Road Rage

by Paul Tomlinson

  “He’s a supercroc – an apex predator. His hearing is good and so’s his sense of smell. But his eyes are incredible. They see in colour, like ours, and their position on top of his head means he can see almost all around him. And he can track multiple targets. That makes him difficult to creep up on.”

  “How long have you been studying them?” I asked.

  Sonny shrugged, embarrassed. “Know thine enemy,” he said dismissively.

  We kept digging. It didn’t take long to prepare the grave. It wasn’t very tall. We stopped when the bottom of the hole started filling with water. Sonny picked up Becker’s legs and laid them in the grave. I was relieved – I didn’t want to touch them again. We shovelled the mud back into the hole and smoothed it over.

  “How do we mark the grave?” I asked, looking around for a piece of wood or a boulder.

  “Don’t bother,” Sonny said. “Becker isn’t in that hole. He’s out there somewhere.” He looked out over the lake. It was placid again.

  “Horrible way to die,” I said.

  “It’s worse if they take you and hold you underwater until you drown,” he said. “Let’s go back to the fire.”

  “This isn’t the first man you’ve buried out here, is it?” I asked.

  “El Bastardo killed Alina’s husband, Maximo,” Sonny said. “She was attacked by one of the smaller ones. It bit a chunk out of her side. When Max went in to save her, the big scracker came up and pulled him under.”

  “Why do you people stay in this place?” I asked.

  He stopped walking and we faced each other.

  “Alina wants to take El Bastardo. We want to help her do it. After that, we’ll retire.”

  “If you live that long.”

  “We’ll get him,” Sonny said.

  “Tell me about the tattoo,” I said. I reached out and touched the side of his neck. He didn’t pull away.

  “Don’t you like it?” he asked, a hint of defiance in his voice.

  “I’m getting used to it.”

  “I needed to look tougher,” he said.

  “Needed to?”

  He looked into my eyes for a moment and then did a little sideways jerk of his head. I thought it was another shrug but it was another sort of signal. The image of the skull started to disappear. Beginning at the hairline it sank downwards, like he’d pulled a plug and the ink was draining away. It was a nano-tattoo, the image created by thousands of tiny machines that lived under his skin. Whenever I see someone with facial tattoos I find myself wondering what they look like underneath. With this set-up you get the best of both worlds.

  I could see why he liked to wear the skull-face. Without it he looked pale and fragile, his features quite feminine. He should have pointed ears like an elf. There were early signs of crow’s-feet near his eyes so he was older than he looked. And if he could survive in this place he was tougher than he looked too. But he felt that he needed to look tougher. I could understand that.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said. He stared right into my eyes. No blushing innocent, that was certain.

  Sonny reached up and touched my bruised face. “Did she do this to you?” he asked.

  “Harmony? No,” I said, smiling. “But that’s not to say she couldn’t.”

  “Let’s go and drink to Becker’s memory,” he said.

  “And then?”

  He thought about this and then smiled sadly. “Then you’d better get back to your woman. You don’t need any more bruises.”

  I glanced towards the group around the fire. When I turned back, Sonny’s skull-face had returned. I would still have kissed him and he knew that. But he walked away. He was definitely tougher than me.

  When we got back to the fire, the others were already drinking to Becker’s memory. All except Skeeter who refused the bottle when it was passed to him. I took his share. It had been a hell of a night.

  The ‘mutants’ seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of vodka. That explained why they weren’t interested in our cargo. By the time we started passing around the third bottle people had begun to relax a bit and share stories.

  “We used to hunt dragons in the south,” Isak said. “We’d sell teeth and claws and skulls. The meat too. But now there are not so many tourists.”

  “I heard that the meat tastes like chicken,” I said, just to make conversation.

  Harmony snorted. “It’s nothing like chicken,” she said. “It’s very strong, gamey – and quite bitter. But it’s okay if you cook it with apricots and spices.”

  The clown-faced one nodded in agreement. But he nodded and smiled at everything.

  The mutants were quite impressed when they heard that I had faced a dragon alone in the jungle. They were even more impressed that Floyd had thrown it at me.

  “He’s not the same...” I said, preparing to tell them about his old body.

  “You don’t need to spoil it,” Floyd said.

  *

  I woke at first light. We were in the truck’s bunk and Harmony and I had our arms wrapped around each other. She was already awake and was watching me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You gave up a night with skull-boy to cuddle with me,” she said.

  “He thought we were a couple so he said ‘no’,” I said. “And after that, I was too drunk to perform.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a true romantic?” she asked.

  “Oddly enough...”

  “Well, don’t hold your breath,” she said.

  We disentangled our limbs and lay side by side in the cramped space. Neither of us wanted to move. In another place at another time it would have been a lovely moment.

  “You okay?” Harmony asked. A man had died in front of me and she knew how I felt about violent death.

  “I’m dealing with it,” I said.

  I told her what Sonny had said about El Bastardo and Alina’s obsession to avenge her husband’s death.

  “If I was killed, would you seek revenge on my behalf?” I asked.

  “Oh, absolutely,” she said flatly. “You know how deep my feelings are for you, Quentin.”

  “It’s Quincy.”

  “Whatever. Put your pants on, I can smell bacon cooking.”

  I jumped up. I didn’t want her getting out there before I did. I’d seen her eat – there’d been nothing left.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  If Alina or any of her people were hungover, they hid it well. But they’d started out pale and skull-faced so maybe it was just hard to tell. They did seem more subdued. I saw them exchange glances without saying anything and it made me uncomfortable. Having a bunch of strangers around probably made it harder for them to express their grief. It was time we moved on.

  After breakfast I went to say farewell to Alina.

  “We’ll be heading out in a minute,” I said.

  “Thank you for what you did last night,” she said. “And for what you tried to do.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him.”

  She dismissed this and changed the subject quickly. “We’re going to stay here a couple of hours and make some noise,” she said. “That should distract El Bastardo so you can get away.”

  “I wish there was something we could do to help you,” I said.

  “You have your delivery to make, I understand.”

  “Have you seen Sonny?” I asked. “He wasn’t at breakfast.”

  “He said he wasn’t hungry.”

  “Tell him... Just say I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

  Alina nodded. She didn’t much look like a woman obsessed with a white whale. But it was clear that Becker’s death had stirred other memories of loss. I understood the anger she’d shown last night – at the giant crocodile, at fate, and at Becker for allowing himself to be killed. I hadn’t seen her physical scar but I’d seen images of shark victims. A meat-stitcher can’t make wounds like that disappear – there has to be something left to knit together. Every time she saw her scar she wo
uld be reminded of the man who had sacrificed his life trying to save her. She had every right to want revenge. I just hope it didn’t destroy her or any of the others.

  She had a tooth on a leather thong around her neck. When she was distracted, her fingers would toy with it. Another reminder, I presumed. She saw me looking at it.

  “They dug this out of me,” she said.

  “I’m sorry about Becker,” I said. “And your husband.”

  “Get out of here before you make me cry,” she said.

  “You Skullbusters aren’t at all how I imagined you’d be,” I said.

  “We’re mutated on the inside,” she said and winked at me. “Good luck, Quin.”

  “Be careful on the old swamp road,” Isak said. “It’s impassable in places.”

  “It always was,” Skeet said.

  “You must have been crazy to keep driving that route,” the big man said.

  “I was. Crazy drunk.”

  Skeet hadn’t touched a drop all night, but this morning he looked worse than any of us.

  “You should be okay for the next ten miles,” Isak said. “But then you’ll have to head away from the lake for a while.”

  “Good to know, thanks,” Skeet said, climbing up into the cab of the truck. Floyd was already up there, armed and ready.

  I looked around the little camp one last time hoping to see Sonny, but there was no sign of him. The dirt bike that I’d seen before was missing so I guessed he was off on a scouting mission or something. Maybe he just hated goodbyes. The rest of the ‘mutants’ seemed relieved that we were leaving and Mayuko looked almost happy. I gave her a cheerful wave but I don’t think she saw it.

  Harmony had decided that she was driving. I flicked on the communication system to check that we could all still talk to one another.

  “This here’s Robin Hood to the Steel Duck and Crazy Skeeter, you got your ears on?” I said.

  “I do wish you wouldn’t do that,” Harmony said, accelerating away harder than she needed to.

  “This is Skeet, what’s up?”

  “Harmony and me are going to scout ahead,” I said. “You two take it easy until we’ve checked the road.”

  “Roger that.”

  The truck pulled out of the camp behind us and the distance between us and it increased rapidly.

  “Slow down,” I said. “Didn’t you see the sign? Crocodiles crossing.”

  Pretty soon Harmony had no choice but to slow down.

  “Their idea of passable is not the same as mine,” Harmony grumbled.

  We’d only travelled about five miles and already the road had disappeared. We were squelching our way slowly through what looked like a ploughed field. And there was a lot of water in the furrows.

  “Could be they haven’t been this way for a while,” I said.

  “Or maybe they deliberately misled us.”

  “Why would they do that?” I asked.

  “Perhaps skull-face couldn’t bear to see you leave?”

  “Or maybe Mayuko wanted a closer look at your Johnson,” I said.

  “Do you think she liked me?” Harmony asked, smiling. “You’d better warn the others that we’re on squit street.”

  “Skeet,” I said, “this is Quin. You’d better hang back because there’s no road here.”

  “I hear you,” Skeet answered.

  “You and Floyd look at the map and see if you can steer you around this mess,” I said.

  “Will do.”

  Harmony had stopped the Trekker. “Do we keep trying to go forward or turn back?” she asked.

  Even with the Trekker’s mud-plugger tyres and all-wheel drive, there were limits to how much squit we could wade through. I didn’t want to get stuck in a sea of sludge with no one around to pull us out. “Retreat,” I said.

  Harmony threw the Trekker into reverse. I was thrown back in my seat as we hit something. My stuffed Bertie the Bear fell off the dashboard and belly-flopped onto the floor.

  “Did you check your rear-view mirror?” I chided. I bent to retrieve Bertie from the footwell.

  “There’s no one on this scracking road except us,” she said. She glanced in the mirror to see what we’d bumped into. “Squit!”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We just hit a crocodile.”

  “A crocodile?”

  “The crocodile. El Bastardo,” she said.

  I straightened up and looked out of the rear window. This was my first proper look at El Bastardo in daylight. He had backed off a little way following the impact. He certainly lived up to his billing. It was hard to tell from this angle, but he was maybe thirty feet long. His body was lifted from the ground on four sturdy legs and he walked with a sort of pigeon-toed waddle, the huge tail swinging behind him. He did look like a giant crocodile. His whole body was covered in dark gnarly skin and rows of scutes ran along his back and down his tail. Definitely bigger and uglier than a Sapphire Dragon.

  “How did it find us?” Harmony asked.

  “You know when you pass a restaurant and the smell of barbecued meat makes your mouth water? That’s what we smell like to him.”

  “How long do you think he’s been following us? Never mind. He’s charging again!”

  The crash was like being rear-ended by a tank. I dropped Bertie again. He was safer down there anyway.

  “What do we do?” Harmony asked.

  “Stay in the car,” I suggested.

  “Genius.” I think she was being sarcastic.

  The big croc’s top speed had never been recorded but over a short distance he could probably manage twelve miles an hour or maybe even twenty. Even at the low estimate, we couldn’t outrun him on foot and the Trekker would struggle to pick up speed in this mud.

  “Get us away from that thing,” I said. “Head for firmer ground.” I pointed inland away from the lake. The creature was in his element in soft mud – we stood more of a chance of escaping uneaten if we could get onto dryer land.

  The Trekker’s wheel spun in the mud. We were moving but not fast. Another impact from behind and the back of the Trekker dipped suddenly. It was darker inside than it had been.

  Chapter Forty

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  Harmony peered at the images from the rear-view camera. “He’s trying to mount us.”

  “He must think we’re a lady crocodile.”

  The back window cracked and we were showered with fragments of glass.

  “What do we do if he comes inside?” Harmony asked.

  “Start swimming,” I said.

  “This isn’t the time for schoolboy humour.”

  She was wrong. There’s never a wrong time for juvenile quips.

  There were loud squeaks and scrapes as rough hide rubbed against the Trekker’s bodywork. And then a fingernails-on-blackboard sound from its teeth as it tried to bite the roof. My guess was that El Bastardo weighed about the same as the Trekker. Hopefully, that meant the roll-cage was strong enough to protect us – but I was less sure about the door panels. We needed to lose our unwanted hitch-hiker.

  Harmony selected ‘forward’ and pressed down very, very gently on the ‘go’ pedal. The Trekker crept forwards. The extra weight had helped improve traction. Inch by agonising inch we moved away from the lake. Individual tyres would lose their grip and spin, but the Trekker’s systems braked the wheel and applied more oomph to those that had grip. If we got far enough away from the water for the creature to feel uncomfortable, it might give up on us and wander away.

  A grinding crushing noise somewhere above us.

  “What was that?” Harmony asked.

  “He just chewed off the roof-mounted lights,” I said. I stifled a scream as a big clawed foot dropped into view beside me. It raked the door panel and I thought it would cut through or smash the glass. I thought about joining Bertie on the floor. The leg was hoisted back up onto the roof and scraped at the paintwork there instead.

  We were edging closer to dry la
nd. Or less wet land at least. If the creature was aware of our movement, it gave no indication. It just kept attacking the Trekker as if it was a can of sardines with a missing key.

  The front of the Trekker rose as we came to a sort of bank and started up it. The change in angle caused the crocodile to slide but it must have tightened its grip because it didn’t fall off the back. The wheels made it over the edge, up onto firmer ground. Slowly they pulled us forwards and upwards, but the weight of our passenger was pulling in the opposite direction. My zap gun was in the trunk or I would have risked sticking my arm out to shock El Bastardo and make him loosen his grip. He would probably have ripped my arm off as he went.

  “He’s too heavy,” Harmony said.

  “You’re doing great, just a few more feet.”

  “And then what?”

  “We’ll make that bit up when we come to it,” I said.

  There was a scraping noise under the Trekker. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one. It seemed to travel backwards under the floor which suggested we were still heading forwards. The rear of the car vibrated unevenly as the back wheels tried to maintain their grip and then we seemed to level out.

  “We made it,” I said. “Dry land.”

  Harmony’s knuckles were white where she was gripping the steering wheel. “I’m going to try and build up some speed. Maybe he’ll let go.”

  With El Bastardo as a roof ornament, the Trekker’s motors would have to work twice as hard to get us moving at anything above a slow trot. Harmony gently coaxed them into delivering all they could. I looked across and saw the speedometer creep up past twenty and on to thirty miles an hour. Above us the crocodile shifted position, apparently aware now that its lunch pail was moving again.

  Red warning lights started to appear on the dashboard screen. Things were starting to get hot. There was an automatic emergency shutdown if things reached dangerous levels, but I’d never had that happen. Yet. I felt bad about what we were asking the Trekker to do for us.

  Forty miles an hour. We weren’t going to see much more than that. And El Bastardo was showing no signs of wanting to disembark. Maybe we needed to stop to let him off. Harmony seemed to think the same thing. She urged a final few ounces from the motors causing an emergency siren to start wailing from somewhere under the dashboard. Then she stamped down hard on the brakes.