160. Hard-Fought Race
160
Hard-Fought Race
W illow
When the guys return to the garage, I run outside to pee, then return to shovel food in my mouth, all the while mentally reviewing our strategy with both of them. The food helps reduces my brain fog.
I’ll admit. I didn’t share a couple of important things with them yesterday. I didn’t want them to think the worst of me. But it’s too late for that. We’ve all shown our true colors to each other as we traversed the awful challenges TGN threw at us. If that hasn’t driven us away from each other, nothing will.
I have Valor back the car up and drive it to the starting line. He bitches the entire time. Well, not exactly bitches, but he balks. He doesn’t like my logic that someone else should be able to drive the car if I’m out of commission. He doesn’t want to think of me being hurt. You’d think he’d be over that after watching that poisonous snake bite me last night.
Since all the other cars aren’t at the starting line yet, I have Braveheart take a turn behind the wheel.
Cross-training. It’s a big thing on Earth, I tell them, my voice falsely chipper.
Braveheart is up front with me, his paraphernalia neatly organized between his feet. Valor is in the back, his projectiles at the ready.
“We’re going to win,” I tell them as I slide into my seat. “We didn’t survive poisonous bites and wyrms and dragons and giant reptiles just to die in a fucking car crash.”
The only thing the network seemed to have upgraded on our car was the screen retrofitted into the middle of the dash and the two small cameras hanging above both top corners of the windshield.
Zedd’s face comes on the screen. Perhaps it’s because this screen is so close, or maybe it’s because it’s the last day of the competition, but her eyes are shining brighter than usual. Almost like she’s manic, excited, deliriously happy she’s about to be the cause of death for 21 people.
Bitch.
“Start your engines,” she says.
I’m half surprised that all eight vehicles start. I guess our opponents did something yesterday besides spray paint their cars. They must have learned some driving basics.
“Go!”
Before I was in kindergarten, I told my dad I wanted to race cars just like him. And from that tender age, he’d told me that was never going to happen. It was okay for his sons, but not his daughter. That’s okay. It never stopped me from learning everything I could from him.
I take off in the middle of the pack. Let the early drivers literally pave the way, let them crash through brush and puncture their tires on sharp rocks.
The three of us looked inside the garage and around the grounds yesterday, looking for spare tires. We found many of them. Not one of them survived the intervening centuries. They were all checkered with dry rot. We’ve got four tires. There will be no replacements. It’s one of our vulnerabilities I’ve been worrying about.
It’s dusty as hell out here, driving behind cars that are blazing a trail through the dirt. I just keep my eyes glued on my competition, keeping solidly in the middle of the pack and trying to see through the sandy haze to avoid big rocks in the roadway. I tell Braveheart my concerns, and he uses his sharper geneslave eyesight to warn me about obstacles.
“You’re doing well,” Valor says from the backseat.
Thanks.
I didn’t have much planned for this first lap. I just wanted to get the lay of the land, see how rocky the track was, and get a feel for how these people drive.
The moment we round the original pole to start the second lap, everything changes.
Ready, Braveheart? I ask my lover in the passenger seat.
Tell me what to do, he says, his tone full of determination.
I jockey for position, weaving between cars, trying to make my way to the front of the pack.
The female of the white team is driving. She nudges us from the right, hard, trying to keep ahead of me. I compensate for her thrust, avoid hitting the car to our left, and keep gunning the engine.
“Bitch!”
She’s doing a pretty good job of blocking our path. Every time I feint to go around her, she manages to anticipate my moves.
“This is up to you, Valor,” I call to him in the backseat.
We’d had a long discussion yesterday about the pros and cons of this strategy. We discussed how the added weight of heavy rocks in the backseat would not only take a toll on the tires, but the extra gas it would eat up. In the end, though, we knew we needed some secret weapons at our disposal. As always, our secret weapon is Valor.
He hefts a boulder twice the size of a bowling ball and takes aim with it above his shoulder like a shot put.
“Get ready!” I say as I pull alongside the white team’s car. When I manage to pull ahead, he lobs the boulder onto their hood, where it lands with a thud then flies through their windshield.
I don’t take my eyes off the cars all around me, but thrill when Braveheart says, “Direct hit. They careened off to the right and crashed into a boulder. I’d bet they’re out of commission.”
Odds just got better. Instead of seven competitors, we have six.
Braveheart must feel my pang of guilt, because he says, We didn’t make the rules, Willow. We will do what we must. For our little family.
I stay in third place, watching not only the cars in front of me, but any coming up behind us.
“Emerald team’s coming fast,” Valor says from the backseat.
“One-two punch, Valor. If one of your big rocks doesn’t stop them, Braveheart, you know what to do.”
Valor heaves a big rock at them, but they manage to swerve to dodge it. I not only keep ahead of them, I manage to cut directly in front of them.
“Now!” I say to Braveheart. He told me earlier he stayed up half the night sharpening all the metal pieces so every surface had a jagged edge. He tosses handful after handful onto the road in front of them until we hear the unmistakable sound of a tire popping.
They fishtail, but stay on our tail for a moment. After a while, the tire must give way completely, because they fall to the back of the pack.
Five competitors are left as we round the far flagpole. We have one and a half laps left.
The orange team is making a move on us as we approach the starting line. They try to bash us from the side as they make their way around us, but Valor heaves one of our largest rocks in a perfect arc. It lands on the ground in front of their right front tire, stopping them almost like they hit a brick wall.
Although we only have four competitors left, I don’t allow myself to feel even a spark of optimism. There’s no room for complacency.
“You guys rock,” I say absently as I keep my eyes peeled for any shenanigans. “I’m going to slow down. Is that the gray team directly behind us?”
Yes, Valor says.
“When I slow, do your worst.”
The other team must wonder what we’ve got up our sleeve when we slow, but the driver doesn’t have the reflexes to maneuver out of the way in time. Valor heaves a huge rock that lands on their hood, but they fishtail through that and keep directly behind us.
Valor doesn’t need direction from me. As soon as he realizes his first effort didn’t work, he tosses another big rock as if it weighs no more than a baseball. This time the rock smashes through the windshield and takes the grays out of commission as we round the flagpole to begin our final lap.
”… so exciting, viewers. I’m sure you never expected any of the teams to cheat like the scarlet team is doing right now…”
Zedd, as usual, is inciting the viewers to hate our team. There is no doubt in my mind that whatever Zedd’s mouth is saying, inside she’s thrilled we’re adding more action and excitement to the race—and more money to her coffers.
For a moment, I wonder what she thought would be so exciting about this race that they put so much of their resources into it. Obviously, we were the only team who came prepared to be on the offensive. If we hadn’t dreamed up our boulder and nail-throwing schemes, this wouldn’t be any more exciting than a NASCAR event.
“Oh, shit!”
What was I thinking? Did I really believe, even for a minute, that Zedd didn’t have something more nefarious, and more exciting, up her sleeve than a bunch of antique cars driving in circles?
I see what looks like an army of security guys in hard-shelled white armor. They’re up ahead, lining the makeshift roadway from the far pole to the finish line.