I'm not stealing Ash; I'm just torturing him for fun. First published story; enjoy.
A Kawasaki Ninja, new green plastic gleaming under the thick clouds, at least wherever the road salt couldn't reach, moaned and rattled as it sprinted over the pot-holed street, pushing eighty through the cold, the treacherous ice and the dawdling traffic. Blackened snow berms rose on the shoulders. The wind gusted—it was no day for racing—but the rider had forgotten that. He twisted the throttle, begging for acceleration and a clear lane, skimming between cars like a bat through the branches of an oak tree, dodging and jolting.
No one can keep that up forever.
The road curved right, and a slow sedan blocked his path. The rider swung left to pass it, sweeping wide and leaning against the turn until his knee scraped pavement as his track curved far over the yellow center lines.
That's where all the snow and gravel of the season lay.
He skidded, back tire flipping out and away, across the opposite lane into an incoming compact. The bike slid past, but the man, jumpsuit shredding against the pavement, took the bumper right in his helmet visor. His body twirled like a flicked paper clip, limbs stretched out limply.
The car that hit him jerked to a stop on the shoulder and a commuter looked out, swore, and scrambled out to drag the man to safety. The man's head was twisted back and to the side; the rescuer prayed his helmet was just sideways. Necks didn't bend that way.
He paused when the rider sat up, took his head in his hands and snapped it back in place, and slowly stood, as though pulled upright by strings. He stopped when the rider yanked his own elbow joint back into place. When the rider turned to face him, white eyes gleaming under the shattered visor of its helmet, the man wisely ran for his car.
With a spray of glass, the rider reached right through the side window and turned him into Mongolian beef, letting the blood fly until the car looked like a paint bomb had gone off inside, before righting the bike and speeding off.
Alan Trent's station wagon reeked of Aquanet, B.O., and cigarette smoke. Every time he went for a drive, he'd come out smelling like the car.
It wasn't always this way. Five years ago it had had a delicious new car scent, freshly spritzed on by the used-car dealership. But now Alan drove a carpool, and the four passengers had each contributed their own odors to the upholstery.
Rob Baker sat behind Alan. Rob was a big guy who liked Whoppers before coming to work, and had on occasion left a sauce-soaked wrapper on the floor for Alan's wife to discover on Saturday nights. Harriet, her perm teased and shellacked into a protective crunch zone, sat opposite Rob, her overexposed legs splayed out coarsely. Between them huddled Alex the high school kid, who, since he couldn't hope to get a girlfriend, only bothered to shower on Sunday mornings. Ash, the newcomer, had shotgun. He smelled like WD-40 and cheap pomade.
Baker used to have shotgun. But put Ash in the backseat with Hairspray Harriet, an embittered, man-hunting barfly whom even a table-spoon's reflection ought to show her she was past her prime, and the whole ride would turn into every family road trip of Alan's haunted childhood. He'd subtly rearranged his pick-up route to segregate the newcomer in the front, and in the meantime prayed for the insurance company to hurry and process Ash's car claim. Alan didn't have the nerve to try to pawn him onto another carpool.
They hit a red light, lining up in a neat row of other cars all heading somewhere at four in the afternoon down this suburban arterial. Ash stretched out his legs, grinned to himself, and slid his seat back another two inches. Harriet, her own leg room disappearing, sharply crossed and uncrossed her legs, so her knees jolted into the back of his seat. She stared straight ahead primly.
"Do we have a problem?" demanded Ash, twisting around to face her. "Is there a retard brain malfunction that makes you want to Can-Can back there with the boys, or are you just out to get on my bad side?"
"Well, look who's the macho man. What, are you so insecure you need to pick a fight with a lady?" She batted her clumpy eyelashes.
Ash made a fist. "I swear to God I'll club you like a seal—"
The light turned green and the line of cars began to churn back up to speed. Ash stared past Harriet's hair out the window. "God, no."
He turned to Alan. "Floor it!"
"What?" Alan liked his driver's license. He liked his transmission. He liked having good tread on his tires. He didn't like getting yelled at; he got that enough from his wife.
"Floor it!" Ash shouted, stomping on the floor and waving his hands wildly. "Go! Go! Go! Hit the gas! Now!"
Alan, imagining his nose smashed in by a steel gauntlet, rabbitted forward. Ash spun away, watching the rearview mirror, staring out the passenger window, leaning back into the car and losing his balance. "You're on the shifter," Alan muttered, trying not to anger the crazy man as the car struggled to break 30 in second gear. "I can't go faster unless you sit up." Ash glared up at him like a mad dog, and Alan shut up and stomped harder on the gas as a second engine's whine drew closer.
A sport biker tapped the car with his fist. Harriet screamed. It cackled, burst ahead a few feet, then punched through Ash's window, spraying glass.
Nobody watched the road. A stench like twenty pounds of beef trimmings left to spoil in a dark basement blasted through the crazed remains of the window, from a human form leaning half-into the car. Ash, twisted away so far his head was almost in Alan's lap, caught the dead man's snappy green-and-white glove in his gauntlet and was straining with both arms to keep it off his throat. He was losing. Alan, spellbound and gripping the wheel with frozen fists, was no help.
"Get out! Get out!" Harriet screamed, slapping the man's helmet with her purse as though trying to repel a tarantula. It turned its broken faceplate toward her, fixing her with its blood-milk eyes. She screamed and jumped back, straining, trapped by her seatbelt. Ash let go the deadite's arm with one hand, grabbed the steering wheel, and yanked down.
The car swerved right. They heard a clunk and a scrape as the green Ninja lost its rider and spun out, ramming the car body and jolting under the back wheel. Off-balance, the deadite fell further into the car, until Ash drew his legs up and kicked it in the throat.
Alan seemed to come alive then, and since the car was about to ram a guardrail, tried to spin the wheel straight. The deadite snarled, still clinging to the window, and tried to claw its way back in as Ash kicked like a rabbit on speed, playing whack-a-mole with its freakishly strong arms. The car began to turn left, back onto the lane, and Ash gave the wheel a hard shove to help it along, and a final kick to the deadite's helmet.
"Gaah!" Alan yelped. They swerved into oncoming traffic, and he frantically cranked them back to the right, then glanced over at Ash. His legs were hanging out the window, and he was hauling himself back into his seat, but the attacker was gone, thrown out by Ash's kick and the shock of the car's turn.
Ash finally righted himself, and stomped his feet to shake the glass shards out of his pants. The car hummed on, Alan following traffic mindlessly and Harriet, the kid, and Rob Baker shuddering on their seats, clutching their knees. "Ugly didn't have a seatbelt," he panted, breaking the stillness. As if on cue, the back seat screamed.
Well, that wraps things up nicely, doesn't it?
I had trouble with Ash's lines—not liney enough—but slapped it up here, anyway. Please tell me what you think.