Choices
Chapter 2: Action
By Gumnut
23 - 28 Jun 2004
Dolores was red. Blood red. Shiny, with a skin as smooth as silk.
She had to be, because Joe had spent all morning polishing her to get that shine. And now as he sat in her driver's seat, staring out across her beefed up hood at the stretch of road before them, he knew she was going to do him proud.
He flicked a glance over at Jimmy. The young upstart thought his canary yellow Mustang, custom paint job included, to be a match for his red Cougar. Time for a little elementary education.
They had chosen this place, this time, after Jimmy had challenged him last Thursday over a busted game of pool. It was really only a bit of fun, the stakes money-wise were paltry, but Joe had a point to prove and he was going to prove it in front of everyone.
They lined the two cars up, nose to nose, while the girls egged them on. Each had been equally catty towards the other since the bet was made, each eager to better the other.
Well, now they would find out.
Sam Begel stepped between the two muscle cars and raised his arms in the signal for readiness. Joe gunned the engine, revelling in the raw grunt of the throbbing pistons. Jimmy called out some smart remark, but he ignored him, focussing on the road that was soon to be his.
The arms dropped.
Two pedals hit the floor.
A cloud of acrid smoke billowed up above the desert as the two cars screamed and shot forward, leaving half their tyre tread on the pavement. Yells and catcalls from the half dozen spectators chased them into the distance, but Joe ignored it all. It was just him, his opponent, and the road.
The speedometer climbed, at an impressive rate, into the triple digits in seconds. The horizon flattened out, and the white lines of the road blurred into one. This was it, this is what he lived for. His heart thudded in his chest to the beat of Dolores' engine, and he flew.
Jimmy somehow managed to keep pace, an eager glance in Joe's direction, reflecting the other driver's emotion. Fast cars and speed, it was a rush. The two racing cars tore along the empty desert highway, nose to nose, the thunder from under the hood drowning out the drivers' excited yells as the roaring wind ripped them away.
God, it was good to be alive.
Joe made his move to edge out in front, but was quickly countered by the Mustang. Hmm, Jimmy was better than he thought. Time for some tactics.
He flicked a glance in the rearview mirror out of habit, only to have his attention snared by an object being reflected back at him.
What the?
His eyes darted back to the speedometer noting the digits the gauge was trembling at. My god!
A black blur swallowed the majority of his rearview mirror, and Joe was vaguely aware of the stunned look thrown in his direction by Jimmy, before the black Trans Am, suddenly on his bumper, threw itself into the air and leapt over the speeding Cougar.
It landed gracefully several feet in front of them, and, without missing a beat, tore off into the horizon, swallowed by it shortly thereafter.
Dolores' engine still throbbed, the two cars still belted along the deserted highway, but the two drivers seemed to drop their interest in the race.
They suddenly had the impression that they had both lost.
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Officer Fred Bangor loved his doughnuts. He knew it was a stereotypical thing for a cop to like, but, quite frankly, he didn't care.
And today he had a couple of his favourites. Blueberry jelly, cinnamon and sugar dusted, lovely and warm doughnuts. He'd bought them for his afternoon coffee break, but had been delayed by some punk who had decided breaking speed limits was amusing. The young upstart wasn't laughing anymore.
Now Fred was on his way to his favourite parking spot, just on the edge of suburbia where a rock outcropping gave a magnificent view of the desert beyond. A place where he could sit and enjoy his doughnuts in peace.
The traffic lights ahead of him dipped into the yellow and he slowed to a stop.
But then, instead of changing to red, the lights flicked back to green.
Bangor blinked.
Before he could react, a black missile plummeted into the intersection from above him, and with a squeal of tyres tore off down the road.
He blinked again.
In the distance, another set of lights did exactly the same thing, the fast dwindling black car dodging any vehicle that got in its way – via all three dimensions.
As the vehicle disappeared into the haze of distance, Bangor finally gathered his wits about him and swore. The patrol car was shoved into gear, and, with no small imitation of the Trans Am, it leapt into pursuit.
Doughnuts forgotten.
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His scanners tracked everything, giving him immediate information on the position of every object, every person, every obstacle between him and Michael's salvation.
Probability projections of the future locations of vehicles and pedestrians, course and speed requirements, turbo boost velocity, emergency braking distance, and that all consuming clock that continued to countdown an estimated time of survival. His electronic mind played the tools of his flight like a musical instrument, his urgency hurling him forward towards that homing signal he could receive but not respond to.
The semi was currently en route to Las Vegas, still catching up with the agent team, and Kitt knew them to be his only hope. There were other options, but in this instance, his existence being housed in the car was nothing but another obstacle. With his outgoing communication system disabled, the only way for him to communicate was via his voice box, and unfortunately apart from Devon and Bonnie, he doubted anyone would listen to him.
And he had no time to argue.
Kitt had always had confidence in his speed capabilities. He considered himself to be one of the fastest vehicles on four wheels – something Michael was quite proud of, in fact.
But now he just wasn't fast enough.
As he entered the outskirts of Las Vegas, he began to encounter more and more traffic and had to repeatedly slow down to avoid endangering lives. Several police units were now tailing him, at varying distances depending on his speed, but he paid them little attention. Michael and Devon could clear up any problems later.
Michael.
He jammed on his left rear brake causing the car to swerve abruptly, avoiding a bus that suddenly appeared in front of him from a side street. Sometimes probabilities weren't enough.
The Trans Am careened into an empty bus shelter, metal fragments and wooden seat sent flying. A cursory scan noted the absence of endangered persons, and he spun his front tyres back onto course and left the destruction in his wake.
The clock continued to tick.
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They called in air support.
They could do little else.
The black car tore through the outskirts of Las Vegas like the devil himself was behind it. The Skyview chopper could barely keep up with it. They could only watch as it darted in and out of lines of traffic, flung itself down side streets to avoid the evening rush hour, and simply leapt over those snarls it couldn't escape.
Its speed varied but given a straight stretch of road it clocked up well over 200mph.
As to who was driving the projectile, they had no idea, its windows were matte black. No one had yet had a chance to catch the license plate number, no one had yet been able to get close enough.
By the time the police department had mobilised itself sufficiently to attempt to halt the vehicle's progress, it had made its way through the majority of the big city and was making a beeline for the California Highway.
Once it hit open road, they had the distinct impression they wouldn't have a hope.
So they set up a roadblock.
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Kitt was beginning to panic. His estimated time to reach the semi was getting larger and larger as each obstacle entered his path. He was becoming increasingly aware of the efforts of the law enforcement community to halt his progress, and he knew that if they succeeded he would have little chance of saving his driver's life as the typical amazement and tangle of explanations of his driverless state, and the list of laws he had recently broken, would steal the last of Michael's time.
The clock was ticking.
His last chance was the open road of the California Highway where he hoped to make up for lost time.
Unfortunately he found it blocked.
By police, their vehicles, and the backlog of traffic, inevitable at any interruption on a freeway.
As he approached, his first glance told him that turbo boost was not an option, and there were simply too many lives at stake to risk smashing directly through. They had been watching him.
They knew what he could and would not do.
For a moment he could almost sense the ghost of his driver sitting in his seat, assessing the situation. They always approached a problem together, both minds analysing, working together towards a solution.
His absence…..
Kitt's scanners tracked the scene, calculations bouncing back and forth regarding his options. He had to get through.
But the road was blocked.
So.
He wouldn't use the road.
His engine didn't miss a beat as he turbo boosted over the guardrail that lined the thoroughfare, all four wheels crunching in the gravel of an empty parking lot. He threw up stones as he accelerated on a course parallel to the freeway and circling the roadblock.
There were indignant exclamations from the direction of the traffic jam, one or two drivers shaking fists at him, while others simply stared at him in astonishment.
He took out a fence and sent two rectangular garbage bins on wheels spinning as he reached the end of the first parking lot and burst into the next. He narrowly missed a parked car, and side swiped a tree, leaping over a brick wall into someone's back yard, a child's swing set bouncing off his hood. His back wheels threw up neatly manicured turf as he ploughed through a garden shed and the fence beyond it.
Police cars were already peeling away from the roadblock, now they were aware of his tactics, but since they were unable to jump the freeway guardrail, they could only attempt to track his progress.
There was a brief reprieve from property damage as he broke through onto a minor service road and accelerated.
He tracked incoming fire, and bullets started pinging off his bodywork, his tyres absorbing several shots.
The service road enabled him to make it past the majority of the roadblock and leave most of his pursuers behind, but it swerved off in the wrong direction before giving him a clear point of entry back onto the freeway.
His path was blocked by a building.
A glass sculpture of a building with the word 'Microsoft' emblazoned on its side.
Scanning only took a microsecond.
It took only a few more for Kitt to turbo burst through the structure, over the guardrail once again, and for his tyres to grip the asphalt with a screech of rubber protest as he accelerated down the now nicely empty road.
His pursuers followed him into the slowly setting sun, but they were now of no importance. He focussed on the signal that was leading him to the semi.
The clock was ticking.
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Several miles away the Chief of the Nevada Highway Patrol picked up his phone. The report at the other end was short, succinct, and not a little frustrated. Less than five minutes later his fingers interrupted the call and dialled another number. He swore under his breath.
Damnit, Knight, what the hell are you up to now?
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Devon held the phone out from his ear and was still able to hear the strident tones of the angry law enforcement chief quite clearly. "For the love of god, Miles, what does he think he is doing? We're talking property damage in the tens of thousands, what possibly could be worth that?"
The receiver continued to scream at him, but he ignored most of it, calmly tapping into the computer the commands to access Kitt's location. The required map came up, Kitt appearing as a flashing red point moving rapidly across the screen in their direction. He was still a good hundred and twenty miles from the semi's location, but a quick readout of his speed showed him to be putting everything he had into his flight.
He signalled Michael.
No response.
He tried several times, each as fruitless as the first. Damn.
"Devon? Devon!"
He abruptly turned his attention back to the Patrol Chief. "I'm sorry, John, I am unable to give you an explanation. We are both well aware that Michael does not flout law heedlessly, I'm sure he has a worthwhile explanation."
"Well, it damned well better be. I have the LVMPD on my tail, and a repair bill worth my job if that reason doesn't materialise."
"I will inform you as soon as I have further information. Thank you for informing me, John."
The Chief didn't answer, he just hung up, the clatter of the cradle at the other end almost as loud as the voice it replaced.
Devon set the phone down and stared at the screen and its rapidly moving dot. As he called out to Bonnie, a familiar knot of worry started to form in his gut.
He was sure Michael was determined to give him an ulcer.
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Kitt?
The word bounced back and forth in his mind. Kitt?
He had been calling his name.
He opened his mouth to speak, but dust danced on his tongue, and he coughed, warm fluid spilling softly between his teeth. The movement shook him, pain the only feedback. He would have cried out, but he found himself unable to move. Something was broken.
Almost fearing what he would see, he slowly opened his eyes.
Black.
Kitt?
His eyes slowly focussed as if reluctant to reveal his surroundings. It wasn't black, it was only dark. A faint tinge to the sky told him the sun had only recently gone down, and the stars were still attempting to shine through the remnant light.
A cool breeze wafted across his face bringing the dry flavours of the parched land with it. He was in the desert. In the dark. In the desert. His barely functioning brain immediately flung up the memories associated with that scenario.
In the desert.
Hurting.
Alone.
Kitt?
He managed to move the fingers of his left hand, fingernails scratching at the dust, a scrap of vegetation crumpling in the sand caught there.
Kitt?
Alone.
Hurting.
In the desert.
Kitt?
Silence.
Kitt?
There was no answer.
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FIN.