Week 35.3 – Desperate Times

Previously: Digger and Cole were escaping from the Czar’s palace with the help of Digger’s powers, while Yi Fan took a wounded Twain to see a healer. And now…

The engine started as Digger opened the door. It was an old light-duty truck, looked like Soviet vintage, though Cole had no idea what kind it really was. He heard distant shouts as he climbed into the passenger seat.

The truck started moving from the moment Digger touched the steering wheel. It roared forward as Cole heard the sound of distant pops and bullets spanged off the fenders. So the guards’ guns were working again; Digger’s powers still had a limited radius, obviously.

The truck roared through the motor pool toward a side gate. Digger’s hands barely seemed to move the steering wheel or the gearshift, and yet, everything worked perfectly. In fact, the truck handled so nimbly, it almost felt like he was riding some animal, moving of its own volition, rather than in a 30-year-old truck being driven by a crazy man.

The side gate was not any kind of motorized barrier, just a regular gate in a 15-foot-tal chain link fence. A guard was pulled the gate shut and was wrapping a steel chain through the fence to hold it shut as Digger and Cole approached. “Sorry, dude,” Digger mumbled under his breath and smashed the truck through the gate, ripping it off its hinges.

Cole couldn’t tell if Digger was apologizing to him, or the truck, or to the gate.

“Where are we going?” Cole asked.

“South,” Digger said. “At least at first. Make them think we’re running for the border. And then at some point, we’ll turn of the road and… You ever watched Zorro?”

“Which one?” Cole asked. “There were a few.”

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”]“Sorry, dude,” Digger mumbled under his breath and smashed the truck through the gate, ripping it off its hinges. Cole couldn’t tell if Digger was apologizing to him, or the truck, or to the gate…[/blockquote]“I don’t remember,” Digger said. “But Zorro had this trick. He would be riding along, being chased by the soldiers, so to foil the pursuit, he would get off his hose and slap its rump to make it keep going, so the soldiers would keep tracking the horse.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” Cole said. “Are you sure that was Zorro?”

“Not really,” Digger said. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s a pretty common Western trick.”

“Wait, you mean, you’re going to do that with this truck?” Cole asked. “Just slap its ass and it’ll keep driving by itself.”

“For a while,” Digger said

“You’re sure?”

“More sure than I am which Zorro movie I saw the trick in,” Digger said.

***

Twain’s screams at the forced mending of his arm nearly drowned out the sound of alarm sirens going off. Yi Fan stiffened. Were they sounding for the escaped prisoners or had someone found the dead Mechanic? Yi Fan tried to ignore the screams, but they tore at her heart, and she very nearly told the healer to stop. They would just have to figure out a new plan.

And then the screaming stopped and Twain lurched out of the kitchen chair he was sitting in to throw up all over the floor. “All right,” he said, his face pale as he wiped his mouth with a trembling hand, “now comes the hard part.”

We know the hard part already, don’t we? Join us for the next episode anyway!

To read from the beginning, click here…