Surfcycle Plague 4: Killer

Drunk bros in button down shirts and shiny necklaces with slicked up hair and foreigners of indistinguishable nationality were paying for their gas. I threw out the Twinkies wrapper and empty coffee cup and left the gas station on the east end of the Long Island Expressway. It's a good thing I had a full tank of caffeine because I did NOT fill up on gas.

Fifteen miles later I was near the geographic center of Long Island with an empty gas tank and no gas light indicating the fuel level. I ditched the motorcycle and bushwhacked off the expressway to a country road. I found a street light and started to call my insurance company. I saw a man walking his Great Dane and hung up.

“Excuse me, sir!” I waved my lit phone in his direction as I walked away from the streetlight, “Do you have a gallon of gas I could use?”

He was bald with a grey, maintained mustache and focused V-shaped eyebrows. He was wearing jean shorts and a t-shirt. He looked real serious for a guy walking his dog but not for a guy getting approached by a weirdo in the dark at 10:30PM on a Friday night in the middle of nowhere.

“Yeah, I do. You run out or something?” I explained the situation. He returned in ten minutes in a paneled van with his contracting company logo on the side and a foldable ladder tied to the top. The inside was a mess of paint cans, tools, and a gasoline canister... 

“I used to ride motorcycles too. Until the accident. Everyone has an accident.” Yes, he really said, "Until the accident."

Source

We talked about riding, wrestling (he was a high school coach), and Charlotte, where he went to college.

We added the gallon. It started. 100 feet later, it stopped. “I think we need more fuel,” he said as We continued to exhaust the charge of the battery.

We began to search for a gas station.  We started talking again. We didn't talk about anything important for about twenty minutes (I was wondering how he didn't know where the nearest gas station was) until he broke the casual nature:

“Here’s a piece of trivia you might like. Well, you may already know it.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a serial killer in the area.”

I was still calm because I didn't really believe him, “Really? Still on the loose?”

“Yeah.”

“As in, has murdered recently and not been caught?”

“Yeah, they found some of the bodies… well body parts at least. Right near where you broke down. Over by uhhh, Wading River Road. It's the Gilgo Beach Killer. I thought it was national news.”

Source

I gave the dramatic chipmunk look and thought of when and how I would have to get out of this.

A leather jacket would SURELY soften the blow of a couple of bullets to the torso as I rolled out of the car and hid in the woods right? I would probably even kill the Gilgo Beach Killer in a one-on-one "First Blood" scenario. I took the junior cadet Leadership Training Course on survival, escape, resistance, and evasion and did all four of those things. No way the GBK was going to take me down. I had my plan for the spear trap laid out in my head when he eased my fears:

“Don’t worry though. He mostly just kills prostitutes." PHEW!!

Keep riding,
LSF