Arena 5

by Logan Jacobs

  I had to admire Fallon and her ability to know just what was needed on this hot morning under a pale purple sky and blazing red sun. The car was slung low to the ground and was a retro-future design that looked like a Seventies muscle car trawled through a time warp. It had hints of a Seventy-Seven Trans-Am mixed with a brand new Dodge Challenger. In short it was a chase car that would make Dominic Toretto cream his Von Dutch underpants.

  “You should test it out,” Fallon said as she patted the hood.

  “We still have five minutes before you can leave,” Artemis said checking her wrist-chron.

  “If you twist my arm,” I joked and then slid behind the wheel. The molded leather bucket seat felt like a glove, and I could sense the stunt racing mod I’d chosen begin to zoom through the racetrack twists and turns of my nervous system the second I put my hands on the steering wheel. I pressed the ignition button and felt the car rumble as the seven-hundred and fifty horses held captive by the hood wanted to break free and run. A seat belt system emerged on its own from the seat in a V over my shoulders and clicked home in between my legs.

  I turned toward my crew of lovely ladies, winked, gave them a Burt Reynolds double eyebrow raise and floored the gas.

  The wheels spun and then caught traction as the car shot forward so hard and fast that I was pushed back into the cushioned seat. I couldn't help the huge smile that burst across my face. Within seconds I was already over seventy miles an hour, and the car hadn’t even broken a sweat. With a jerk of the wheel I put it into a controlled powerslide to swing myself back toward the roadhouse. I did two quick donuts in the dirt before I came to a tire squealing skid in the exact spot where I had started.

  “Well?” Fallon asked as I got out.

  “It is fast and it is furious,” I answered. “It just needs one little modification.”

  By the back of the roadhouse I’d noticed a bunch of discarded paint cans amid the piles of trash and junk that had been generated the day and night before as the other teams had refueled, restocked, and fixed their vehicles. After about thirty seconds of digging through the mess, I found what I was looking for, a half-full cylinder of gold metallic paint in an aerosol can with a pistol like spray nozzle.

  I walked over to the hood of the car and began to paint. While I was no Banksy by any stretch of the imagination, my hand was guided as if by some divine providence and soon my morning masterpiece was completed. I tossed the now empty can over my shoulder and moved aside to show my teammates with an exaggerated flourish of my arms.

  “Ta-da!” I said and grinned. On the hood of the car, in bright metallic gold paint, was my rendition of the classic Firebird emblem from the car from Smokey and the Bandit.

  “Is that a big bird that is kind of on fire?” Artemis asked.

  “Fuck yeah it is,” PoLarr said and high-fived me. “East bound and down, bitches.”

  “I think it’s sexy,” Aurora drawled.

  “It is not the worst thing I have ever seen,” Nova added.

  “Hot,” Tempest nodded.

  “Fallon, thank you,” I said as I walked over to the sexy feline and gave her a big hug. She pulled back and kissed me hard on the mouth, and her tongue danced over my lips seductively.

  “You’re welcome,” she purred. “And you can thank me for real when this match is over.”

  “Deal,” I replied and squeezed her firm ass before I turned back to my crew.

  Just then the air shimmered near our truck and Tyche appeared. He was dressed in his crisp white finest that would never be touched by the dirt and grime of this waste of a planet.

  “Good morning, Team Havak,” he intoned in his smooth British accent. “Your truck is loaded with the necessary medical supplies, and a route to Elysia has been put into your navigation system. The road will be treacherous. You will be able to get under way in thirty seconds.”

  “Oh, shit,” I muttered and then gave Artie a quick hug and kiss.

  Tyche watched with a disapproving glare. Her core AI had been taken from a piece of his so in essence he was like her dad. He was smooth and slick on the surface but I could tell he hid a dark side. Couldn’t tell you why I knew that, but I felt it deep in my bones.

  Nova and PoLarr climbed up on top of the truck. Nova moved behind the machine gun turret and PoLarr took up her post on the quad-harpoon cannons at the back.

  Tempest and Aurora got into the cab of the truck with Tempest behind the wheel.

  I tossed them all a wave and slid into the molded leather seat of the Road Rager.

  “Good luck to you, Team Havak,” Tyche said and then his voice dropped to a whisper that only I could hear. “You’re going to need it. On your mark! Get set! Go!”

  I didn’t have a chance to ask the asshole hologram to clarify. Instead I shoved the shifter into gear, popped the clutch, and floored the gas.

  A plume of dirt and rock spewed from the car’s tires right into Tyche. They went right through his laser imaged body but the effect was still the same. It was like giving him the middle finger without giving him the middle finger.

  I steered the fishtailing car onto the sunbaked remains of what had once been a major highway.

  “Tempest, you copy?” I said into my comm-link. “Artie?”

  “I copy, Havak,” Tempest responded.

  “Me too, Marc,” Artie said in my ear. It was good to have her, if only her voice, on this leg of the journey. “Most of the other teams are several miles ahead of you guys at this point so you gotta smolder petroleum elastomer.”

  “Consider my rubber burned, baby,” I said and shifted into a higher gear. I pushed the car up to over a hundred miles an hour. “Hey Tempest?”

  “Here,” the beautiful blue-green alien replied.

  “Keep the Behemoth pegged at eighty or above,” I recommended. “I’m going to stay about five minutes ahead of you. That should draw out any baddies, and I can lead them away from you to clear the way.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Tempest said.

  “I’m gone,” I replied and pushed the car over a hundred. The high-performance suspension sank lower as the car got over a hundred to provide for a more aerodynamic profile. Even though I was going fast as hell it felt like I could steer as if I were only doing forty. That, combined with my stunt driving mod, made me feel like I could do any of the physics defying moves from the Fast and Furious franchise movies.

  Thirty minutes later, I noticed a decided shift in the terrain. The desert wasteland had given way to a mountain like region with sparse, scrub like trees, and the road got way better. A thin, muddy river wound down through the rocks like an anemic brown snake. Boulders, some as big as the car, lined the roadway from some long forgotten land slide. A shallow valley that the road meandered through stretched out in front of the hood of the car as I entered a slight decline.

  Something about this sent my spidey sense tingling and I slowed to a gentle stop right at the mouth of the valley.

  “Hey Artie,” I said into the comm, “are you able to track us?”

  “Sure am,” she said loud and clear. “I have a fully rendered 3D map and your placement accurate to one square yard.”

  “What do you make of this valley?” I asked warily.

  “It’s the easiest gateway that leads to Elysia,” she replied. “You could backtrack about fifty miles and go around this mountain range, but that would add a bunch of time.”

  “Can you see the position of the other teams?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Everyone got upgraded Mission Control on this leg. We can see where they are, and they can see where we are.”

  “Anyone else take this route?”

  “Nope,” she replied skeptically. “Looks like they all went one way or the other around. If you cut through, you’ll end up ahead of the pack.”

  “What’s the catch?” I asked. “This seems too good to be true.”

  “I don’t know, Marc,” she answered. “All I have is the topography, which isn’t too bad, t
he road snakes through there and has a couple of switchbacks, but looks very drivable, but that’s all I can see.”

  “Smells like a trap,” I pointed out.

  “I can’t smell through the com-link,” she snorted, “but I will take your word for it.”

  “Tempest?” I asked. “How far back are you?”

  “Maybe seven minutes from your position,” Tempest answered in my ear. “I got a three way junction right up ahead. What do you want to do?”

  “We need to make up this time,” I said, mostly to convince myself. “Fuck it. I’m gonna hit this road hard and heavy. If it’s a trap, it’s a trap. I should be able to take all the heat if it is so you guys can get through.”

  “Copy that,” Tempest agreed. “I’ll make sure to keep the Behemoth barrelling down the road.”

  “Well, here goes nothing,” I said to myself and hit the gas.

  The Road Rager drove down into the valley and at first nothing happened. I thought maybe I’d been paranoid for no reason other than I’d been out in the wastelands for too damn long. Then the boulders on either side of the road started to shift and morph before my eyes.

  The dark brown rocks seemed to unfurl like roly poly pill bugs. They roughly resembled the crustacean like insects with hard, armor like sections that ran across their bodies but that’s where the likeness ended. Instead of legs the damn things had wheels. Or something close to wheel. I couldn’t tell if it was something made from their bodies or if it grew out of them but once they were completely unfurled, the freaky bugs started to roll like cars. Their bodies emitted a noise that was part carapice rubbing and part engine rumble as they got moving.

  And they moved fucking fast. Two of them shot onto the road like little Japanese sports cars and headed right toward me.

  The suckers were quick and very maneuverable, so I hit the gas and spun my wheel left and then right to avoid their interception move as I drove past them. In the rearview mirror I watched them stop on a dime and then speed forward without turning as if they could see out both sides of their armored bodies. Three more of the creatures shot onto the road to my left. I shot by them but they soon matched my pace, and I got a closer look.

  Their bodies looked as tough as tank armor and a strange red glow shone from between the spaces between the plating. Four small tube like appendages protruded from the front and back of the bugs and emitted a thin, grey smoke from some kind of internal combustion that I assumed drove the rubber like skin covered wheels the creatures rode on. It wasn’t until one of them slammed into my car that I saw the giant, teeth filled mouth that sat where the grill of a car would be.

  There was a loud crunch of metal from behind me, and I whipped my head around to see where it had come from. Part of the back of the Road Rager had been torn away, and I watched in sick fascination as one of the rolling mouths chewed the chunk of my car that had been torn off.

  “Oh no you fucking didn’t,” I cursed and cut the wheel hard to slam into the nearest of the roly-poly creatures. It squealed like sneakers on polished hardwood and spun off into the scrub like trees on the shoulder of the road.

  There were now five of the creatures hot on my tail. Hopefully I attracted all there were so that the truck could get through the valley pass safely.

  The verdict was still out if I was going to be so lucky.

  We were going to see how fast these little suckers could go.

  I downshifted and slammed on the gas. The car shot forward, and soon the speedometer was on its way past one hundred and fifty miles an hour. My senses were on fire as I kept the car on the road and hugged the curves like a lost lover. The Road Rager hunkered down and chewed up the road.

  My burst of speed put me out in front of the roly-poly cars but not by much. I could tell that we were headed into a hairpin turn, and I wanted to see how fast we could all take it.

  As I went into the turn, I pulled the parking brake just at the right moment and the car started into a massive drift slide that brought the tires to the edge of the road. Then I slammed the brake back down, and the tires grabbed hold and shot me into the straightaway. Two of the roly-poly cars slammed into each other as their tire-feet lost purchase and they crunched into a tree trunk and exploded in purple slime.

  That just pissed the remaining creatures off, and they attacked with renewed fervor. They came up on either side of me and smashed their bodies into the car again and again. Their shells were hard as any armor plating and dented the front fenders of the Road Rager. It was a stout car, but I doubted it could handle a ton of punishment.

  I hit the button, rolled down my window and then pulled my Equalizer from the holster on my thigh. At the speed we were going shooting was going to be tricky, but the Ar’Gwyn hadn’t let me down before, and I didn’t think it would now.

  I aimed carefully and pulled the trigger just as I saw an opening in the creatures armor. The bullet smashed into it, and a spray of purple guts flew into the air. The things front wheels locked up, and it cartwheeled into the air before it hit the ground and disintegrated in a mess of purple gore.

  While my attention was on the cartwheeling crash, the other roly-poly car hit me with a Pit maneuver, and I went into a crazy spin. The world whipped by like a merry-go-round, and it was all I could do to get the car under control. I flew off the road and into a bunch of trees which flew all around me.

  My hands worked the wheel and shifter like a madman until I finally got the car back under control, but I was far off the road and had to concentrate to weave the car through the sparse but seemingly sturdy trees that would end my trip real quick. The monster cars came at me again. They were tailor made for this type of terrain and conditions. But I’d be damned if I was going to get eaten by souped up freaky Honda bugs.

  I saw the road up ahead and gunned the car toward it. The two remaining roly-poly cars were hot on my trail. Back on the asphalt I had the advantage again and an idea.

  “Tempest,” I said into the comm-link, “what’s your position?”

  “Just entered the valley,” she replied. “Going as fast as this beast can take the turns.”

  “Okay, keep your eyes peeled,” I said as I downshifted to slow the car. “I’m headed your way with some baddies on my tail. You just keep that hammer down, copy?”

  “Copy that,” Tempest said.

  I was about to play a very dangerous game.

  I slowed the car even more so that the two roly-poly cars could catch up and think that they were going to get a delicious metal snack. They nipped, literally, at my heels with their stone-like teeth as I kept the Road Rager just out of their reach. Once I was sure they were on my backside like white on rice, I slowly began to inch the speed up. Soon we were once again over a hundred and fifty miles an hour as we came out of a turn into a relative straight away.

  Up ahead, I saw the Behemoth crest a small hill and power down the road.

  “Is that you, Marc?” Tempest asked.

  “Sure is,” I replied and pressed the gas pedal down further. “It’s going to look like I’m playing a game of chicken. Whatever you do, don’t swerve, okay?”

  “If you say so,” she said cautiously.

  The truck came at me faster and faster. I eased off the gas just a bit, and the roly-poly monsters lurched forward, wanting to gobble my exhaust as an appetizer. Soon all I could see in my windshield was the Great White shark like grill of the Behemoth and that’s when I floored the Road Rager and jerked the wheel to the right.

  There was a shower of sparks as the Behemoth and I traded paint. I sliced by the side of the truck with not even a centimeter to spare. The roly-poly cars weren’t so lucky. They had been so intent on my backside that they hadn’t noticed the gigantic locomotive truck barrelling down the road.

  I had skirted out of the way just in time.

  But they couldn’t, and The Behemoth smashed into them like they were plastic toys. Pieces of shell and purple guts sprayed out in every direction as they were literally vaporized.r />
  As the truck passed me, I slammed on the brakes, jerked the wheel to the left, and put the car into a power skid. Just as my rear end came around I shifted, floored it, spun the wheel to compensate for the slide, and hit the road like a bat out of hell.

  The Behemoth and I shot out of the small valley at the same time as the road widened into what had once been a large interstate highway. Up ahead, maybe fifty miles away, was a glimmering, glittering skyline of a massive city.

  “You guys did it!” Artemis burst over the comm-link. “Up ahead is Elysia, and you are in the lead. The hospital where you are supposed to deliver the supplies is on the far side of the city.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad, right guys?” I asked into the comm cockily. I couldn’t imagine that the city would be worse than the wild wastes we’d been driving through.

  As if to answer my question a streamlined four-wheeler mixed with a crotch-rocket bike shot out from behind a series of small hills in the median of the road with bright red and blue lights flashing. There were two dark grey armor clad riders on the bike. One driver and one passenger who held some kind of magazine fed automatic shotgun in his hands. They wore sleek helmets with tinted windscreens.

  “Pull over!” A rough voice boomed from a series of speakers on the side of the four-wheeler as the passenger aimed the shotgun at my face. “You are under arrest. Your cargo is forfeit. Submit to our authority or you will be destroyed.”

  “Ah, me and my big mouth,” I muttered and stared into the black barrel of the scatter gun.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Instead of pulling over, I slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left. The shotgun blast flew over the hood of the car instead of into my face, which was good, because I kinda liked my face. Before the four-wheeler could react I hit the gas and slammed my fender into the back wheels of the quad-bike which sent the thing off-road where it dug into a ditch and sent the two Cruxian cops flying into the air.