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Steve and Veera meet someone new, C is for Kill, Kill, Kill!

Tonic Engine Racer Renegade Group: Members Posts: 159 Joined: Feb 26, 2009 Steve and Veera Meet a New Friend Steve pressed the phone against one ear and his palm against the other, hunching his shoulders against the wind. "Yeah, Ma, I got the job!" The wind skirled, and chalky sand sleeted against the payphone enclosure. He squeezed more tightly against the yellowed plexiglass window and strained to listen. Telephone service was expensive and unreliable, but nothing beat voice comm for special occasions. "The job," he repeated. "I got the job." The voice on the other end was unintelligible, but it sounded excited. "Three hundred a month! Can you believe it?" The reply was a couple of interrogative syllables. "I SAID THREE HUNDRED A MONTH!" More interrogatives. "Hey dude," said a nearby eavesdropper. "Need something?" She had a satchel whose contents she now revealed: a variety of drugs. Steve grinned. "I SAID TWO HUNDRED A MONTH!" * * * “This is your place?” Veera asked, and Steve guessed he couldn’t blame her. The building looked abandoned, half-covered with drifts of sand and only clean fingerprints on the doorknob betrayed its occupancy. Even the windows were silted over. The noise of the metal door was large and immediate in the enclosed space. Shadows stretched out to a number of cloth-covered shapes and one uncovered hotrod with an unlikely iridium paintjob. There was a small office in front with a desk, bedroll and coffee machine, and it was there that Steve and Veera had their fun. Later, veins singing with novocaine, they wandered the building. “What is all this?” she asked. “Cars for my gang.” He showed her the emblem on his sleeve: a boogeyman in black and white, drawn by a child. “We’re called Tonic’s Engine.” She looked alarmed at that. “The guys who kill their new recruits?” “They only kill them if they lie on their application. Or fail the hazing.” “Hazing?” “They make you walk from Gateway to Somerset. Or drive a phoenix with a flamethrower.” “Have you been hazed?” she asked. “Not yet,” he said. “Just got hired. I’m administrative; I check the market, take care of paperwork and fees for folks coming through, that kinda stuff.” “Sounds boring.” “I’m practicing for the day I get to fight alongside them.” “Is that what they told you?” He could hear the skepticism in her voice. “Hey, it’ll happen. They’re moving a hunter squad here in a couple weeks. I’ll get my chance then.” The novocaine put some distance between him and the anxiety, made it somebody else’s problem. “Will you get to drive one of these?” she wondered, trailing a finger along the fender of a cloth-draped Corghette. “Maybe,” he lied. “Ooh, or that one?” she indicated an SUV nearby whose gun barrels tented the cloth over it. “Apache duty isn’t too bad,” he said. “What about the hotrod?” “They don’t usually put guns in those.” She was enjoying the game, imagining him in different rides, doing battle. Her eyes lit on the big one, pupils dilating. She walked to it, ran her hand along its flank. It dwarfed every other ride in the building. “What... is this?” “Hey, they said don’t touch that...” but it was too late. She had tugged the cover, and the old fabric started coming apart under its own weight. It had been stitched together from smaller covers, all of which came apart and collapsed to the floor. They both stared at the machine, gaping. It was easily thirty feet from nose to tail, at least eight feet tall, and built like an armored shoebox. A trash truck. Blue furry nose art proclaimed its name: Cookie Monster. Steve stood there in a drug-induced haze, awed by this engine of destruction. The things he could do in a trash truck... She interrupted his reverie. “Why is the exhaust in the front?” She indicated what she thought were two large pipes coming out of the front, big enough to put her fist into without touching the sides. He looked. Looked again. Shivers crawled up his back and into his scalp. “Those are tank guns,” he said. “And they just left it here? Why?” “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just hope I’m there to see it, when it finally rolls out.” ......................... vet wv Posted Nov 30, 2012, 7:15 pm

Tonic Engine Racer Renegade Group: Members Posts: 159 Joined: Feb 26, 2009 Today was a boxvan named Mandolin. Yesterday it had been a boxvan named Balalaika, and the day before that it had been Naugahyde the ugly brown Stormer. It had been Veera’s idea to christen every car in the garage. “They ordered you, did they not, to treat them as they were your own?” she had said, and Steve put up only token resistance to the idea. Now, lying tangled in blankets with her, he watched a constellation of dust motes do their slow and stately dance through the still air. She shifted, murmuring in her sleep, and he felt a strange contentment wash over him. Engine noise made him come to with a start--he must’ve dozed--there were cars outside! He roused Veera, told her to get dressed, and slid off the boxvan to the ground. First thing: he picked up his shotgun. Second: he put on his pants. He was reaching for the door when he heard a key rattle in the lock. He unlocked it, pointed his shotgun in the general direction of the door but not right at it, and said, “It’s open!” There was a kick, the door flew open, and in sauntered Shauna “Charger” Metts. She was five feet tall, but it seemed like eight. She was beautiful like a panther, and just as deadly. More deadly, in fact, because panthers only killed for need. She planted her feet, put hands on hips, and regarded him for a moment. A faint smile played around her lips. She was checking him out! He got that sometimes--he was a big guy, and here he was in just a pair of pants. “You Benitez?” she finally asked. “Steve,” he said, sticking out a hand to shake. “You must be Charger.” She slapped his palm, twirling her hand in the air in the same motion. “Everything shipshape?” “Girlfriend’s here,” he admitted. He he really just used the term ‘girlfriend?’ She raised an eyebrow and walked a circle around him, stopping just behind his left shoulder. “She’s got ten seconds.” “Veera!” he said, marveling at how his voice didn’t break when Shauna slapped him on the butt. Veera made a sleepy questioning sound in response. “My gang’s here, so you gotta vamoose.” She slid off the truck dressed and ready. Steve watched as the two women exchanged unfathomable reams of girl-code just by exchanging a few looks. They didn’t even introduce themselves. With a wink for him, Veera was gone. He popped the garage doors and in they came: a boxvan, an apache, a voyager, and two buzzers. They disembarked--there were at least five people in the boxvan--and did the usual maintenance chores. Steve brewed some coffee and broke out a bottle to spike it with. Shauna pulled the dust cover off a sleeping phoenix to reveal a stunning flame job. “This one,” she told the guy next to her. “Weapons,” he said to Steve, all business. “What’re you rated?” “Small guns, class 8” he replied. He was qualified for class 9 but hadn’t yet taken the test. “Rocket launcher, gatling.” said the guy, pointing to the front weapon mounts. “Make it happen.” As Steve hustled to do so he asked, “What’s it for?” “For harassment and pursuit.” The guy smiled. “Gatling at long range, rockets up close. Single seater.” “Then why two guns?” “So you don’t have to reload.” “Me?” * * * “This is it, folks. Battle stations. We’ll make our stand at the truckstop.” Steve punched it, and the phoenix surged ahead. Trailing him was the rest of Task Force “Shake Your Babymaker.” First there were the two buzzers, Violca and Ludmilla. Whoever had given Engine those monsters had had a thing for fat Russian women. With them was Pelvis the apache, and Naugahyde, an unarmed stormer whose purpose was solely to carry the scout. There was a rabble of pursuing cars behind them. One of them must have gotten too close, because Steve heard the whump of car cannons and a crash that he later found out was the car falling into a ravine. They pulled right up to the walls of Badlands Truckstop and prepared to slay their pursuit. True to their word, they had had him fit a rocket launcher and gatling gun to the single-seater phoenix he drove. Trouble was, it was named “Napalm Express” so they decided it made more sense to swap out the rocket launcher for a flamethrower. Flamethrower fuel was notoriously unstable, and the tank was sitting in the passenger seat. Steve was driving an incendiary bomb with light armor. His only hope was to get rid of the fuel, and to do that he’d have to put it on the other guy. Sorry, fella, he mentally sent to whomever would be on the receiving end. Better you than me. The buzzers and apache pulled up as the stormer blasted past to take cover in the Badlands Truckstop. Being tailgunners, the big vehicles just stopped in a line. Steve swung around just in time to line his gatling up with the first pursuer, a phoenix. The whole line opened up on it until it belched black smoke and rolled behind a hill. The next was a pickup, and it got the same treatment. They continued in that vein for a while, Steve hitting reliably with the gatling but unsure of its effect amid the fusillades they were sending downrange. They were taking out car after car, but the bandits kept coming, and they were crowding in closer, fast. Already a Gladiator had love-tapped Violca’s rear bumper with what was left of its ramplate before being lit up from within by a car cannon round. Steve had been given specific orders: his job was to end the fight, quickly. Sweep up the stragglers as soon as possible, terrorize the enemy with the flamethrower. He supposed he was ready but couldn’t resist peeing a little when the order came over the radio: “Benitez, you’re up.” He floored it and spun left as he triggered the flamethrower. An oncoming masher burned madly and Steve couldn’t hear himself yell as he drove straight for it. They connected for a moment, bumper to flank, then a slam of impact. The masher left a corkscrew of smoke, rolling. Steve kept on going, looking for another target... Right in front of him, two peds from the first vehicle. They had run toward the line and were aiming their RPGs. The masher and a couple of other cars were getting crushed against the firing line to his left. To his right, a straggling marauder was coming into view. Steve triggered the gatling and the first ped threw up his--no, it was her--hands. Blood sprayed out of her mouth--a lung hit. The other ped scooped up the RPG with time to spare, but the flamethrower spewed burning liquid on him, head to toe. He flailed for a moment, and Steve could swear he heard him scream just before the car hit him and the woman both. For just an instant, the burning bandit was thrown up against Napalm Express’s windscreen. Steve could feel the heat, even smell the roasting flesh. It would be months before he’d eat pork again. But then the guy bounced up, over the roof and onto the sand behind him. Steve slewed the car around to face the marauder. The marauder surrendered. * * * “How was it?” Veera. They were sitting in one of the clean but narrow rooms of the compound. He had intended to smoke, but he was just watching the cigarette burn down. When it was burned, there would be nothing left but ash. But it hadn’t burned down yet. He reached for her. * * * The next day they hit the King Cobras. Steve had been bolder, driving Napalm Express into the melee earlier. He’d mostly taken out a poltergeist, and used his gatling to disrupt artillery fire from one of those bloody tractors that had started popping up. Now they were figuring out who got to drive the loot cars. “The symph is toast,” argued Thomas, one of the gunners of Pelvis. “Leave it.” “Scared?” challenged Shauna. “Maybe you should drive it. It’d toughen you up.” “We got ten miles back to the stop. We get jumped, that thing can’t get away.” “Nah, it’s no big. They’re just bullets.” To her zerk-aided perspective, that’s all they were. “Then you drive it.” “Nope! We got rules. Noobest noob drives the slowest loot.” She looked right at Steve. “You’re up, Benitez.” He looked at the half-smashed car--he remembered strafing it as he drove past, during the fight. The rear armor was solid, but there was a leak in the coolant pump and a crack in the block. It would be almost faster to walk. “Who’ll drive my car?” he asked. “It’s a single-seater.” “Good point,” she said. To the group: “Where my noobs at?” This was an experienced crew. There were no--wait. Wait! There was one guy. Herb Mather. He had been the sitter in Shanty, keeping a lonely vigil for years, never firing a shot in anger. The gang had shut their Shanty operation down a few days ago and brought him to Badlands. “Mater drives--” Shauna began but was interrupted with a whisper. “Mater, Mather, whatever. He drives the Symphony, Benitez is in Napalm Express. Let’s mount up!” Hands of Cthulhu caught up to them five minutes later. They killed Mather without even slowing down. ......................... vet wv Posted Dec 17, 2012, 5:08 pm Last edited Dec 17, 2012, 5:10 pm by Tonic

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