Red Engine
Grief pushed himself into a sitting position, physically exhausted from what he’d done. He didn’t know whether to cry or scream when the van’s two front doors opened and a pair of flame-engulfed figures stepped out. One of them tottered, took two steps and then succumbed to the flame, collapsing to the pavement. But the other kept coming, lurching and flailing.
The horrified screams of the other two men, both of them frozen and disbelieving their eyes, snapped Grief out of his stupor. He wrestled the fallen bike back up to a standing position, mounted it and brought it to life just as he began to feel heat at his bike. The Hallowjack took off with a squeal of his tires and the proxy, so close but now defeated, collapsed. One roasting arm landed in the growing puddle of gasoline from the hose Grief had dropped at the van’s explosion.
The gas pumps erupted and the two stricken bystanders were washed away in tides of flame. Grief was not so far away that he did not hear the thunder and know what it was.
The sun had touched the horizon and lit the sky like an inferno by the time Grief had left Phoenix heading west on I10. The cost of this game blurred his eyes with tears, turned his stomach with nausea but he did not slow down. He had to win this thing now, not just survive it. He swore to himself that he would.
He didn’t know that this bad night for Phoenix wasn’t over yet, that the Red Engine itself would shortly enter the city, following Grief’s path, and triple the carnage and chaos already done. It would be a night of sirens and fire, a night of hell that the newspapers would never be able to explain.
The pale full moon and a crowd of stars lit the desert and witnessed Grief’s return to the circle of steel. He kicked up a spray of dust and dirt as he braked, tried to dismount and just flopped to the ground in exhaustion. But there was no time to rest, no time. The last few miles of his run had passed in terror; he could feel the Red Engine bearing down on him.
And now, a cloud of dust was just visible in the distance as something inhuman tore across the desert.
Coughing, aching, he got himself upright and stumbled towards the circle, calling, “Spur! It’s right behind me!”
Spur met him at the outer edge of the circle and leveled a shotgun at him. “That’s why you’re not getting in here, bro.” His words were ever so slightly slurred and his eyes were bright and glassy. He reeked of alcohol.
Grief dared to walk right up to the barrel of the shotgun. What did he have to lose? The small dust cloud in the distance was now less small and less distant. “You tried to get me killed. I came out here to help you and you tried to get me killed.”
Spur bared his crooked yellow teeth in a skeptical leer. “You came out here to help me? Nah, you came out here for the same thing we all did, thrill-seeker.”
“You got others killed. A whole bunch of folks in Phoenix-”
“People gotta die so that others feel alive, boy. Gas is a fossil fuel, you know. We burn the dead so that we can chase the dream, whatever it may be, so that we can feel alive. And I wasn’t even in Phoenix. You were.” As he spoke, the older man stared out past Grief, mesmerized by what was coming.
Grief turned to look and saw a shape in the dust cloud, a hulking figure on an enormous, jagged motorcycle. It made not a sound but ran silent as a shark. Grief broke out into a cold sweat and felt his knees weaken. If he didn’t get into that circle now he was going to die.
He turned back to the older man and forced himself to speak in a calm, almost soothing voice. “You know this isn’t right, Spur. That’s why you had to get drunk off your ass.”
But Spur didn’t look at him, just gasped, “All those flies, even more than last time.”
Grief spun around again and saw that the cloud around the creature wasn’t just dust. He could hear a low buzz that wasn’t in any way mechanical. It would be on him in a minute.
He turned back to Spur and said evenly, “Just be a man, look me in the eye and tell me this is right. Tell me this is what MF Madison would do.”
Finally Spur locked eyes with him and there was genuine sorrow in his faltering words. “Kid, this is the way the world is, y’know? Everybody’s gotta fight to survive. Somebody’s gotta lose.”