This morning Marlow had the lead until the first gas and rest stop. It was going to be a long day of riding on two lane back country roads they had never seen or ridden. As Rex had not group ridden with Marlow in the lead, a short pre-brief was required.

“We all know back country road surfaces change from superb to dangerous with no warning. Consequently, when I lead, we will not follow cars or trucks for any period of time only to be suddenly surprised by unsafe road conditions. I will not pass unless I see there’s enough time and space for all four of us to complete the pass safely.

“I will signal you when we are about to pass with my left turn signal. On the second flash, I will downshift and begin to accelerate hard. You will hear my exhaust pipe barking. On the third flash, my throttle will be full wide open and I will commence the pass.

“You must stay close behind me and immediately follow. Do not look at your speedometer. How fast we will end up going during the pass is not important.

“If we want our pack to stay as one, pack integrity depends entirely on maintaining passing speed long enough for the last rider to duck in front of the last passed vehicle. So stick to the ass of the bike in front of you in a slight stagger. I will hold my course and speed until I see the last rider has tucked back in.

“I do not dice roll snake eyes when I make these maneuvers. Trust is a must in your lead. Otherwise some or all of us will get hurt. Any questions?”

Rex was an old school rider and did not flinch when he said, “Gotcha.”

Steve added, “Piece of cake.”

Augustus, ever the comedic Falstaff to Marlow’s Hal, chimed in “Wonder if we’ll top last year’s passing speed record of 108?”

“Bite me, girly man!” was Marlow’s standard reply.

The vehicle passes that morning were numerous, excellent and much needed. Road surface changes were abrupt and dangerous with unannounced chip seal road surfaces, rain squalls, unmarked oblique RR track crossings, slick roads, and logging truckload trailing debris storms.

At the end of his lead time, Marlow and his bike were spattered with mud, gravel, leaves, needles and twigs. His fellow riders were not, prompting Augustus to say, “Where’s a rake when I need one?”

Augustus and Steve split lead duties the next four hours. The mid-afternoon roads were now empty, dry and smooth.

The motorcycles were slicing through the sun drenched, flat black asphalt. The land beside the roadbed was getting wilder and deeply forested. Wildlife was lurking and posed existential hazards should it decide un-providentially to cross in front of them.

Raptors glided over their heads as if joining them on the ride.

The road was peaceful and straight ahead. They were sweating, under their leathers. They had worn them to protect against the early morning chill but now they were a detriment not a help. They kept wiping the sweat from their eyes and squinting to see the road. Augustus splashed some water on himself from an old used plastic bottle he kept between his windscreen and handlebars for such purposes.

At a rest stop ahead near a road side ditch creek, they stripped off their jackets. They greedily drank deeply from their water bottles.

Marlow and his bike were around the bend, since he had almost missed stopping. He had been riding fast to catch up to the pack when they had stopped without warning.

The forest around him was silent, mysterious and surprisingly stifling.

A snake slithered by him and dropped into the ditch. It swam with the same motion it had on land but with its head held higher. Its speed and directional control on water were better. After more than 50 feet of downstream progress, it turned starboard and exited the stream and entered the forest.

Marlow thought to himself, that they might have to watch for snakes on the road ahead since unsuspectedly squishing one might make our directional control a bit dicey.

Suitably refreshed, he cranked his bike back to life and without putting his helmet back on putted at idle in first gear back to the group. Rounding the corner, he could not believe his eyes. A group of three large snakes was making their way along the roadside and then veered directly at the trio of bikers. These were not little pit vipers, black or garter snakes. These were large Hollywood movie rattler bad boys with gleaming skins. The slimy squadron turned to cross the road and headed towards the group. The riders were unsuspecting since they were leaning on their bike saddles with their backs to the road, peering across the creek and into the forest.

He thought to yell a warning, but his barely muffled pipe brapping would cover his message. Instead he stood on his bike’s floorboards, goosed the throttle, and headed straight on an intersecting course with the snakes and their heads.

Picking off the first one was easy. As expected the bike became unstable, nauseatingly so, but it held firm. Squashed brains and snake carcass flopped in his rear view mirror.

The next two targets were moving faster, were much bigger and closer together. This would be difficult and dangerous by several factors. He decided to keep the tires on them a bit longer, so he slowed down a bit. Bad choice.

As he fixed his sites on these two slitherers, he recognized them as rattlers, but they were much, much bigger than those he had seen in the wilds of the Florida panhandle and northern Georgia. He was shaking on the inside. Sweat beads now obscured his visions. He struggled to steady the slow moving, 1000 pound bike.

The second one’s head was so big that it was like mounting a city street concrete curb. The bike rolled sickeningly over the snake as the bike cracked but not crushed its skull.

With the bike’s rolling and his adjustments to keep the bike straight up always lagging a bit behind, the third snake strike would be well aft of its head and at a higher rate of speed. This was not good. He and his bike hit the snake at a severe lean angle.

He then did what he knew better not to do. He looked down. Following the old motorcycle adage that you go where you look, Marlow and the bike slowly began to go down. As he fought to keep the bike upright, his right hand twisted the throttle wide open, accelerating the fall. As he spun downward, he saw that he had missed the snake’s head and only managed to piss it off.

Fortunately, the bike’s wildly spinning rear wheel had lofted this monster into the air and the other lane of traffic. Marlow managed to soften his head striking the hot pavement when he instinctively brought his gloved hands to his head.

Wham. Screeeeeeeeeeeeeech.

Pain and stars. But no darkness

He struggled to retain visual contact with the snake, since he and the snake were rolling in the same direction on the road. The bike was now on its side slowly skidding to a stop but fortunately fully blocking the lane of oncoming traffic. That was a very good thing.

There was the taste of blood in his mouth. He felt quite disoriented and very woozy. Fighting this, he finally regained visual on the third snake as it tumbled and writhed on the asphalt. Its eyes and mouth were headed straight at him. This was a very, very bad thing.

The boys were now alert to something behind them. They were still slowly taking in the situation. The third snake was no more than 10 feet from Marlow.

As he raised his arms in defense, an old black pickup truck swerved away from Marlow and bike and into the other lane, neatly trisecting the snake dead. A piece of the third snake’s tail rolled and stopped at his feet.

This ride’s wilderness theme had now officially become all too real.

The riders hurried to Marlow’s aid, picking up him and his bike.

“They had bad intentions.” exclaimed Marlow as he spit.

“Rattlers don’t travel in a group like that.” rejoined Rex, “At least not in Texas where I’m from.”

Steve was booting the dead snake parts off the road into a pile.

Augustus interjected, “I’ve seen momma snakes with their hatchlings travel as a group but never large adults. Adults might share a nest but they’re solitary hunters.”

Marlow added, “Snakes never make a beeline for larger creatures. Wonder if there’s a nest nearby?”

With that attention getter in the air, Steve, Rex and Augustus all turned to survey the ground around their bikes. They all had missed it.

There were multiple sets of the telltale marks that these snakes leave when they travel over loose surfaces. There was a large nest somewhere nearby.

Rex and Augustus like Marlow had taken survival classes in the wild during their time in the military. They had been taught these things.

One by one, while the rest of them stood watch over the approaches, the bikers relocated their rides with great urgency to where Marlow’s bike had originally rested.

After several minutes of chatter, they figured out once again that they were standing in the middle of a forest convulsing with snakes. They found deep rectilinear snake tracks in their new rest area.

Augustus commented as they mounted up again in search of a safe and now concrete-padded rest area, “Looks like it’s come down to who of us can survive and who can’t. If we fail to see things in sunlight, we’re screwed.”

This deep forest rest stop was a serpentarium.

The bikes with their bungee corded loads lurched off. Soon they entered the cluttered outskirts of another small town, past a near empty feed store, shuttered businesses, empty gas stations, boarded up houses, overgrown churches, rusted signs, and faded billboards. There were no cars moving about, let alone people in evidence. The gas station and concrete pad they were seeking was on the other side of town. It too had but one grade of gas.

All this decay made Marlow wonder. So, looking at Steve and Augustus who were waiting for Rex to finish filling his tank, he asked, “Is the country on the wrong path? Are we headed down a dead end alley? If small towns we are increasingly seeing aren’t surviving, could big cities and their softer and very dependent citizens last?”

As Marlow expected, Augustus emphatically said no; but, Steve, ever the optimist, said “They and we will last as long as we want it to and believe it will. Only when too many of the smart guys like you two stop belieiving it, then will the whole deal collapse. I take this as a matter of faith.”

Gus surprisingly and forcibly jumped in, “It’s gotten so complicated and effed up that no one in the imperial city will level with us . . . there’s a fair portion of folks out here who’d be okay if it all just fell apart and we started over . . . because they feel they will be among the survivors.”

Steve and Rex were taken aback. Marlow had heard this and what followed before. Many times.

“You know where I’m headed when it does? Right where we’ve been, right here and right where we’re going. It’s simple and it’s real.”

Marlow knew it was fruitless to argue with Augustus about how he saw the realities of pain, fear, killing, loss, dissolution and surviving. What Augustus saw coming was a personal and mass communal insantiy.

Rex and Steve saw this and were deeply unsetled by this exchange.

P.S. Had we been camping, we’d have eaten the snakes. With the right herbs, they’re better than Paula Deen’s chicken.

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