Book 8, Chapters 16 and 17 (Patreon)

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Heat 2 of 8

Chapter 16.

“What does this button do?” Bucket Boy the crocodilian asked nervously as he sat behind the steering wheel. We’d just both come from the saferoom, and the moment he sat in the driver seat, he started touching things. He reached to press the red, big button.  

“Stop,” I called. “Don’t touch that unless I say so. That engages the spider legs. We only use those if we have to.”

“What about the chair? I gotta push it back or my snout will touch the front glass shield. Do I need to be able to reach these pedal things with my feet?”

I opened the passenger side door and placed my feet inside, standing so I could reach the top of the truck. I was going to attempt to rip the front of the fiberglass tommy gun off the roof with my bare hands. The repair gremlins had put it back, and Hedy said she’d “run out of time” to figure out how to remove it.

We had about 15 minutes. Donut was already in the back of the truck, grumbling as she cleaned up all the spilled frozen food. Apparently the freezer had a never-ending supply of frozen chicken patties, French fries, and tater tots, and both Mongo and Rend had been helping themselves for quite some time.

There was just an announcement, given by Zev, that all the teams would line two by two in order of their last race for this one. Apparently, not everyone would have the same type of race as each other for the later heats, but for these first three, they would all be similar. The only difference would be the monsters we faced along the way.

For us, we’d be in the final row, side by side with Radoslav and Jasha’s van.

The Wild Hunt, which was Chiyome’s team of razor foxes, would be in the second row alongside the womantaur team, called the Lady Dominators. We had a plan to disable the Dominator car the moment the race started, before we all got separated. If that was successful, we’d all work together to survive the race.    

While I didn’t trust any of the other teams, I did trust that they wanted to avoid killing off any unnecessary opponents. Losing two or more teams meant the racers in the next heat would likely be the blood-thirsty survivors of other heats. Better to try to pick off the competition slowly and cultivate a group with teams you knew you could beat, as opposed to facing the unknown each time.

That didn’t mean I was being naïve. Chiyome clearly wanted us to work together to knock off the top three teams, but I didn’t trust those foxes at all. Luckily we were separated for this second race, and we could test the bonds of our tentative alliance.

Still, I strongly suspected we’d be at the receiving end of a double cross. Probably not this race, but it would happen. They knew exactly how powerful we were, thanks to their usage of Size-Up on me and Donut. We’d have to be ready for it.   

“Both of you,” Donut said from the back of the truck. She’d been in here for several minutes as she rifled through the cabinets. “I must warn you, I spent some time speaking with the GPS, and I just learned...”

Get your scaly little hands off my buttons, or I’ll lead you into a swamp and drown you like a basket of ugly puppies.

The words appeared on the screen, and they spoke out loud in the truck at the same time, like a modified system message.

“...she talks, and she’s very nice, but only if you do as she says,” Donut finished.  

Bucket Boy shrieked and pulled his hand back from where he’d been about to touch the dials.

I paused my efforts to look inside the truck at the gps unit, which had apparently turned itself on a few minutes back. I exchanged a look with Bucket Boy who stared wide-eyed at the glowing unit.

“Uh, Donut,” I said. “That’s probably something you should have warned us about.”  

She scoffed and indicated the mess of scattered food in the back of the truck. “I would have warned you if your poorly-trained pet hadn’t trashed our vehicle, Carl. She just introduced herself like a minute ago, right before you and Bucket Boy came out here. And look at this mess. How many frozen French fries can one eat? The GPS and I had a very nice conversation before you got here. Her name is Dr. Metcalf, and once we have earned her respect, she promises she will tell us her first name.”

Jesus Christ we don’t have time for this. I looked between Donut, Bucket Boy, and the unit, still processing all this, especially the name. “The GPS? The GPS is named Dr. Metcalf? That’s the same name as...”

“Miss Beatrice’s therapist, yes. I know. It’s not really her. I asked.”

“God, I hope not,” I said, suddenly remembering the one and only time I’d met the very expensive “alternative” therapist. The therapist who’d turned out not to be a real doctor at all. Whenever I was reminded of that whole episode, my head still ached from the trust fall thing she’d made me and Bea do. Bea had dumped her after she’d suggested Bea start drinking her own urine or some bullshit like that.   

“Anyway, Dr. Metcalf has her controls set as she thinks best, and I believe we should listen to her,” Donut said.  

Donut: THIS RACE IS JUST A STRAIGHT ROAD LIKE THE LAST ONE, SO IT’S NOT LIKE SHE’S IMPORTANT JUST YET. BUT WE DO NEED TO KEEP HER HAPPY BECAUSE WE MIGHT NEED HER LATER. SHE HAS BIG MEAN GIRL NARCISSIST ENERGY, SO WE MUST BE NICE TO HER.

Carl: She’s a goddamn GPS unit. A computer.  

Donut: SO IS THE AI, AND YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE MEAN TO THE AI.

I sighed, and then out loud, I said, “Bucket Boy, don’t touch the GPS. She knows best, and we trust her to do the right thing.” I paused, and then I added, “Besides, if we lose, we all get killed, including her.”

“Why did I volunteer for this?” Bucket Boy asked miserably.  

Donut: ARE WE GOING TO GET A SECOND BACKUP? WASN’T GLUTEOUS MAX GOING TO COME, TOO?

Carl: No, he and Bucket Boy weren’t supposed to come on board at all until race number three when we had more details. I just have him here now to drive so you don’t have to.

The safety plan we’d worked out with Imani and the others required us to have at least two mercenaries in our truck at all times, but we didn’t have time to work it all out just yet. We wouldn’t know until this race started whether or not Prepotente’s theory about having to race other crawlers was the correct one.

Donut: WE SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST TWO FOR THIS RACE, TOO. BOMO AND SLEDGEY WOULD HAVE EXCELLED AT THIS.

Huh, I thought. That gave me an idea, but it was too late to do anything about it now. I sent a quick message to Mordecai.

I reached down and twisted the Emberus ring on my finger.

Carl: I don’t want to burn through all the strippers just yet as I suspect we’ll need them later. Especially since we decided we’re not using Dong. It’s okay. If there’s an emergency, I have a backup plan. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

Donut: CARL, IS THIS YOUR FIRST DAY? WHY WOULD YOU EVEN SAY THAT? IT ALWAYS COMES TO THAT.

Mordecai: We got Mario Kart and Gran Turismo 5. And those GTA games. Oh, and a few different versions of that Cars game from that cartoon.

I felt myself grin.

Carl: Not GTA. Start with Mario Kart, move to Cars, and we’ll want everyone on Gran Turismo as soon as possible. Start building a good practice cockpit. Also, talk to Hedy and get the design she made for Donut and see if you can simulate it for the game.

Mordecai: I already know the design because she got it from me. She sent Splash Zone in here asking to borrow the joystick system I’d made for Ruby. That kid loved that damn Cars game.     

Out loud, I asked, “Donut, did you get the device from Hedy?”

“I did,” she said. She pulled open a cabinet, and a whole slew of paper plates and plastic utensils slid out. “Carl, look at this mess Rend made!”   

Our mechanic had spent the last few hours designing the Donut drive system, which was janky as hell. If she’d truly borrowed Mordecai’s design, I didn’t see it. One look at it, and I went inside and grabbed the first person I saw to drive instead. Bucket Boy had been sitting there in the guild with Samantha painting his fingernails with a polish brush in her mouth, so he’d been the one I recruited. We had plans in motion for the later races, but for this one, we just needed to survive. It seemed this race was going to be more about the boss monster halfway through the race, and that was it, so I wasn’t too concerned about the driver.

Hopefully we wouldn’t ever have to use the drive system Hedy had designed for Donut, which now sat in Donut’s inventory. I was going to attempt to refine it after this race. It was basically a lever system that attached to the steering wheel, and it allowed Donut to steer by rocking back and forth. It had sticks that hit the pedals. It looked like something straight from a goblin workshop on the first floor, and I suspected without a lot of practice, we’d end up in a ditch in seconds if we actually allowed Donut to drive.  

As it was, I knew there was going to be a small learning curve for Bucket Boy. If we survived this race, everyone on the team were going to spend all their free time playing driving games. I cursed myself for not thinking of this earlier.

Bucket Boy let out another shriek as he accidentally hit the horn.

“Make way for the big shot! Bawk!”

“Gah!”

“You have driven before, correct?” Donut asked. She remained in the back, inspecting the contents of the chest freezer. Her little legs dangled out the unit as she peered inside. Her new crupper jingled.  

“I said I have driven a cart before!” Bucket Boy said, his voice going up an octave. “You know, with horses? Am I really the only one allowed to drive? I can’t even see with this thing on the roof!”

“It’s not hard. If Miss Beatrice could drive, you certainly can. And you’ll have Dr. Metcalf helping you.”

Bucket Boy looked as if he was about to bolt. “I don’t know who Miss Beatrice is.”

“She only got like five or six tickets,” Donut added. “She only got them when the cop was a woman.”

“I don’t know what a ticket is, either.”

The GPS beeped. We’re all going to die.  

Bucket Boy looked at me. “When Mordecai was doing that weird reaper prediction thing, he said my innards were going to be used to paint the heavens.”  

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Let me do this, and I’ll run through it for you.” I returned my efforts to breaking the giant tommy gun. I grunted and pulled. Standing behind me on the floor of the garage was Rend wearing his new headband, who made his own groaning noises as I strained.

Just as I felt as if the gun was about to give, I received a notification. You do not have the ability to make changes to the stock configuration of your vehicle at this time.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Carl, every time I remove food from the freezer, it just comes back like ten seconds later! I put it in my inventory, but it just keeps coming,” Donut called from behind me. “We could literally open a restaurant with all this stuff. Where are they getting all these chickens?”     

“Which pedal makes us stop?” Bucket Boy asked.

“Hedy,” I called from where I was standing. “It’s saying I can’t change anything!”

“I was afraid of that,” the gremlin said from the workbench she’d set up. She was working on the chair we wanted for the passenger side, but it wouldn’t be ready until after this second race. “You can add stuff you make yourself, but you can’t take it away. Once the race actually starts it’ll let you rip it off. But you’ll have to do it each time. There might be a golden upgrade that lets you make more permanent changes, but I’m not sure.”

“Damnit,” I said, pulling myself back into the truck. I crouched there in the empty space, looking forward at the closed garage door, thinking of everything we needed to do. After I’d ripped the gun off, I was originally planning on smashing out the front windshield, but now we’d have to wait. I moved a pointed banger sphere into my expanded hotlist.

I mentally played out the plan we’d worked out with Chiyome and the bugbears. I was going to have to shatter our own windshield the moment the race started. Donut needed to be quick with her crossbow.  

Donut remained in the back, now rummaging through the lower cabinets.

“If we’re stuck with all this stuff, maybe we should actually try cooking. Should we fire up the deep fryer?” she asked. “Mongo does like tater tots. And so does Mordecai. At least he did when he was a frog guy.” She gasped. “Can he even eat in his current form? I didn’t even think about that. He must be starving!”

“Don’t touch the deep fryer,” I said. “It’ll splash all over the place. And probably cause a fire.”

“Yes, I suppose that could go very wrong,” Donut agreed. “But maybe we can have a cookout after.”  

“What does this do?” Bucket Boy asked as he yanked on the transmission.

“Stop touching things, and I’ll show you everything in a minute,” I said. “Donut, quit messing with the cabinets and get ready. Hedy said the doors lock closed. Grab Mongo.”

Race starts in ten minutes. You may enter the starting grid now. Your track assignment is now available. Your GPS has been updated. Warning. Saferoom rules apply until the light is green.   

“Rend,” I called, pulling the pet carrier out. I still had the truck passenger door open, and he stood there, looking at me, panting weirdly like a dog. The inside of his mouth was absolutely filled with smashed, uncooked French fries. “Want to go for a ride, buddy?”

He let out a deep giggle and let me zap him away.

I took a deep breath, and turned my attention back to the GPS. I could touch it to get the info, but I hesitated.

“Uh, Dr. Metcalf? Show us the information, and show the map.” The display lit up red. “Please,” I added, and the display color turned blue.

Path assignment: Left path. You will share a path with the teams One Fine Pig, Lady Dominators and the Gimp, and Girth the Trouble.

Starting grid: Spot #7.

Distance: 10 kilometers.

Distance to next rest area or refueling pit stop: This heat does not have any pit stops.

Track: asphalt-paved road. Rolling hills.

There are two paths for this race. You are assigned the left path.

Tasks required to complete: Each path is of equal length. Each path has a gatekeeper monster along that path that must be killed to resume.

Special Rules: Your vehicle may only travel your assigned path, but you will be able to see and interact with and may possibly cross over other paths, including the paths of other heats all together.

Environment: Torrential downpour of rain and giant hail.  

Hazards: I thought a cat driving was a 50/50 death sentence, but now that we’ve actually put a prepubescent crocodile behind the wheel, I see you’re not leaving anything up to chance.

Time Limit: 3 hours.  

“Hey,” Donut called. “That was very rude, Dr. Metcalf. We’ve been nice to you. We need to all work together.”

A map appeared, and as I suspected, the twin paths were relatively straight, but they were right next to each other, and they crossed over a few times, almost like a DNA strand. We were on the left, which was equal with how we were set up in the starting grid. All the odd numbers on the left, and the evens on the right. The map turned sideways as I looked, revealing that small hills dotted the path, but nothing too crazy. Both roads had a big, blinking red dot right about halfway through. The dots were relatively close to one another, meaning it was possible we’d be able to see both of these boss monsters at the same time.  

“Do we know what sort of boss this is yet?” I asked.

Not yet. But I bet it’ll be horrible.

This was going to be tricky. I didn’t even know what the first team—One Fine Pig—was, nor did I have any information on the third team, Girth the Trouble. I just knew they were all mechanical based vehicles. The other road would have the creepy jugglers, the razor foxes, the asshole unicorn guy, and the bugbears.

Hedy pulled herself off the bench and moved to the chain to open the garage door. It started to open, revealing a torrential pour. Lightning crackled across the sky, followed by a loud bang.   

 Next to me, Bucket Boy gave me a nervous look. “So, you’re going to teach me to drive now?”

I nodded. I suddenly had to shout because the rain was so loud. It was as if it hadn’t even been raining until we started to open the garage door.

“Look, it’s easy. You have two pedals down there. The one on the right...”

I trailed off as a new message came in.  

Tran: Oh fuck. Got some shitty news.

Imani: What’s wrong?

Zhang: Sorry, guys. Confirming Prepotente’s theory is mostly correct. Na had killed five of the other teams, and we have four replacements at the starting line. Two are NPC teams, but two are crawler teams, including Tran’s team. The other team is Rezan and some of the guys from the 101st from last floor. Na is just sitting there behind me, not reacting. I have the reins for this one. I don’t know what to do.

Donut jumped to my shoulder as I felt myself sag.

And so it begins.

“Goddamnit,” I said.  

 Chapter 17

“Brakes!” I shouted as we lurched to a stop. We jerked one more time, almost running into the car in front of us before we jerked as we stopped under the awning. Just behind us, the rain continued to pound into the asphalt.

“Wait, I have to keep my foot on this brake the whole time?”

“If it’s in drive, then yes, Bucket Boy,” I said. “But you’re going to put it in park. No, not reverse. Park. Yes. Now you can take your foot off the pedal. We’re going to keep it in park for now. Don’t touch anything until I tell you to.”

We were stopped next to the bugbear’s van. To our left was a steep ditch. As long as Bucket Boy could keep the steering wheel straight, we’d be okay.  

The bugbear’s van blared music. It was an Elton John song, and it was loud enough to hear over the rain, but I wasn’t familiar with it. Something about making friends. Jasha sat behind the wheel, cigarette hanging from his mouth. He gave us a wave.

The eight vehicles were positioned side-by-side in four rows, not staggered as I kind of hoped. It made sense since we weren’t actually headed toward the same track.

It wasn’t dark outside, but the rain just kept coming and coming. We didn’t have working wipers, which was going to be a problem, though not so much once we smashed out the windshield. For now the rain didn’t hit us as all eight vehicles and mounts were under a giant awning. Still, the sound of the rain was almost deafening. There wasn’t any hail yet, but I imagined that would start soon.

Right in front of the bugbears sat the pile of vines that was Dwight the unicorn and Lucienne the whatever-the-hell she was. Team Sparkles. The little, French rodent was no longer on the head of the unicorn, but was submerged in the vines, her helmeted head sticking out the top. I still had no idea how they “drove” the thing.

Dwight the unicorn, meanwhile, was engaged in a shouting match with the group to their immediate left, which was the team right in front of us.

Girth the Trouble.

Their vehicle was a bright yellow, 1950’s Chevy Bel Air with a massive blower popping up from the hood. Red flames were painted on the side of the car. It was like a real-life matchbox car. We’d seen plenty of similar cars during our time in Cuba, but nothing this tricked out. And leaning out the passenger side, screaming their head off at the unicorn was some sort of slime creature I’d never seen before. It was human shaped, sort of, and it appeared to be made of translucent gelatin. Like someone had taken an Operatic slime, but clear-colored, and smashed it into a gingerbread man cookie cutter. It wasn’t wearing clothes. It was leaned all the way out the passenger side of the car, screeching at the unicorn. I assumed there was at least one more of the creatures in there behind the wheel, but I couldn’t see him from my position.

Through the translucent skin of the creature I could see shapes floating there. Organs.    

Masterplan. Guck Elemental. Level 84 Rockabilly.  

This is a splitter. If you kill Masterplan, he will split into two even more annoying creatures.

Think of the stupidest guy you’ve ever met. Now imagine this moron had sex with a Jell-O Cup, which somehow ended up pregnant. The Jell-O Cup had a baby, and then raised it on 1950’s shuffle rock. They probably dropped him on his head a few times.

Got it?

Now you know what a Guck Elemental is.   

They have the consistency of congealed horchata, and the personality of a dead jellyfish. Their organs actually work, but they’re ridiculously hard to kill because there’s no limit to how many times they can split.  

They love to argue and fight, though, that’s for sure.  

Masterplan’s voice was deep and loud, and it carried as he screamed at Dwight the unicorn. I had no idea what had started their fight.

“You can go fuck yourself right now,” Masterplan shouted at the unicorn. “Team Sparkles? More like team suck my gelatinous dick. You’re lucky we’re not on the same track this race. I’m going to rip that girly horn off your stupid horse head and stab it right into your heart!”

“I’m a unicorn, not a horse you barely sapient pile of lube! And I’d love to see you try, you fucking idiot!” Dwight shouted back. “I’m going to wear your spleen like a hat! Then we’ll see who’s girly.”

“I don’t feel as if wearing someone’s spleen as a hat is either manly or girly,” Donut muttered from my shoulder. “Carl, keeping these people alive is going to be impossible. Are we sure we want to do this?”

“Yes,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. We could only kill one team. If a second team died, then all this would be for nothing. But we couldn’t risk coming in last place, either.

Lucienne popped up and also shouted something while shaking her little, rodent fist, but I couldn’t hear her over the rain.

Chiyome: We are in place, but you’ll have to hit them with the bolt right away. It looks like the two roads don’t diverge from one another for a good half kilometer, so we’ll be right next to them, but they’re faster than us, so we’ll have to do this right at the start. Do you have a shot?

I looked. I couldn’t see the womantaur vehicle, parked right in front of the slimes’ vehicle, from our position in line, but I could hear the revving of their engine. It was another muscle car like the one right in front of us. What I could see was the two forms of the tall drivers behind the wheel. Their car was convertible, and they sat there stoically. If they did manage to escape, the rain and hail was going to be a challenge for them.

Corcunda sat in the back, leaned over to the side, like he was asleep. I hoped for his sake that he was.

I still struggled with this decision. Not out decision to kill the NPC, but to forgo the quest to reunite him with Dong. Clearly the AI had some grand plan, and we were avoiding it by doing this. I still wasn’t sure what that prize was, but I suspected we’d get another bite at that apple. This was the safe route, and it avoided all the inevitable drama that would come with dealing with that quest.

If we could take this guy off the playing field without Dong ever knowing, that would be preferable. I suspected that wasn’t going to happen, especially when the AI thought it would be funny. So we’d also made the decision not to allow Dong ever work as a driver if we could avoid it.

Because if we did allow Dong to drive, that was when the powers that be would tell him that we’d just killed his best friend in the world.

Mordecai was right in his earlier comment. We needed to focus on surviving this floor before we focused on what was next. I still didn’t know what we were going to do about Tran and Zhang and Li Na, and to a lesser extent, Rezan and his team. Maybe a solution would present itself. But all of that was further confirmation our attention needed to be fully focused on getting through each individual race.     

Carl: The driver is on the left, correct? The one named Rapture with the red hair?  

Chiyome. Correct.

“Think you can make it?” I asked Donut. “You’ll have to shoot over these idiots in front of us.”

Her weapon mount, the Scorpion’s Bite, formed on Donut’s back, along with Katia’s crossbow. The glowing Danforth bolt locked into place on its own with an ominous click. The bolt glowed. Hopefully we’d be able to retrieve it.

We’d debated putting Donut on the roof of the truck for this. But in the end, we decided against it. I didn’t want her sitting out there as a prime target for others.

The plan was that the moment the light turned green, I’d break the window and Donut would hit the driver from behind with her Danforth bolt, which would root the womantaur in place. If they tried to drive off, or if they’d already started moving, it would go badly for Rapture. As soon as the driver was hit, Chiyome’s mount, which was a giant bear, would smash the car to the side. The driver would remain in place, and the car moving underneath her would likely end up cutting her in half. Either Chiyome or one of the bugbears would take out the driver if she was still alive, and we would, if we could, take out the second womantaur and Corcunda as we passed. I had a Molotov cocktail ready to toss on their car as well, which would hopefully be upturned at this point. After that, we would try to all stay alive for the rest of the race.

We didn’t know what upgrade the Lady Dominators picked, but if it was a shield, it likely didn’t stop both magical attacks—which is what Donut’s bolt would be—and physical attacks, which is what the bear attack would be, so we were covering all of our bases. Because of this floor’s challenge, namely the hail, we assumed it would be a physical shield. But if we struck right at the very start, hopefully we could catch them by surprise.

I spent a moment trying to examine the vehicle in front of the womantaurs, the vehicle currently in the first spot. Team One Fine Pig. It was a big, military vehicle, similar to what I imagined Imani and Elle’s vehicle to be, and I couldn’t see the driver at all. Either way, it was good because it would take a second for it to start moving, which gave us time to get our shot out. To the right of them in position number two stood the large, black dog of the Jugglers. The creepy, masked riders sat in a row on its back. The razor fox’s bear was about the same size and was currently sniffing at the butt of the dog.

Donut was staring at the giant dog, muttering under her breath.

“Donut,” I said. “Do you have a shot on the womantaur?”

She gave one last derisive snort at the massive dog and turned her attention to the Lady Dominators.

Directly in front of us, the unicorn and the gunk elemental continued to squeal at each other.

“You wanna go! You wanna go right now?” Dwight shrieked. “Imma fuck you up!”

“Imma have a go with your donkey of a mother,” Masterplan shouted back. “I’m gonna ride her like I’d been working overtime all week.”  

“I have a shot, no problem,” Donut said. “Right over the slime guy’s car and right into the back of that one’s head. But you’ll have to crouch further down because that stupid gun is in the way. I do hope we can retrieve the bolt before it all gets destroyed by the AI.”  

“Wait until the windshield is smashed. Make sure it’s fully smashed before you shoot. If they manage to knock the car into the ditch, I’ll jump out and grab the bolt from her head before the car is destroyed.”       

Carl: We’ll be ready.

Chiyome: Good. Jasha and Radoslav, I’m marking on the map where we’ll meet up before we challenge the boss. The Jugglers might try to kill it without us, but if they wait, we’ll all take it out together, and then the race will be on.

Radoslav: Ya, we good.

The gps beeped.

Green light in thirty seconds. Environmental hazards starting.

New note has just been added to the hazards database. The hail is light at the beginning, but it increases in intensity as the timer increases.

I pulled the special banger sphere out. If it worked as intended, it would destroy the entire windshield in one hit, not just poke a hole in it.

“Get ready, Donut!”  

Crash! The entire ground shook. It was like a bomb had just gone off. Next to me, Bucket Boy let out a shriek and hit the horn.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking about. I couldn’t see anything.

Crash! A second detonation came, this time right behind us. The back of the truck bucked as if we'd been rear-ended.

“Carl, what’s happening?” Donut shouted.

Dr. Metcalf beeped right when I figured it out.

I’m pretty sure that’s the hail.

“That’s light hail?” Donut shrieked. “What’s considered heavy?”

Boom! The entire awning over our heads exploded. Bits of ice and snow and metal crackled across the roof of the truck. The rain started, pounding the windshield. In a second, I couldn’t see anything through the ice and water. I couldn’t even see the lights above us, indicating when it was time to go.

Race starts in ten seconds. We are so fucking dead.

“Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods,” Bucket Boy said.

“Stick to the plan!” I shouted, pulling my arm back.  

 Five, four, three, two, one.

Green light! Green light!

I hurled the banger sphere through the windshield, which shattered into pieces. The sphere continued its forward trajectory as our vision was suddenly, kind of, clear. In the distance, a hailstone the size of a two-story house smashed into the ground between the two roads.

At the same moment, Donut tensed, as if she was about to fire, but she paused.

She paused because a long, tank-like tube had just popped out the side of the Team Sparkles bush, and it was pointed directly the muscle car right in front of us.

“Get down!” I shouted.

But despite being the one to shout that, I didn’t duck in time. I watched the flames burst from the turret as they fired directly into the Chevy Bel-Air. Instead of rocketing away, the car, miraculously, went straight up in the air as if it had been launched from a catapult.   

“Gah,” I shouted, and only then did I duck down.

“What the fuck? What the fuck?” a new, high-pitched voice shouted, followed by another, then another.

It was a mini version of Mastermind, the gunk elemental. He was about the size of my fist, and he’d landed in my lap. There were suddenly dozens of them, of all sizes, and they rained down all over the truck. They all had the same names. Mastermind, and the other one, whose name had been Boggle. They continued to rain down, having been blown to literal pieces.

We gotta move. They’re gonna shoot at us next.

I picked one Mastermind off my chest and hurled him through the missing windshield of our truck as I peeked up. Next to us, Jasha and Radoslav were also cowering in their van. Ahead, all the other vehicles—including the womantaurs—were already gone.  

“Help!” a tiny Mastermind called as he bounced off Bucket Boy’s muzzle.  

Kablam! We all ducked again as the burning Chevy Bel-Air landed loudly to the left of us, smashing into the ditch, burning furiously.

“That’s right!” came the shout from Dwight the unicorn. I could now see the tank cannon was peeled back, like in a cartoon. It must’ve been a one-time use weapon. Or more likely, a once a race weapon. “How’s that for girly? Eat my unicorn balls, you translucent bitch!”

And then the bush just took off, moving significantly faster than it had the last time.

The only ones left on the track were us and the bugbears.

Team six, Girth the Trouble has been eliminated due to the destruction of their vehicle. Seven teams remain in the current heat. 

“No!” a tiny Mastermind shouted from the floor of the truck, so small I could barely hear his tiny voice. I hadn’t even noticed him. “Avenge me! Avenge me!” He rose up into the air before exploding like a piece of popcorn all over Donut’s sputtering face.

Next to us, the song “Black and White” by Three Dog Night blared from the bugbear van. I recognized it because my mom had loved that song, and there was a strange, surreal moment where I just sat there, listening, remembering my mom holding me and dancing while she sang to me. The reverie was broken by yet another massive hailstone crashing against a distant hill. Jasha gave me an apologetic shrug, and the bugbears zoomed off, leaving us sitting alone at the start line.

~~~~~~~

Hey y'all. Had a lot of fun writing this one, and we're just getting started. The plan is for each race to get more and more unhinged, but in a new and unique way each race.

But we also have a lot of overarching arc territory to cover this book as well. Let's see if we can combine those two, no?

~~~~~~~~END SPOILERS---------

DO NOT post these anywhere as they're getting announced tomorrow at 2 PM Pacific, but I wanted you guys to get the jump on tickets. It looks like the Tucson one has the tickets available already here, but the LA event doesn't have their tickets up. The LA event is a venue that holds 1,400 people, so if gets anywhere near capacity, I won't be able to sign all at once. As a result, we have three tiers of tickets. Event only. Event and Signing Line that same night or Event and Signing Line the next day at the bookstore.

We have another Seattle date that's not ready to be announced also.

Again, don't post these anywhere as I will get in trouble, and if I get in trouble, then y'all can't get early stuff anymore. And please don't call Diesel asking about tickets. The link will appear on their site when it appears, supposedly at 2 pm tomorrow.