rage, sick of killing.  It is
well that it should end here.
 
     Do not lament.  I have longed for this day.  Although it is an  end
for  me,  it  is  the  beginning of everything I've fought for.  But the
fight isn't mine any longer.  It must be won with  law  and  order,  not
guns and bombs. Make it happen for me.  I never made it to the Olympics.
Let Spike Bike go out a winner.
 
     Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I've still got  a  pint  of  Jack
Daniels stashed away on the bike somewhere.  I've got about half an hour
to kill, and I could sure use a belt.  It's been a long day.
 
---
 
     [Epilogue:
 
     It was Spiro Bikopoulis's wish that his diaries be made  public  in
the  event that something happened to him. Had I not known Spike, albeit
briefly, and seen the climax of this adventure unfold, I might not  have
believed the fantastic accounts recorded on the diskettes that were sent
to me by the Bikopoulis Family.  I am honored that he  chose  me  to  be
among the first to read it.
 
     The nuclear blast was well contained by the deep mine.   There  was
considerable  structural  damage  from  the  shock, but little radiation
escaped,  and  Detroit-Windsor  has  remained   safe   for   habitation.
Casualties were minimal, and an international crisis was averted, thanks
to Spike's sacrifice.
 
     We do not know, as yet, how widespread the Morgan  conspiracy  was.
We  are  searching for Morgan's accomplice, the man who, posing as Spike
Bike, stole the Bomb that was almost the end of us all.   He  should  be
able to tell us much, if we ever find him.
 
     President Iaccoca resigned in lieu of impeachment.  We decided  not
to  pursue criminal proceedings against him, in deference to his age and
satisfactory evidence that he knew nothing of the Morgan  affair.   Vice
President  Turner  has  resigned  as  well,  although  there are charges
pending against him.  The Cabinet has, of course, been dissolved.
 
     House Speaker Trump has resigned in scandal,  leaving  the  job  of
U.S.  President  to  me,  as President Pro Tempore of the Senate.  It is
with great reluctance I have accepted the Office.  Spike was right;  I'm
going to need some luck.
 
     The new Congress has a staggering agenda.  The Corporatists did  an
incredible  amount  of  damage,  and  it will take more than a decade to
overcome it all.  Yet Spike was wrong about a few things.  The first Act
of the new Congress was a unanimous resolution to repeal the Bicycle Act
of 1992.  The legislation left in its place provides  for  a  nationwide
effort  to  improve  the roads to better accommodate bikes, and outlines
severe penalties for motorists who engage in "willful acts of hostility"
against cyclists.
 
     Attached to the bill  was  a  resolution,  passed  by  acclimation,
granting  a  general  pardon to Spiro Bikopoulis, a.k.a. Spike Bike, for
"all crimes and misdemeanors, known or otherwise," committed during  the
years  the '92 Act was in force.  It also ordered that a medal be struck
in his honor.  However, the Cities of Detroit and Windsor have  upstaged
us.  On an artificial island in the center of the Detroit river stands a
statue of a man astride a  mountain  bike.   Twenty  feet  tall,  it  is
appropriately larger than life, as was the man it honors.
 
                           Respectfully Submitted,
 
                              Joseph Crisp
                     President of the United States
                              July, 1999]
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

     [In the year 1989, one man rails in futility against the tyranny of
the automobile...]

 ---

     Springtime in northern Illinois comes late, too late for me to wait
for balmy breezes and sunny skies to begin hard training.  I can't stand
my wind trainer, and the trails are often too icy for off-road  mountain
biking,  so  I've been hitting the roads.  Sometimes I can get a partner
or two, but mostly, I'm out there by myself, friendless and defenseless.
Just me and THEM.

     In the winter of 1980, I quit smoking.  A  month  or  so  later,  I
decided  to  do  something  about  the ravages thirteen years of tobacco
addiction had inflicted on my body.  I considered jogging, nearly  threw
up  on myself just thinking about it, and bought a bike instead.  It was
a 32-lb department-store superclunker, but it had  ten  gears  and  drop
handlebars. It was to change my life forever.

     I'd not had the bike for long before the pattern was  set.  One:  I
was  hooked.   Despite its massive, water-pipe frame, flimsy steel rims,
80-PSI gumwalls, pot-metal brakes, and all the other frailties  junk  is
heir   to,  this  amazing  machine  gave  me  a  sense  of  freedom,  an
exhilaration I thought I'd lost along with childhood.  I knew right away
this  was  for me, and that I'd be doing it until the day I die.  Two: I
discovered that day could come  prematurely.   I'd  already  encountered
some  of  THEM.   I was thus forced to make a decision: I could cower in
some health club, buy a set of running shoes, and let THEM dictate how I
enjoy  my  free  time,  or  I  could  defy  the  bastards  and maybe get
slaughtered in the  process.  As you all know, I took the latter option,
and I've been living with it ever since.

     Every year that decision gets harder and harder to live with. Every
year  I  ride more and more miles, 4500 in '87, 6000 in '88.  I've set a
goal of 7500 for  1989, provided I survive.  Every spring I think  about
the  close  calls  of years past, about the impermanence of human flesh,
and about the weak law of large numbers  and  all  those  goddamn  CARS.
Maybe  only  one  driver in 100 gives me any real trouble, but there are
so, so many of them.  So many of THEM.

     It gives me the heebie-jeebies when I think about it,  so  I  don't
think  about  it.   I've made my decision, and I will not go back on it,
the increasing risks notwithstanding.  I'm not going to have my life run
by  a  bunch  of hotheads, rednecks, hell-raisers, and half-dazed morons
who don't even watch the road half the time,  let  alone  look  out  for
bikes.   I  hate  them.   I  hate  them all.  Mile after mile I ride on,
seething with hatred and  contempt,  ever-vigilant  and  wary  of  every
mechanical  monster that comes within my sphere of awareness.  Watch and
hate. Listen and hate.  I have to hate THEM, or they'll scare me out  of
my shorts.  Hate is a strong emotion.  Stronger, even, than fear.

     Last spring I dropped into a local sporting-goods store to pick  up
a  supply  of those terrycloth sweatbands that vanish without a trace in
the laundry.  A display case in the store caught my  eye:  GUNS.   There
were  hunting  rifles,  target  pistols,  even  an  imposing Redhawk .44
magnum.  One piece in particular prompted a closer look: a double-action
.38  Smith & Wesson revolver with a snub-nosed  barrel.  It was perfect.
Small and easily tucked away in a jersey pocket, it could be  drawn  and
fired in a split second without  having to fuss with a safety catch or a
receiving bolt.  You could keep one hand on  the  handlebars  to  steady
your  aim.   Perfect.  And it could be had for a few hundred bucks, well
within the means of any credit-card-carrying yuppie such as myself.

     I don't know how long I stood there looking at it.  The reality  of
that cold steel mingled with eight years' accumulation of a hatred  that
borders on paranoia, and something dark and ugly stirred within  me.  On
the  other  side of the glass was a fistful of revenge, and all it would
take was a little bit of paperwork and some of my disposable income, and
it  could  be  all  mine.   That  thought  scared the crap out of me.  I
quickly fled the gun department, bought a handful of the sweatbands  I'd
come  in for, and left the store feeling very shaken.  Days later, I was
still disturbed about it.  For just a moment, perhaps for just a  split-
second,  I'd  actually  felt  the impulse to do it, to call the salesman
over, plop down my  Visa  card,  and  do  something  that  would  almost
certainly  ruin  my life -- and could very well end it. I know now, as I
realized then, that as long as I own a bicycle, I must not  own  a  gun.
Having made _that_ decision, I felt a whole lot better.

     The incident brought into focus a peculiar problem, though.  I need
my hatred to give me the courage to ride, but I have too much of it left
over, pent up. I needed an outlet.  I'd already settled the matter of my
carrying a gun, but it seemed such a shame to let the idea go completely
to waste.  I conjured an image of a man who'd  made  that  decision  the
other  way,  and  the  result was a story called "My Wild Ride," which I
posted to rec.bikes some time in May of last  year.   The  character  in
that story was to disappear in the bursting bubble of a daydream, but he
would return a few weeks later as Spike Bike.  I already had the idea of
a  vigilante cyclist who would wreak vengeance on the dregs of motorized
society.  All I needed was the proper setting to put him  in.   In  what
sort  of  society  might such a man emerge? I didn't have to think about
that for too long.

     I chose our own society of course, making just a few minor  changes
here  and there.  I had a little fun with it, getting ideas from current
events: ruthless corporate  takeovers,  trade  protectionism,  political
corruption,  and  rampant  urban sprawl.  But the central premise of the
Spike series was the Bicycle Act of 1992, which formally strips cyclists
of  all  the  rights  which  have been informally stripped away already,
i.e., now, in 1989. That's right, 1989. Now. Today.  We have no rights.

     Don't take my word for it.  If you want to discuss your rights, ask
that  son  of  a bitch who just honked you, cut you off, and flipped you
the bird.  Ask Officer Rupp.  Ask your State representative,   who  will
dismiss  you as a crank and subsequently ignore you.  The only reason we
get to ride at all is that there aren't quite  enough  of  THEM  to  get
bikes   outlawed.   The  fact is, most people just don't give a damn one
way or the other.  Certainly not about us.  But  to  the  extent  that's
changing,  it's  changing  for  the  worse.  Bike bans are more and more
prevalent, e.g., Sheridan Road here in  Chicago. By  1992,  there  could
very well be a law to get us off all the roads.

     There may be some hope nevertheless. The  Spike  Bike  series  ends
with  his society moving in a positive direction.  The bicycle becomes a
symbol of opposition to the forces of Evil.   Inspired  by  Spike  Bike,
people  take  to  the roads  in ever-increasing numbers, in spite of the
risks.  It's the same in our own society.  If you want  to  be  able  to
ride tomorrow, ride today, and take a friend with you.  Better yet, take
two friends, not people who ride all the time, but people who've, maybe,
just  quit  smoking and are looking for a way to get in shape.  You see,
the more of US there are, the easier it will be to deal with THEM.

     Spike began to understand this, too, near  the  end.   He  realized
that one man could do little to change things, despite all his resources
and skill.  Benevolent creator that  I  am,  however,   in  the  series'
climax  I  gave him an opportunity to be a real hero  (and gave myself a
neat way of wrapping things up).  The world Spike saves is  better  than
the  one  he  shoots  full of bullet holes; it is better, even, than the
reality of 1989.   Perhaps I'm an optimist, or perhaps I just don't like
to  tell  depressing  stories.   You  get  enough  of those from the Ten
O'clock News.

     The Spike Bike series was cathartic for me.  I had something to get
off  my  chest, and to all of you who enjoyed the stories and encouraged
me to write more, I offer my heartfelt thanks.  I'm no  Hemingway.   I'm
just  a  hack  engineer who harbors a frustrated writer within, and it's
nice to have a way to let off a little steam, to  indulge  in  a  little
fantasy,  and know there's somebody out there who gets a kick out of it.
It was fun.  Thanks for coming along.

     I'll be away from my office for a couple of weeks, so I'll  be  off
the  net  for  a while. I'll leave all of you with a couple of things to
think about, though.

     Spike did something after he arrived at  the  salt  mine's  control
center.  What did he do, and why would he do it?

     Spike logged out half an hour before the Bomb went off.
--
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish

Path: abel!manta!bpa!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!ihlpa!fish
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: Spike Bike Returns (Part 1 of 8)
Keywords: This is NOT a re-run!
Date: 10 Mar 89 19:39:31 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 190
 
 
                            * PRELUDE *
 
     [American life in the Year 2000 is not what the  futurists  of  the
late  Twentieth  Century had predicted.  With the Western economy nearly
wrecked by the remorseless profiteers of the Corporatist era, conditions
are  sometimes  harsh,  problems  and  unrest  abound,  and a fledgeling
Government struggles to steer America back to a course of prosperity and
growth.
 
     Times are hard, but improving. In many ways, it is a better  world.
Most Sundays, bicyclists ride freely up and down the streets and avenues
of American cities, secure in the knowledge  that  they  are  no  longer
flirting with suicide.
 
     Optimism abounds as the  new  Millenium  approaches.   People  have
grown  kinder, more tolerant, even happy.  Most people, that is.  In the
year 2000, one man cannot forgive the lowly cyclist for getting  in  his
way.  Another cannot forgive himself.
 
     Fate is to bring them together.]
 
                               * PROLOGUE *
 
     (The smell of the new upholstery exhilerated him.  With  a  lot  of
people  out  of work, it meant something to drive a new car.  It was not
just a cheap little econo-crate,  either;  this  was  a  top-of-the-line
mini-van, with a V-6, air conditioning, stereo, power windows, the works.
 
     He drove out of the congested city into the abandoned  roads  south
of town.  This would be a good place to open it up, see what it could do
now that it was broken in.  Just over the hill and .. NO! Just his luck,
a goddamn bicycle.  One of those arrogant wimps who were responsible for
those spineless bleeding-hearts in Washington.   Things  had  been  good
when the Corporatists were in charge; there was money, and you could buy
a new car every couple of years.  Now he had to work a second  job  just
to make the payments on this fine machine.
 
     He followed the bike at a distance until the shoulder of  the  road
gave  way  to  a  bridge  abutment.  That would be the place.  Okay, you
little bastard, it's pay-back time.  He pushed the  accelerator  to  the
floor...)
 
                              * PART ONE *
 
     I lay on the shoulder of a dusty Texas road,   my  feet  hopelessly
tangled  in  the  toe straps of my wrecked bike. My arms felt like lead.
E. J. Ross towered over me, his great bulk quivering as he laughed.
 
     "Gonna whup yo' ass, boy.  Teach y'all to  fool  with  me!"   E. J.
moved  closer, reached for me.  I managed, lamely, to get an arm raised,
and I tried to throw a punch at his jaw.  My fist drifted slowly through
the  air,  barely dented the pudgy flesh of his jowls, and fell back.  I
could not raise it again. So weak...
 
     E. J. gripped my shoulders in two ham-like fists and pulled my face
close  to  his. His breath stank of whiskey.  He was no longer laughing.
He squeezed my skull against his forehead and I felt my  head  begin  to
split. I could not breathe.  I could see nothing but his eyes.
 
     "Gonna whup yo' ass, boy."
 
 ---
 
     I awoke with stifled scream lodged in my  throat.   My  pillow  was
drenched.   The chill air of the cabin impinged on my awareness as I lay
among knotted bedclothes tossed askew in the night.  Shivering, I turned
the  pillow  over  and  pulled a heavy quilt up around my neck.  My head
hurt.  After a while, sleep returned.  E. J. Ross did not.
 
     A beam of  morning  sunlight  glinted  from  the   half-empty  Jack
Daniels  bottle  next  to  the  bed.  The  cabin  was awash in daylight,
terribly bright, driving needles into my eyes. I  sat  up  groggily  and
reached  for the jug, for the hair of the dog.  Raising it to my lips, I
was seized by a pang of revulsion as the  peppery-sweet fragrance bit my
nostrils.   I  hurled  the bottle into the fireplace, where it shattered
and fell among the other shards of glass there.  I regretted the gesture
immediately,  for  the whiskey stench now flooded the room.  After a few
agonized moments, I rose to my feet.
 
     A light June snow  had  fallen  in  the  night.   With  the  bright
sunshine,  it would be gone by mid-morning, and by noon, I would be able
to split wood outdoors  without  a  shirt  on.   Such  weather  was  not
uncommon  in the Canadian Rockies, but even after nineteen months, I had
not grown indifferent to the unpredictability of this place.  It  helped
to  mark  the  passage  of time -- time which was too slowly healing the
wounds of a life ended under the streets of Detroit back in '98.
 
     The day's first coherent thoughts returned to that night,  as  they
often  did.   Another  morning,  another  day's life drawn on a bankrupt
account.
 
     I didn't deserve to live.  Sitting there alone in the mine, I tried
to  recall  how many men I'd killed since I awoke only that morning. I'd
lost count.  Multiply that uncertainty by five years and it added up  to
a  load  of  guilt  which  could  be expunged by death alone. It was the
right time, the right place to die.
 
     But I did not want to die.
 
     I'd had the better part of an hour to work with the mine  computer.
It  took  little  time  for  me  to  activate one of the conveyers which
carried salt to the surface, half a mile above.   After  completing  the
last  entry  in  Spike Bike's diaries, I prepared my escape.  To lighten
the bike as much as possible, I removed all the heavy armament,  keeping
only  the  grenades and my 9mm Walther automatic.   I then donned a dust
mask and hefted the bike  and  myself  into  one  of  the  hoppers.   At
precisely  9:30  PM,  as  I  had  instructed  the computer, the conveyer
lurched to life and I began the painfully slow ascent.
 
     When I emerged ,  I had but ten minutes to get away.   I  used  the
remaining  grenades  to  blast  the  conveyor tunnel I'd used to escape,
hoping to contain a bit more of the radiation from the impending nuclear
blast.  Then  I  jumped  on  the  bike, pointed it at the main gate, and
sprinted away.  Fortunately, I ran into no  resistance.   Senator  Crisp
must have been successful at evacuating the area.
 
     I got, perhaps,  two miles from the mine entrance when a  brilliant
flash  lit  up  the sky.  A moment later, the pavement buckled violently
and I was thrown into the air.   I landed hard on the broken asphalt.  I
looked  back  towards  the mine, half-expecting to see a mushroom cloud,
but I saw only the glow of scattered fires.  The flash I'd seen had been
merely  the  result  of  a  transformer  explosion.   It was over.  Ames
Morgan's plot had been foiled; what was to have  been  a  major  nuclear
disaster had become a second-rate earthquake.
 
     The bike had landed hard enough to collapse the back wheel.  It was
totaled,  and  I was not far from being totaled myself.  I hadn't broken
any major bones, but my left wrist was sprained, and  the  bullet  wound
I'd  received  in  my  shoulder earlier had long since opened up, oozing
blood down the front of my flak jacket.
 
     I armed the plastique charge in the bike's down  tube,  tossed  the
bike  into  the  culvert, and simply walked away.  When the radio-linked
heart monitor I wore was out of range of the bike's receiver, the charge
went  off, rendering the evidence of my survival to slivers.  Spike Bike
was dead.
 
     In the pandemonium following the blast, it was easy to slip  across
the  border into Ontario.  I had discarded my remaining weapons, keeping
only my Canadian papers and some cash.  Some time early Tuesday morning,
Michael  Resnick,  of  Caroline, Alberta, Canada, checked into a Windsor
hospital and slept for two days.  The doctors did not challenge my story
about  getting  my  injuries  in  a gas line explosion, although I don't
think they believed it, either.  In any case, I was discharged  after  a
few  days,  to  make my way to the only home I had left, taking the only
identity I had left.
 
     Michael Resnick was born April 17, 1965, in Vancouver, B.C. He died
of  severe birth defects on April 18.  He had been my cousin.  His birth
certificate was among the effects my  mother  inherited  when  Michael's
parents  died  in  a  plane  crash  in  '67.   I used it to obtain other
Canadian documents, including a passport and driver's license.
 
     I established the Resnick identity during the years  I  fought  the
Act.  Canadian citizenship made it easier for me to move around north of
the border and helped to cover  Spiro  Bikopoulis's  movements.  To  the
Canadian   government,   Michael  Resnick  was  a  geologist,  a  mining
consultant who spent most of his time in the States.  But that was  just
for  the  benefit  of  the  authorities,  and the bankers and lawyers in
Calgary.  The people of the little town of Caroline,  Alberta,  where  I
kept  my  post office box, didn't  care  what I did for a living.  I was
just a hermit who came down from the mountains only to get  whiskey  and
supplies.
 
     I'd have to go this day, as that jug I'd smashed had been my last.
 
     I didn't get drunk every night.  Why, just two  weeks  before,  I'd
gone  to bed after only a couple of good ones.  Well, maybe three.  It's
not that I needed the booze.  It just helped to  dim  the  stares  of  a
hundred  dead  men.   I  could  handle  the  rest of it, memories of the
flames, the twisted metal, even the blood.  It  was  just  those  damned
_eyes_.
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
 
 ---
[In case you were wondering:
 
In the final installment of "Armageddon in Detroit," Spike removed the
Bomb from his rear rack after he reached the mine's control center.
Why would he do that if he didn't intend to ride the bike any more?
 
How many of you caught on?
 
Fish]
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish
 
 
 
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Path: bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!att!ihlpa!fish
From: [email protected] (Bob Fishell)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: Spike Bike Returns (Part 2 of 8)
Keywords: Fate steps in
Date: 16 Mar 89 22:05:37 GMT
Lines: 117
 
 
     [Synopsis: a  guilt-ridden, alcoholic  Spike  recounts  his  escape
from  the Detroit salt mines the world believes to be Spike Bike's tomb.
Although 19 months have passed since the Detroit cataclysm, the memories
of countless killings haunt him, even in sleep.  Living as the reclusive
Michael Resnick, an identity he has borrowed from a dead relative, in  a
cabin  high  in  the Canadian Rockies, Spike spends his nights trying to
drown his remorse in whiskey.
 
     Today, things are to change...  
 
---
 
     My cabin cannot be reached by auto, even by 4WD,  which  is  why  I
like  it  there; it cuts down on the riffraff. There are two ways to get
there:  on foot or by ATB.  I prefer not to walk.
 
     The bright June sunshine had already melted the night's  snow  from
the trail, leaving only mud, but I was used to that. I rode the mountain
bike effortlessly down the five miles of familiar trail (riding back  up
with  full  panniers  would  be   more taxing) to the Timberline Trading
Post.
 
     At 6500 feet, it was well below the timberline, but it was the last
outpost  of  so-called  civilization  for  the tourists who passed by on
their way to the campgrounds up the mountain.  They were willing, if not
happy,  to  buy  their  groceries, eggs, and notions at the Timberline's
outrageous prices if it would save them the 20-mile haul into  Caroline.
As  for  me,  I got a substantial discount, inasmuch as I half-owned the
place.  My partner, Jack, kept most of the obscene profits in return for
not  involving  me in the day-to-day operations of the establishment.  I
got my eats and supplies wholesale, and I got to use  the   Timberline's
ancient  Jeep  CJ when I had to go into town for stuff Jack didn't sell,
viz. American bourbon.
 
     I pulled into town around 2:00.  I stopped by the  post  office  to
get  the  month's  mail.   It was the usual stuff: bank statements, junk
(even assumed names can't escape mailing lists), and a couple of letters
from my mother, forwarded by my lawyer in Calgary.  My family knew I was
alive, but not where I was.  My lawyer knew where I was, but not  who  I
was, and I paid him enough not to ask.
 
     My next stop was Snuffy's Tavern,  one  of  Caroline's  less-classy
saloons.   Snuffy  kept  in stock for me an extra case of Jack Daniel's,
which was my usual monthly supply.  Stepping into the dark, smoky bar, I
noticed   something   shockingly   new:  a  120-cm,  wide-screen,  high-
definition, surround-sound, plasma-display television set.  I  had  long
ago  forsaken such banalities, but I was  snared by a close-up shot of a
pitcher winding up.  A "C" emblazoned on his jersey told all:  the  Cubs
were  playing,  at  Montreal. What's more, they were actually leading by
four to one in the bottom of the eighth.
 
     I guess it's something about  growing  up  in  Chicago.   The  bums
hadn't  won  so much as a division championship since 1984, but Cub fans
die hard.  I sat down, ordered a beer, and watched the rest of the game,
which,  of course, the Cubs lost on a grand slam homer in the bottom  of
the ninth.
 
     During  the  post-game  wrap-up,  I  observed  that   the   program
originated  from  Chicago's  WGN-TV,  and  was  being  picked up here in
Alberta on a satellite dish.  Snuffy had really gone overboard with this
rig.   I  was  just  about  to  pick  up my whiskey and head back up the
mountain when the program broke to the local news.  An attractive female
announcer deadpanned:
 
     "Two more bikers killed in Oak Lawn.  Details next on  News  Nine."
Typewriter music faded into an inane beer commercial.  I sat down again.
Snuffy reached up to change the channel, but I gripped his arm. He  gave
me  a  startled  look  and  backed  away from the set when he caught the
expression on my face.  After  an  eternity  of  drivel,  the  announcer
returned.
 
     "Two Oak Lawn teens are the latest victims of a hit-and-run driver.
The bodies of sixteen-year-old... "
 
     The screen flashed high-school photos of the two victims, a boy and
a girl. I was struck by the girl's pretty, white teeth and engaging eyes
[at this point, the  reader  will  notice,  the  narrative  descends  to
contrived,  manipulative  hate-mongering,  a  cheap  ploy  to  gain  the
sympathies of the reader and make  his blood boil at the same  time.  --
Fish].  The announcer continued,
 
     " ...the youths were the fifth and sixth  victims  of  what  police
believe  to  be  the  work  of  one  man, seen fleeing the scene of this
morning's tragedy in a late-model Ford mini-van.
 
     "Despite severe federal penalties, it appears, at least in Chicago,
that the streets are still not safe for bicycles."
 
     The newscast switched to local  politics.   The  announcer's  voice
faded  into  the  rest of the background noise: the clinking of glasses,
the murmur of the other patrons, the rickety ventilation fan. I  sat  in
numbed  silence,  no longer watching the screen.  Something familiar and
yet new stirred inside me, a feeling I'd not had in years.
 
     After a while, I got up to leave.  Snuffy called after me:
 
     "Hey, Mike, what about your booze?"
 
     "Pass it around when business picks up.  Tell 'em it's on  me."
 
     It was near nightfall when I got back to my cabin. I sat staring at
the  fire, sober for the first time in nineteen months.  Their eyes were
gone, along with their accusations, their hatred, their fear.  The  sons
of bitches had deserved it.  The old rage blazed inside me, searing away
the guilt, cauterizing the wounds. The only pair of eyes I  saw  in  the
flames were the powder-blue discs of a dead girl, imploring me to avenge
her.
 
     That night, I slept better than I had in years.  The next  morning,
I was on my way to Calgary Airport.
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish
 

Path: bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pacbell!att!ihlpa!fish
From: [email protected] (Bob Fishell)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: Spike Bike Returns (Part 3 of 8)
Keywords: Home is the Hunter...
Date: 23 Mar 89 22:45:15 GMT
Lines: 103
 
 
     [Synopsis:  Spike recounts his thrilling escape  from  the  Detroit
salt  mines  believed  to  be  his tomb. Living as the reclusive Michael
Resnick high  in  the  Canadian   Rockies,  Spike  drinks  himself  into
oblivion  each  night,  trying to forget his bloody past.  But he learns
that a maniac in a mini-van has run down six cyclists  near  his  native
Chicago,  despite  new,  severe federal laws protecting bikies.  Given a
new sense of purpose, Spike forsakes his drinking and boards a plane for
Chicago ...
 ---
 
     The plane made its approach to O'Hare over Lake Michigan, giving me
a  spectacular view of the Loop.  I had not seen this city I once called
home in well over a year.  My thoughts were not, however, of homecoming.
Somewhere  down there was a killer, the kind of man I'd nearly destroyed
myself trying to fight.
 
     The plane landed and I disembarked, going through  customs  without
incident.   I'd  brought  only  an  ordinary  suitcase and a few hundred
dollars in traveler's checks.  I had hoped that what I would  need  here
would be waiting for me in a rented storage shed out on 75th street.
 
     With the aid of my shipping records, the  old  Secret  Service  had
raided several of my caches when they closed in on me, but they couldn't
have known about this place.  The key-card still opened  the  gate,  and
the seal on unit 13-J had not been tampered with.  I'd leased this place
back in the fall of 1998, paying two years' rent  in  advance.  A  musty
smell  greeted  me  as  I  opened the overhead door to reveal the shed's
contents:  A dining room set, a china cabinet, and a large crate marked
 
                             HAMMOND ORGAN
                            HANDLE WITH CARE
 
I moved to the rear of the crate and felt under a  slat  for  the  small
studs  which, activated in the proper sequence, would disarm the charges
that lined the box.  A reassuring chirp from within assured  me  that  I
would  not  be blown to bits, along with everything else inside of fifty
yards, when I pried open the crate.
 
     All was intact, and appeared to be in  good  condition:  A  custom-
built,  titanium-frame  mountain  bike,  a  MAC-10 submachine gun, a .44
magnum, a small-caliber automatic, a case of ammo, another of  grenades.
A  small  box  in  the  corner of the crate held ten thousand dollars in
American greenbacks.  I buttoned down the crate, loaded it and the  rest
of the junk into my rented panel truck, and drove away.
 
     I needed a place to stay.  A hotel would  not  do;  there  was  too
little privacy.  I finally found a tiny furnished apartment to sublet in
Berwyn. A house would have been better, but this would do.  Besides, the
landlord  had  been  happy  to  accept my hard cash for the three months
which remained on the  lease, and didn't ask many questions.
 
     There was little danger of being recognized.   There  had  been  no
close-up  photos  of  Spike  Bike,  and  the  few  photographs  of Spiro
Bikopoulis that had been  in  the  news  did  not  resemble  my  present
appearance.   I'd  grown  a  short, full beard, which, like my hair, was
flecked with gray.  The most familiar news photo of me was of  a  clean-
shaven,  22-year-old  Marine  sergeant  without  much  hair at all.  The
principal threat would come from a chance meeting  with  someone  I  had
known well, but the chances were pretty slim.  My family no longer lived
in the city, and I'd had few close friends during my double life in  the
Act years.
 
     My principal problem was locating my quarry.  I'd  never  had  much
difficulty  finding  trouble  in  the  old  days,  and  the few specific
individuals  I'd gone after, like the  infamous  E. J. Ross,   had  been
easy to find.  But all I could do now was set myself up as bait and hope
the killer would take the hook.
 
     The police would be looking for him, too, but  law  enforcement  in
Post-Corporatist  America  was,  like  everything  else,  in  a state of
disarray.  The economy was slowly recovering, but the country was  in  a
near-depression.   Unemployment  was at its worst levels in sixty years,
civil disorder was widespread, and crime was  rampant.  The  fanatically
loyal  private  security  forces  of  The  Twenty  had  been  completely
disbanded, and their former employees were barred from  public  service.
State  and  municipal  police  departments  were  staffed with eager but
inexperienced young officers and a few old hands who'd been  willing  to
come  back to the job.   They were a dedicated lot, but they were pretty
green.
 
     The Federal Government wouldn't be much help, either, with the  FBI
and  Secret  Service  having  undergone  the same kind of overhaul.  All
things considered, it was a wonder things worked as well  as  they  did.
President  Crisp  and his pals had their hands full. Faced with the most
staggering agenda since the Second World War, I suppose  the  Government
had  more  important  things  to  do  than to devote scarce resources to
protecting a few crazy cyclists.
 
     Nevertheless, it made my  blood  boil.  The  police  were  advising
cyclists  to stay off the streets.  While that would make my job easier,
it wasn't what I'd been all about for five years of my life.  Had I done
any good at all?
 
     I should have stayed in Alberta.
 
     How was I going to find the son of a bitch?
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish
 
 
 
========================================================================
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Path: bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!husc6!rutgers!att!ihlpa!fish
From: [email protected] (Bob Fishell)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: Spike Bike Returns (Part 4 of 8)
Keywords: A new twist...
Date: 30 Mar 89 22:29:55 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 121
 
 
 
     [Synopsis:  Renouncing the solitary, alcoholic life of  a  mountain
hermit,  Spike  returns  to  his  native  Chicago to track down a serial
killer who preys on bicyclists.  Upon arrival, he recovers an old  cache
of weapons and sublets an apartment to use as a base.  His problem is to
locate his quarry while maintaining a  low  profile.   The  World  still
believes  Spike  Bike  is  dead,  and  order  has been restored in post-
Corporatist America.
 
Somewhat...]
 
     It had been a hot, sultry  summer  in  Chicago.   At  9:00  in  the
morning,  the  temperature  had already risen into the mid-eighties, and
the afternoon promised to be positively infernal.  I wondered if it  was
keeping  my adversary indoors.  For three weeks I had been riding nearly
a hundred miles a day, randomly  criss-crossing  through  the  southwest
suburbs where all of the attacks had occurred.
 
     All had been quiet so far.  Motorists passed by without so much  as
a  tight squeeze or even an angry horn.  Riding on city streets was less
unnerving than it had been  even  in  the  pre-Act  days,  back  in  the
Eighties.   Perhaps  the  new  laws were doing some good, or perhaps the
excesses of the Act had shocked these people into better  behavior.   It
was  almost  disappointing.  With the temperature in the nineties nearly
every day, the weight of the heavy weapons I carried made  itself  ever-
apparent. I was particularly aware of it now.
 
     I first saw the lone rider as I headed into what  used  to  be  the
Palos   Hills   Forest  Preserve.   It  was  now  a  maze  of  abandoned
construction sites strewn with rotting building  materials  and  rusting
machinery.    The  roads,  however,  were  pretty  good,  so  it  wasn't
surprising to see somebody training out here, or it wouldn't have  been,
had  not  the  scare  kept so many bikies off the streets.  I decided to
pursue. I hadn't ridden with anyone in years, and I found myself longing
for company.
 
     To my chagrin, whoever  this was didn't seem to want any, or was at
least  playing  hard  to  get.   After  chasing the rider for nearly two
miles, I had closed barely half the  distance  between  us,  and  I  was
panting  and  drenched  with  sweat.  O.K., maybe I was on an overweight
mountain bike.  Maybe I was thirty-five years old, and maybe I had  been
drunk  every  night of my life for over a year and a half. But dammit, I
had still trained every day. I'd once beaten Alexi  Grewal.   I'd  never
had so much trouble trying to catch up with a woman!
 
     She knew I was there.  Several times, she glanced back,  flashed  a
smile,  and  dug in.  It was only after she   had to slow down over some
broken pavement that I finally closed the gap.  When  I  pulled   beside
her, I had to catch my breath for a few beats before I could speak.  She
saved me the trouble.
 
     "Hi! I'm Annie."  She turned her head, and I could see that she was
nearly as wilted as I was from the race.  She was also very pretty.  She
had nice teeth, and the niceness  sort of continued  in  all  directions
from there.
 
     "You can call me Mike."  She  could  have  called  me  anything,  I
wouldn't have minded. "You know, you're pretty fast."
 
     "You're not so bad yourself, considering.  What  have  you  got  in
those  things,  anyway?   You touring, cross-country?"  She indicated my
full panniers.  I liked her, but I didn't want to burden  her  with  the
details  of their contents just now.  I don't think it would have made a
good impression.
 
     "Just day touring, but I like to be prepared.  You know, tools  and
things."
 
     "Tools? Looks more like you've got a whole bike shop in there", she
laughed. "You do any racing? Off-road?"
 
     "On-road, back, oh, ten or twelve years  or  so  ago.   Before  the
Act."
 
     "Gee, you don't look that old."
 
     It was bad enough that she  was  gorgeous.   Did  she  have  to  be
ingratiating, too? "Chalk it up to clean living. You race?"
 
     "I just started this year.   Got  a  crit  Sunday.   Registration's
still open. You wanna come?"
 
     "I'd love to," -- and I would -- "but I've got some things  I  have
to  do."   Which  I did, and it was something I was beginning to  really
regret.  Riding here beside my new-found companion, I  felt  more  alive
than I had in years.  I'd forgotten what living had been like.  I'd been
close to no one, lonely.
 
     Damn, she was pretty.  She was young,  twenty,  twenty-two,  maybe.
Long,  light  brown hair streamed behind her from underneath her helmet.
She wore black lycra shorts and a light jersey, much as I  did,  but  on
her  it  looked  a  lot more interesting. She was tall.  I think "leggy"
might be the word, but there was no awkwardness, at least, certainly not
in  the  way she rode her bike.  I thought she might be holding back for
me and my fat tires and my grey whiskers, and I began to wonder  if  she
hadn't  purposefully  allowed  me  to  catch her.  I got the feeling she
could break away at any  time, and there wouldn't be  much  I  could  do
about it.  I was glad she didn't.
 
     I found myself thinking what a beautiful day it was.  For the first
time  in many, many years, I remembered why I had started cycling in the
first place.  There was her, the warm sunshine, the rush  of  wind,  the
singing  of the wheels underneath.  I momentarily forgot what I had come
here to do.  Just for a minute.  It was a minute too long.  Too late,  I
heard  the  roar of the engine, the howl of the tires.  I jerked my head
around and he was on us, close enough for me to  see  the  bugs  on  his
radiator.   A  blue Ford mini-van.  I had nothing in my hand but a water
bottle.
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
 
[Yes, she's beautiful.
 
No, I'm not going to put any cheap, gratuitous sex in this story.  
 
 -- Fish]
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish
 

Path: bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!att!ihlpa!fish
From: [email protected] (Bob Fishell)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: Spike Bike Returns (Part 5 of 8)
Keywords: surprises
Date: 7 Apr 89 14:49:22 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 125
 
 
 
     [Synopsis: A serial  killer  stalks  Chicago,  preying  on  hapless
cyclists who have only recently begun venturing out onto the roads after
the repeal of the Bicycle Act of 1992.  Spike's outrage brings  him  out
of  his  self-imposed  exile,  to secretly return to his native city and
destroy this menace.  Recovering an old cache of weapons, Spike searches
for  the  killer  day  after  day  without success.  On one such day, he
encounters the beautiful Annie, an  aspiring  bike  racer.   Immediately
smitten,  feeling  the  weight  of  his  long, lonely years as an outlaw
vigilante, Spike momentarily forgets his mission.  Could this be a fatal
mistake?
 
Nahhh.]
 
 ---
 
     The deadly blue van was nearly on us.  There was no time to get  to
the  MAC-10,  not  even to the little Walther that I always had close at
hand.  There was no time even to warn Annie of  the  danger.  There  was
time for only one act.
 
     Back when I was racing, I'd go up against guys who  were  a  little
short  on manners, particularly in the closing laps of a criterium.  One
learns to expect some  aggressive  maneuvers  in  such  situations,  but
occasionally  somebody  would cross the line between competitiveness and
sheer malevolence.  Once in a while, somebody would bump you a  bit  too
hard,  with  the obvious intent of making you crash and perhaps take out
some of the  pack with you.  I developed  techniques  for  dealing  with
these  guys,  an  unusual blend of cycling skills and Aikido.  If a move
was executed properly, you got the guy out of the  race  without  taking
anybody  else  down.   It  was  such  a  technique  I  applied to Annie,
regretting that I had no time to explain.
 
     Fortunately there was water and soft mud  in  the  ditch  that  ran
along  the  side  of the road.  Annie's wheels hit the high curb and she
went sprawling, sliding down the muddy bank on her side.  I cut just  in
front of her and bunny-hopped the curb an instant before the van's tires
slammed into it.  A hubcap came loose and rolled past me as I fought  to
keep the bike upright on the slippery surface, groping for my automatic.
The van swerved and fishtailed for a block or so, then accelerated  away
before  I  could  get off a shot.  Remembering I wasn't alone, I quickly
tucked the little Walther back in its holster.
 
     I turned my attention to Annie.  She was fishing herself out of the
muddy  ditch,  uttering  some  decidedly  unbecoming monosyllables.  She
turned to me.  As she stood, I could see that she was  strikingly  tall,
nearly  a match for my own 6'2" frame.  She removed her helmet and shook
her head to get some of the big pieces of mud out of her long  hair.   I
waited  for  her  to speak, more afraid of what she might say than I had
been of the marauding van.
 
     "Are you OK, Mike?  What happened? That van..."
 
     She had seen it!  Thank all the gods and  all  the  lucky,  twinkly
stars  on a Rocky Mountain night, she had seen it!  She would understand
why she'd just been run into a filthy ditch by a guy she'd known for all
of five minutes.
 
     "Oh, my god!" she exclaimed, "that was him, wasn't it?  The guy  on
the  news,  the one who's been...  Oh, Mike, if you hadn't been here..."
She crossed the distance between us, put her long,  willowy arms  around
my  neck, and kissed me.  She was covered with mud, and she was smearing
it all over me.  It could have been tar and feathers, and it would  have
been all right with me.
 
     After a delicious, brief eternity, she broke away.  We took  a  few
minutes to clean some of the mud off her bike, then rode together as far
as the nearest convenience store. Neither of us  said  much.   She  kept
giving me puzzled glances.  I could not take my eyes from her.
 
     "We have to call the police," she remarked, "they'll want  to  talk
to us."
 
     She was right. Well, half right, anyway.  My Resnick identity might
hold  up, but then again, it might not.  In any case, I didn't have time
to get involved in a police investigation, particularly one conducted by
young, enthusiastic, and somewhat inept detectives.
 
     "No, _you_ have to call the police.  They might want to talk to  me
about some things I don't have time to explain right now."
 
     "Are you in some kind of trouble, Mike?"
 
     "Let's just say I have my reasons for not wanting to get involved."
 
     "But you are involved, aren't you? There's something odd about you.
I  know  you  from somewhere.  You had something in your hand when I got
out of the ditch.  You didn't want me to see it.  That was a gun, wasn't
it?"
 
     "It was just..." Dammit,  I  didn't  like  lying  to  her.  "Annie,
please, let's not go into that.  It's better that you don't ask. Listen,
you call the police, you tell them what happened.  Tell them to get that
hubcap back there, it came off his van."
 
     "What do I tell them about you?"
 
     "Tell them what you have to.  Tell them I was afraid."
 
     "No.  Not you.  I don't think you scare easily.  But..."
 
     "Annie, I have to go."
 
     "Will I see you again?"
 
     "Count on it."
 
     I turned the bike around and sprinted away.   I  looked  back  only
once,  to  see  her  standing  there, looking after me.  I decided to go
home.  The killer, having been foiled, would  likely  not  do  any  more
hunting today.
 
     My heart was doing flip-flops.  I'd come here on a  mission  and  I
had  failed.   But  I'd been in the right place at the right time.  If I
had not been there, Annie might have been dead.  Yet if  Annie  had  not
been  there,  the killer would be dead, and it would be over.  But then,
I'd not have  met  her,  would  I?   Life  was  beginning  to  get  very
complicated.
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish
 
 

From: [email protected] (Bob Fishell)
Subject: Spike Bike Returns (Part 6 of 8)
Keywords: Smitten Spike
Date: 13 Apr 89 21:28:41 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 101
 
 
     [Synopsis: Spike has come out of retirement, secretly returning  to
his native Chicago to track down a serial killer who runs down cyclists.
After recovering a cache of weapons, he stalks  the  streets  day  after
day,  eventually  meeting  the  beautiful Annie, an aspiring bike racer.
Smitten and feeling the weight of years of loneliness, Spike  is  caught
momentarily  off  guard by the marauding van he has been seeking. Thanks
to some quick thinking and reflexes on Spike's part, he and Annie barely
escape  slaughter,  but the van and its homicidal driver get away before
Spike can get off a shot.  Grateful for her life, Annie embraces  Spike,
complicating his situation further. Wary of the police, Spike leaves her
at the scene, conscious that she knows he is concealing something.]
 
 ---
 
     I returned to my small Berwyn apartment feeling exhausted and torn.
Too  much  had  happened today.  My head swam, and I longed for a drink,
just one little belt to put things back in order.  I  knew,  of  course,
that  diving back into a bottle could only make matters worse. I settled
for a hot shower instead.  Letting the water run for a long time, I felt
the tension slowly leave my muscles to mingle with the soap and mud that
ran down the  drain.   Remembering  how  I'd  gotten  so  muddy,  I  was
reluctant to wash it off.
 
     I considered my feelings.  The rage which had driven me for so many
years  was  still  there.   The  image  of  the  blue  mini-van escaping
unscathed incensed me.  If only I'd had my senses about me.  I played it
over  in my mind, how I would feint to the outside, then cut back beside
the van, shoot out the tires, and finish it off  with  a  grenade.   Two
granades.   Hell,  I  wanted  to shred it and its driver into pieces too
small to identify. I wanted to do it twice.  This much was familiar, and
almost comforting.
 
     But there was a lot more.  Annie.  I'd spent, maybe, twenty minutes
with  her.   I  didn't  know  anything  about  her,  her background, her
circumstances, not even her full name, yet I could not get her out of my
mind.  It made no sense. In my situation, I shouldn't even consider such
matters; it couldn't work out with any woman, yet that knowledge made no
difference in how I felt.  I had to see her again.
 
     That was still not the end of it.  I'd been caught off guard today;
I  nearly died because of it.  This gave me a profound sense of failure,
but even this was not new.  I'd blown it before. What was new was that I
was  afraid.   I  was  not  afraid  of death, but of life.  For a brief,
fleeting moment today, I had forgotten everything, forgotten who  I  was
and  all  that  had happened in my life, and I had _lived_.  And enjoyed
being alive.  There was no room for that feeling in the  context  of  my
existence.   Nevertheless,  I  wanted  more. I wanted to _live_, whereas
before I had wanted only not to die.  It scared the hell out of me.
 
     I shut off the shower when the hot water  ran  out  and  collapsed,
soaking  wet,  on the sofa bed.  I awoke many hours later, shivering and
ravenous.  I crossed to the  tiny  kitchen   and  extracted  a  leftover
chicken  leg  from  a  paper  bucket  in  the  refrigerator. Wolfing the
drumstick, I padded back to the bathroom to throw on a robe.
 
     Returning to the main room with a Coke and the rest of the  chicken
bucket,  I flicked on the tube to catch the rest of the Cubs game.  They
blew it in the top of the eighth, losing eight to four, which would back
them into a  tie for fourth place, four games below .500, and eleven and
a half games  behind the first-place Mets. But it was only July.  Things
could get better.
 
     I was finishing off a serving of congealed mashed potatoes when the
nine  o'clock  newscast  came on.  I dropped the mess in my lap when the
screen cut to a shot of Annie.
 
     "This Orland Park biker narrowly escaped death  today  as  the  van
killer strikes again.  Details next on News Nine."
 
     After an interminable spate of commercials, the newscast got  under
way.   There  was an interview with Annie, who recounted the events that
had transpired earlier,  save  that  she  made  no  mention  of  another
cyclist.   All  too  soon,  the  camera  cut  away  to  the young police
lieutenant in charge of  the  case.  He  bungled  his  way  through  the
interview,  commenting  that  they'd  recovered  a  "valuable  piece  of
evidence" from the scene.  I presumed he meant  that  flattened  hubcap,
which  wouldn't  tell  them diddly-squat.  They already had the make and
model of the van. They were no  closer  to  bagging  this  bastard  than
they'd been when I was stinking drunk in my mountain cabin.
 
     I found out a little bit about Annie, though.  Her  full  name  was
Ann  Chernak.  She  was  twenty-two  years  old, unmarried(!), a nursing
student at Loyola. She also looked  just  fantastic  with  the  mud  and
sweat washed off her and her hair combed and set and large hoop earrings
and just the right amount of makeup around her eyes.
 
     I sat with a lapfull of mashed potatoes through a  re-run  of  "The
Twilight  Zone" and half the late movie before I cleaned up the mess and
went to bed.  I had checked the phone  book  for  "Chernaks"  and  found
there were eight entries, but no "Anns" or 'A's, listed for Orland Park.
I thought of contacting Loyola, as if they'd tell me anything, but  then
I  remembered she was going to race on Sunday, two days from now.  There
couldn't be too many bike races in the area. I hadn't seen one in  ages.
Come to think of it...
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpa!fish
 
 
 
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Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: Spike Bike Returns (Part 7 of 8)
Keywords: Revelations
Date: 21 Apr 89 15:02:32 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 113
 
 
 
     [Synopsis: Spike has secretly come out  of retirement to track down
a  serial killer in a marauding blue mini-van.  Searching for the killer
in a remote area, Spike encounters the beautiful Annie Chernak,  and  is
distracted by her allure.  He momentarily forgets his mission, and it is
at this moment the killer emerges.  Spike and Annie barely  escape,  and
the  killer  speeds  away  unscathed.   Shaken  by  the  incident, Spike
hurriedly departs the scene.  Examining his feelings, he discovers he is
badly  smitten with Annie, and for the first time in years he is afraid.
He knows he must find the killer before he strikes again.  He also knows
that he must once again find Annie...
 
 ---
 
     All day Saturday I criss-crossed  the  southwest  suburbs,  ranging
from  Darien and Willow Springs  all the way to Frankfort and New Lenox.
There was no sign of a blue Ford mini-van, nor any sign of Annie.  Well,
if  she knew anything about racing, she would be training lightly today.
I did spend  a little extra time patrolling the side streets  of  Orland
Park,  but  I  reminded  myself  that I'd come here for a reason, and it
wasn't to meet women.
 
     Where could he be?  _Who_ could he be? I wondered what sort of mind
the  killer posessed.  He wasn't like any of the brutes I'd faced during
the  Act  years.   They  had  come  from  various  social  and  economic
backgrounds,  but they were united by a common trait: they'd had no real
scruples; the Act had merely removed the thin deterrent  of  punishment.
They  were  predictable,  and that had made them relatively easy to deal
with.
 
     This guy was something different. Cyclists were  now  protected  by
laws  stiffer than those of the pre-Act years.  Shocked by the brutality
of the nineties,  Americans  had  affected  a  kinder  attitude  towards
bikies.   The  killer was not, therefore, merely a product of his times.
He was an abberation, a psychopath, unpredictable.
 
     All I knew was that he struck his victims several weeks apart.  His
attack  on Annie and me yesterday was the first he'd attempted since the
incident that had first brought him to my attention, nearly a month ago.
Would  it  be  weeks  before  he struck again?  Or would he hit somebody
today?  Yesterday had been the first time he'd missed.  Maybe he had  an
itch to scratch, and I'd put it out of reach.  Maybe I'd gotten him mad.
 
     In any case, I didn't think he would emerge today.  I  would  watch
the news later to find out, but I had some things to do yet.  I'd looked
up a couple of bike shops in the Yellow Pages, and I was pleased to  see
that  the  old  Oak Park Cyclery was still in -- or back in -- business.
It was on my way home, so I stopped in just before closing time.
 
     It wasn't as I  remembered  it.   The  bicycle  industry  had  been
utterly  destroyed during the Act years, so the inventory was skimpy and
unimpressive.  Most of the new bikes were from  places  like  Korea  and
Malaysia,  although  a  few  European  and  Japanese companies had begun
dipping a toe into  the  American  market  once  again.   I  didn't  see
anything  I  liked, though, so I poked my head  into the repair area and
asked the greasy-nailed guy back there if  he  had  anything  nice  that
wasn't on the sales floor.  He did.
 
     It sat in the corner of the shop, a used Pinarello  built  up  with
Campy  Super Record.  It was scratched up and at least 20 years old, but
it had the right sized frame.  The guy said I could have it cheap,  only
$1800,  since  it  had  sew-up  tires, and nobody used them any more.  I
pondered whether $1800 was cheap, but there was quite a bit of inflation
these days, and it was the only decent machine he had.
 
     He let me take it out around  the  block  for  a  test  ride.   The
handlebar  stem was  too  short for me, but I could live with it, and it
cornered well.  I told him I'd take it and a pair of  cleats,  which  he
threw  in  free  of  charge.  I think he knew he was gouging me, and the
shoes made him feel a little less guilty -- particularly when I paid him
with nice, crisp, fifty-dollar bills.  I removed my shades for the first
time when I paid for the bike.  The  young  mechanic-salesman  (-owner?)
looked  at  me  for  a moment and remarked, "You've been in here before,
right?"
 
     "Not in years", I told him.
 
     "You look familiar.  Can't place you, though."
 
     I thought of something Annie had said yesterday. "Lot of that going
around,"  I returned, "but I'm sure I don't know you."
 
     "It'll come to me."
 
     He turned his attention to scribbling out a receipt, after  happily
counting  through  the  wad  of greenbacks I'd passed him.  This was the
first time I took a good look at the large poster which  hung  over  the
cash  register.   I  recognized  the  photo.   It  was taken at the 1991
Nationals.  A sweat-drenched, road-rashed  bike  racer  held   a  trophy
triumphantly  above  his head.  A caption was emblazoned on a wide black
stripe across the bottom of the poster. It read:
 
                         Spiro Anton Bikopoulis
                              1965 - 1998
 
     He noticed my looking at it.
 
     "Oh, yeah, you want a Spike Bike  poster?  You  get  one  with  the
bike."
 
     "Uh, no, no thanks."
 
     "Yeah.  I suppose everybody's got one of those by now."
 
     Hell,  it wasn't a very good picture.  And I'd only  won  the  damn
race on a disqualification.
 
                          * TO BE CONTINUED *
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpy!fish
 
 
 
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Path: sousa!schlep.dec.com!jfcl.dec.com!decvax!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!att!ihlpb!ihlpy!fish
From: [email protected] (Bob Fishell)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: Spike Bike Returns (Conclusion)
Keywords: The Finale!
Date: 27 Apr 89 21:27:29 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 331


                           (Part 8 of 8)

     [Synopsis:  Spike has secretly come out of retirement, returning to
his  native  Chicago to track down a serial killer.  He meets the lovely
Annie Chernak and, distracted and smitten, barely saves her and  himself
from  death as the killer chooses that moment to attack. He leaves Annie
to deal with the police, but knows he must see her  again.   Remembering
that  she'd mentioned a race, Spike procures a road bike, hoping to join
in.  At the bike shop, he is surprised to see a large poster of  himself
on display.  In many ways, Spike is beginning to realize how long he has
ben out of touch with the world...]

 ---

     I didn't know.  Mom's letters had said nothing about  it,  and  the
papers  and  newscasts I'd seen lately had mentioned little about me.  I
thought they'd still be looking for me in  every  state  in  the  Union.
Instead,  I find out I've been pardoned, and that there's some statue of
me turning green and collecting bird droppings  in  the  middle  of  the
Detroit river.

     Of course, they thought I was dead.  Had  they  known  I  survived,
would  they  have been so magnanimous?  Or if they'd known how I skimmed
profits from Bikopoulis Imports to finance my  operations,  or  how  I'd
cheated  on  my  taxes  because of it?  Would the Canadian Government be
pleased to know I was impersonating somebody who died  when  I  was  two
months old, and that I'd broken just as many Canadian tax laws, and that
I still went around packing a 9mm automatic everywhere I went?

     It occurred to me that there might be certain advantages to staying
dead.   It also occurred to me that I should finish my business here and
get my ass back to Alberta before somebody took a really  good  look  at
me.  The  trouble was that my business wasn't entirely under my control,
and there was more of it than there'd been when I got here.

     The bike shop guy had told me there was only one nearby  race  that
he knew about.  It was a 4-corners criterium being held in an industrial
park outside Willow Springs. It had to be the one.  I rode the Pinarello
down  from  Berwyn and arrived at the registration desk about 8:00 AM. I
didn't know how I was going to bluff my way in,  but  it  turned  out  I
didn't have to.

     USCF was defunct.  The Bicycle Act had put an end to all  organized
bike  racing in America by 1993, and the organization disbanded.  It had
been in disarray even before then.  The leadership had  deteriorated  to
an entrenched cabal of squabbling, imperious men who sat around thinking
up  silly-ass  rules   that   were   as   inequitable   as   they   were
incomprehensible.  It was the reason I left the circuit in '92.

     This competition, however,  was a far cry from the old days.   Like
all  races  now,  it  was  an  open affair, sponsored by local clubs and
businesses. There was no license required, just ten bucks and a  release
form.   There were only two divisions each for men and women, "Beginner"
and "Experienced," which means you'd finished  a  couple  of  "Beginner"
races  without  crashing  or  going  off the back.  Even at that, nobody
checked; you just signed one sheet or the other  and  got  your  number.
The  only thing they really worried about were unroadworthy bikes -- and
from what I'd seen of the  bikes  that  were  currently  available,  the
concern  was  justified.  I had to get my bike checked out by one of the
officials, who turned out to be the greasy-nailed guy who'd sold me  the
bike yesterday.

     "Oh, hi, Mister, ah, Renwick?"

     "Resnick."

     "Well, I guess this bike'll check out."

     "I would hope so."

     "You know, I'm still thinking.  It'll come to me, I never forget  a
face."

     "I suppose."

     "Well, good luck."

     "Thanks.  Say, when do the women race?  You know a tall gal,  light
brown hair, kind of thin, name's..."

     "Annie. Ain't she an eyeful?  Yeah, the women's 'E' race starts  at
9:30,  she should be there.  She's pre-registered, so she probably isn't
here yet.  She'll win.  Hell, she could win the men's division. You know
Annie?"

     "Met her the other day. Say, she going with anybody?"

     "No, no boyfriend. But a lotta men tried, and  a  lotta  men  died.
Man, you _really_ need some luck."

     "Thanks. I'll keep it in mind."

     I pinned my number to the back of my jersey and loped over to watch
the  men's  'B'  race,  the event just before Annie's.  It was a comical
affair.  There were numerous crashes, though none were serious. The race
officials did a good job of clearing the course of stragglers who'd gone
off the back and obviously had no chance of catching  the  pack.   These
kids  had heart, though. It brought back fond memories of how things had
once been, before everything went to hell.  I had to smile.  Damn it,  I
was  beginning  to enjoy myself again.  Damn it to hell, I was beginning
to like this place.  Damn...

     "Mike!" That voice! "Mike, you came! You're _entered?_"

     She approached, as gracefully as anybody can walk with  cleats  on,
and placed a hand on my arm.  Her smile was dazzling.  I noticed for the
first time that one of her eyebrows was just a little crooked.  It  made
her  face  all  the more endearing. She looked delicious. She had looked
delicious with mud all over her.

     "Mike," she lowered her voice, "Mike I didn't tell them  about  you
the  other  day.   I  said he ran me off the road, that I steered myself
into the ditch.  I guess I  owe  you  a  lot,  and  I  know  you've  got
something  to hide. That's why I didn't tell them about you. But  you've
got to tell me about it.  Can we talk after the race?"

     "You can count on it. I..."

     An announcement pierced the air.  God, they were still using  those
same damned bullhorns; some things hadn't changed.

     "That's me.  I have to get to the starting line.  Wish me luck!"

     "Good..."  She draped her  arms  around  my  neck  and  kissed  me.
"...luck."

     The women's 'E' race was a 40-km criterium which,  I  learned,  was
the  standard  distance for most events these days.  Power would be more
of an advantage than savvy would be in  such  a  competition.  That  was
well-suited   to  the  times,  as  few  aspiring  racers  had  any  real
experience.  It made me wonder how I'd do in my own  race.  I  had  done
little  road  biking  in  the  last  eight  years, and the maneuvers I'd
mastered on my ATBs were probably not useful here.  Breaking away from a
pack  isn't  the  same  as dodging a marauding pickup truck while you're
cocking the receiver of a MAC-10 with your teeth.  I  was  still  pretty
strong,  but  some  of  these  kids looked strong, too.  I would have my
hands full.

     Annie was quite at home here.  She stayed near  the  front  of  the
pack  for  much of the race, then made her move when a group of three of
the stronger women broke away.  She cut to the outside and  effortlessly
ran them down from a hundred yards back.  By the last couple of laps, it
was evident she would win with ease.   Just  before  the  lap  gun,  she
broke away, easily outdistancing the pair of riders closest to her.  The
gap steadily widened as she sprinted up the long  back  stretch  of  the
3.2-km course.

     It was the trick of a practiced eye that caught it.  I saw a  light
blue  blur  on  the edge of my perception, and automatically homed in on
it.  It was _him_!  He roared  down  a  road  parallel  to  the  course,
watching out his side window for an opening.  He would get his chance at
the cross street near the end of the back stretch, a mile or so distant.
The only rider who'd be there to meet him was Annie.

     I jumped on the Pinarello, cursing as I lost precious  milliseconds
starting  a  cleat  in  the  unfamiliar  pedals.   I  knocked  down  two
spectators as I jumped onto the course, and two of the  women  who  were
trying  in  vain to catch Annie collided as I darted into their path.  I
was going to make them scratch  this race,  but  that  wasn't  important
now.  In the clear, I stood up and sprinted for all I was worth.

     Only slowly did the gap between me and Annie narrow.  The  menacing
blue van was at the end of the parallel street, making a screeching left
turn onto the common cross  street  that  would  connect  him  with  the
course.   I  tried  to call out to Annie,  but she couldn't hear me over
the commotion on the sidelines.  I could not reach her in time.  I would
have only one chance.

     I'd brought the little Walther along almost as a good  luck  charm.
I  hadn't  intended  to  race  with  it, and I was feeling it now as the
holster dug into my side under my jersey.  I drew it,  flicked  off  the
safety,  and  pulled back the receiver in the hollow between my chin and
neck. I tried to steady it before me  as  my  eyes  swam  and  my  lungs
burned.

     Annie rounded the corner and accelerated into  the  bottom  stretch
just  as  the  van  smashed  through  the barricades.  The hay bales and
sawhorses slowed him down just a little, enough time for Annie to to get
out  of  the line of fire.  I tried to center the sights on the driver's
window. I squeezed off one shot, two, three, nothing.  Four,  five,  the
van  swerved  slightly,  kept  to  its  course, picked up speed.  Annie,
Annie, SPRINT, dammit! I fired off the sixth shot and  the  side  window
shattered.   One  more  shot, then I kept pulling the trigger, but there
were no more cartridges.

     I knew I hit him.  I could have sworn that his head jerked  to  the
side  as  I  squeezed  off  the  last  round.   The driver was no longer
visible, but the van continued to gain on Annie. I tried to scream,  but
I had no breath. NO! My god, if only I could reach her!  If only I could
take her place! I could not watch, yet I could not look away.   Annie...
The  van closed to within a few feet of her rear wheel, but then lurched
abruptly, left the roadway, turned over on its side, and crashed into  a
wall.  A moment later, it exploded into a ball of orange flame and black
smoke.  Only then did Annie turn around to see what was happening.

     You won, Annie.

     After an eternity, I took a breath.  I pulled off  the  course  and
got  away   as  fast  as I could.  There would be police here very soon,
with questions to which I had no answer.

 ---
                               _Epilogue_

     I waited behind the rusting carcass of an earth-mover as I  watched
the  distant  rider  approach.   I  stepped into view when she was close
enough to recognize me.

     "I hoped you'd be here." She said.

     "Glad you could make it."

     She crossed to me, raised a hand to touch my face.  It was a moment
before she spoke.

     "When I was a little girl, I had  a  bike.   It  was  just  an  old
clunker,  but  I  loved  it.  I  rode  it  everywhere.  Then, when I was
fifteen, my father took it away.  I didn't understand. I cried for days.
I didn't cry like that again until I heard you were dead."

     Tears welled in her eyes.  She fell into my arms,  kissed  me,  and
held  her  embrace  for  a long time. Neither of us said anything in the
minutes or hours that passed.  Finally she drew back.

     "How long have you known?"

     "Since you left the other day. I wasn't sure at first, but  when  I
saw you again at the race, I knew. I think some of the others do, too."

     "The police?"

     "They know somebody rode onto the track and shot him. Nobody  would
tell  them  anything  else. Only Dutch -- he's the guy who owns the bike
shop -- and I know your name, or the one you're using.  Dutch  destroyed
your race registration.  We didn't tell them.  They didn't need to know.
Oh, Spike, you got him.  That's all that's important."

     "Another dead man.  Another pair of eyes.  They all watch  me  from
somewhere, you know."

     "You did what you had to do.  You did it for all of  us.   What  of
the living Spike?  What about us?  What about _my_ eyes?"

     "They're lovely."

     I pulled her to me and kissed her again.  After a while, I  let her
go.

     "You know I have to leave, Annie."

     "Where will you go?"

     "I can't say."

     "Take me with you?"

     "I'm getting  old, Annie.  I couldn't keep up with you."

     I turned away and walked toward the mountain bike. It was no longer
loaded  down  with  packs  and oddly bulging panniers.  There was no C-4
packed into the frame any more.  For the first time in  an  eternity,  I
didn't  need  any  of  that stuff.  The bike felt light.  Riding away, I
realized that I felt light too, younger  by  the  minute,  and  _alive_.
What in the hell was I doing?

     She hadn't got more than half a  mile down the road. I  chased  her
down in less then a minute.  I tried to hide my shortness of breath.

     "You ever been to Alberta, Annie?"

                              * THE END *
 ---

                               Postscript

     Some time ago I read an essay by someone very good, Harlan Ellison,
I  think.  He explains that his stories often tell themselves; he writes
them down almost as though they have been dictated by an  unseen  other.
Occasionally,  a  story  willcome  out  far differently from what he had
planned.  In my own experience, "Spike Bike Returns" was such a story.

     I had always planned for the original Spike Bike series to end in a
final  confrontation  of Good and Evil, with Spike bringing order to his
world  only  though  the  act  of  supreme  sacrifice.   As  the  series
developed, however, Spike became more than a comic-book character to me.
I grew fond of him, and in the end, I couldn't bear to kill him off.   I
gave  him  a way out, which an astute reader will have surmised from the
little clues I left in the closing paragraphs of  Spike's  narrative  in
"Armageddon in Detroit."

     "Spike Bike Returns" begins where that story left off,  but  beyond
getting  Spike out of the mine and safely into exile in Canada, I had no
idea where to take the story from there.  With the fall  of  Corporatism
and  the  demise  of the Bicycle Act of 1992, the central premise of the
original series was gone. I had deliberately left some loose ends at the
end,  but  I had only a vague idea how to develop them into a story. The
serial killer  idea  seemed  like  a  good  way  to  get  Spike  out  of
retirement,  but  beyond  that, I had no idea where the story would lead
me.

     Yet lead me it did.  Every spring,  my thoughts turn to two things,
cycling and people like Annie.  Once I had the idea for her character, I
realized that the loose ends would have to  wait.   The  story  diverged
from  the  old  blood and fire and became a tale of a man's rebirth, his
reconciliation with life and humanity.  To be sure, Spike deals death in
the  end,  but  it is for the sake of life and love, not destruction and
hatred.

     Much of this story was written in one sitting.  It took me as  much
by  surprise  as  it  did  any  of  you,  I  assure you.  If it was less
bloodthirsty than what you'd come to expect  from  Spike  Bike,  perhaps
it's  because I wrote it early in the year, before I've had an unhealthy
dose  of  hostility  at  the  unclean  hands  of  the  local   motorhead
population.   Nevertheless,  I  was  quite pleased with the story.  I've
been making up stories for as long as I can remember  and  writing  them
down  since  I  was  nine  years  old.  Of all the stuff I've written in
recent  years,  "Spike  Bike  Returns"  has  been  the  most  gratifying
personally.  If it wasn't what you expected, I hope you liked it anyway.

     Will Spike Bike be back?  This time, I honestly don't know  myself.
There  are  those  loose  ends  I mentioned, but at the moment, Spike is
happy and healed.  I'd like to give him and Annie a little privacy for a
while.  Of  course,  it's  early  in  the year yet.  I had an unpleasant
encounter with a gravel truck last Saturday; there will  undoubtably  be
similar  incidents  in  the  months  to come.  It's possible I will need
Spike again before the summer is out.
-- 
 __
/  \				Bob Fishell
\__/				att!ihlpy!fish

Path: sousa!shlump.nac.dec.com!decwrl!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnewsd!spike
From: [email protected] (Bob Fishell)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: The Adventures of Spike Bike: The Last Race (1 of 2)
Keywords: The _unseen_ Spike Bike adventure
Date: 28 Jul 89 15:27:51 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 177


By now, most of you have heard that the Spike Bike stories I posted
to netnews last year were accepted for publication by _Cyclist_
magazine.  You've also heard that _Cyclist_ went out of business.

Oh, well....

In any case, I am still determined to get the stories into print.
Once you've seen yourself written up in slick paper, it goes to
your head.  I had intended to publish the series myself, making
it available to Spike's fans.  The story which follows was written
as a sort of carrot to get people to send in for the booklet.
When I succeeded in selling the series to a magazine, I abandoned
the idea of a limited publication, and I decided to post this story
as a way of saying thanks to all the people who encouraged me to
develop the series.

Regrettably, this was shortly after I was unceremoniously dumped
onto this wonderful, new netnews system with its "enhanced"
software.  As  result, most sites didn't get the article.
"The Last Race" opens in Spike's hospital room a couple of
days after his escape from the Detroit salt mines.  The story,
however, is set in the summer of 1993, the year it all began...


                              Spike Bike:
                             The Last Race

                           by Robert Fishell

     Grey November light poured through the window of the stark hospital
room  in which I lay recovering from exhaustion and a bullet wound in my
shoulder.  My body, if not  my  spirit,  felt  much  better  today.  The
doctors told me I could go home soon.

     Home.  I didn't know where that was any more.  As Michael  Resnick,
I kept a two-room cabin in the Canadian Rockies, but it was no more home
than this grey hospital ward.  It would be a place to hide,  perhaps  to
heal, but it would not be home.

     It was over.  I would kill no  more.   This  purpose  gone,  I  had
nothing  left but memories that even now had begun to haunt me.  How did
it start?  What was the turning point?  Why had I  stayed?   Why  did  I
kill, and who'd been the first?  I remember...

 ---
                                 _one_

     I was no longer racing in the spring of 1993. I got my USCF license
revoked  after the 1992 Olympic trials following an altercation with one
of the officials.  Disgusted as I was with the  organization,  I  didn't
appeal the suspension.

     As things turned out, the incident was moot.  The Corporatists  had
taken  control  of  the Congress and passed the Bicyle Act of 1992.  The
Act prohibited all states and municipalities from spending any resources
on  bicycle  facilities, so it was no longer possible to hold USCF races
on public roads.  There were still a few track events,  but  those  fell
apart  when  most of the big names fled to Europe, Canada, and Australia
to continue their racing careers. The little fish in the lower Cats were
left in the lurch.  In the spring of 1993, USCF formally disbanded.

     The full impact of the  Act  had  yet  to  be  felt,  though.   Few
cyclists  took the "at own risk" clause seriously, since most of us felt
that we'd been taking that risk for years, anyway.   Motorist  animosity
toward  cyclists  had grown slowly but steadily throughout the eighties,
but most of  the  skirmishes  were  name-calling  contests  that  hadn't
resulted in any real violence.

     As such, it wasn't surprising that the Chicago area  clubs  decided
to  hold  the  Kay-Five unofficially.  Most of the course was on little-
used farm roads in Kane and Kendall counties, where there  wouldn't   be
much of a threat from autos anyway.  Or so we thought.

     The Kane-Kendall Korn Kountry Klassic, which everybody  called  the
Kay-Five,  was  a  120-km road race held every year on the Sunday before
Memorial Day.  It was the first race I'd won as a Cat 2, and  I  won  it
twice  after  that  before I achieved National status.  I still held the
course record.  Now that my licensing problems were no longer a concern,
I  allowed  myself  to be coaxed out of retirement by my old friend Dave
Karpinski.  It seemed there was a score to settle.

     In 1992 the Kay-Five was won,  amid  considerable  controversy,  by
Scott  Currey of the Winnetka Wheels.  Currey purportedly won by jamming
a water bottle  into  my  ex-teammate  Jerry  Smies's  spokes  as  Smies
overtook  him  on  the last  stretch.  The only witnesses near enough to
actually see it were Currey's teammates, who  kept  their  mouths  shut.
Jerry went down at over 30 MPH and got himself busted up pretty good.

     Everybody knew Currey's reputation, so most of  the  guys  believed
Jerry's  story.   The  only  ones  who  didn't  believe it were the USCF
idiots  who  officiated the race.  Currey got the  win  and  the  prizes
that  went  with it.  Since that time, everybody was gunning for Currey,
particularly the Oak Park guys who were  Jerry's  teammates,  as  I  was
once.  No one had nailed him yet.  The Winnetka Wheels were a very fast,
very skillful team, in spite of being some of the worst  sportsmen  even
USCF had to offer.

                                 _two_

     My reunion with the old Oak Park  team  was  an  emotional  affair,
which  called for a few extra rounds of Wisconsin's finest (or cheapest,
as the case may be) swill.  The important business thus out of the  way,
we  settled into a strategy session for Sunday's race.  Jerry Smies, the
team's fastest rider since my departure, started in.

     "O.K., now that Spiro's back, we can put those Winnetka wimps  back
in the gutter where they belong.  Of course, Spiro'll win this year.  We
can..."

     "Hold it Jerry," I interjected, "I  don't  think  that's  the  best
approach.  Why don't we plan for Karp to take it this year.  I think you
and I are going to have some other business to conduct."

     "Such as?"

     "I think we ought to take care of Mister Currey.  Catch my drift?"

     A vicious smile twisted Jerry's lip, bringing color to the patch of
road  rash  he  still had on  his left cheek from his last confrontation
with Scott Currey.  The smile was  infectious,  and  soon  we  were  all
grinning and chuckling our way through the strategy session.  Of course,
it was thristy work.

                                _three_

     The authorities would not cooperate for Kay-Five, but  the  weather
did.  It was a cool day, partly sunny, and the winds were light.  It had
been raining off and on for several days, filling the  drainage  ditches
and making lots of nice, black, Illinois mud wherever  the soil had been
turned.  This was perfect for what we had planned for Scott Currey.   So
far,  everything  had  gone  as  planned.  100 klicks into the race, the
field was pretty well spread out.   At  the  front  were  myself,  Jerry
Smies,  Dave  Karpinski,  and  Scott  Currey,  who  was by now nervously
glancing around in search of his teammates.  The rest  of  the  Winnetka
Wheels  were  well  back in the pack, hopelessly tangled up by the other
members of the Oak Park team and a couple of dozen other guys who'd  had
it in for Currey.

     We had Currey boxed.  Jerry Smies took the point, while Karp  stuck
on  Currey's wheel.  I held the flank, cutting off Currey from moving to
the outside.  To the inside was a  drainage  ditch  and  a  soft  gravel
shoulder.   A  couple  of  miles up ahead, there was a sharp turn in the
road.  The area had recently flooded, and the ground all the way to  the
road's  edge  had  turned completely to mud.  Added to the mixture was a
generous amount of natural fertilizer contributed by  the  local  bovine
population.   It was there we planned to give Currey his due:  Jerry was
to move momentarily to the side, giving  Currey  room  to  move  on  the
inside.   But  I  would  sprint  to the point to cut him off, whereafter
Jerry would bump him into the muddy embankment at the  curve's  sharpest
point.

     It wasn't to happen.  As we pulled into  the  curve,  an  enormous,
high-rider pickup truck pulled into our lane, crossing the double yellow
line.  I went off to the left of the truck.  Karp and  Jerry  went  into
the mud.  Currey went into the grille of the truck.  His bike went under
the oversized tires, but Currey was carried for several hundred feet  on
the bumper before the driver slammed on his brakes to shake him off.

     I'm pretty sure Scott Currey  was already dead.  He wore a  helmet,
but  it  wasn't  much  help  in  a head-on collision with that behemoth.
Nevertheless, I didn't get sick until I saw the  truck  drive  over  his
body  before  continuing on its way.  As I had dodged the truck a second
earlier, I'd seen the face of the man behind the  wheel.   He  had  been
smiling.

     Damn it, Currey.  You weren't supposed to get it that way.


                           * TO BE CONTINUED *

                  Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Fishell
                          All Rights Reserved
-- 
 __
/  \                Bob Fishell
\__/                ihlpa!fish    cbnewsd!spike

From: [email protected] (Bob Fishell)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: Spike Bike: The Last Race (Conclusion)
Keywords: A legend begins
Date: 3 Aug 89 21:43:54 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 264



     [Synopsis:  Recovering from exhaustion and a bullet wound,  Spike's
memories  take him back to 1993, the year it all began.  Nobody took the
Bicycle Act seriously, particularly not the Chicago area  racing  clubs.
Despite  the  collapse  of  USCF  and the end of public support for bike
racing, the Kane-Kendall Korn Kountry Klassic -- the "Kay-Five" --  will
run on schedule.  The defending champion of this 120-km road race is the
hated Scott Currey, who won the 1992 running by causing one  of  Spike's
former  teammates  to crash.  Reunited with his old team, Spike plots to
give Currey his due by bumping him into the mud  near  the  end  of  the
race.

     A vicious redneck in a red high-rider pickup truck  puts  a  tragic
end  to Spike's plans.  Deliberately crossing the center line, the truck
plows into  the pack.  Spike and his teammates  escape,  but  Currey  is
caught  head-on,  killing  him instantly.  Spike laments that Currey was
supposed to get  his -- but not that way.

     In the year 1993, the legend begins... ]

                                 _four_

     We all stood in shocked incredulity as the deputy continued,

     "...well, it's one thing for you to say the guy  was  left  of  the
yellow  line.   Maybe  he  was, but it doesn't make any difference.  _I_
didn't see it, so I can't issue him a citation.  In any case, it's all I
could do anyway.  Your friend there..." he gestured toward the coroner's
wagon "...was on his own.  I'm sorry, boys, that's how  the  law  reads.
As  far  as  I'm  concerned,  there  was no accident.  Legally, you guys
weren't even here.  I can't go after him.  Now I'm telling you, for your
own good, get those bikes off the road."

     We'd all seen the son of a bitch. Down the road,  the  scumbag  had
sort  of  plowed through the pack, sending riders off  both sides of the
road, but no one else was seriously hurt.  Just Currey.

     Most of us had disliked Currey.  He was a dirty competitor, and off
the  road,  his  personality  had  been  somewhere  between arrogant and
psychotic.  A lot of the guys who raced against him would not have  shed
a  tear  to  learn  that he'd been struck dead by lightning.  Yet he had
been one  of us.  He showed up for the Kay-Five  to  defend  his  title,
even  though  it  was  an  outlaw  race.   It was thus by acclamation we
declared him the winner.  The kitty was six hundred twenty  dollars.  It
bought quite a few flowers.

     I didn't sleep much the night  of  Currey's  death.   I  could  not
forget  the  look  in  his  eyes  when  he  knew he was going to get it.
Neither could I forget the fat, ruddy jowls  of  his  murderer  wrinkled
into  a  remorseless  grin  as he went by.  The words of the insensitive
sheriff's  deputy  repeated  themselves  over  and  over  in  my   mind.
"...can't  go after him...get those bikes off the  road...can't go after
him...off the road..."

     Every notion of justice I'd ever  held  was  shattered.   What  was
happening  to  this  country?   Why had I spent four years in the Marine
Corps, what had I been defending?  And what of the goddamn  cops?   What
did  they  have  to  protect  any more?  "...can't go after him ... your
friend was on his own."

     We were all on our own, now.  It had been that way for  years,  but
most  of us had learned to cope with angry gestures and trash thrown out
of windows.  Now we had to cope with murder.  That price  was  too  high
even  for  a  bastard like Currey.  It was much too high for me.  What I
had to do became suddenly and painfully clear.  Finally, I  drifted  off
to sleep.

                                 _five_

     He'd  been  easy  enough  to  find.   Red  high-riders  are  pretty
conspicuous,  and  I'd guessed rightly that he lived in one of the small
towns that sprinkled the area where we held the Kay-Five.   For  days  I
watched  him,  doing  nothing,  getting  to know his routine.  He was an
early riser.  Each day, he got up before dawn and left for work at first
light.   He was a foreman at a construction site in Batavia.  He bullied
his workers, drank his lunch, and chain-smoked all day long.  Around six
o'clock, he would leave the constuction site, stop at a little roadhouse
outside of Batavia, and drink boilermakers for a couple of hours  before
departing for home.

     I didn't let him see me at first, while I learned his  habits,  but
when the time was right, I started to spook him a little.  I dressed all
in black, like the mountain  bike,  save  for  mirrored  sunglasses.   I
smeared  black  smudges under my eyes, like a football player, partially
to cut down on the glare, and partially to obscure  my  face.   I  stood
across  the  road from his driveway, leaning on the bike, sitting on the
top tube, as he departed  for  work.   The  sun  was  peeping  over  the
horizon,  and  I  caught  its glint with my shades, flashing it into his
eyes.  My hand cradled the butt of a 9mm  Walther  automatic  behind  my
back,  but  I  did not use it.  He just gave me a funny look, turned the
corner and drove off to work.

     He kept a pair of wretched, abused dogs penned in  the  back  yard.
When he returned home that evening, they were gone.  The next night,  he
did not park in his garage. Somehow, it had burned to the ground.   When
he rose to go to work the next morning, he would find the words

                              Scott Currey
                              1966 -- 1993

rendered in black spray paint on the side of his truck.   For  the  next
several  evenings,  he  would return home to find nothing untoward, save
for an occasional random phone call in the middle of the night.

     Two weeks after I first appeared at the foot  of  his  driveway,  I
showed myself again.  This time, I waited, leaning against his truck, as
he left the construction site.  When he caught sight of me, he began  to
run,  heaving  his  belly  from  side  to side. I jumped on the bike and
vanished into the maze of half-built houses before he  could  reach  me.
But  I  had left a calling card scratched into the paint on the driver's
door:

                            JOHNSON'S MOUND
                                  DAWN

                                 _six_

Northern Illinois is mostly flat, save for a few anomalies  left  behind
by  the  glaciers.   One such was Johnson's Mound, a heavily wooded hill
out in the middle of the  Kane  County  cornfields.   It  was  a  forest
preserve  before  Corporatist  real  estate developers razed it in 1996.
There was a road that cut through  the  woods.   It  wound  through  the
trees,  then  cut  sharply  into a hairpin turn to the left, thence to a
steep grade to the top of the mound.  It was a  popular  attraction  for
local  cyclists,  who used to race one another to the top. The grade was
steepest just before the crest; this caught many an  unwary  cyclist  in
the wrong gear.  It was here that I set up for him.

     In the blue, predawn glow I waited beside the  road,  watching  the
wide-set, elevated headlights approach.  When he was near enough to take
chase, I sprinted for the woods.  As I expected, he crashed through  the
chain  that  was  drawn across the bumpy drive, two hundred  yards or so
behind me.

     I reached the sharp turn and jammed my way up the hill.  Unable  to
negotiate  the  turn,  he  went  off  into the woods, had to back up and
maneuver around to right himself.  He was making this  easy.   I  waited
atop  the hill for him to reach the notch just before the steep grade to
the summit.  At precisely the right moment, I kicked over an ashcan, and
fifty-five  gallons  of  used  motor oil flooded the pavement.  When his
wheels hit the slick, I heard the motor abruptly change  pitch  and  saw
the  huge  truck  lurch to the side, slamming into a tree.  He tried for
half a minute to get it started up the slope  again  before  he  finally
shut off the engine.  He reached to the rack behind the seat, got out of
the cab, and leveled a double-barreled shotgun at me.

     "You wanna tell me what you want, boy?" he grunted.

     "Your worthless redneck ass."

     I stood at the summit, perhaps fifty feet above him, not moving  or
flinching as he gesticulated menacingly with the 12-gauge.

     "You the sum'bitch that took my dogs?  You  burn  down  my  garage?
You mess up my truck?"

     "Your dogs ran off as soon as the gate was  open.   I  don't  think
they  liked  you very much.  You had a lot of old rags and paint in that
garage.  Wiring  wasn't much good, either.  As far as that piece of sh*t
truck goes, it was messed up right off the assembly line."

     "Who the hell is Scott Currey?"

     "Just about the meanest son of a bitch ever  to  straddle  a  bike.
Besides  me,  that  is.   Too  bad you didn't get to know him before you
killed him. You might have liked him."

     He took a few steps up the slope, leveled the shotgun,  and  pulled
back on the hammers.  I maintained my stance.

     "What's a matter with you, boy?  Don't you know you're gonna die?"

     "Well, we all gotta go sooner or later."

     I watched, grinning, as he pulled one trigger, then the  other,  to
no effect.  A look of consternation crossed his face.  He broke down the
shotgun, extracted the dud shells, and moved back toward the cab.

     "They're all like that." I told him.   "Regulation  weight,  except
for the powder.  They don't work too well without it."

     He reloaded the gun and repeated his futile  gesture,  casting  the
shotgun  aside  as  it once again failed.  He retrieved a tire iron from
his truck and came for me.

     He slipped on the oily surface twice as he scrabbled up  the  hill.
I  waited motionless as he regained his balance and eventually closed to
within swinging distance.  I kept my  hands  behind  my  back  casually,
almost  lazily  ducking away (so it appeared) as he repeatedly swung the
iron.  He lunged with its point and I stepped aside,  tripped  him,  and
kicked  him  in the butt as he went down.  Stepping back, I waited as he
rose to his feet and advanced again.  He was beet-red,  dripping  sweat,
wheezing like a broken bagpipes.

     "You know, you ought to give up smoking." I offered. "Bad for  your
health. I'll bet your blood pressure is out of sight."

     "You son of a bitch!" he panted as he swung at me again.  This time
I  did  not  step  aside, but stepped into his lunge, blocking aside the
tire iron and bringing my fist hard into  his  solar  plexus.   Stepping
back as he doubled over in pain, I snapped my foot viciously up into his
face. He fell onto his side, blood streaming from his nose, gasping  for
air in little, desperate gulps.  I retrieved the tire iron from his limp
fingers and cast it aside, down the hill and into the woods.

     "That's for Scott Currey." I said  softly.

     I left him there, struggling weakly to his knees, and rode down the
other, dry side of the hill.  At the bottom, I waited for perhaps twenty
minutes before I heard the engine  start.   A  moment  later,  the  huge
pickup  emerged  from  the  woods,  lurched abruptly, and drove onto the
grass, picking up speed, headed straight for me.   I  let  it  close  to
within fifty yards before I brought the Walther around and leveled it at
the driver's side of the windshield.  When I could see his eyes, I fired
seven  times,  exhausting  the magazine.  The truck rolled past and fell
over on its side in the ditch.

     "And that's for me." I said, to no one who could hear.

 ---

     "Well, Mike, your temperature is down today.  I think we  might  be
able to send you home in a day or two."

     The doctor examined the stitches in my shoulder, pursed his lips in
satisfaction, and replaced the dressing.  He withdrew the I.V. umbilical
that had chained me  to the bed for the last few days.

     "We'd like you to move around some today, but take  it  easy.   You
know,  most  men  wouldn't  have  stood up so well to the punishment you
took.  You have a remarkable constitution. Enviable, in fact."

     "Don't envy me."

     His expression turned somber.  "You want to tell me how this really
happened, Mike?"

     "I don't think you'd believe me. In any case, it's over with."

     "Is it?"

     I didn't know.

                                   THE END

                                Author's Note

     Johnson's Mound is a real place, much as described in the story.  A
glacial  legacy,  it  rises  above  the  cornfields, dwarfing the gently
rolling hills which surround it.  Although  the  climb  to  the  top  is
relatively  short,  the  steep  grade is a challenge for local cyclists,
particularly for those who use tight gearing  that is  more  appropriate
for  the  surrounding flatlands.  Because it is conveniently situated in
the middle of some of the better cycling country around Chicago, it is a
popular  place  to set up rest stops for the many invitational tours and
group rides held in the area throughout the season.

                    Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Fishell
                            All Rights Reserved
-- 
 __
/  \                Bob Fishell
\__/                ihlpa!fish    cbnewsd!spike

From: [email protected] (Bob Fishell)
Subject: Spike Bike and the Columnist
Date: 31 Aug 89 22:08:45 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, Illinois
 
 
[In the year 1989, one man fights an institution] 
---
 
     Annie asked me how it all began.
 
     I told her the story of Scott Currey and the last Kay-five, but  it
really  started  a  long time before that.  I learned how to ride a bike
when I was four or five, and it  probably  started  shortly  thereafter.
Nevertheless,  when  I  think  of  more  recent times, of the dark years
immediately preceeding the Act, one incident comes to mind...
 
     It was the summer of 1989.  I was in my second year as an undergrad
at  Caltech,  visiting my family in Chicago over the break and competing
in some of the local races.  I was still a Cat 2 then, unknown save  for
a small local reputation I was getting.
 
     Dave Karpinski, my best friend and one of my teammates, showed me a
newspaper  clipping  that  had  been  circulating among most of the USCF
clubs in the area.  The author was a humorist, a local personality noted
for  his  irreverent  commentary and sardonic wit.  Usually, his columns
were funny.  There was nothing funny about this one.   He  described  an
incident  involving  his  wife  and  a  local cyclist.  The  cyclist, it
seems, had been hit by the wife's car.  The circumstances which  led  to
this  were  not  fully explained, but the columnist inferred that it had
been the cyclist's fault; perhaps he had run a stop sign.  This was  not
infuriating  in  itself.  The columnist, however, went on to explain how
his wife had been upset by the incident.  He claims that he  would  have
enjoyed  it.   Mutilation  and  death,  it  would seem, were appropriate
penalties for minor traffic violations.
 
     _T_h_a_t was infuriating.
 
     The local racing organization  was  asking  its  members  to  write
letters  to the columnist's paper, deploring the irresponsible nature of
the column and all that.  I took a somewhat different view.   Being  one
who holds freedom of speech in the highest regard, I didn't want to tell
his paper they shouldn't have printed the article.  The man was entitled
to  his  views,  however  warped  and  sadistic  they  might  have been.
Nevertheless, I wondered if he was sincere in his  word.   I  thought  I
might find out.  I was always better with a bike than with a typewriter,
anyway.
 
     The rag he wrote for ran TV commercials that  suggested  he  was  a
regular at "Billy Goat's Tavern," one of the Loop saloons.  I checked it
out and found out it was true enough, although the place wasn't as homey
and   cozy  as  the  commercials  would  have  you  believe.    I  spent
considerable  time observing him,  keeping  track  of  his  comings  and
goings  and  the  amount  of beer he drank.  The information would prove
useful.
 
     I followed him home a  few  times,  in  my  Dad's  car,  keeping  a
discreet  distance.   I didn't want him to see me on a bike just yet.  I
had to learn his habits, which turned out to be well established.   This
would also prove useful.
 
     Ultimately, I was ready to set up for him.  I didn't  go  armed  in
those  days  (although  I  often  wanted to), but what I had in mind was
somewhat less than lethal.  Hanging from ceiling hooks  in  my  parents'
garage  was an old Schwinn LeTour I used to ride to high school.  It was
battered and rusty, but still serviceable.  It did, however,  require  a
few  modifications.  I retrieved a set of Deore' cantilever brakes and a
pair of beat-up Campy Record levers from my junk  box.   A  little  work
with a brazing torch, and the brakes bolted on.  I installed a couple of
oversized Mathauser  brake  pads,  the  kind  used  for  heavily  loaded
touring,  and  a pair of well-stretched 2mm cables.  When I was done, my
old beater bike had brakes that would stop a train.
 
     I waited until Friday afternoon to make my move.  I  wore  my  most
obnoxious  outfit,  a screaming, day-glow jersey I'd won in some crit or
another, and a matching helmet cover, white gloves, and  shorts  with  a
bright yellow stripe.  I wanted to make sure he could see me.
 
     I lay in ambush for him in an alley a  couple  of  miles  from  his
house.   I  knew  he'd be coming home from Billy Goat's down this narrow
street, with several beers in him.  As I saw him approach, I pulled  out
of  the  alley and strategically moved in front of his car.  He laid  on
the horn, but  I ignored it.  There were cars parked in solid lines down
both  sides of the street, with nowhere for me to go, even if I'd wanted
to.  Of course, I didn't want to.  I wanted him good and mad.
 
     At the end of the block was a four-way stop  sign.   The  columnist
would make a right-hand turn here, usually the California variety.  This
is where I sprang my  trap.   I  did  something  he  didn't  expect.   I
stopped.   That  is, I STOPPED, from 21 MPH to zero in just enough space
to keep me from going over the handlebars.
 
     He did what I expected.  Timing it perfectly, I  had  released  the
brakes an instant before his bumper hit my back wheel.  It was easier to
control than I'd expected; I had to throw the bike into a  skid  myself,
taking care to slide a ways on my elbow and thigh.  A touch of road rash
would make it more convincing.
 
     By  the time the  columnist  was  out  of  his  car,  a  couple  of
passersby had already come to my side.  I wasn't hurt, but I made a good
show of it, holding my elbow with the other hand, not  getting  up  from
the  street.   A  crowd was gathering.  I heard someone murmur something
about  getting  an  ambulance,  another  mentioning  the  police.    The
columnist  was  visibly  shaken,  but I was just getting started.  As he
approached, I turned to face him, pointed my finger and shouted  to  the
gathering crowd:
 
     "Him! He tried to kill me!  He followed me  for  blocks!   Get  him
away from me!"
 
     A couple of big men emerged from the crowd, stood  between  me  and
the columnist, glowering menacingly.
 
     "What did you do to the kid?" One said (I was 24 and  an  ex-Marine
at  the  time,  but  I  took no insult in being called a "kid" under the
circumstances).  "Sh__, you just run him down, man.  Hey,  mother______,
you been drinkin'?"  The crowd got uglier as sirens approached.
 
     Ultimately I went easy on him.  I dropped the assault charges a few
days  later.  I  waited  a  couple  of  months to tell him I wouldn't be
seeking civil damages, although I did ask him to pay for the  bike.   He
was  in  a  good deal more trouble with the police and his editor, given
the content of the article he'd written.  And I didn't see  him  hanging
around  Billy  Goat's  Tavern  much after that.  Just as well; I kind of
liked the place.
 
     It was just a small skirmish, ultimately an  empty  victory  before
the gathering storm.
 
                  Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Fishell
                          All Rights Reserved
-- 
 __
/  \                Bob Fishell
\__/                att!ihlpy!fish    cbnewsd!spike

San Francisco Chronicle - November 3, 1992

In a scene suitable for a Charles Bronson movie, a late night bicyclist in San
Francisco fired a salvo of bullets at three men allegedly trying to rob him and
then vanished before one of the men was found dead at the wheel of a car,
police said.

According to the offices, who pieced the story together from accounts by
witnesses and the two surviving suspects, the bike rider was pedaling along
Broadway in Pacific Heights a 1 a.m. when the three young men knocked him to the
pavement near the intersection of Laguna street.

The rider, described by police as an Asian or white man in his 20s - jumped up,
whipped out a small caliber, semi-automatic pistol and began shooting at his
tormentors, police said.

The bicyclist wounded at least two of the alleged attackers, who were unarmed.
As the bullets whizzed at them, the three ran police said.

The startled suspects fled to their car, roared down the steep pitch of Laguna
Street and crashed into a parked car near the bottom of the hill.

The driver, identified as Fernando Ramirez, 20, of Daly City, was dead at the
scene. Homicide Lieutenant Bruce Lorin said Ramirez had been shot by the
bicyclist, but it is not know whether his death was caused by gunshot wounds
or the collision.

    	I read about this in SOAPBOX yesterday. I immediately thought
    	of Spike Bike, too.
    
    	I just wonder...
    
    	Scott

    I heard it with slightly more detail:
    
    "[the rider] whipped out a small caliber, semi-automatic TITANIUM
    pistol"  I think we all know who it was... ;-)  kratz

    	Hey, that's right. No one has seen Spike Bike and Chip
    	together at the same time.
    
    	Chip,
    
    	Have you told the missus about your hidden identity? 8-)>
    
    	Scott

     Not yet Scott... But it's only a matter of time before she spots that
    tattoo on my butt... :-)
    
        T
      Chip

                <<< PEAR::DUA1:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
                   -< SOAPBOX: Around as long as Digital is >-
================================================================================
Note 14.3007                       News Briefs                      3007 of 3015
TENAYA::RAH                                           8 lines  12-NOV-1992 22:13
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    the bicyclist who killed the bike hijacker a couple of weeks
    ago is still at large. 
    
    talk show hosts have been encouraging the cyclist to stay that way.
    
    54 cars hijacked in SF since they started counting in September.
    

    	Copied w/o permission from BICYCLING, May 1993
    
    	Now That's Justice
    
    	So this rider is cruising down a road in Toledo, Ohio. A car
    	swerves and nearly hits him, then does a U-turn and screeches
    	to a stop. The driver jumps out and threatens to do some serious
    	butt-whipping.
    
    	The cyclist is an off-duty cop. When the dust settles, the 
    	motorist is charged with:
    
    		driving while intoxicated
    		assault
    		resisting arrest
    		two traffic violations