The Night Cyclist Read Online Free PDF Page A

caught it on the bottom bracket with the hammer side, the full force of his impact traveling up the aluminum frame, driving the seat post deeper into flesh.
    The night cyclist didn’t even grunt. The black blood just slipped from his mouth, oiled his chin and chest.
    He did smile, though.
    â€œWhat do you have to smile about?” Hatchet screamed, bouncing like a boxer on his toes, wrapping up to swing again.
    Double-Bit smiled, seemingly pleased with how the night was falling out, but he caught me in his peripheral vision, too. At the last possible instant. He turned away just fast enough that my paring knife caught him across his open mouth, instead of his temple, like. The blade crossed between his upper and lower teeth, the dagger-point nicking the bunched-up jaw muscle at the back of his mouth on both sides, I was pretty sure.
    He reeled back, away from the pain. Into the mouth of the night cyclist, open just as wide as his now was, like a snake about to swallow an egg.
    When the night cyclist bit in, some of the blood spattered onto my face. I was wearing my backup clear glasses, but still I flinched, blinked.
    This all in a moment cut so thin it was nearly transparent.
    In the next moment, Hatchet was turning to me. I flipped the paring knife around and grabbed it by the tip, as if to throw—on the cycling team, we’d fake-lob a water bottle high to someone, then spray them hard with the water bottle we secretly had—and while Hatchet had his arms raise to protect his face, I drove my eight-inch knife up into his belly, digging for his diaphragm. Maybe I got it, I don’t know. He fell back into the night cyclist’s bike, fell back hard enough to crack it to the side, out of the night cyclist, and then the night changed.
    The night cyclist slumped down, free of the seatpost, his hair hanging over his face, and inside I was screaming at myself to run, to ride, to leave this place. But Hatchet was already coming for me, holding his guts in with one hand, his weapon high in the other.
    He would have got me, too, if the night cyclist hadn’t stabbed a hand forward, dug his sharp fingers into Hatchet’s calf.
    Instead of pulling Hatchet’s throat to him, instead of climbing hand over hand up to Hatchet’s throat, he simply pulled that calf to his mouth, and, with Hatchet facedown in the muck now, he drank, and drank deep, his Adam’s apple working up and down with each swallow.
    His eyes, they never left mine.
    When Hatchet was drained, just his foot spasming, the night cyclist pulled himself over to Double-Bit, drank some more there as well.
    And then he rolled over, convulsing in the mud, holding his shoulder.
    I could have run then, I know. But I didn’t.
    When he could, he stood weakly, looked up the path the way I’d come, then back the other way.
    We were alone.
    He lurched forward, for his ruined bike.
    â€œNo,” I said.
    He stopped, studied me, his eyes showing real fatigue for the first time I’d seen.
    Shaking my head no, I pointed with my paring knife back to the bike in the grass, the one he could surely smell.
    He looked into that tall grass, then back to me.
    â€œTake it already,” I said, and nodded down to his bike. “Need to put this one out of its misery.”
    His front wheel was taco’d, one drop was lower than the other, and one of the cranks had bent in under the top chainring.
    I couldn’t imagine going that fast through the darkness, alone.
    It was a rush just thinking about it.
    â€œWhat the hell are you?” I said when he took that first step bike-ward, though I knew.
    In reply, he took my paring knife forearm in the cold grip of his good arm, pulled the meat of my hand right up to his mouth.
    He opened slow. His teeth were impossible.
    I had my big knife in my other hand, but it might as well have been someone else’s hand.
    He lowered his teeth to my skin, his eyes never leaving mine, and I understood what