And who knows? Maybe one day you even have the good fortune to work right alongside one of your heroes. I had a chance to write a couple of stories with my father and went for it. It was fun. I hope you like ’em—they’re here in this book.

I had some years to wear a mask, but I breathe better now that it’s off my face.

And that’s enough from me for a while. We’ve got some riding to do. Come on. Let’s go.

Bring on the bad guys.

Joe Hill

Exeter, New Hampshire

September 2018

Throttle

with Stephen King

THEY RODE WEST FROM THE SLAUGHTER, through the painted desert, and did not stop until they were a hundred miles away. Finally, in the early afternoon, they turned in at a diner with a white stucco exterior and pumps on concrete islands out front. The overlapping thunder of their engines shook the plate-glass windows as they rolled by. They drew up together among parked long-haul trucks, on the west side of the building, and there they put down their kickstands and turned off their bikes.

Race Adamson had led them the whole way, his Harley running sometimes as much as a quarter mile ahead of anyone else’s. It had been Race’s habit to ride out in front ever since he’d returned to them, after two years in the sand. He ran so far in front it often seemed he was daring the rest of them to try and keep up, or maybe he had a mind to simply leave them behind. He hadn’t wanted to stop here, but Vince had forced him to. As the diner came into sight, Vince had throttled after Race, blown past him, and then shot his hand left in a gesture the Tribe knew well: Follow me off the highway. The Tribe let Vince’s hand gesture call it, as they always did. Another thing for Race to dislike about him, probably. The kid had a pocketful of them.

Race was one of the first to park but the last to dismount. He stood astride his bike, slowly stripping off his leather riding gloves, glaring at the others from behind his mirrored sunglasses.

“You ought to have a talk with your boy,” Lemmy Chapman said to Vince. Lemmy nodded in Race’s direction.

“Not here,” Vince said. It could wait until they were back in Vegas. He wanted to put the road behind him. He wanted to lie down in the dark for a while, wanted some time to allow the sick knot in his stomach to abate. Maybe most of all, he wanted to shower. He hadn’t gotten any blood on him but felt contaminated all the same and wouldn’t be at ease in his own skin until he’d washed off the morning’s stink.