Rumble rumble rumble-
The sky is overcast, and oily rainwater is already pooled on the road, although it's only five o'clock in the morning. The rumbling, however, isn't coming from overhead. It's coming from the horizon, racing the sunlight along the highway. There's a blur there, resolving into eleven shapes. Bikes.
-rumble rumble-
These people aren't police or soldiers or even just a club of motorbike fanatics; that much is clear from the way they sit, the way they ride, the way they swerve purposefully from left to right. From a distance, it isn't immediately obvious that these people are people at all.
From a distance, all that's obvious is that these people are coming closer, and that it would be a good idea to get out of the way. Now.
-rumble RUMBLE RUMBLE rumble-
And they're past, flying into the distance, along the desert highway. The sun is rising after them, but mere light isn't fast enough to catch them. The fire in the sky tugs itself above the horizon, while the riders soar west.
They had stopped. There was a petrol station next to the highway; it looked abandoned, it looked empty, but mostly it looked grimy. One pump rested rustily on a sand-scorched concrete pillar, while chars and scratches marked where another once was. There was a building, small, crouching, deferential, with a bicycle leaning against its wall. Not a motorbike. A bicycle.
The man inside the building looked like the petrol station – rusty and abandoned. For the most part, though, he looked scared. This could be his normal expression, but it seemed more likely that it was due to the circle of bikers surrounding his domain.
They looked neat, in a literal rather than a slang way. They all looked as if not only their clothes but themselves had been run through a trouser-press moments before, though their stance suggested that they'd been riding for a long time. They all looked like this except one of them, whose shirt was untucked beneath a scruffy leather jacket, whose helmet was twisted and visor was scratched, whose boots were caked in mud.
The sun was clear of the horizon. The bikers – with their heavy leathers and face-concealing blacked-out visors – didn't look happy at all. Despite the fact that their faces couldn't be seen, that is.
One dismounted, stepped forward and rattled the door of the building. Maybe the cashier inside saw the bikers coming down the highway and had the presence of mind to lock it, or maybe he was just fortunately absent-minded when he'd arrived for his night shift; either way, it stayed closed. The bikers looked even less happy.
The biker pounded on the door's upper pane of glass with a gauntleted fist. The cashier shrank back, maybe wishing he'd put up some blackout-style cardboard as well.
"Hey, let us in!" Well, that biker was human, at least, an American accent muffled by his helmet. Nine of the other ten bikers dismounted as well, with sharp, graceful movements; no stumbling about from a night of riding or a morning of racing the sun. One, however, stayed in his saddle, shirt still untucked, helmet still askew, leaning lazily backwards with his blackened visor pointed towards the sun.
The cashier looked as if he wanted to stay shtum, but another round of rattling the glass door – which sounded perilously close to cracking – convinced him to speak.
"Can't come in unless you're buying petrol!"
The biker at the door turned to the one man still on his bike. Without looking down, the mounted biker gave a thumbs-up. Another dragged his bike over to the petrol pump, while the man at the door turned back to the quivering cashier.
"T-take your helmets off, before you come in!"
"Why?" His voice held nothing but contempt.
"You could be terrorists!" It was clear that, even in his own mind, the cashier was clutching at straws.
"Terrori-" the man let out a vicious bark of a laugh. "You think we're terrorists? There are worse things than terrorists in America, boy. Don't worry. We're not terrorists."
"Well, I bet that's what you'd say, if you were terrorists!" The cashier's voice was verging on hysteria. He'd led a mostly blameless life, and the night shift at the petrol stop was quiet, and he'd never dealt with a biker gang before, let alone one that seemed as menacing as this without even having done anything…
The biker at the door was fishing in a pocket, now. After a few seconds, he pulled out a card and held it up to the glass door. The cashier, against all better judgement, walked up to the glass on the other side and squinted. It was an identity card. There was a photograph of an average-looking man on an average-looking background. The card said: United States Army: Special Operation Initiatives.
The head of the man still on his bike snapped forwards. Everything became very still for a moment.
"I don't know that that's you," said the cashier, uneasily.
The scruffy-looking biker dismounted.
"Now, if you were to take your helmet off, I'd be able to see if you were that guy in that photo." His hand was inching towards an ancient telephone on a table.
Stopping behind the biker at the door, the scruffy-looking man paused, appeared to consider something, and then seized the other man's helmet in both hands and tugged.
The cashier watched in horrified fascination. The good news was that the biker did indeed match up to his photo. Brown, close-shaven hair, pale skin, slightly crooked nose… the bad news was that, the instant the sunlight touched that face, it began to smoke.
And then flame.
And then there was only dust, and a spare motorbike at the petrol pump.
The scruffier biker carelessly smashed the glass door in front of him and strode through, pushing his way past the suddenly-not-quite-as-protective cashier. The others followed him. With eleven people in the room, it was fairly cramped, but the cashier didn't even consider suggesting that one of the bikers should stand outside.
The sunlight didn't reach too far inside the building. The scruffier biker lifted up his visor, and the cashier screamed a little, quietly, at the sight of yellow eyes and a ridged forehead and fangs past any required by nature's evolution. The mouth that held those fangs curled upwards at the edges in a smile, and the ridges faded away, the fangs morphing back into normal teeth. All that was left was a guy – an all American guy, with wavy brown hair that had grown long and unkempt inside his helmet, and a few weeks' worth of stubble, and a friendly smile.
"Hello, sir," he said. "I'm Lieutenant Finn. I'm afraid that we're not terrorists. We're the something worse. Now, my men will be staying here for a few hours. It can get awful uncomfortable out there when the sun's up, especially in California – this is California, right?"
The cashier nodded, dumbfounded. The smile widened, just a little.
"So, before we… let you rest, just a quick question. Do you know a town called Sunnydale?"
-RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE.