“Reckon so,” said Shiara, watching the beast diminish in the windshield. It lumbered over to the wreck of the Scout and began nudging it with its armored head, curious about this strange challenger in its territory.
They reversed up the trail at speed, and when they reached the clearing where the trail forked, Cassica braked and switched gears to go forward again. The other route was tight and forbidding, but it was better than trying to get past that monster.
It was a few seconds before Shiara realized they weren’t moving. She looked at Cassica, puzzled.
“We going?”
Cassica shushed her. She was still looking out the back window. Shafts of sunlight stretched across the hazy gloom in taut, blinding threads. Everything was still, and there was silence but for the Interceptor’s idling engine.
Shiara felt a low, heavy thump, passing through her feet into the pit of her stomach. Then another, and another after. This was what had perturbed Cassica. The sound came faster and faster. Behind them, up the trail, the trees had begun to thrash as if tormented by a sudden wind.
The blood left her face as she put the evidence of her senses together. “Move it!” she cried.
Cassica hauled the wheel and pressed down on the accelerator as a monster burst out into the clearing. Shiara caught a nightmare glimpse of something like a colossal alligator, with a mouth big enough to swallow her whole, and then they plunged off down the trail and the foliage closed in behind them.
Branches whipped at the windows, assaulting them on all sides. Cassica worked the gears, one hand on the wheel, fighting the Interceptor’s urge to slip. The way between the trees was so narrow that Shiara kept losing sight of it, but Cassica’s reactions were fast enough to keep up. Though it felt like they were traveling at a speed close to insanity, Shiara trusted her, as she always had.
“Is it still back there?” Cassica asked, her eyes never leaving the trail.
“I can’t see it,” said Shiara. She wasn’t sure if it had followed them or not. Hard to tell when the engine was roaring in her ears. Still, the Interceptor was surely too fast to catch on foot, whatever its size.
The trail bent left, and Cassica had to brake for the corner. Shiara checked her compass as the turn got longer and longer.
“We’re doubling back on ourselves,” she said.
But there was only one way to go, even if it led them in the wrong direction. Shiara’s screen had found a signal again and was showing hovercam footage of Kasey Ralls’s Scout. The beast that had rammed it was now stamping on it, rising up on its hind legs to piledrive the wreck with its forefeet. The screen switched to show the Interceptor, filmed by another hovercam that was tailing them. Watching herself live on screen was disconcerting, so Shiara looked away.
“There’s another trail!” Cassica called, but before Shiara could find it, the trees ahead of them lashed into a frenzy and that enormous mutant alligator poured itself out into their path in a slithering torrent of muscle and scaled hide. It was a monster, all gaping jaws and dead-eyed reptilian purpose, encrusted in armor like the barnacled hulls of the rotting ships in Coppermouth harbor. It spoke to some deep primal fear in her, the terror of being eaten alive by wild beasts, that echoed out of the ages of history and made her weak at the sight.
Cassica, as ever, reacted first. Without missing a beat, she swerved the Interceptor down the side route she’d spotted, and they were battered again by branches. The windshield cracked and the car jolted and rocked as they bumped wildly along.
Suddenly they broke free of the confining trees and emerged into a wide clearing partially submerged in brackish water. Grassy hillocks ran between weed-choked pools. Trees rose here and there, dominating their own little islands, twisted and magnificent in isolation.
Cassica hit the brakes. The trail ended here; beyond was a jumble of routes over strips of land that rose out of the water, some by only a few inches. Shiara saw her friend scanning the route, calculating. It was soft and soggy ground, uneven enough to give a four-wheel drive trouble. The Interceptor wasn’t made for such difficult terrain; it would likely flounder and stick. Caught between the monster behind and the swamp ahead, Shiara looked to Cassica for a decision, since she had no answers of her own.
“Hell with it,” said Cassica, crunching gears. “We’re going for it.”
But the car, when it moved, went backward instead of forward.
“We’re going for what?” Shiara cried as they raced up the side trail in reverse.
They smashed through a mesh of branches, back out onto the trail. The rear window filled with a wall of rippling green hide. Shiara screamed; Cassica slammed on the brakes. Shiara couldn’t make out what part of the creature she was looking at; it seemed to be all around them.
The alligator let out a clattering bellow, and its tail came rushing at their flank like an oncoming truck. Shiara braced instinctively before they were smashed sideways, glass exploding inward and scattering across her lap.
The impact knocked all reason out of her for a few seconds. She was aware of a burning sense of danger, but she couldn’t make her body move, and she just stared at the dash, stunned. When she raised her head, it was as if in a dream, and everything around her seemed dull and blurred. She was aware of a rapid coughing noise and a vibration beneath her seat, but she couldn’t make herself understand what it was.
Something huge moved at the periphery of her vision, as if the bayou itself was rising up. It was the teeth that focused her. The massive levered maw, looming toward them.
She screamed again, this time from the well of her guts, a place of such black terror that she thought she might lose her mind. Again, the rapid coughing, the vibration. Cassica, frantic, turning the key in the ignition, leaning into it. The Interceptor trying to start.
“Go! Go!” Shiara was too scared to be ashamed of how high and raw her voice was.
Cassica’s teeth gritted. The alligator bellowed a challenge, lumbered toward them in a waddling charge.
The engine caught and roared in response. Cassica jammed the Interceptor into gear and floored the accelerator. They tore away as the alligator’s immense jaws snapped closed, missing their rear end by inches.
They careered back up the trail toward the fork with the alligator thundering behind them, smashing trees aside in its rage. Both routes onward were blocked by monsters now. Cassica would have to backtrack toward the start. It would likely lose them the race, but Shiara didn’t care about that now. Forget winning; forget what Harlan had gotten himself into. They’d fulfilled Scadler’s condition by starting the race. Just to survive would be enough.
They reached the fork. Cassica pulled on the handbrake, skidded the car in a tight right turn. Then she drove; not back toward the start as Shiara had imagined, but down the fork where the Scout had been wrecked. Where the other monster waited.
“What are you doing?” Shiara cried. But Cassica had that look on her face, that eerie determined calm, and she would neither reply nor be turned from her course. The trail widened out. On Shiara’s screen, the footage was now cutting between the view from their helmet cams and the hovercam following them. Their plight was the focus of millions.
The alligator burst out onto the trail ahead of them in a cloud of leaves, having cut through the trees to reach them. Cassica swerved around it and its teeth met in a bony clack as it snapped at the air. Now they could see the Scout, crushed halfway to scrap by the beast that had rammed it. It stopped pounding and looked up as the Interceptor approached, drawn by the sound of its engine.
Cassica hit the brakes and came to a halt. The beast stepped back from the wreck, gathered itself, lowered its armored head to meet the challenge. Cassica waited, her eyes fixed on the beast’s.
“Tell me you ain’t gonna play chicken with that thing,” Shiara said quietly.
Behind them, the alligator thumped into view. It slowed as it saw the beast, opened its jaws, let out a challenge. The beast’s attention switched to the alligator, and
it roared back.
Cassica put her foot down. The beast lowered its head and charged. The earth shook as it pounded toward them. Then, smooth as silk, Cassica swung to the right and skidded round the creature, slipping between the monster and the trees. It passed by with a sound like the end of the world, close enough to take off the paint from their fender, and a moment later they were back on the track, impossibly alive. Shiara twisted in her seat to look behind, where the two massive creatures crashed together in a snarling, shrieking tangle.
The trees closed in, the path bent, and they were gone from sight.
Shiara slumped back in her seat. Her screen was showing footage of the titanic battle going on in their wake. Cassica was driving as if nothing had happened.
“How’d you know?” she said when she could talk again.
“How’d I know what?”
“That it’d ignore us. That it’d fight the alligator instead.”
Cassica snorted, as if she thought Shiara naive for even asking. “You see the size of those two? Think there’s anything bigger than them in the bayou? They’re the top dogs here.” She flexed her fingers on the wheel. “The big guys don’t need to pay mind to the little people. But there’s only room for one at the top.”
They were crossing a rusty iron bridge over a slow, murky river when the engine began to struggle. Shiara frowned, reached to adjust the fuel feed, and saw that the screen showing the broadcast had gone blank. Cassica pumped the accelerator, the revs picked up again, and the screen blinked back to life.
It was only a temporary reprieve. Once they were off the bridge and back among the crooked trees, the engine started sputtering again, and it was clear something was wrong.
“Can’t you do something about that?” Cassica said.
“Doin’ what I can,” said Shiara, working at the dash. “You might recall we got whacked by a damn great alligator. Reckon that might have somethin’ to do with it.”
Cassica tutted, though she wasn’t sure if she was irritated at the Interceptor for being too fragile or Shiara for being unable to sort it out. Maybe it was everything: Harlan, Scadler, Shiara, the lot. She was driving the wrong car for the course, and they had few parts for repair even if they made it to the next stage. A breakdown now could mean the end of the Widowmaker for them.
All she wanted to do was win. Why was everyone making it so difficult?
They sped down trails that tunneled through the steamy twilight. Dangling ropes of moss stirred as they passed. The Interceptor’s power faded every now and then, and the accelerator stopped working, but it always came back after a few seconds. Cassica hoped it would somehow fix itself, but it soon became clear it was getting worse.
“Find us a place to pull in,” Shiara said.
“What? No! We gotta keep racing!”
“Engine’s gonna die any minute anyway. That’s if you don’t crash us first ’cause the steering goes, or somesuch.”
“Look, I can ride the power loss. It might hold out till the end.”
“We ain’t even halfway through yet! This car ain’t fueled on wishful thinkin’. Pull in!”
Cassica bit her lip in frustration. The broadcast put them in third place. Whether by luck or Shiara’s instinct, they’d picked their way into the heart of the bayou without too many wrong turns.
Now this. So damn unfair.
“Look! Over there! Pull in there!”
Cassica saw a building, slumped and hulking, through the trees to their left. Ahead was a turnoff. She was tempted to defy Shiara just for the hell of it, to keep driving and hope the engine held out; but a temptation was all it was, and she turned off the trail as she was told.
The Interceptor drew to a halt in front of the building, crushing a path through waist-high weeds as it went. Cassica killed the engine, and it seemed like a defeat. For a few moments, they did nothing but sit in their seats, taking stock.
The building was mostly standing, but vines had taken hold of every part of it and the upper floor had largely collapsed. Once it had stood square and grand, surrounded by a pillared porch and a terrace above. Now its tall, rectangular windows were empty frames busy with leaves and thorns.
Shiara popped her safety harness, got out, slammed the door behind her. The unexpected force of it made Cassica jump. By the time she got out, Shiara was already lifting the hood, interested only in the Interceptor.
They’d stopped in the remains of a parking lot. The concrete underfoot was tipped and cracked, shattered by the slow strength of plants. The remains of a log barrier were still visible at the boundary, black and decayed, bored hollow by woodworm.
“You need a hand?” she asked Shiara.
“Just keep a lookout for a minute,” Shiara replied, in that impatient way she’d taken on of late.
Cassica scanned the trees warily. The memory of the monsters was still fresh in her mind. What other wildlife might be out there? And she hadn’t forgotten the warnings about the swamp folk, maddened and made strange by mutagens in the water.
The hovercam floated in the air, a whirring light in the murk, watching her with its cold, blind lens. With the Interceptor’s engine silent, she realized for the first time how noisy the bayou was, how it ticked and croaked and rang with crawling life. Outside the car, she felt naked and vulnerable.
She clutched herself, tapped her feet, impatient and uneasy. Now that her mind wasn’t occupied with driving, it roamed to places she didn’t want it to. To comfort herself, she thought of Kyren. That meeting at the party and what they’d done after. A flush crept up her neck and she felt herself grow warm at the thought.
It was his eyes she remembered best, the way he looked at her, how totally there he was. Like nothing and no one else existed but her. Afterward he’d been cooler, his gaze roving, his speech distracted. He hadn’t lingered long, but she didn’t mind that. The Widowmaker obsessed them both, and now wasn’t the time for emotional tangles. It wasn’t a relationship she was after: she had a race to win. But still, she wished she were there right now.
“Any joy?” she asked Shiara.
“I’d get there a lot faster if you’d stop distractin’ me,” Shiara replied irritably, still buried in the engine.
Cassica took the hint and shut up, but her ego had been bruised, and her mind filled with cruel and unfair things to say to Shiara in response. She tried to keep her mouth shut, but the pressure soon became too much, and she had to let it out somehow.
“Hoy,” she said. “We gotta talk.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, we do!” Cassica snapped, slamming her hand down on the side of the car.
Shiara came up from the engine, wiping her hands on a rag, and stared at her levelly. “Go on, then.”
Cassica hesitated, searching for the words. Now it came to it, she didn’t know where to start. “This!” she said, waving a hand at her. “This frickin’ thing you do! The silent treatment! Pretending nothing’s wrong when it’s plain as a dog’s ass something’s up! What, you want me to guess what it is? Is it ’cause I knocked that girl off the track? Fine, I’m sorry, but it’s done! Is it ’cause you think I’m getting all the attention? That’s not my fault: you’re never there! Always wandering off or storming away or some damn thing! Is it Kyren? Are you jealous?”
“Huh. Yeah. Jealous,” Shiara grunted sarcastically.
“So tell me what it is, then! Stop acting like a sulky frickin’ child and speak up if you got a problem!”
Shiara sighed, as if an insult like that was just what she expected from Cassica. “Forget it,” she said, turning back to the engine.
“Don’t ignore me, damn it!” Cassica shouted and pushed her, harder than she’d meant to. Shiara staggered sideways, tripped on a lip of broken concrete, and fell among the weeds.
Cassica felt dizzy, light-headed with adrenaline. She’d gone too far; she hadn’t gone far enough. Shiara picked herself up again. Cassica could see she was struggling to keep her cool.
Sto
p being calm! she wanted to shout. Let loose on me!
Shiara dusted down her leathers, not meeting Cassica’s gaze. Her face was red with anger. “I’ll tell you the problem,” she said, keeping her voice carefully even. “Problem is, you’ve changed. That girl with the fine hair and the makeup and the beautiful dresses, that girl who smiles all the time for the cameras, says the right thing, acts all cute and pretty when the lights are on her: that ain’t the girl I knew in Coppermouth. Ever since we came to Anchor City, since that first party we went to … I mean, you just took to it like a fish to water, didn’t you? All those zines you read, the shows you watched, you were studyin’ up, though you didn’t know it. And now you’re here, and you got all the poses and all the lines down pat. But it ain’t real. It ain’t you. It’s fake.”
Cassica had expected several possible accusations and had readied her arguments against each of them. But she hadn’t expected this. Not real? She wasn’t real now? What a bizarre and ridiculous thing to say. There was only one explanation for it, and it was the one Cassica had suspected all along.
“You are jealous,” she said. “You’re mad ’cause I can handle the limelight and you’re too scared.”
But Shiara just shook her head in exasperation. “No, no, I knew you’d say that.” She put her hand to her face, rubbed her temple with her fingertips, closed her eyes as if fighting off a headache. “Can you just imagine, for one moment, that the world don’t revolve around you, that everybody don’t want what you want and think how you think? Can you do that?” She opened her eyes and looked forlorn. “I ain’t jealous of you, Cassica. I’m afraid of losin’ my best friend.”
Cassica had been about to launch her next assault, to hurt Shiara the way she’d been hurt herself. When she argued, she argued to win, to beat her opponent rather than making terms. But this last comment took the wind out of her sails.
“You’re not losing me,” she said, but it sounded limp, without conviction. “And if you are it’s ’cause you won’t talk to me about it.”
“I’m talking now, ain’t I? Look, it’s just …” Shiara struggled visibly. “It used to be about us,” she blurted at last. “We were doin’ somethin’. Buildin’ a car, racin’ it together. It was the doin’ of it that counted, not the end. Not whether we won or not. Do you get that? It was you and me.”