He gets up and dresses even though it's the middle of the night. Slips on a tatty shirt, leathers, and grabs a helmet.
He moves quickly, trying to outrun the nightmare still clawing its way out of his bed and back into his mind.
At least he remembers to close his door behind him with care as not wake the neighbours.
The road blurs. Darkness flashes past; loud, indistinct, unimportant. The roar of the bike fills his head and sets his heart pounding in time to the ghost within the machine. Only speed makes sense.
Faster.
The headlamp is a tiny glint in the night: a reaper's lantern burning through the mist and the fog. He twists the throttle furiously, attempting to outrun the fear that hounds him.
He takes the corner too fast. The bike slews sickeningly underneath him. He laughs; a wild, mad bark against the engulfing darkness. He welcomes the dance, wrestles with it; lets Death run her fingers through his hair.
She'll grab hold one day, he knows. Grab hold and drag him down into the ocean for a Judgement long overdue.
And he doesn't know if he'll welcome it.
The front wheel bucks over a stone. Fireworks ignite in his bones.
Faster!
A clear section of road. He pushes the bike to the limit, living in the half-world of speed-stretched images that last less time than a blink of the eye.
Don't think.
Don't feel.
Just ride.
There's a shadow waiting at his door when he gets back; ice-cold, only half-patient. The shadow sees the bike, sees the tears, but all he says is, "It's nearly half three in the morning."
"Yeh."
"Couldn't sleep?"
"No."
The shadow shrugs, but he can feel the crackling tension. "Any chance of a nightcap, then?"
"Yeah." No. he's too lost in the memory of speed, he's spellbound, entranced. Bodie's presence is too real and too close. But Bodie waited outside his door…
"Why, Ray? You could have killed yourself. It's not a good night for a bike ride."
He breathes, deliberately. "We nearly died this morning."
"That's nothing new." Bodie tightens his shoulders.
"A nuke's a little different."
It's true. He's scared of the light now. He needs the soft darkness if only to stave off the image of pure white light –
And then nothing. Nothing ever again.
"On the bright side, we'll know nothing about it."
He looks at Bodie, pale in the starlight. He has waited for Doyle outside his door instead of being asleep at home.
A nuke is very different.
So he opens the door, welcomes stillness into his home and turns on all the lights.