by Logan Jacobs
“Looks like we ain’t out of the woods yet,” I said into the comm and pulled the Road Rager out in front of the truck.
“No, no you are not,” Artie said, her voice full of worry. “I hacked into the police bands, and it is lit up.”
“Tell me again why the cops are going to stop us from delivering medical supplies?” I asked.
“The city-states are separated into districts that are all autonomous,” Artie tried to explain even though I was only half paying attention. “The hospital getting the supplies is in district six. Districts one through five want to stop that from happening.”
“Why would they want to stop them from getting medical supplies?” I asked.
“Because they are big meanies,” Artie huffed.
“Great,” I said, more than a bit exasperated.
“How are we going to play this, Marc?” I heard Nova ask.
“Um, rush in balls to the wall and hope for the best?” I shot back.
“Classic Havak,” PoLarr chuckled.
“Really?” Tempest asked incredulously.
“Pretty much, sugar,” Aurora confirmed.
“Okay then,” Tempest sighed.
“Trust me, it will be fun,” I tried to convince her.
“You and I have very different definitions of the word, Havak,” she countered.
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled. “Okay, so, I’m going to see if I can grab all the attention. Keep everyone busy while you take some back ways to get there. Artie can you get me a map of the city?”
“Coming right up, Marc,” she replied. I heard her taping on her keypad through the comm-link and then I felt a buzz at the base of my skull. “Loading it into your nano-chip now.”
When the buzz faded, there was a 3-D map of the huge city that I was very quickly approaching ghosting over my vision. Kind of like Google Maps, with traffic patterns, alternative roads and passages, only in my brain instead of on a smartphone. A little diamond blinked on the far end of my vision with a constantly changing number underneath it.
“Hey, Artie,” I said as I tried to figure out how the damn thing worked, “um, what is that little diamond thingy?”
“Oh, that’s the hospital,” she chirped. “The number underneath tells you how far away you are in meters.”
“Cool, makes sense,” I replied. “Tempest, it looks like there is a lesser used side road into the city. While I get everyone attention at the main entrance, why don’t you see if you can sneak in there, and we’ll meet up inside the city.”
“Ten four on that,” Tempest said.
“You should add a good buddy,” PoLarr chimed in.
“Why?” Tempest asked.
“Just do it,” PoLarr insisted.
“Ten four on that, good buddy,” Tempest said, a little annoyed.
“Try to drive casual, and I’ll keep the fuzz busy,” I said and shifted into a higher gear. The car jumped forward as I let some of the caged horses loose. “I’m puttin’ the hammer down. We gone.”
I floored it and zoomed down the ancient highway toward the brilliant city that loomed ahead. It was like something out of Judge Dredd mixed with the Fifties Art Deco sensibilities of The Incredibles. There was a huge, three hundred foot wall that stretched all the way around the city. Every so often there were gates that had all sorts of vehicles coming and going. Security didn’t seem to be too intense, but I did notice a few Biker Boys as they attempted to attack a cargo truck that had just left the city. Cops on more of the quad-bikes shot out from inside the city and blasted them with their shotguns before anyone could even blink. I’d gotten lucky with the ones from before and was going to have to make sure I stayed well ahead of any cops once inside.
The road up ahead got somewhat congested with ragged vehicles all trying to get into the city. There was a checkpoint that had created a little choke point.
I didn’t have time to wait.
With a turn of the wheel I went off-road and shot down the median. Vehicles flashed by on my right, and I caught a few angry glares from the aliens who were all patiently waiting their turn. Up ahead the security guards, who were different from the cops, glanced my way, their faces full of surprise. They attempted to wave me down but I just gave the car a little gas, flipped them a quick wave, and drove right through the wooden barrier board that had been set up next to the guard stand.
The board snapped like a twig, and I drove into the city leaving nothing more than splintered wood and angry yells from behind me.
I wove the Road Rager in and out of the various traffic which was fairly sparse for a city this size. It didn’t take very long before there were flashing red and blue lights behind me. For whatever reason red and blue must have been the universal colors for police lights.
“Unauthorized vehicle!” A gruff voice said from a loudspeaker on the Police Cruiser behind me. “Pull over. You are under arrest.”
“Eh, not today fellas,” I muttered and spun the wheel left to cut across oncoming traffic. Tires squealed as other drivers hit their brakes. The cop car chasing me didn’t lose a beat, or stop to see if anyone was hurt, and stayed close on my tail.
I was going to have to get more inventive to make sure I had the attention of most of the cops in town. I gunned the engine and cut down a side street that led out onto one of the cities main thoroughfares, like Park Avenue. This one was more congested than the others, that didn’t stop me though. I pulled up onto the sidewalk, horn blaring until I was through a big intersection, then I pulled a big U-turn and went back the same way I had come.
The car crashed through tables and chairs set up outside a sidewalk cafe and the patrons had to scatter.
“Sorry,” I yelled out my half-opened window. I doubt they could hear me.
Just as I was about to turn back down the road I’d come from three more police cruisers, dark grey muscle car jobs, with flashing lights and dark tinted windows swerved into my path, tires burning rubber on the hot concrete.
“There we go, now it’s a party,” I commented. “Artie, how is everyone doing?”
“The Behemoth just made it through a side security gate,” Artemis said in the comm.
“Yeah, we may have made a little mess though,” Tempest chimed in. “Apparently a truck matching our description was involved in an almost fatal incident with two Elysian District Cops. Oops.”
“So much for being inconspicuous,” I shrugged. “How’s the heat? Can you guys handle it?”
“We had a lone motorcycle cop who buzzed around us like a pissed off wasp,” PoLarr said in the comm. “But they took off a few minutes ago.”
As she finished speaking a motorcycle cop shot out of an alley to join the cars already on my tail. Its engine whined furiously as it did a little wheelie and zoomed up next to me. The rider reached into one of the molded plastic saddle bags near his seat, pulled a softball sized object out of it and tossed at the front end of the Road Rager. I cut the wheel hard, pumped the brakes, and then gunned it again so I swerved away from the object. Just as I passed, it exploded in a tangle of electricity snakes that crackled and hissed for a good three seconds before they dissipated. I could feel the hairs on my arms stand up from the static even though I’d been able to avoid it by a good ten feet. If that had hit the car, or rolled under it, it would have fried my whole electrical system and possibly me as well.
“Yeah, I think I just met him,” I said and watched as he wove in between several cars trying to get me into position again for another softball of electricity. The surrounding street was full of traffic and pedestrians who by now were all running for cover. My reflexes surged with adrenaline, and the stunt driving mod, which, as it turned out had been a really good idea, made my synapses race. My eyes flicked from the road to my rearview mirror to my side mirrors in a drum beat rhythm - road, rearview, side, other side, road - again and again as my brain worked nano-second fast to process the information and send signals to my hands and feet. Every flick of my wrist or slight pressure of my foot
was the difference between missing the back end of a cargo truck by a heartbeat or flying through the guardrails and off the side of a bridge.
Speaking of a truck, I noticed up ahead that one was backing out of an alley with no way to see the high-speed chase that was headed directly for it. The motorcycle cop saw it too and looked over at me. I couldn’t see his eyes through his heavily tinted wind-visor, but I knew they were boring into me.
We both hit the gas as the same time to try to jostle for position as the gap behind the truck shrank. He tried to shoot ahead of me, but I matched his pace and wouldn’t let him over. Frustrated, he grabbed in the saddle bag and tossed another electro-softball.
With my left hand, I turned the wheel into him, which forced him to go wide just as he threw the electro-softball, while my right skinned my Equalizer and aimed across my body out the open window. The Ar’Gwyn did a fancy swing dance step with the stunt driving mod, and before I even pulled the trigger I knew I wasn’t going to miss.
The electro-softball flew through the air in a parabolic arc on course to slam into the hood of my car. Just as it crossed my field of vision I pulled the trigger and swerved back toward the opening behind the cargo truck. The bullet grazed the softball grenade and sent it spinning up and over the top of the car like a tin can in a shooting gallery.
To my left the motorcycle cop slammed on his brakes and laid the bike down. It spun out from under him and crashed into the side of the cargo truck. Then he tumbled like a wild weed until he smashed into a group of pedestrians and sent everyone flying, arms and legs akimbo, in all directions.
The Road Rager hit the gap at the back of the truck with centimeters to spare and, I heard the loud crackle of lightning behind as the grenade went off. In my rearview mirror I watched as it detonated under the closest police cruiser. Fingers of bright blue electricity wrapped around the whole front end of the car and then skated off the sides like sparks.
The car stopped dead.
The cars behind it did not.
Another police cruiser crashed into the back and then flipped high into the air over it to land roof side down on the street. The other two police cars slammed on their brakes, sending up huge clouds of dark gray smoke from their tires as they slid across the asphalt.
When the smoke cleared, the whole street was completely blocked.
“Ha,” I shouted in triumph and slowed the Road Rager. I made a series of fast turns down several side streets and a few alleys until I was five blocks to the east of the crash and ten blocks north where I pulled out into traffic as if I were a normal driver just running an errand.
“What’s everyone’s position?” I asked into the comm as I kept my eyes scanning the surroundings. I inched the car forward to keep pace with the snails crawl of traffic.
“We’re maybe six miles out from the hospital,” Tempest said in the comm.
“But traffic is heavy,” Artie said. “They all know you’re here so I just caught a snippet from a police band that they are looking for you. Not so much the truck.”
“Y'all drive casual and just keep making forward progress,” I advised.
The traffic I was a part of wound up on a corkscrew like on/off ramp for a series of elevated roadways that, like some kind of Hot Wheels playset from hell, wound through the buildings. There was enough traffic that I felt fairly well hidden.
That’s when I heard the loud whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades and saw a compact, double seat, helicopter come up over the lip of the ramp. It had four fixed blades, like a person sized drone you’d get from Best Buy, with a cockpit for the two cops suspended between them. The thing wasn’t much bigger than a full-sized car but moved over the tops of the cars that lined the ramp with incredible speed and dexterity. Red laser light played out of a bank of sensors set in the bottom of the cockpit and roamed over the string of cars that waited patiently to gain access to the elevated roads.
It was maybe five cars behind me, and I kept an eye on it in my rearview. The cars ahead of me began to move, but I stayed put. I needed some wiggle room. The folks behind me weren’t that patient and began to lay on their horns which, unlike Earth horns, were high pitched and shrieking. The copter hovered for a second like a hummingbird and then pointed in my direction.
With one foot firmly on the brake I slowly began to press the gas until I was in a full on brake stand, clouds of thick, white smoke poured from my rear tires as my back end began to fish back and forth slowly. As the copter flew through the smoke, I removed my foot from the brake and peeled rubber.
I came up on the right side of all the cars with just inches between the other cars and the side retaining wall as I shot up the corkscrew curve of the ramp. The copter was hot on my tail, and I saw over the lip of the ramp that six more police cruisers zoomed down the elevated roadway to cut me off.
At the last minute before I was going to shoot onto the roadway and into a veritable blockade of police cars, I swung the Road Rager over the median and into the other side of the highway. Right into oncoming traffic.
“Oh boy,” I muttered to myself. “This may have been a very bad idea.”
I didn’t have time to chastise myself over a decision already made. The toothpaste wasn’t going to go back in the tube. I gripped the wheel tightly in both hands, took a deep breath, and hit the gas.
The cops on the other side of the road were dumbfounded at my choice and scrambled to chase me. The commuter traffic in front of me honked and hit their brakes and tried to avoid getting in a head-on collision with a maniac, namely me.
I went for the path of least resistance and just kept the wheel as straight as I could and prayed that everyone would get out of my way. Chaos and mass hysteria were more calm.
Up ahead I saw signs that had this side of the roadway closed for repairs. A quick glance in the rearview showed that the cops had indeed recovered from my little fake out and were hauling ass to box me in. The copter flitted around over head. The 3-D map in my brain showed that a large portion of the roadway was actually out and there was no way in hell I’d be able to jump it.
I slammed on the brakes. Cops behind. Nowhere to go ahead of me.
“Fuck it,” I said, threw the car in reverse, whipped my arm over the passenger seat, craned my neck to look out the rear window, and hit the gas.
It was another move the cops hadn’t been expecting, and they all hit their brakes, and I barreled towards them at top speed in reverse. With two quick back-and-forth flicks of my wrist I weaved in between the stopped cars. As soon as I was through them I spun the wheel furiously and threw the Road Rager into a Rockford turn. When my front end came around, I threw the car into first gear, popped the clutch, and hit the gas so that I didn’t lose any forward momentum as I went from reverse to forward.
The cops tried to all change their direction at once and ended up in a tetris like tangle in the middle of the road. A smile crept across my face. This was kind of fun.
Most of the civilian motorists had pulled their cars over to the side of the road so I had a free and clear roadway and I let the Rager stretch her legs a little. Soon, my speedometer had crept well over a hundred.
In my vision I saw the little diamond outline off to the north east. The numbers below it showed I was three thousand meters away. Just as I was about to ask my teammates how they were coming along, I saw a blue blip on the map in my mind that was the Behemoth. They were closer than I was but moving very slowly.
“Hey, Marc,” Nova came across the comm. “We might need you at our position.”
“Yeah, like yesterday,” PoLarr added.
“What’s up?” I asked and steered the car toward an off ramp. My tires squealed as I hit the tight downward corkscrew turns at seventy miles an hour. Any other car I’d ever driven would have lost traction and slammed into the retaining wall but the Road Rager's alien tech kept me close to the ground and flying like a ballistic missile on four wheels.
“The fuzz is thicker than Seventies bush,” PoLarr said.
“Ugh. What is wrong with your brain, Havak?”
“Hey, not my fault my buddy’s dad had a collection of Playboys and Penthouses from the age of disco,” I retorted.
“Do I even want to know?” Artie queried in the comm-link.
“No, Atemis, you do not,” PoLarr shot back quickly.
I hit the bottom of the ramp doing damn near eighty and fishtailed into the street right under the roadway. There was traffic, but not much.
“Artie, can you get me a fast route to their position?” I asked as I wove through the cars, trucks, and motorcycles. The extended overpass that was under created a dark shadow snake that I was following. It was very different from being up top in the bright Cruxian sunlight. Wherever that ramp had taken me was definitely not the best part of town. It was dirtier, grimier, seedier. I noticed that there were not cops here. Which should have made me feel relaxed, but it did not. In fact, a fresh surge of nitro-charged adrenaline hit my synapses like a coked out Tommy Lee drum fill.
“Working on it, Marc,” she replied, anxious. “Wherever you just went the signal is spotty. Um, we may be in a not very good part of town. Like, swerve paddle.”
“Skid Row,” I corrected gently. “And yeah, I think you are right.”
That’s when a big, matte black, Escalade looking SUV side swiped the fuck out of me. It had come out of nowhere and tried to knock me into one of the giant support struts for the roadway overhead. The stunt driver mod went into high gear. I dropped the car into a lower gear, tapped the brakes, and wove around the pillar. Barely.
As I came back onto the street, the SUV was there, cutting through traffic to match my pace. I watched as its side opened up like a panel van and three, angry, alien thugs in double-breasted suits and wide brimmed Fedora hats pointed mean looking submachine guns at me.
“Oh shit!” I exclaimed and slammed on my brakes just as they fired. The bullets tore into the poor car next to me, and it careened onto the sidewalk to crash into a storefront.