Mac Slater Coolhunter 2
Page 12
'Don't come back to Inwood,' he told her and my heart fell into my stomach. Then he turned his eyes back to me. He let go and I stood up straight, turning my head from side to side, cracking my neck. Heath let go of Paul, too.
'Pick up the stick,' he said to me, like I was a dog.
I looked at him for a second, then bent down and picked the memory stick up off the road.
'Now put it back in the phone,' he said.
Was he going to let us go? He was such a random dude, who'd know? I pulled the phone out of my pocket and pushed the memory card into the slot.
Gatt popped the rear flap of Perpetual, exposing the engine.
'Start recording,' he said.
I swallowed hard, switched to camera mode and pressed 'start'. The timecode ticked over.
'You won't want to miss this,' he said into the lens, then he calmly reached in and grabbed the rotor with the magnets on it and ripped it out of the machine, tossing it to the ground. Magnets scattered.
'You get that?' he said.
'Don't,' Melody said.
He then reached in and tore out a wire coil. I wanted to stop filming, but I was scared.
The old guy in the support vehicle opened his door to see what was going on. I looked back and Bruiser was standing beside his cab. The other Hivers watched on, too freaked to say anything. Paul looked devastated. My eyes flicked back to the phone screen as Gatt ripped a thick piece of metal pipe out from under the engine. He raised it above his head and then brought it down, smashing the engine, denting and busting up the remaining parts.
'Get a good angle?' he said to me when he was done. I hit 'stop' and lowered the phone. He was breathing heavy, muscles pumped. He'd annihilated his creation in front of the people who had helped him build it. We all stood there, silently waiting for him to cut sick again.
'Now give it to me,' he said.
I popped the card out and slowly raised it, offering it to him. It was everything we'd risked our lives for – a tiny piece of plastic sticking out from between my shaking fingers. He took it, looked at it for a second in his palm, deciding what to do with it. He smiled to himself and I tried to force a smile, too.
Then he tossed the card down again, mashing it into the road with his sneakered foot. Within three seconds, any evidence that Joe Gatt had built the world's first fully functioning fuel-free vehicle was gone.
'I can't be bought,' he said. Then he dropped the hunk of metal he'd been using to destroy the machine, turned and stepped out into the road. He walked right into the centre of the four lanes. Two cars swerved to miss him.
'Joe!' Melody called, but he didn't listen. She waited for a tow truck to pass then started to cross the road. Without turning around, he shouted, 'Leave me alone.' Cars came down the street and veered around him, honking, but he didn't care. It was like he couldn't see them. Gatt just looked straight ahead and disappeared into the darkness of Broadway, New York's main vein – a rebel, a renegade.
32
Somewhere Over America
'Sleep is so rock 'n' roll right now. Sleep is the new awake. By the end of this year they're gonna be sleepin' in malls in Oklahoma.'
The plane had in-flight mobile service, so I was watching our Sleepers piece on my phone as we flew over America. It was streaming live off the Coolhunters site and it was going off! Ninety-six thousand views in eight hours, and counting. Our biggest piece ever. Paul and I had decided to upload it, unedited, at 2:52 a.m. when we got back to the hotel. As the vid ended I flicked to my blog page and started flowing. My thumbs were getting faster.
is it our fault that gatt destroyed his machine or would he have done it anyway? was that really the end of perpetual or was it just a bad night? i dont know but i feel like in the end we did the right thing. we went downtown n faced the dude. offered 2 show him the footage. we apol'd 2 melody + thanked her for saving our lives. gave her a ride home. but i still dont know what 2 make of gatt. in some ways, i wish i was him. he knows what he believes in. rock solid. like my folks. maybe thats what annoyed me about him. theyre always telling me to b true 2 myself n go with my gut but truth is that sometimes i dont know what i really want or who i am or what my gut is saying and sometimes i mess up. and is gatt a better person than me because he's so hardcore on staying true 2 himself that he destroys what he creates? maybe. possibly. probably.
My phone beeped with a message. It was Speed:
U guys rock! Yr Sleepers piece has the 2nd highest hit numbers on site this week. Sleep is about to have its iPod moment. It's going to go large, lads. In fact I'm going 4 a nap right now. I knew I made the right decision on u guys. Never doubted u. Can't wait 2 c what u dig up back in Kings Bay. Make sure it's as hot as the Sleepers. And what ever happened to those young Einsteins? Not that I really care now. Oh, and Michiko lost her job. It was almost you. There'll be a new Hunter in Shanghai. C u there in 3 months' time.
S
I tried to pass the phone to Paul, who was sitting next to me. He didn't take it. I realised he was asleep. My mum's herbal anti-freak-out drops had worked. He still had fresh sweat on his top lip and his hands had a pretty good grip on the vinyl seat arms, but he was asleep.
I looked across to my dad. Sleeping, too. His beard and hair were chaos, Greenpeace T-shirt stained with sauce. The guy never changed. I'd been through all this crazy stuff in NY and he was still the same old Dad. So not New York. But maybe that was OK. I mean, he seemed to know that sleep was hot way before New York realised it. He's been sleeping twelve hours a day for years. Maybe I needed to look to him to find the next big thing from now on. I mean, maybe snoring, blackheads and yellow teeth were about to have their iPod moment, too?
I pulled my NY springy-hearts headband out of my seatback, stuck it on my head, closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But I couldn't. My head was jammed with thousands of snapshot flashes of NYC. Even after everything, after all the stuff that had gone down, I couldn't help but love the place. Seriously, if you're gonna go anywhere, you go to New York.
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About The Author
Tristan Bancks is a writer and filmmaker. He has a background as an actor and television presenter in Australia and the UK. His short films have won a number of awards and have screened widely in festivals and on TV. He loves to discover new places, hang out with his family, play sport, get lost inside a good story and eat Mexican food. His drive is to tell inspiring, fast-moving stories for young people. More at www.tristanbancks.com