Out on Route A-32, just shy of the bridge to Crestville, was a tavern that nobody in their right mind ever went to. It was exactly that kind of place. Broad, squat, and ugly, looking like what it was—a biker bar. Twenty-six bikes were lined up beneath a long canvas tarp. The thump-thump of Alabama Thunderpussy playing “None Shall Return” rattled the windows and crashed like artillery in the night air.
Johnny Ray Kenton, a massive lump of a bald man six and a half feet tall, with a furious red-gold beard and a line of skulls tattooed across his forehead, sat on a stool just inside. He was the doorman and bouncer and kept an eye on the bikes.
Beyond him, spread out around a bunch of tables or in a hunched line at the bar, were the members of the Cyke-Lones. Not all of them. Not even half, but some of the more senior members. None of them even cared that they were stereotypes, with cliché biker nicknames or lifestyles that came straight from the Hell’s Angels movies of the 1960s. To them this was living a legacy, and they lived it hard. The crew ran coke and crack up along I-95 and took laundered cash and bearer bonds down to other clubs who ferried it in links to the cartels. It was an old business that ran smoothly and with little change as the years went by. There were members who were designated to take falls for more senior riders. And there were some who had been born into the club and who considered it their true family.
They didn’t care what anyone else thought because as far as they were concerned, fuck the world.
The place stank, but the barbecue was good, the beer was cold, and most of them had wives or girlfriends. Old Lenny Snicks in the corner had this week’s crack whore on his knee and his hand up under her blouse. Nogs and Panhead were playing liar’s poker with two of the younger guys. It was a rinse-and-repeat night, with nothing new happening. They were chilling out until the next big shipment, and were amusing themselves by dropping hints or starting rumors that they were going to hit the Fringe Festival. Which they were not. Bragging on it meant that half the cops in the county were going to be in Pine Deep, while they were going to be in New Jersey, heading south on back roads until they crossed over in Philly and got on the interstate. Cops would be looking their own way and holding their dicks. Fucking cops.
None of them noticed that there were more flies in the place than usual and certainly more than were at all common on a cold night of wind and rain. There was a dressed buck hanging on a hook out back because Nogs liked to hunt and they were planning a venison roast if the rain ever goddamn stopped. Dead meat draws flies. Who cares?
The flies, however, noticed them.
And, far away, in his bedroom, a dreaming Owen Minor looked through dozens of multifaceted eyes, searching for the toughest, the meanest, the deadliest of them. Finding everything the Lord of the Flies desired.