by Brian Cody
“D*** it!” the driver snarled as he thrust himself into the cab and waved his bruised fingers. “Give me the wheel!” he howled as he thrust the passenger away, clasped the steering wheel, and looked to the first of three iron towers marking the bridge’s extent.
“Do you want the A-R?” the center-right passenger inquired.
“No”, the driver grunted as he examined the vehicles around the truck.
“There’s no place for us to maneuver or to lose him”, the far passenger remarked.
“We’ll set up a barrier”, the driver replied as he looked to a tanker truck in the right lane. “Have any of you watched monster trucks?”
“Yes”, the center-left passenger replied. “Why_?”—he slammed into the driver’s side as the driver jerked the truck to the right—”what the h***_!?” The driver, guffawing, tightened and blinked. As he blinked, his vehicle drilled into the tanker’s side, malleating it as the other occupants within the cab were jostled. As the garbage truck straightened and pushed, the tanker was thrust rightward into a perpendicular slide. The garbage truck, first turning from the tanker, then jerked back to its cab, ramming into it and blasting it towards the bridge’s shoulder. The cab ramped off of the shoulder’s cement partition and cleaved through the suspension cables, while the tank, still gliding, collapsed and slid along the road. The garbage truck, then accelerating, squeezed past the tanker’s outstretching length and bolted on.
***
“Sheesh!” David exclaimed as he watched the tanker’s cab recoil from its slowed force, no longer able to tear through the cables. A short rumble directed him to the cab and towards initiated motion—a downward slide that dragged it towards the lime-green waters of the James River. “Crap!” David exclaimed. “Turrisi!” he called into his phone.
“I can squeeze through!” Turrisi replied.
“No, Turrisi, the truck! The truck’s about to_”—David stopped as he watched the vehicle’s nudges strengthen, and he gasped as the cab tilted off of the bridge. “Hold on!” David shoved his phone into his hoodie, inverted himself, and dove, clearing that thousand-foot altitude in a matter of moments. He righted himself and slammed down beside the truck’s cab, while Turrisi passed. As David caught the truck by the front of its tank, Turrisi braked. David’s legs then stiffened and his feet dug into the cement as he held fast. “Turrisi!” David called as he looked back, “grab the driver!”
“What?” Turrisi asked as he hopped off of the bike.
“The driver; grab the driver. If I’m able to let go of the truck and grab the driver before it hits the water, the acceleration from my movements would do more bad than good on his body. I need you to grab the driver now!”
“Right”, Turrisi replied as he jogged towards the truck, “right!” he repeated as he slid between the tank and the road. He reared up and jogged towards the shoulder, his mind forsaking the garbage truck for the moment, but keeping it as an after-thought as he came to the tanker’s misshapen and hanging cab, jumped onto the bridge’s shoulder, and then bounded for the running board. Landing, he clasped the shattered outline of the driver’s window to keep from sliding, while he scanned the interior, layered in shattered glass, and the driver, an elderly man, leaning towards the open windshield with his face covered in blood. “Hang on!” Turrisi called as he unlocked the door.
***
“Do you see this?” the far passenger gasped.
“The biker not following?” the driver cackled.
“Holy s***, that guy is holding the truck in place!” the far passenger howled.
The driver looked to his side view mirror, pinpointing the human shape standing firm with tank in hand, and then pinpointing Turrisi reaching into the cab’s interior. He slammed on the brake. Though jostled, the three passengers, instead, looked to the side-view mirrors.
“I’m not seeing things, right?” the far passenger asked as the driver heaved himself from the window and looked down the road. “Am I seeing things?”
“This isn’t right; this isn’t right at all”, the driver mumbled. “We should’ve taken a suit!” He beat the cab’s roof but then looked to the center-right passenger, and the small, bloated duffle bag at his feet. “Give me it.”
“Now?” the center-right passenger asked.
“Let’s give ‘em that light show”, the driver spoke while looking out.
***
“I’ve got you!” Turrisi called as he held the man on his shoulders while angling onto the truck’s running board.
“Can you make it?” David asked.
“Yeah”, Turrisi replied as he balanced on the cab’s ledge and bent his knees.
“No, but seriously_”— Turrisi leapt. With his legs pointed forward and his torso bowed, Turrisi cleared the shoulder and slid atop the road’s pulverized cement before sprinting towards the median. “What do I do with this thing?” David called.
“I don’t know, just do something quick”, Turrisi replied as he jogged behind the truck’s rear. “Cars are starting to congregate a few hundred yards back. If anyone gets a clear picture of you_” Turrisi silenced as his afterthought returned to prominence. One hundred feet from the tanker, he looked back, towards the center of the bridge, where the garbage truck was parked, while the driver stood along the median, behind the driver’s side door, with, on his shoulders, an elongated, metal shape, tube-like and a little over a yard in length. “Piekarsky, let go!” Turrisi roared as he shot from the tanker.
“What?” David called back.
“Let go!” Turrisi roared as he neared the parked cars and the onlookers populating them, “you need to let_” A cacophonous hiss sounded behind him. As Turrisi dropped to his knees and slid onto his gut, David turned, looking over his shoulder and pinpointing the rocket’s celeritous flight. David released. He outstretched his right as the rocket came within one yard of the tanker’s side, and he lunged as it came within one inch, Pouting, he watched its tip slam into the container, and, as the container shattered, he blinked.
The rocket erupted and uplifted the tank; yet, that light cough and the tanker’s fuel were consumed in a fifty-foot deflagration. Turrisi, having slid several feet, looked to the brisance raining around him and listened to the screeches of commuters fleeing for the bridge’s far side. He hoisted the man off of his back, examined him to ensure that he still breathed, and then dragged him to the median. He looked back to the blast nucleus—a pyretic field engulfing the remainders of the truck’s carcass and a fifty-foot radius around that. Cement had been annihilated, the median had been levelled, and the cables nearest to the tanker truck were charred and dissevering.
Turrisi stepped as he peered through that black smoke, and his heart raced as he found David intact against two cables. Turrisi then looked down the road as the driver threw down the rocket launcher and climbed into the garbage truck’s cab. Glaring, Turrisi reached for his holster, but, after pouting, looked to David, and stared to locate the slight expansions of his chest. Of course; he’s a Five. “Piekarsky!” Turrisi called. David was silent, while behind him, the cables jolted. “Shoot!” Turrisi bellowed as he rushed. The cables jolted once more, and David, in turn, tilted over the ledge.
“Piekarsky!” Turrisi called as he came within fifty feet, his sneakers hissing across scorched ground. “Piekarsky!” Turrisi roared as he came within twenty feet, swerving past a ball of flames beside him. “Piekarsky, wake up!” Turrisi exclaimed as he came within ten feet.
The cables shook. Turrisi knelt, outstretched his left, and squeezed it over David’s wrist; and he inhaled to pull David in. The cables snapped, and David fell. Turrisi flung his head back to keep David from plunging, but his melting soles found no grip and he too slid, and, with David in hand, plunged. “Oh_!”
Gasping, David opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder to the James River, then an instant from contact. David righted himself in a short blur, inhaled, and then knelt. With Turrisi still holding him, David’s downward motion stopped, and,
as Turrisi looked up at him, David grasped him by the shoulder, exhaled, and fired his legs downward. He skyrocketed, passing one hundred feet in a blinking moment, three hundred feet in the next, and one thousand feet as he bolted towards the sound barrier.
“Thanks, Davy”, David replied as he flew past five and then nine thousand feet, “But just a note: I would’ve survived the fall.”
“Piekarsky!” Turrisi wheezed, “wind resistance!”
“Oh, right.” After a gradual deceleration, David stopped at just below ten thousand feet and hovered with Turrisi in his grasp.
“I wasn’t sure”, Turrisi replied as he breathed and looked down to the garbage truck speeding towards the bridge’s opposite end. “It’s moving on.”
“Can I tip it now?” David asked as he commenced a slow dive.
“No”, Turrisi barked. “There’s a reason Fives and Sixes are watched so closely. You’re naturally too invasive. I have an idea that won’t turn this place into a war zone: I’ll take out the guys in the cab to distract-slash-pummel them, while you open the container and place the vats along the roadside.”
“Sounds good to me”, David replied as he dove under the bridge’s central tower, “but how are you getting into the truck?”
“I have another idea: throw me into the cab”, Turrisi replied as they flew twenty feet over the road and one hundred feet behind the truck.
“What?”
“It’ll be cool; I’ll fly through the windshield doing a roundhouse kick or something.”
“I’m not going to accidentally hurt you”, David replied as he flew just over the container’s back edge and lowered Turrisi onto its roof. “Let’s get this done before they cross into Madison Heights.”
“Right”, Turrisi replied as he knelt. “Give me twenty seconds; then you break in and empty them out.”
“Rodgers”, David replied as he flew a few feet behind the container.
Turrisi crept over the truck’s container as he knelt against the wind. Coming to the gap between the container and the cab, he reached to his side and pulled, from along his vest, an empty clip. He pitched the item onto the left side of the cab, just over the driver; then, he looked to the passenger side and knelt.
“There’s someone on the roof!” the driver bellowed as he looked up.
“What?” the center-left passenger inquired.
“I heard someone on the roof!” the driver repeated before glancing to his side-view mirror and watching a metal square bounce along the road. He glared into the mirror, examining the item rolling behind them, and making out its general structure and the two pistons that had once held it shut. “The container door just fell open!”
“What!?” the far passenger exclaimed as he leaned, “We need to_”—a scraping tear directed him to his right where his door was opened and flung.
Before the entrance could close, Turrisi swung into the cab, shoved into the passenger’s side, and wound back his right hand. Before the far passenger could cry out, Turrisi shattered his nose with a right hook, grasped him by the back of his head, and slammed him into the dashboard. He looked up as the center-right passenger lifted a pistol, but he swatted the item away and jabbed his left. That blow nicked the passenger’s jaw. Turrisi wound back a second time, but the center-left passenger reached over the center-right and swung. Turrisi blocked, while the center-right passenger reared up, and Turrisi uppercut his left at the center-left passenger while slamming the -right passenger’s gun into the dashboard.
The center-left passenger was flung backwards by the jaw-aimed attack, but he caught himself and kicked his legs to bound over the center-right. Turrisi fired two jabs into the -left passenger’s gut that caused him to rear forward, and then fired another uppercut that jolted his head against the ceiling. The center-left passenger collapsed as the center-right reared up. Turrisi thrust both arms to hold the firearm towards the ceiling. The center-right passenger swung a left cross, but Turrisi deflected with a jerk of his right, pushed the gun-holding arm, aimed it towards the driver, and, with a swat along that passenger’s right hand, discharged. The driver moaned as the round drilled into his right shoulder, with his body seizing, and his head smacking into the window, where he rested.
“Oh sh_”—Turrisi jabbed the center-right passenger’s windpipe, causing him to cough and to gag. Turrisi then caught him by the back of the head and slammed him into the radio. The center-right passenger slackened and his grip loosened over the firearm until it dropped to the floor. Turrisi then clawed over the three unconscious passengers, reached in front of the driver, and grabbed the steering wheel to steady the vehicle, while pulling out his phone.
“Clear”, Turrisi spoke.
“Almost done here”, David replied as he glided into the cargo hold, returned his cracked phone to his blackened pocket, and reached for to the last two containers. He wrapped his arms on the tethers surrounding and holding the vats, and ripped them free. David then clasped both items before hovering into the open, dropping to the road, and transitioning into a superfast sprint. David then held his breath, decelerated to half of his running speed with the first step, one quarter in the second, one tenth in the third, and then stopped. He dropped both vats and then shot past them, sprinting after the truck, ascending, and glancing to those two containers, and the other two sets behind them, each standing in the center of the road. David faced forward as he rushed into the truck’s blind spot and pulled out his phone. “And done; right when we’re about cross into Madison Heights.”
“Uh…crap”, Turrisi replied as he held the wheel.
“Crap? What’s crap? We’re done, baby!” David exclaimed with a thrust of his left.
“The cops were a little more prepared than we thought”, Turrisi replied as he looked through the windshield, down another two hundred yards towards the bridge’s end, and then another one hundred feet beyond that, where sat a fortification of cement slabs, almost two dozen forward-facing police cruisers, and, preceding both, a fifty foot expanse layered with spike strips. “As in, police-blockade-prepared”, Turrisi finished.
“All right, I’ll fly around and grab you from the driver’s side, and then we’ll fly off”, David replied. “Turrisi?” he called after no response, “Davey, you good in there?”
“That’s too risky”, Turrisi replied, his phone pressed between his right ear and his shoulder as he sat the bloodied passengers upright. “Out of the both of us, you’re the one that absolutely can’t be seen”, Turrisi explained as he reached to the driver’s side, grabbed the seatbelt and extruded it so that it stretched across three of the men before being inserted into the passenger’s holster. “Wait behind the truck and be ready to catch me. I have to hang up now!” Turrisi thrust his phone into his pocket, turned towards the passenger side, and yanked that seatbelt across three men before inserting it into the driver’s buckle. “Okay”, Turrisi hummed as he looked ahead. Blockade is about ten seconds off; within five seconds, they’ll open fire, and, within seven seconds, the truck’s tires will contact with the spike strips. “This”, Turrisi began as he slid over the driver, unlocked that door, grasped the back of his neck with his left, and the steering wheel with his right, “is going to suck.” He inhaled and wound back.
By stomping the brake and jerking the steering wheel to the left, Turrisi flung the truck on a breakneck turn. The tires’ gyrations ceased, while the chassis jolted. One hundred feet from the police line, the truck jolted leftward, and, in the same motion, as it became perpendicular with the road, it jounced to its side, hopping five feet off of its tires before landing and then bouncing on its top, completing a revolution, and tilting to bounce once more.
It slammed a second time, rolling over the driver’s door and then continuing over its ceiling. As it bounced along its top and continued towards an eventual, upright position, the driver’s door, inverted and facing from the police line, shot open, and, as the truck’s flipped mass tilted past ninety degrees, Turrisi lunged out, grasped the top o
f the battered and misshapen doorway with both hands, and pushed off, lunging into the open air and travelling a yard above the road. Flipping truck will disguise me, leaving Piekarsky to… he turned back and found the road vacant. Dave…?
He looked down to the asphalt, with those moments diminishing in pace as he felt his remaining momentum pull him backwards. Working alongside of that pull, he felt gravity, the inevitable downward yank that clawed at him and yearned for nearing impact. Turrisi lifted his legs, shifting his weight to his upper body and tilting his head towards the ground. He outstretched his hands towards the road, with his mind attempting to develop a maneuver that would ensure, at the very least, the survival of the first and hardest impact. Don’t mistime it…the vest might help if you do…but don’t mistime it…
Turrisi blinked as he neared the road, diminishing in altitude, from one yard to inches, and his eyes discerning the shapes, the lines, and the indents marking that pathway from years of use and one day of vigilante pursuit. He then looked to his silhouette as it increased. His eyes widened and refused to blink as he concluded that blinking would throw off his timing. Then, before his unblinking gape, his silhouette darkened into a piceous black, expanded into a more ovular shape, and, as his chest came within an inch of smacking into the road, his shadow reverberated. Turrisi, despite his training and his understanding of the potential risks, blinked.
A wail sounded, driving him to open his eyes the moment after he hit the road; yet, instead of feeling the cushioning of his form and the initial stages of comminution, he passed through that layer of cement and descended through a tunnel surrounded by undulating black, while a column of fine smoke eddied in its wake. Turrisi blinked and plunged out to the open. He looked to the James River twenty or so feet below, he looked around to a network of steel girders, and he looked up as he flung his arms and found the bridge’s underside. Did I fall through_!?