≡ high windows ≡

Across the tracks at South Jackson, cruising near the reformatory and charity hospital. There, suddenly, bikes, riders all around him. Quickly he makes the first right. To get bearings, he looks for a street sign, but none appears.
He's been warned about driving this part of town.
A strict shortness comes up his throat. Mac does not recognize this street at all.
A Dead End sign announces itself, one corner somehow ripped away and paint-faded. A barbed-wire fence and rural field and black woods beyond. It is as if finding himself transported to another place in the world entirely. He is trying to reverse when he sees the bicycles, coming. They're slapping, kicking fenders with bare feet, yelling, calling him out. Voices chant, ancient deep leering sounds that strike at his heart. He can't drive past, they're so thick.
Later he would consider at length why he had actually gotten out of the car.
One appears to be a kind of leader. Mac makes several attempts to chat, but gets no coherent reply. He's sucking his Icee when they dismount and close in as the bikes fall over heedlessly and his last recognizable utterance is his one black friend's name shouted, and then blows to the stomach, head, chest. The breathy, greenstick sound of ribs in distress. Within moments Mac is fetal, wheezing. No sirens, no two-way radios. No Ret around to hear.