The Origin of MASK
Chapter 8: Fast Food, Part 2
By Qweb and/or Jelsemium
"That's two down," Dusty said.
"You can't get rid of Vanessa that easy, cowboy," Matt warned.
"What's she gonna do? Fly?"
No sooner were the words spoken than Manta launched from the overpass. Wings sprouted from its sides. The rear bumper unfolded into an airplane's tail, exposing three powerful jets that roared into life. Manta shot into the sky to join Switchblade, leaving flightless Piranha behind.
"Me'n my big mouth," Dusty said, before Matt could speak.
With two flying foes on his tail, the freeway was too exposed for Dusty's taste. He took to the city streets, dodging laser blasts that tore up the ground in front of him, trying to get him to lose control.
Matt and Dusty ducked instinctively as Manta strafed past.
"You say that's a lady flyin' that car?"
"A woman, Dusty. But she's no lady!"
A close blast singed the paint on the fender.
"I guess you're right about that."
Vanessa and Mayhem tried to take out the tires, but the heavy truck sat so low on its springs that its wheels were an impossible target. The back of the truck had the treacherous quilting effect plus thick, protective insulation to keep the pizzas warm. The cab was the only vulnerable spot; but Mayhem was still reluctant to fire directly at it, at the passenger side, anyway.
"Dagger, take out the driver," he ordered.
"Right, Mayhem."
Manta swooped low to parallel the speeding truck. Startled, Dusty looked out his window and found himself almost nose to nose with the blank, jack-o'-lantern gaze of Dagger's mask.
"Watch out!" Matt yelled, grabbing at the wheel.
"Torch, on!" Dagger commanded.
A stream of fire leaped toward Dusty, as the pizza truck spun out and stopped. Manta whipped past. Dusty cried out and beat at his flaming sleeve. As he got the fire out, Dusty saw Manta turning for another pass. He wrenched at the gears, stomped on the accelerator and shot away at right angles like a scorched jackrabbit. Manta charged past its target like a bull missing a matador.
Matt saw Dusty was again only using one hand to drive the speeding truck. His right was clenched around his left biceps.
"Dusty! Are you all right?"
Dusty sneaked a peek at his arm, sighed with relief, and put both hands back on the wheel — to Matt's relief.
"It smarts. But I reckon I'll live," Dusty said. "How many tricks these folks got, anyways?"
Rapidly Matt explained about the masks, Manta's buzz saws and Switchblade's bombs and missiles, as Dusty kept up a zigzag course, dodging around buildings, heading generally south.
"We'd be flat out of luck if they handed us a missile," Dusty said. "Why don't they?"
Matt slapped the briefcase by way of explanation. Dusty nodded in understanding.
"You hang on tight now, Matt," Dusty said. "We're almost there."
"Are we going somewhere in particular?"
"Uh, huh. I figgered if these fellas wanna play with fire, I ought'a take to the water. Here we go!"
The truck seemed to leap sideways, smashing through a chain link gate, snapping the rusty lock. Dusty and Matt bounced down a ramp into an apparently endless concrete channel with high vertical walls and a trickle of water on the floor.
Matt had a feeling of dèjà vu, then realized he'd seen the place in dozens of movies and TV shows. It was the Los Angeles River. Dry as the proverbial bone 99 percent of the time, the "river" was a joke to Southern California newcomers, until they finally saw it during the rains, swollen, angry and deadly. But, at the moment, Matt realized, the flood control channel was the perfect place for a car chase.
The concrete riverbed was as wide as a freeway and twice as smooth, apart from the sandbars, which built up at the curves, and an occasional hardy bush that planted its tenacious roots in a handy crack.
In the center of the riverbed was a secondary channel, three feet deep and five feet wide. The "creek" at the center of the river was all that was needed to carry the normal runoff from the desert-dry city. In some low spots, water spread out of the creek, covering the riverbed like a silken sheet.
Dusty allowed Manta to draw alongside again as he aimed the pizza truck at one such sprawling puddle.
As Dagger poked his head out the window again, Dusty spun the wheel and the truck shied to the side, sending a roostertail of water cascading into Manta, dousing the Torch just as it came alight.
Dagger ordered his mask to open fire, but there was no response.
"It's soaked," he told Vanessa.
Water dripping from Whip, Vanessa glared at Dagger. Her clothes were plastered to her body, her toe made little splashes on the carpet as she tapped it in anger.
"Everything's soaked, dumbbell," she snarled. "I'll teach that, that pizza truck driver to rain on my parade!"
She hit a switch extending the buzz saws that operated on long arms, one on either side of her front fenders. She cut speed to drop back and slash Dusty's tires.
"Oh, no you don't," the cowboy said, and hit her first.
The front fender of the heavy truck smashed into the rear fender of the low-flying car. Manta spun out of control, hit the side wall and ground its left buzz saw into powder against the concrete.
"Blast it!" Vanessa cursed.
"Warfield! Can't you do anything right?" Mayhem shouted.
"I don't see you helping any," she snarled back.
"I'll stop him," Mayhem swore, "if I have to do it all by myself!"
He flew ahead, rising to clear an overpass, then landing in the channel just beyond a concealing curve. He turned Switchblade to the side. Its tail brushed the concrete wall. Its nose was just a foot from the center channel. Mayhem climbed out and looked at his roadblock with satisfaction. There was no room for anything as wide as a pizza truck to pass. Even Piranha would have a hard time getting through without falling in the channel.
Mayhem waited, arms crossed, for Vanessa to herd his unsuspecting prey into the trap.
Dusty vaguely wondered where the helicopter had gone. Dodging Switchblade's laser blasts had become almost second nature; he missed it when it was gone. But he didn't have time to worry about it. He was busy trying to lure Vanessa into his trap.
Dusty measured the distance to the approaching bridge with his practiced eye, and calculated the rate of approach of Vanessa's remaining buzz saw. He cut speed just a bit to synchronize the events.
Manta roared up next to the racing pizza truck. The buzz saw edged close to its rear fender.
Dusty taped the brake and threw the truck into Manta. The buzz saw bit deep, but only into the truck body. The heavy insulation trapped the blades as the pizza truck forced the smaller car against the bridge supports.
Manta's left wing snapped off with a shriek of outraged metal. The flying car flew no longer. It dropped. Sparks flew as it was dragged along the ground; then the blade tore loose and Manta spun out, smashing against the overpass, finally scraping to a halt facing the opposite direction.
Dagger staggered out dizzily, holding the door handle for support.
Vanessa, sputtering unladylike curses, had to climb out the driver's window. The whole left side of the car was shredded. She looked at it in disgust and kicked the remaining front tire brutally.
"Come on, Dagger," she ordered.
The Venom agents ran after the pizza truck.
Bounding over sandbars at the river's curve, Dusty took the turn at high speed. Switchblade loomed up before him. Mayhem stood next to it, Viper mask at the ready.
"Whoa!" Dusty said, spinning the wheel.
A blast of Viper's corrosive acid spattered the ground behind the truck as Dusty whirled it to head back the way he'd come, only to find Vanessa and Dagger coming up fast.
Vanessa's energy whip lashed out, tearing a chunk out of the pizza truck's fender, as Dusty whirled again.
"They've got us boxed in!" Matt shouted.
"Not this boy," Dusty answered.
He swerved toward the sandbar and hit it hard with the right tires. The right side of the pizza truck bounced into the air. Dusty threw his weight to the left and jockeyed the wheel to keep the heavy truck up on two wheels. Matt fell heavily against the shoulder straps, and looked down at his young rescuer. The Texan's face was twisted into a mask of concentration.
Though Dusty hung out over the river's central channel, the truck wheels were on level ground. Forcing his head around, Matt looked out his window and saw the tilted truck's tires clear Switchblade's nose by less than an inch. The pizza truck's exposed belly would have made a great target for the chopper's cannons — if anybody had been at the controls.
Then they were past and the right side was falling back to earth. The heavy landing jolted the breath from Matt's body. But he managed a smile to meet Dusty's broad grin.
Mayhem cursed, leaped into the cockpit and took off, leaving his cursing cohorts standing ankle deep in sand. They trudged back toward the disabled Manta.
Mayhem ground his teeth. He'd almost forgotten about the component he wanted. It was a matter of dishonor now. No clown in a pizza truck was going to beat Miles Mayhem.
He swept down on the truck, lasers firing for effect. The deadly fire poured onto the truck, but the mirrored finish and the insulation deflected most of it.
"He's playing for keeps now," Matt said.
"Guess I got him mad," Dusty replied.
"The truck can't take much more of this," Matt warned.
"Time to head 'em off at the pass, pardner," Dusty said.
The truck dodged out of Switchblade's fire and whipped into a tunnel that led up out of the river. They bounded into the open and found themselves in the wide open spaces. The city had vanished. A narrow road zigzagged up a brush-covered hill in country that looked as wild as it had when Father Serra built the missions.
"Where are we?" Matt asked. He was totally lost.
"Griffith Park," Dusty replied, heading up the switchbacks into the hills.
Matt looked for Switchblade in the rear view mirror and found the city again. Beyond the multi-acre park, Los Angeles spread out concrete and glass, sparkling under a light haze of smog, blue sky clear and sharp above the thin layer of brown.
Dusty spent a lot of his free time in Griffith Park. That patch of wilderness in the midst of the teeming metropolis appealed to him. It wasn't much like the muddy swamps of the Texarkana region where he grew up, or even the plains and desert of western Texas, where he'd spent a lot of time; but it was wild land, natural. Sometimes, gregarious though the young man was, he needed to keep his own company. And, apart from the Los Angeles Zoo, Travel Town and a few picnic spots, the sprawling park in the hills was basically uninhabited. Dusty had explored every back road of Griffith Park.
It was natural that he'd head there to make his last stand.
Dusty parked in the middle of the deserted back road and climbed out. He reached behind the driver's seat and pulled out a serviceable lariat, part of his personal emergency kit.
He unlimbered it and tied the free end to a loop on the side of the truck with a quick release knot. He put the end in Matt's hand.
"You hang onto this, and when I give the word, yank it free as hard as you can."
"What are you going to do?" Matt asked.
"I'm gonna rope me a whirlybird."
"You're not serious," Matt said in disbelief.
"Sure am," Dusty replied. "Helicopters ain't the most stable critters in the world. Don't take much to set 'em on their ears."
Matt looked at the rope in his hand, then he looked at Dusty who was scanning the sky for his foe. The blond inventor grinned.
"You haven't let me down so far," he said.
They heard the searching helicopter before they saw it. The faint throb of the engine became a deafening roar as Switchblade cleared the sound-deadening hills. Coming that direction, Mayhem only caught a quick glimpse of the pizza truck before he was past it. He saw a brown-haired young man standing beside the open driver's door, twirling a lasso around his head, then he was past; but Dusty had been ready for him.
Dusty cast the rope. It looped over the helicopter's skid.
The rope tightened, jerking Switchblade to a sudden halt. Only Mayhem's superb piloting skills kept the helicopter from being yanked out of the sky by the first jolt. Then Dusty sent the truck leaping forward, dragging the helicopter behind.
Switchblade struck the side of the hill. It's rotors snapped, pieces flying in all directions.
"Cut 'er loose," Dusty cried.
Matt yanked.
The truck leaped free of its huge anchor. A section of blade speared down into the spot they'd just left. Smaller chunks of debris clanged off the truck's metallic sides.
Dusty raced away on the curving road.
Mayhem climbed out of the helicopter growling under his breath. He put his brawny shoulder under Switchblade's side and tilted the machine back onto its skids. He yanked the rope free with a curse, then climbed back inside.
He pressed a button on the control panel.
What was left of the helicopter's rotors folded together and retracted into the top of the aircraft. The tail flipped up into an airplane's tail. A pocket on the belly of the aircraft popped open revealing two powerful jets. The airfoils on either side of the chopper extended out into full-fledged wings.
Switchblade sprang from the hilltop, reborn as a fighter jet.
Mayhem scowled down at the twisting road, looking for that damned pizza truck. He was tired of fooling around. No more Mr. Nice Guy, he thought.
"I guess that was the last of 'em, Matt," Dusty said, easing the battered truck down to cruising speed.
He saw Matt was still watching the sky and the rear view mirror.
"Wasn't it?" he asked plaintively.
"That chopper's not called Switchblade for nothing," Matt said. "I'm not sure you've put it out of commission."
"Aw heck," the Texan swore. He eyed a black speck in the sky suspiciously and said, "Just what does the blasted thing switch into, anyhow?"
Matt opened his mouth to answer.
"Never mind!" Dusty shouted, spinning the wheel violently.
The black speck had swelled into rakish black jet with all too familiar red markings. It planted a bomb on the narrow road in front of them. Shaken by the explosion, Dusty slammed on the brakes. The pizza truck skidded to a stop, front wheels crunching the loose dirt the edge of a crater where the road had been. Before the dust settled, a second explosion demolished the road behind them, too.
Matt looked the situation over grimly.
They were out of running room and out of luck, this time. The truck could probably ease through either of the craters, but it couldn't do it fast. They would be sitting ducks for Switchblade, which was circling back to study its handiwork.
Matt looked down the side of the hill, steep enough to make a mountain goat dizzy, at the continuation of the road that led down toward safety. So near and yet so far, he thought in despair.
The inventor looked at Dusty whose brow was furrowed in thought. Matt knew he couldn't let this young man come to harm on his account.
"Well, cowboy, guess this is the end of the line," he said. "Maybe Mayhem will leave us alone if he gets what he wants." Matt started to unbuckle his seat belt.
Dusty's hand stopped him. Even as he gripped Matt's wrist, Dusty backed up the pizza truck, planting it against the steeply cut embankment so Switchblade could only come at them from the front.
"And it could be," Dusty argued, "that he's so mad right now he'll blow us away just for spite."
Matt had to admit the younger man had a valid point.
"Now you just trust me one more time," Dusty said. "And we'll either get away clean, or we'll take that dangerous doohickey of yours up to glory with us. And I tell you right now, I'm too young to die."
"I'm sorry I got you into this, Dusty," Matt said.
"Not me. It's the most fun I've had in a dog's age," Dusty said cheerfully.
Matt was still laughing as Dusty leaned casually out the window to watch the circling jet.
"This is your last chance," Mayhem growled over the loudspeaker. "Throw out the briefcase or I'll blast you into subatomic particles!"
Slowly, thoughtfully, Dusty put his thumb to his nose and wiggled his fingers at the jet.
Mayhem's cry of rage came to them clearly.
The jet swung out, then roared in, a missile dropping into the launching rack beneath it. The pizza truck leaped to meet it.
As the missile fired, the truck went over the edge of the road. Dusty pulled on the wheel and the truck lost its footing on the steep hill. It began to roll, over and over.
Mayhem stared as the truck disappeared, then the missile tore off the top of the hill, throwing chunks of sod and rock at the shuddering jet. Switchblade's jet engine sucked up a huge wad of brush — and choked on it.
The engine died. As Mayhem tried frantically to keep its nose up, Switchblade, for the second time that day, crashed on a hill in Griffith Park.
The pizza truck rolled to its feet as it reached the lower road, then swayed far to the left as if it wanted to continue on down. Dusty and Matt threw their weight to the right. The truck hesitated for a long moment, then dropped back to all fours.
Dusty revved the engine experimentally. The sturdy truck responded gamely. The Texan patted the dashboard affectionately and started down the road sedately, certain that this time he'd really lost his pursuers.
Dusty glanced at Matt. The inventor was frankly staring at the remarkable young driver.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" he said in a strangled voice.
Dusty nodded.
"It was too steep to drive," he explained as if everyone rolled their cars down steep hills.
"You're amazing, Dusty!" Matt said fervently. "You should be a stuntman!"
For a second something seemed to muddy the clear waters of Dusty's brown eyes; then his cheerful laugh filled the cab.
"I am, Matt. Shoot, you didn't think I could'a done all that without practice?"
Mayhem sat on the side of Switchblade, elbows on his knees, chin on his hands. Viper lay in the dust where he'd thrown it in fury as he watched the pizza truck drive away unmolested.
As Manta limped up the hill, followed by Piranha, he looked at his underlings without expression. No one said anything for a moment, as they looked at the splendid wreckage of their high tech vehicles.
"You want me to scout around and try to pick up their trail," Rax, who had the only undamaged vehicle, offered half-heartedly.
"Forget it," Mayhem sighed. "He'd just drive circles around you until you thought you were in a tornado. Let's go home," he said, sinking into Manta's back seat.
It had been a long day.
"Think we could pick up something to eat on the way?" Dagger asked plaintively.
"Anything but pizza," Vanessa said.
For once they were all in total agreement.
In the next installment:
Opportunity knocks for an
unemployed pizza truck driver
and Dusty wrestles a Gator.