The wide, large rear tires of the fastback car clung to the road like a child holding onto a piece of candy. It was all-wheel drive and extremely fast. As soon as he punched the pedal, his head slammed against the headrest and the car pressed down on the shocks.
The tiny backseat had been folded down and combined with the trunk. The space had been filled with all the weapons and equipment they had grabbed from the raiders.
In the distance behind him, he could see Black Betty struggling to keep up. The van’s silhouette was growing smaller by the second. Finally, he took his foot off the pedal, and let the car naturally coast to a stop.
In front of him, there was a deep gulch where the road had been entirely washed away at some point in the past.
For people with more capable vehicles, they could drive directly down and then right up the other side of the slope. Others would need to travel farther down the center of the gulch, before reaching the point where the walls weren’t quite so tall.
The car he was driving would be able to handle the sloped walls without a problem. Normally, Black Betty would have been able to as well. However, in its current weighted-down state, the odds weren’t exactly in its favor.
Trace pulled out the system-breaching module and popped it into his neck while he waited for Monroe to catch up. Even if he couldn’t pull the same trick as before, it was still worth taking a look at what the options were. He was curious as to what the raiders might have modified or added to it in the name of improvements.
The menu that the module revealed to him was that of a completely custom and unlocked vehicle’s control module. It looked like the raiders didn’t even bother breaching the original control modules -or at least they hadn’t on this vehicle- they simply replaced them with their own units.
He took a second to put his own information in the displayed owner setting before closing the menu. There was so much more that he wanted to explore in it, but he needed to discuss something with Monroe first.
The van pulled up beside him a few moments later, and Trace motioned for his partner to get out and join him.
“What’s up? Are you sick of driving fast already?”
Trace laughed at the bad joke and shook his head. “No, I actually found something interesting just now, though. It might be worth it for us to go back to where we pushed the cars off the road.” He quickly told the man about the custom control chip inside the car. “It might be because this one is better and is capable of handling more mods that they did it. However, if the other cars also have similar custom chips on them.”
“What are the odds of a chip like this working on the truck we’re going to get?” Monroe asked, after giving the matter some thought.
“There’s no way to say for sure, since I don’t have the particulars on the truck or the chip. These chips might not work with big vehicles, or they might need to be programmed in a special way. Honestly, there are a dozen reasons I can think of right off the top of my head, on why they might not work. If they do though… it’ll unlock far more functionality than you would have had before. I can still do it the original way, but this is something extra we can do once we get back home, if nothing else.”
“Alright, let’s head back and see if the others are set up like this one. I take it you need my help for something in particular?”
He nodded. “You did a lot of work on Black Betty. I sort of assumed you would know where to find the control module. I’ve never worked on a vehicle before. Electronics sure, but nothing this big or complex.”
***
In the end, they only found one custom control module, which they retrieved from the van. They did discover that all the modules did at least look the same and used the same pin layout. Anything past that would be related to programming and perhaps the individual abilities of the chip.
A while later, they were back at the gulch.
The car powered up the slope on the other side without a problem. Meanwhile, Black Betty’s turn started out well until the tires began to spin in the loose dirt and sand. Within moments, the heavy van was stuck.
That eventuality was part of the reason Trace had gone up first. A chain was attached to the pull-loop on the front bumper of the van and then tentatively wrapped around several points of the car’s undercarriage. If they weren’t careful, it would be easy for them to tear the underside of the car completely off.
Trace gradually increased the pressure on the chain and then, working together, they pulled Black Betty free. If the car hadn’t worked, then they would have needed to dig the tires free, and back the van back down into the gulch. From there, Monroe could have either tried again, or they could have headed for the normal exit site.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
In the end, they were able to pull the van free and the rest of the way up the slope without damaging the car. The other area where the road was gone though, they would most definitely need to go around it. They had no other options, and even if they did, they still wouldn’t take them. That was part of the route they would be returning on in the semi. Scouting out its overall condition would be valuable information for later.
The sun was high in the sky by that point and starting to dip toward the horizon. The trip to Fort Collins, which both of them had expected to take the bulk of the day, was already taking longer than expected. The meetup with raiders had been somewhat expected, but wasting time to backtrack and then dig around in their vehicles was not. They also hadn’t thought the van would get stuck, or about how slowly they would need to go during the off-road portions. Driving through the ruins was a breeze, as no one bothered them.
For such a relatively short distance between cities, the trip really was an annoying one to make. At least they only ran into raiders the one time.
It was nearing eight o’clock in the evening when the walls of the new city finally came into view.
Trace flicked on the radio, wondering what sort of music the people one city over liked to listen to. Screams of rage, backed by thundering drums, pooled through an upgraded sound system, and set his heart racing. In a panic, he turned down the volume and then changed the station, searching for something that wouldn’t give him a heart attack.
Denver only had three radio stations. An oldies station, an alternative/punk station, and then the station that played everything new. The latter always seemed to consist of a lot of industrial noises and throat singing. Trace was fine with the throat singing, but mixed with industrial noise was just a no-go for him.
Fort Collins only seemed to have two radio stations. One was currently playing the angry death drum music. The second station had some random fellow crooning about how his tractor ran off with his wife, while his dog came down with a bad case of malware.
It was odd… but infinitely better than the other station.
Without an active edger mission bringing them out this way, they were stopped at the wall and checked over by the guards. They found the contents of the Black Betty suspicious at first until Monroe told them they were heading out to the badlands on a private gig.
With a bit more respect in their eyes, the guards quickly finished up their checks and even gave them directions to a place they could stay for the night.
They had more or less everything they needed ready to go, except for one item that they hadn’t been able to source in Denver. A battery. Once they reached the badlands, Black Betty’s ability to receive wireless energy would more or less cut out entirely.
The constant sandstorms had destroyed the power network that had been laid in much of Wyoming. There were a few protected areas where it was still intact, however, the power stations in those places were barely functional.
Vehicles that entered the badlands needed their own power source. Ideally, a miniature-reactor of some sort. As one would expect, with something that advanced, they were not cheap. Entire Gypsie clans saved up for years simply to afford a single unit and then would power their entire fleet off the one with the help of batteries.
In their case, since they were only going a few miles into the badlands, batteries as an alternative power source could work.
Assuming they could find a decent price for a battery setup, then their departure time would depend on how long it took to get it installed.
While Trace was taking care of selling all the equipment and weapons they had taken from the raiders, Monroe looked into the battery situation. They had gotten a few credits from the crypto-vaults of the dead men, so they weren’t exactly destitute. Still, they weren’t exactly as flush with credits as they would have liked to be either.
Trace pulled out Monroe’s armored undershirt and placed it on the counter of the gun store, along with everything else. “How much will you give me for all this, minus what it would cost to fix this piece of armor?”
The muscled woman behind the counter held the shirt up and felt at its tight weave and the considerable damage it had suffered. “This is a custom job. Probably rated for somewhere between medium and heavy ammo. My people can do a patch job to make it useable,” She said after a minute. “The quality won’t be anywhere near as good as this. It would stop light weapons fire though, with a possibility for medium. Depends on what they have in stock.”
He sent a message to Monroe, asking for his opinion, before nodding when the large man agreed that it was a necessary expense.
“How long will it take?” Trace asked as the woman sent the credits over to him for everything.
“We can have it done by tomorrow morning if you are willing to wait.”
He agreed and headed directly to the motel to wait for Monroe. When he had messaged him earlier, the man had still been waiting to talk to someone at the store.
It was nearly eleven o’clock at night when a dirty Monroe clomped into the motel room with a yawn.
“You get everything set up?”
He nodded, “Yeah, they’re going to let us rent the battery on the condition that I do some welding work for them when I return. I already did some for them just now, as a sort of down payment and to show off my skills.”
“Did you bring enough stuff for that? I thought all of that was in case something was seriously broken on the truck?” Trace asked him, impressed at how useful the man’s job really was. It was a practical skill that always seemed to be in demand.
“It’ll be fine,” The giant of a man rumbled as he headed for the sani-spray shower to get cleaned up. “They promised to top up all my supplies in the morning as a favor. Parts of their building are in nearly as bad a condition as your warehouse was. They’ll spend the next couple of days getting the supply of metal and some spare welding rods together. It’ll be all ready for us when we return.”
“How come they never had someone local do it?” Trace shouted as the sani-spray started up, the sanitation dispenser forcefully ejecting its mist with an annoying hiss. The motel likely hadn’t worked on the unit in years.
There was a loud thump, and the noise went away as Monroe smacked the nozzle. “It’s a controlled market here. There aren’t any free welders anymore, apparently. What’s beginning to happen in Denver already did here. A couple of corporations took over the market and muscled everyone out. As soon as I’m done, we’ll have to leave quick like to avoid getting in trouble.”