The Road To Fero City

“Fuckin’ weirdos.”

Scarecrow scuffed his cigarette out as he watched the cop car speed away towards Camden, still trying to figure out exactly what had just happened, and half expecting to see some dimwitted TV presenter pop out and tell him that he’d been ‘framed’, ‘punk’d’, or otherwise humiliated in the name of cheap entertainment. But, no, that couldn’t be it: as long shots went, that was Lee Harvey Oswald in the book depository.

Few of Scarecrow’s friends would be stupid enough to think he’d find that kind of thing remotely amusing, and, though they’d get some vicarious pleasure from the hope that he’d beat said TV presenter senseless with his own microphone, those who knew him well enough to have set this up would also know that jokes where the law were concerned weren’t very funny.

All the same he did a double-take, glancing up and down the street. Nope, no cops, no film crews, no Jeremy Beadle’s or whatever that fat bird’s name was. Just the slow rumble of traffic, and the usual mix of winos and diseased pigeons that frequented this part of Kings Cross on a grey Sunday afternoon.

He’d picked up the unmarked cop car on the Westway flyover, spotting the tell-tale aerials as he passed them at around a hundred and twenty miles an hour, way too late to back off to a sensible speed that might just get him a ticket instead of a ban. He slowed for a moment thinking maybe he could still talk his way out of this, but then remembered the small, but nonetheless conspicuous, baggy of coke in his jacket pocket.

Not good. Reckless driving, probably drunk driving since he was nursing a vicious hangover, possession of a Class A drug, and...oh fuck! He still had a set of custom made brass knuckles in his other pocket, a gift for Dum Dum that would now be a gift to some spotty-faced arresting officer looking for promotion. No talking your way out of that one, my son, he thought, winding back up to one twenty with gears to spare.

Scarecrow’s bike wasn’t just fast: hand built from the wheels up with the ZZR1100 motor more tweaked out than a meth lab, it made the space-shuttle look sluggish and had won him numerous trophies on the drag strip. Shame the nitrous was empty, but still, he could easily outrun these muppets and then lose them completely as soon as he hit traffic on the Euston Road, zipping through gaps that no cop car could possibly follow him through.

He changed up a gear with that satisfying Kawasaki clunk and started to put some distance between himself and the rapidly disappearing sirens and flashing blue lights. The problems started as he was passing Regents Park, trying to decide whether he should throw a left up through the park or take the straight line to Kings Cross. Traffic and traffic lights conspired to allow the cops to gain some ground, and Scarecrow had just remembered a convenient cycle path, big enough to fit a bike through, but a dead end to cars, when his engine started cutting out. He reached down to put the tank on reserve and then, sickeningly, realised that it already was, and that he was quickly running out of both petrol and options.

Fuck! Maybe he could make it as far as York Way and then hide around the back of the station somewhere, maybe...but no. The bike popped and choked one last time as he swung a left onto York Way, and then the engine died completely. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Scarecrow had just enough time to dump the coke and the brass knuckles into a nearby rubbish bin before the cops rounded the corner, pulling over in front of his bike, as he swiftly chewed on a stick of minty fresh gum in the hope of disguising any lingering alcohol smell from last night.

That was when things started to get weird. The cops suddenly seemed confused as to why they’d pulled him over, or indeed if they had pulled him over at all.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?” said Scarecrow, figuring he may as well play dumb until they decided what to arrest him for.

“I thought perhaps you could tell us,” said the younger of the two cops, late twenties, maybe thirty-something, but certainly not some bum-fluffed kid fresh out of Hendon. “Sounded like you were having some engine problems.”

Ran out of gas,” shrugged Scarecrow. No point in lying about that since they’d have to tow his bike anyway if they were going to arrest him.

“Nice bike,” said the other cop, leaning down to inspect the exhaust and apparently failing to notice the ‘NOT FOR ROAD USE’ stamp. “You build it yourself?”

“Mostly,” Scarecrow nodded warily.

“Nitrous too!” cooed the first cop. “Man, I’ll bet this thing is fast! What’s the top speed?”

“Couldn’t say, officer,” said Scarecrow, getting the distinct feeling that they were just fucking with him until backup arrived.

“Must be at least a hundred and ninety,” said the cop. “Faster if you had a fairing.”

“It’s pretty quick,” allowed Scarecrow, unable to disguise a hint of pride. “It’ll outrun most things on the road.” He glanced at the cop car, mentally adding that it would outrun almost anything if he remembered to fill the fucking tank.

“I’ll bet!” repeated the cop, apparently keen on gambling.

Nearly twenty minutes later the cops had still failed to ask Scarecrow for any ID and showed no sign of wanting to arrest him for anything. There was no sign of any backup either. They just kept ooh-ing and ah-ing about how great his bike was, and as much as he was, in normal circumstances, happy to talk bikes all day, they were beginning to piss him off.

It was sheer dumb luck that they caught him in the first place. It wasn’t just Scarecrow’s bike that was fast: sometimes his reactions were so quick on the drag-strip that the timer failed to even register a difference between the lights going green and him taking off from the line. And God help anyone who thought they’d get to throw the first punch in a fight. If Scarecrow was feeling nice then they’d be swinging wildly at the empty space where he’d just been standing, if not then they’d find themselves on the floor, with a number of teeth missing, wondering what the hell had hit them.

But, fantasies about beating up TV presenters notwithstanding, Scarecrow was not a violent man. He would fight if he absolutely had to, but otherwise gave people several chances to right any wrongs before he resorted to amateur dentistry and, even then, he would disarm and restrain his opponent rather than hospitalise them. The fact that he could catch flies in flight, just pluck them out of the air with his fingers, gave him, he always felt, a rather unfair advantage, and, for reasons that he had never quite been able to fathom, he had a strong aversion to bullies. Not that he had ever been bullied as a child, for the simple reason that there was no one to bully him. He and his family – mother, father, and sister – had lived in a remote farmhouse outside Lezayre on the Isle Of Man, a population less than two thousand.

To add to the isolation both siblings were home taught rather than going to school. It was a simple lifestyle, too simple for Scarecrow. They raised chickens, grew vegetables, chopped wood, milked goats, watched paint dry. And all year long Scarecrow yearned for June to come around and with it the TT races that filled the entire island with motorcycles and noise and speed and music and anything but home-grown carrots and goat’s tits. Most of all, despite the track claiming over two hundred lives, the races brought life to the island.

During the day Scarecrow would find a secluded spot to watch the races from, somewhere with a bit of cover in case it rained, with a good view of at least one fast corner, and as far away from any humans as possible. Motorcycles were everything, and by the time he was nine he could name every bike by sound, long before it passed his hideaway. He timed the laps of the loudest bikes on a stopwatch, writing them down in a scrap book with a picture of the bike beside it.

It was around this time that Scarecrow met his friend Buggane, a large and crotchety old tramp who seemed to spend most of his time in jail for vandalising the local church. Buggane was hiding in the bushes waiting for some tourists to pass so they didn’t see him and Scarecrow was looking for a new hideout. They watched the racing together and Scarecrow shared his sandwiches because he sensed that no one had ever been very nice to Buggane.

“How old are you?” he asked, still young enough to ask questions that age would censor.

“As old as my nose and a little older than my teeth,” said Buggane.

Beneath a wild grey beard it seemed that his teeth were too long for his mouth, but it was difficult to tell because he seemed to be mostly made of hair. Even his knuckles were hairy.

“Why are you hiding in the bushes?”

“None of your business,” grunted Buggane, shuffling around trying to get comfortable. “Bloody church.”

It turned out that Buggane was hiding from the police who wanted to question him about a huge boulder that had been thrown through the windows of the local church early that morning.

“I told ’em,” he said. “Need a bloody crane to lift that rock. How is it my fault? There’s no tyre tracks. Act of God I told ’em. Got any more of them cheese and pickle ones?”

“So why are you hiding then?”

“Ah, well,” said Buggane, deciding that a large root was the cause of his discomfort. “The thing is, ya see, is... Well, the thing is, I done it. I done it and I’ll do it again! Bloody church.”

Buggane grasped the root and pulled it sharply. Most of the bush came out of the ground. They found somewhere else to watch the racing from and spent the rest of the day jotting down meaningless facts in Scarecrow’s scrapbook.

Although Scarecrow was vaguely aware, even at that age, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Buggane was not only freakishly strong for his age, but also completely insane, he was nonetheless fascinated with the old man and they became firm friends.

As far as Scarecrow could tell, Buggane either lived in a cave or some sort of hut in the mountains. He also seemed to have a sixth sense about when there was going to be a crash and they always found the best places to watch from, but, strangely, he knew to steer them away from anything really bad. He would mutter something about “not thanking the faeries” and lead them in the opposite direction, and Scarecrow would later find out that the crash had been fatal. As he grew older Scarecrow insisted they watch less crashes and he started saving for his own bike, a wretched little Honda with no brakes.

Scarecrow was nineteen years old when he first met Aberrant MC. It was the same year that Buggane went to prison. Proper prison. He remembered that Buggane insisted he drive him down to Douglas to meet the late ferry coming in for the first day of the TT races. He thought it strange because Buggane usually refused to go anywhere near his bike, which, by this point, had progressed to a desperately unstable Z650, but he needed little excuse to show off his riding skills.

Having grown up on the Isle Of Man he could now complete the race circuit faster than many of the bikes that were actually competing in the races, and a local shop was talking about sponsoring him to enter next year. Despite the cold chill to the night air he was thinking about going down to the harbour anyway to catch the first wave arriving on the island and check out the bikes.

It was spitting with rain when they got to the harbour, the thin spray highlighted in street lights and headlights. Buggane paced around looking nervous, possibly just relieved that the ride was over, while Scarecrow went into train-spotter mode: lots of ZZRs, Fireblades, GSXRs, a nice old Guzzi, an MZ with German plates, which seemed like an awfully long ride for one of those things. Not that Scarecrow had much idea as he’d never left the island, but he’d ridden an MZ and didn’t envy the rider.

As the ferry emptied Buggane paced around more anxiously, straining to look down the gangplank.

“I can’t see ’em,” he grumbled. “They said this boat, I know they said this boat.”

“Who?” said Scarecrow, still none the wiser since Buggane hadn’t actually told him why they were meeting the ferry.

“Aberrant,” said Buggane bluntly, as if it was obvious to everyone why they were here. “Good boys, they are. Always looked after me they ’ave. Good boys.”

It was then that Aberrant MC came rumbling up the gangplank and Scarecrow would never forget it. He remembered Mad John, the wild gleam in his blue eyes as he headed the pack, then Mental, who looked more like a pirate or a wizard than a biker, then Numb Tongue, a wall of a man, over seven feet tall, with the devil’s own eyes and a face full of scars. Scarecrow could remember all of them. Joker, Flashback, Loud-As, with his ear all stitched back on after a fight, Smiler, grinning from ear to ear, which later turned out to be a squint because he couldn’t see very well. And still they came, like a dark cloud sweeping into the bay, all chrome and black leather.

It seemed like there was a spotlight on their arrival, like somehow the harbour lights had got brighter, and people scurried to get out of their way. Scarecrow was suitably impressed. As the crowd parted the club headed straight for Buggane, who was still frantically waving in case they hadn’t seen him. Mad John got off his bike and embraced Buggane like a long-lost brother, exchanging words that were muted in the noise of the bikes.

“And you must be the one I’ve heard so much about,” said Mad John, turning to Scarecrow. “Good things,” he added with a grin. “Although, I’m not sure the goat thing was entirely legal.”

Scarecrow had no idea what Mad John was talking about, but instantly warmed to his sense of humour. He was nervous, or at least apprehensive, and knew enough not to disrespect any member of an outlaw club, but they seemed on very good terms with Buggane who was currently walking down the line of bikes, greeting each rider with a warm hug.

“You know how it is,” said Scarecrow. “It gets lonely up here in the winter months.”

“So long as you leave Flossy alone, she’s mine” smiled Mad John, before turning back to the club. “Gentlemen,” he said quietly. And for a moment it was as if the harbour fell strangely silent. “If I might have your attention...”

Scarecrow stuck with the club like a magnet for the entire two weeks they were on the island, riding at the back of the pack wherever they went, absorbing their menacing presence, but, nonetheless, trying not to grin like an idiot the whole time. He loved the mixture of fear and curiosity they provoked in the general public and, despite parting crowds like something out of the Bible, they always had people to party with and, more often than not, a girl on each arm. It struck him as a little odd that they were staying in a remote country inn on the outskirts of town, but they seemed to know the staff, who treated the club like royalty.

In those two weeks Scarecrow had got to know all the club members fairly well. He’d also been introduced to cocaine, ecstasy, and acid. Most of the club were open and friendly, but a few of them scared him. Numb Tongue and Loud-As felt unpredictable and dangerous, like they might smash him in the head with a beer glass at any moment, even though they never showed any sign of wanting to do so. And it wasn’t difficult to guess where Mental got his name. One night in a bar it looked like there might be trouble with a huge pack of mods and Scarecrow, quietly tripping his nuts off, voiced his concern.

“Put these on,” said Mental, handing him a pair of sunglasses. “What you can’t see can’t hurt you. Put ’em on.”

The weird thing was it had worked.

The sadness that Scarecrow felt when the TT races were over was almost unbearable. It was bad enough in normal circumstances, but this time he felt like some great adventure had come to an end and he was losing his new friends along with having to return to every day life. It didn’t help that, just two months later, Buggane was arrested for blowing the roof off the local church. Scarecrow went to visit him a few times, but couldn’t seem to get much sense out of him.

“Not the first time,” he kept muttering. “St. Trinian’s was the first. Put ’em up, knock ’em down. Bloody churches!”

It was the same at every visit and Scarecrow was beginning to worry that Buggane was losing his mind. He knew for a fact that St. Trinian’s Church had been a derelict ruin since something like the fourteenth century, so why Buggane was claiming to have done it was anyone’s guess.

He wrote to Mad John, who, much to his delight, had kept in touch since the races, but John just kept telling him not to worry. ‘Buggane has been a dear friend to myself and the club for many, many years’ he had written. ‘He’s a lot stronger than you think.’ It had been a small comfort, but more than anything Scarecrow was desperately lonely. Buggane was sentenced to twenty years.

The following year Aberrant MC came back for the TT races and it was Scarecrow who met them from the ferry, swelling with pride as they made their usual dramatic entrance and then headed straight for him. They partied, though not as hard as previously since Scarecrow was actually competing in the races this year, and with Aberrant as his pit crew Scarecrow won his class outright and was presented with a huge trophy. The next day he and Mad John went to visit Buggane, who wept with joy when he saw them both.

“Good boys, I always said,” Buggane smiled. “You stick with these boys, Scarecrow. Good boys they are.”

When Aberrant MC went back to London, Scarecrow took Buggane at his word and went with them, staying first at their clubhouse before finding a small flat in Mile End. He found work as a motorcycle mechanic and repaid the club’s kindness by working on their bikes for free. Together they built a drag bike and Scarecrow won so many trophies that Mad John, apparently quite the carpenter, built him a cabinet to put them all in.

It was the last time he saw Mad John, who seemingly disappeared without trace, but, by then, Scarecrow was like part of the furniture at the clubhouse. He drank with them, went on runs with them, and, on more than one occasion, fought beside them. He was flattered but not surprised, when - two years ago at the Bulldog Bash - they had approached him before his final run of the day.

“We thought you might want to represent while you were out there,” said Joker, handing him a sleeveless leather vest with three patches on it.

Scarecrow put the trophy for that run in the clubhouse alongside assorted awards to other

club members, usually won for drinking or fighting.

“I don’t mean to be rude, officer,” Scarecrow ventured finally, realising that his mind had drifted, “but I’m running kind of late.”

“Oh my goodness! Of course! Of course! You mustn’t let us detain you,” said the cop, completely missing the irony. “I’m afraid it’s quite a walk to the nearest petrol station from here and I doubt you’ll want to leave this beauty unattended around here. I’ll tell you what; we’ve got a spare gallon in the back of the car if this beast’ll run on regular unleaded. We can give you that to get you on your way.”

And with that, the cops filled Scarecrow’s tank, bade him good-day, and left him standing by the side of the road, not a little confused and with the vague feeling that he’d somehow been tricked. What the fuck was all that about? Good cop, good cop? He glanced up and down the street again, but the cops had definitely gone, so he fished the coke and the knuckles out of the bin and started his bike just as his mobile went off.