Reece leaped out of the car and pulled the release rope on the garage door, putting it in manual mode. Then, grabbing the two handholds at the bottom of the door, he lifted with everything he had. It stuck for a moment, then with a high-pitched grinding noise, the dried-up wheels and pulleys slowly began to turn. It took Reece a couple of good yanks to get it moving, but by the time he had it to his chest, it was rolling up without too much effort. It was long overdue for a tune-up and greasing. By the time the door was up, Reece had broken a sweat in the sweltering desert air. He wasted no time getting back in the vehicle and closing the door.
Looking over at Cyrene and Ciera, he asked, “You ready?”
Cyrene bit her lip and nodded. Ciera winked and gave Reece a thumbs-up as she chuckled to herself. Reece pressed the metallic pedal down and let the electricity flow. The vehicle hummed out of the garage, and Reece took an immediate right, heading east. While he sped out of the city and back towards their friends, he felt Cyrene’s soft touch on his forearm.
“Hey, we’ve got company,” whispered Cyrene, concern in her voice.
“She’s not kidding,” added Ciera, her voice having a dangerous edge to it.
Reece looked up from the road and cursed. They had more than just ‘company’. It looked like the whole Order had swooped down upon them. A fleet of heavy vehicles carrying Order soldiers drove side-by-side with mammoth zombie elephants and rhinos covered in a dozen clinging ghouls each, more party favors the Order had at its disposal. Above them flew a whole flock of undead gargoyles and other assorted creatures of the air, all horrid experiments of the Order.
Reece shook his head in frustration and hit the brakes while turning the wheel. The car skidded into a spin that brought it facing the opposite direction, to the west and away from their companions. It couldn’t be helped. He could only hope that they were okay.
Pressing the pedal to the floor, Reece sped up even faster, pushing the Drust-Jaeger to its maximum velocity, just over 300 kilometers per hour. The edge of town was in sight as the houses and shops flew by in a blur. He quickly left the incoming horde behind and breathed a sigh of relief while speeding out of town. They found themselves on a major thoroughfare that headed towards the West African coast and the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, that was still over 2500 kilometers away.
Reece checked the power gauge, noting they only had an 11% charge left. They’d have to find a charging station soon or risk becoming stranded. To conserve power, Reece slowed down to 200 kph. That reduced the wind resistance and drag on the Drust-Jaeger. They were safely out of reach of the army that trailed them. Things were finally starting to look up when Cyrene pointed out the windshield.
“What’s that?” she asked, furrowing her brow.
“That’s not good,” stated Ciera.
“Jupiter’s cock!” cursed Reece when he saw the billowing dust cloud on the horizon that Cyrene was indicating. “Here. Take the steering wheel.”
Cyrene tilted her head quizzically but did as he asked. Reece activated the cruise control and fell back into his mind, reaching out across the sands. Reece attempted to detect other intelligent beings in the area using his mind control ability. He hoped that it was just a storm. Unfortunately, Reece began picking up a multitude, more than he could easily count.
Deciding to do a more thorough scan, he opened the area up to all around him, and he could feel his heart sink. At least six groups were working to converge on his location. They were coming from every direction and spreading out as they grew closer. Reece and his companions would be trapped within a massive force within a couple of hours. It was unlike any that they had seen before. Reece snapped back into his body.
“We’re about to be the main course in a shit sandwich,” he grumbled, looking Cyrene in the eye.
“What do you mean?” she asked, cocking her head to the side and arching an eyebrow.
“That cloud of dust is being kicked up by a horde of the Order’s zombies and worse,” he answered. “On top of that, a dozen other hordes are moving in on us. They’re trying to capture the nightcore at all costs right now. I wanted to finish this war after we recovered the piece in Argentina. Now, I think it’s going to end here and soon. We’re just about out of moves, and available allies are getting increasingly thin.”
“Oh, this is just fucking wonderful,” lamented Ciera sarcastically.
“So, what’s the bad news?” added Cyrene playfully.
“Uh, we only have a 3% charge remaining,” answered Reece.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that,” a semi-robotic woman said.
Reece, Cyrene, and Ciera looked at each other in confusion. Reece laughed and rolled his eyes. “It’s the car,” he explained before speaking directly to the car’s computer. “Um, car… We need to find a charging station,”
“Okay, you want to find a charging station. Is that correct?” replied the car.
“Yes,” replied Reece.
“Okay, the nearest charging station is 400 kilometers away,” answered the car. “You do not have enough power to reach it. Do you want to search for other power sources?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess,” replied Reece, shrugging his shoulders at Cyrene, who was watching him with an amused expression.
“Okay, we’ve found one match,” answered the car. “The Hyper Rail is only ten kilometers away. Would you like me to set the Hyper Rail as a destination?”
“Yes,” said Reece, looking at Cyrene and Ciera. “We may yet be in luck.”
“How’s that?” asked the nymph while Ciera cocked her head questioningly to the side.
“If we can make it there before the armies,” explained Reece, “then the car should go into hover mode above the electromagnetic track of the Hyper Rail, and not only will it charge us back up, but it’ll increase our speed three-fold as long as we remain on the track.”
“Well, okay then,” laughed Cyrene in disbelief. “I think we should do that. I want to live.”
“I second that motion,” added Ciera. “Living sounds good.”
“The destination has been set,” the Drust-Jaeger informed them. “Would you like to go into ‘self-driving’ mode?”
“You have a self-driving mode?” asked Reece exasperatingly. “Why are you just bringing this up now?”
“Because you never asked,” deadpanned the car, not a hint of emotion in the robotic voice, though Reece was starting to wonder.
Reece’s eyes grew wide, and he prepared to punch the car’s dashboard. Cyrene put her hand gently on his arm, calming him.
“Fine,” huffed Reece between gritted teeth. “Please, go into self-driving mode.”
The steering wheel suddenly lurched out of Reece’s hands as the car started turning on its own. Reece quickly let go with his lands, letting the car do its thing. It turned off the road and traveled across the hardened sand of this area of the desert, heading roughly south.
Now that he didn’t need to worry about driving, Reece reached back out to get an idea of their chances of escape. What he found didn’t make him feel any better. Two hordes were converging near where they had to go to reach the Hyper Rail, and he wasn’t sure who would make it there first.
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“Car, can you go any faster?” asked Reece once he left his controlled trance.
“How fast would you like me to go?” asked the car.
“Uh, as fast as you safely can,” answered Reece.
“Okay,” replied the car as it immediately began speeding up.
Looking at Cyrene and Ciera, Reece began pulling several guns and the grenade launcher from his pockets. He followed them with a couple of dozen ammo clips and a couple of grenade cartons.
“We may have to shoot our way to the Hyper Rail and possibly even after we reach it,” said Reece, answering the women’s unasked question.
“I see you are displaying weapons,” the car chimed in, again interrupting their conversation. “Would you like me to shift into ‘battle’ mode?”
“Battle mode?” asked Reece suspiciously, narrowing his eyes as he shook his head in disbelief. “What kind of vehicle are you?”
“Why, thank you for asking,” answered the car. “I am a VX Drust-Jaeger. I come standard with; sixteen driving modes, forty-three communication technologies, and three energy modes. I’ve been equipped with several combat support capabilities, including enhanced shielding, tracking countermeasures, radar mimics, self-destruct, landmines, roof access with sunroof shield, and fore and rear automated under-car gun turrets.”
“Okay then,” chuckled Reece, shaking his head in disbelief. “Activate battle mode. Let’s see what you can do.”
“Very well, who will take gun control?” asked the Drust-Jaeger.
“You can have it, Cyrene,” said Ciera. “I need a bit more freedom of movement. I’ll take the sunroof position.”
“Front passenger will take control of gun turrets. Is that correct?” asked the car.
“Yes,” said Cyrene.
“Very well,” said the car. “Deploying battle mode.”
Reece could hear clicks, whirs, clunks, and zips from the car as it made the necessary changes. The sunroof opened, plates forming a shield in the front that resembled a shark fin to minimize wind resistance and a lower, flatter shield in the back. Ciera stood up and latched herself into a harness that dropped out of the car’s roof, putting on a pair of goggles to protect her face from the wind and the blowing sand.
A targeting system appeared from the dash in front of Cyrene, a hand control complete with targeting and trigger was part of it. She grabbed the stick, and her eyes grew wide.
“Boys and their toy,” she whispered, her face full of wonder.
Looking at the dash, Reece noticed a new options layout, including mines, flares, electrified exterior, and self-destruct. He doubted that any of them came standard. He had to chuckle and shake his head at the absurdity of it all.
“Who in Hades had lived in that hidden mansion,” he wondered. “Maybe a prince in hiding, a sheikh’s winter home, a powerful drug dealer, or … ”
Reece was pulled from his reverie when he finally saw it, or as it turned out… them. The Hyper Rail was straight ahead, but so were a pair of converging armies consisting of mechanized units and all manner of zombified creatures that had been warped by demented experimentation. The Order had beat them there. There was only one thing they could do now.
“Okay, Cyrene, I need you to plow the road!” yelled Reece, quoting one of his favorite movies, ‘Liberation Day’. He had to raise his voice over the loud wind from the open sunroof.
“What?” asked Cyrene, looking at Reece quizzically.
“Shoot everything directly in front of us,” said Reece, speaking over the wind.
“Car, I need control back,” stated Reece loud enough that he hoped the car would understand.
“You’d like me to return vehicle controls to you, is this correct?” asked the car in its feminine robotic drone.
“Uh, yeah!” yelled Reece, getting flustered as they rapidly approached the mass of mechanized and undead bodies ahead of them.
“Very well,” stated the car. “Returning vehicular controls to the authorized driver.”
Once he regained control, Cyrene started firing the forward gun turrets.
“Incoming,” yelled Ciera, though Reece could barely make out her words.
However, the sound of her gunfire was easier to hear. It also let him know that the flying creatures were also probably on them.
“Jupiter’s cock!” swore Reece. The feeling of being between a rock and a hard place would be much preferable to their current situation.
The only reasons they were still alive were they were staying ahead of the aerial monsters, and they were the fastest ground-based unit on the board. Throwing his doubts out the window, Reece concentrated on making it to the Hyper Rail without dying. Cyrene seemed to read his thoughts. She ignored the behemoths that he could easily outmaneuver and shot the smaller zombies and mechs instead, creating a small but clear path for the Drust-Jaeger to take. A behemoth, much larger than its kin, was dead ahead. Reece curved left around the behemoth as its massive foot crashed into the ground, missing the car by less than a meter. This lined him up with another behemoth while he drove through the remains of several zombies and an unfortunate mech that had gotten in their way. Instead of going around the new behemoth, Reece went right between its legs.
He would have loved to try and control some of these things, but he didn’t trust the car to be able to handle this kind of driving. He hoped he wasn’t making a fatal mistake as he passed under the massive misshapen junk of the behemoth above them. Ignoring the gristly sight, he turned again, seeking to avoid a pack of dread wolves that had moved in. Unfortunately, they were at the car’s side and were out of the kill zone of the gun turrets.
“Ciera, we’ve got bad doggies on our left,” yelled Reece as loud as he could.
Ciera’s slow and steady firing suddenly turned to rapid bursts, and Reece watched while wolf after wolf were dropped with deadly head shots. Reece just shook his head in gratitude that she was on his side. He needed to remember never to piss her off.
Cyrene fired several more bursts of large caliber bullets and cleared the last of the enemy from between them and the rapidly approaching Hyper Rail. These were new, looking like several zombies all stitched together into grotesque zombie golems. Each consisted of at least five or six full zombies. They had been squished and pressed into a shape suitable for a much larger creature. To say that they were revolting would be a gross understatement.
Reece started to smile as they came within range of the Hyper Rail. His smile was short-lived, however, as the Drust-Jaeger chose that moment to run out of energy. As the vehicle powered down, they began to slow considerably, and the monsters started to catch up. Even Cyrene’s guns were offline, as were all their countermeasures. Looking in the review mirror, Reece noticed one of the behemoths was very close and closing quickly, its misshapen legs pounding the sand behind them as it came on. Ciera’s gun would be useless against the enormous thing.
“Cyrene! Take the wheel,” ordered Reece as he fell back into his mind.
He hoped Cyrene heard him and would listen. Her gun turrets were offline anyway. The thought was fleeting as he found what he was searching for. He had come a long way since that day on the carrier when he had controlled that zombie whale. But now, he had a slightly more complex plan for the behemoth. Quickly, he entered the creature’s mind deeper than he ever had. Overcoming its weak will was like pushing through wet tissue paper.
He overshot his intentions and found that he was now looking down at the Drust-Jaeger while the vehicle slowed to a crawl, carried forward only by its momentum. He had taken control of the behemoth’s body. Instead of freaking out, he just went with it, a skill he had picked up over the last few bat-shit crazy years. He started stomping everything around him as he moved his enormous girth towards the solitary car a hundred meters from the Hyper Rail and nearly at a standstill. Reaching down, he grabbed the back of the car with one hand and pushed for all the behemoth was worth. The push sent the vehicle the last fifty meters over the finish line. He hoped that would be enough.
Returning his mind to his body, he noticed the car’s systems were all booting back up, the Hyper Rail’s energy refilling their vehicle’s empty batteries.
“Welcome,” said the car. “It’s a wonderful day, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” answered Reece truthfully.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that,” said the vehicle.
Reece ignored it and hit the pedal, re-energizing the Drust-Jaeger’s propulsion system. Looking at the instrument panel, he saw the energy levels were at one-quarter percent. It would have to be enough as the hordes of undead closed in on the stalled vehicle. Giving the car all the juice the energy pedal would allow, Reece held tight to the steering wheel, his knuckles white with tension. Just as the behemoth had recovered enough to continue the pursuit and was about to stomp a meaty foot down upon them, the car’s tires flipped up. They hovered for a split second before taking off so fast that it threw Cyrene and Reece back into their seats while poor Ciera let out a blood-curdling shriek as the harness worked overtime to keep her stationary within her gunner’s position.
“Look alive,” yelled Reece once he saw several misshapen figures standing directly on the Hyper Rail, blocking their path.
“Plow the road,” yelled Cyrene, learning quickly as she unloaded a hailstorm of bullets into the offending creatures, blasting them clear of their path.
It took them less than a minute to massacre the zombie horde. With the creatures blown clear, they zoomed down the rail. Reece breathed a sigh of relief. Despite their speed, the car was already at two percent power and rising. Ciera unhooked herself and returned to the vehicle. Once inside, she pressed the manual release for the sunroof, allowing it to close normally. Risking a moment to look back, Reece let out an unconscious chuckle. Ciera gave him a death glare as she removed her goggles, her face was covered in dust, and her hair stood out all over the place from the extreme winds it was subjected to.
“You’re welcome for saving you asses,” she huffed. “It was no picnic out there, I promise.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” replied Reece mirthfully. “But seriously, I appreciate you. I’m just so happy to still be alive. I was sure we were goners back there.”
“I’m starting to wish I had remained in the antechamber,” said Cyrene, beaming despite her comment.
“Oh, now what would be the fun in that?” asked Reece sarcastically, giving the nymph a gentle nudge with his elbow.
She just smiled back at him and placed her hand on his knee. The trio steeled in, speeding along the Hyper Rail on their way to the western coast of Africa. That they had survived was almost beyond belief. Reece hoped his friends had received their own miracle.