Death Drive

Chapter 17

It was a bloodbath out in the streets, and Thomas could just barely keep his head above the crimson surface. One moment he was stuck in traffic, the same as usual, the next saw him driving for his life as the usually so dull Ampere vehicles had come for him like wolves that had cast away the clothes of sheep. His Chevelle was battered and dented in many places, but still nimble enough to stay ahead of the merciless pack.

"Just when I got this thing fixed," he brooded.

At first he had thought this was the attack he had been expecting, but seeing the broken bodies thrown about amongst the trash littering the streets he had concluded that whoever was behind this wasn't particularly choosy in his targets. He also found it hard to believe anyone with the resources to pull of something like this would particularly care about a former car salesman who could only influence things with his vote, which was something he had withheld for years now.

Too many cars rushed towards him from the street ahead, and he made a quick turn to the right at an intersection. He still had to avoid a few assailants, dodging them like a matador dodges an enraged bull, making life a matter of inches between horns and flesh.

When he had realized that the vehicles were going after anyone they spotted, his first thought had been to head for High Gear to pick up Naomi and the others. Ambushes, roadblocks and roving swarms of autos had necessitated a roundabout, evasive route, but finally he parked his car next to the tall wooden fence protecting the back end of the dealership.

He got out of the car, leaving the engine on idle, and went to peek around the corner. The sight made him grit his teeth. Bloodied vehicles were standing at spare intervals all over the street, seeming to have stopped at random spots. Some of them had people locked inside, most of whom having surrendered to their imprisonment, barely daring to move a muscle.

"Switched off or standing guard?" he pondered. The way the cars were arranged, in a pattern that allowed them to keep an eye on most of the street and the intersecting smaller alleys, made him think it was the latter. Going in via the main entrance was out of the question.

An ear-piercing sound of metal being torn and crushed made him instinctively pull back in the shadow. It was coming from behind the fence. The air reverberated with the din and thunder of heavy construction machinery so he didn't worry about anyone—or anythinghearing him as he climbed on the roof of his car and jumped, getting a hold of the fence's top. He pulled himself up to take a peek.

The dealership's extravagant collection of cars had been reduced into a smoking junkyard. Autonomous excavators and bulldozers roamed the lot, quickly crushing the merchandize to metal waste and stacking the smoldering husks in piles. The main building at other end of the property seemed untouched but Hugh's, Naomi's and Jason's cars all stood crushed in their named parking spots by the building.

He swung his leg on top of the fence and pulled himself up, side first, before quickly dropping down and taking cover behind some mangled cars. Doubled over, he made his way across the yard, moving from one cover to the next. The ground shook from the movements of the large vehicles, and he didn't want to find out what would happen if they spotted him.

A bulldozer cleaned up the area, pushing all the ravaged vehicles into a mountain of broken metal, glass and tires by the side of the plot, leaving a bare field of sand between him and the building. He crouched, pressing his back to the last piece of cover before the vacated stretch of land. It was less than a hundred feet long, but with the murderous earthmovers overlooking it, getting to the other side was harder than crossing the Sahara Desert.

He knew enough about the heavy-duty vehicles not to try and sneak behind them; their field of vision spanned 360 degrees around them, with cameras higher up scanning further away while cameras at the sides and bottom kept eye on its immediate vicinity. Not to mention the cameras in the buckets of the excavators as well as the blades of the bulldozers.