Bob climbs over the tailgate. When he’s settled against the cab, the kid hits the gas. The crossroads dwindles until all Bob can make out is the faint red throb of the signal. For the first time since the fight, he thinks of the other Bob. Rest easy, he tells him. You will be avenged.

The kid stops at a gas station. Bob hops out and walks up to thank him, but he’s already pulling away. The station attendant is asleep in the office, head resting on folded arms. Bob goes to the phone booth, gets the number for the Apache Motel from the book, and puts a dime in the slot. The night clerk connects him to Antonia and Elijah’s room. Antonia answers.

“Bob’s dusted,” Bob tells her.

“Dusted?” she says. She sounds like she thinks he’s joking.

“We got ambushed, and he was killed.”

“Ambushed by who? Where?”

“I’m not getting into that now.”

“Are the rest of us in danger?”

“I have no fucking idea, but if you are, you’ll be better off with me there, so hurry and send someone to pick me up.”

Elijah and Pedro come for him. They ride back to the motel, and everyone gathers in Antonia and Elijah’s room to hear what happened.

“We were at the spot where we were gonna feed,” Bob begins. “A rover and an unturned girl tried to snatch the kid, but I caught them at it.”

He goes on to tell how the dude stopped his ticker with a lucky poke and Bob brought him back, but he was still too late to save Bob from getting dusted. He tells how he fought the rover who killed Bob and another who was with him and was almost dusted himself before escaping by jumping off the mountain.

He calls for a smoke when he finishes. Johnny Kickapoo passes a pack of Lucky Strikes.

“What happened next?” Antonia says.

“I laid there until I healed, then made my way back here,” he says.

“No sign of them on the way?”

“Not hide nor hair.”

“Would you know them if you saw them again?”

“The motherfuckers who dusted my best friend and tried real hard to dust me? Yeah, I’d know them.”

The Fiends are roiling, thirsty for revenge, ready to ride out and tear the city apart searching for the lowlifes who killed their compatriot, but it’s already 4 a.m.—only an hour until daybreak.

“We’ll come up with a plan and start hunting as soon as the sun sets tonight,” Antonia says.

“I’m not waiting,” Bob says. “Who’ll lend me a bike?”

“Take mine,” Johnny says.

“And I’ll ride with you,” Pedro says.

“No,” Bob says. “I’m going alone.”