Chapter 8

“We don’t need brakes, we just need to drive, right?” Richard said, in an attempt to lighten the moment. Katrina went back to hitting him.

Richard raised his arm to fend off the blows from his passenger when he noticed a box truck following them. In fact there was a whole line of box trucks behind them. Soon the trucks were passing them like they were on their way to a fire.

“What’s up with all of these trucks?” he asked. “None of them have any markings.”

“They’re the support vehicles that will make our race invisible if a car is disabled or gets into an accident. What we’re doing is illegal. So the investors have to clean up after themselves as the race proceeds.”

An idea struck Bertrand. “That means we have a truck that will follow us too?” he asked hopefully.

Katrina nodded. She was tired from using so much of her energy to hit her driver and she slumped back in her seat. She was tired of answering questions that wouldn’t need to be asked if Richard had bothered to read the manual.

“Yes, a truck and a camera crew are following each car. But they can’t help us or interact with us in any way until we are out of the race.”

“I’m sure we can convince them to get us some oil,” he suggested.

“You really are some special kind of idiot aren’t you? We need brake line repair and brake fluid. Oil won’t help us at all. We need to pull over so I can get a good look at the problem and fill the burn holes in the car’s skin. Since we need to charge some more we should do it now where there’s very little traffic.”

“But we’re already in last place. If we stop now we’ll never catch up.”

“Listen carefully.” Katrina said through gritted teeth. “This is a slow motion race. We are not supposed to break the speed limit. Everyone has to stop to pee and get food, or recharge the car in some way before the end of the day. Optimally, everyone will only stop twice each day. We will just choose to stop early. At the next store you see, pull over and we’ll get food, I’ll fill the holes, and we can check how bad the leak is.”

“Why fill the holes? Who cares?” Richard said irritably.

Katrina sighed, it was as if she was traveling with a child and she had to explain herself every time she opened her mouth. “Like I mentioned before, there are two layers of material that make up the skin. If the weapon burns through the first layer and the inner epoxy is burned away the two layers will touch and short out the car. What do you think will happen when we drive through rain?”

Richard pondered on that thought for a whole minute before the light bulb came on over his head. “Water conducts electricity and the car will short out.”

“Oh my God, he does have at least two brain cells.” Katrina shouted. Richard smacked Katina in the arm.

Frodes had a phone to his ear. All he could hear was ringing. For some reason no one was picking up. The students were all supposed to be watching the race back at the shop where the car had been built. The call finally reached the number of rings allowed before the recorded voice of a woman came on to inform him that the person on the other end was not responding.

Frodes hung up the phone and tried again. Finally someone answered.

Frodes had to pull the phone away from his ear. The noise blaring though the receiver was so great that he thought he would go deaf. He switched ears but held the phone a bit further away in self-defense. He could hear a voice but it was fragmented as if the line had a bad connection. Moments later the voice became clear and asked “Hello?” again.

“This is Frodes,” he said. He assumed that his name alone would command the attention of whoever had answered the phone but the shouting in the background had resumed. Frodes realized that they had just watched what had happened in the parking lot. Then it occurred to him that everything that was being streamed on the internet was not actually live, it was being edited and would be many minutes behind the real events. When the shouting subsided Frodes finally began.

“I know that what you just watched made for good entertainment but we have real problems. We know that our car needs some serious work that will have to be done when they arrive in Circleville, Ohio. I need a team, as many people as you can get to come out here. We need manpower and tools. Bring the second transmission and all the specs to replace anything that needs work. Also I need twenty more tires, the same kind that we already put on the car. We need another team that is staying at the warehouse that can track down parts so we will have everything we need when you get there. Dr. Jenkins is getting transportation set up and I’ll call again as soon as I know more about what we need.”

The screaming started anew and Frodes had to pull the receiver further from his ear again. He hoped that the person he had spoken to had gotten everything written down. He sighed. He would have to call again in fifteen minutes to make sure that the situation was under control.

The intern who had managed to pick up the call walked back into the room where the television was located. He shouted and shouted for everyone to shut up. Finally when the energy level had shrunk enough for him to be heard, Christopher Franq took a deep breath and began to speak to the now attentive crowd before him. “That was Frodes. He said that the car was damaged from the exit out of the parking lot. He needs a team of as many members that want to go out and make repairs. Who wants to go?”

The entire room went crazy. They had just witnessed now much better designed their car was compared to most of the other cars in attendance. It had displayed better design work in both the operation of the car and in the weapon. Now they were being asked if they wanted to be the mechanics for the best car in the race? Not one person said no.

The entire group in the television room threw their arms in the air in excitement at the opportunity that they had just been offered. It was like being asked to go to the moon to fix the landing craft so that their team could come home safely. Who could say no? Pride, in combination with lots of energy drinks, fueled everyone’s desire to be part of history. The whole room cleared out not knowing what they had to do or where they were supposed to go. The energy was too great to contain. When the last intern left the room and Franq was about to leave, the phone rang again.

The MIT car was slowing down though they were still a long distance away from the Shell station that they were approaching.

“Why do we have to slow down from such a distance? I feel like we are an old couple who doesn’t know how to drive anymore.” Richard asked.

“Because if our brakes cut out all of the way we’ll be able to stay in traffic, hopefully without causing an accident.” Katrina said. She had been looking over her shoulder the whole time. She didn’t want anyone to crash into them.

Richard came to a stop in a parking spot easily, as though nothing was wrong with the car. “See, I told you, you were worrying too much.”

“Just go in and buy enough food to last us the entire day and I’ll do the hard stuff.”

“Right, because you’re so smart.” Richard quipped. “I’m the one who got us here.”

Katrina made a rude gesture with her finger in his direction but he had turned away before he could see it. She opened what would have been considered a trunk for most cars. In this case it was used mostly to store tools. She took out a container with two tubes in it. Similar to epoxy, she squeezed equal amounts and mixed them together. As she prepared the mixture the truck that was assigned to follow them pulled up behind the car.

A black man popped out of the cab of the truck and asked, “Are you guys broken down?”

“No, just making a few minor repairs,” she said quickly, afraid that they were going to try to take the car.

He was a large man, handsome to a fault with big brown eyes, a shaved head, and large muscles. He introduced himself and the cameraman who was still sitting in the truck playing with his camera.

“Hey, I’m Jersey and that’s Lucky. We’re the ones who’ll be following you throughout the race. You’re sure you’re all set?”

Katrina had every intention of telling them the truth until Lucky jumped out with his camera already rolling. He was a creepy looking guy. She froze, wondering how much she should say if she was ‘on camera’. If the race was being shown over the internet then every investor would know if they were having problems. That wouldn’t look good. It wouldn’t look good at all. She needed to maintain some secrecy. She definitely didn’t want any of the other teams learning about their current weaknesses.

“Nope everything is fine,” she said. “Just doing an inspection and filling some holes.” Katrina raised the epoxy compound in the air so that they could see it properly. She looked at Jersey when she spoke but knew it was the camera that was really watching. “We don’t want rain to be a problem.”

Richard popped his head out of the Shell station’s door. “So what do you want to pee in? A Gatorade bottle or a Pringles can? Or should I just get toilet paper and you’ll just do it out the window as I drive?”

Time slowed to a trickle as embarrassment engulfed Katrina. Her face flooded. The weight of what he had just said in front of the camera made her feel very insignificant. All her friends and perhaps future employers were watching this race. Emotions raced through her with thoughts of his stupidity and carelessness and false bravado. Something inside of her snapped. She wanted to beat Richard to within an inch of his life.

Katrina carefully set the epoxy on the roof of the car. In an instant her anger overcame her composure. She turned with fury on her face and ran full tilt at Bertrand.

Richard didn’t move a muscle. He waited for Katrina to approach him as though she were going to tell him off in a whisper so that the camera wouldn’t hear her. He even smiled, thinking of his coming retort. He was very witty, he thought to himself, and Katrina was just another woman who would bend to his will in the end.

When she didn’t slow down, even at four feet away, his smile faltered, then faded completely as Katrina dove the last few feet. She tackled him in the chest. Both of them flew backwards into the store through the open door Richard had been holding. The items he had been holding flew into the air. Loud angry epithets spewed from Katrina’s mouth and could be heard outside despite the fact that the door had swung closed behind them. Lucky ran in followed by Jersey. They pulled Katrina off her driver as she punched every bit of Richard as she could.

Richard drove silently down the interstate. One eye was in the process of blossoming with color. Katrina was resting the knuckles of one of her hands against an ice cream sandwich in a plastic bag that was melting as it molded around her fist.

“The next time I talk to my father, I’m going to tell him what you did.” Richard said.

“That sounds about right, cry to daddy. You can’t even be a man about your own stupidity. You go and tell him a girl beat on you. I’ll tell you what, you drive to Ohio and I’ll let you off the hook for the rest of the race. I’ll drive the rest of the way and win this race for my team.” Katrina barked.

Richard brooded, knowing that if he did call his father he would become the laughing stock of his family, more so than he already was.

Lost in their problems neither was paying attention to what existed in the rearview mirror. For the most part they considered themselves in last place at the moment and were trying to make up time. No racecars were behind them anymore. More than the customary amount of time had been used back at the Shell station between the fight and the triage of the car.

Lucky had watched the whole thing through his camera lens, sniggering. Katrina was so embarrassed. She had barely had enough time to fill the holes in the car’s shell before they had left. They hadn’t taken any time to buy food, and now they had to drive straight through to their scheduled stop in Ohio.

Katrina’s phone rang. She dug it out of her uniform’s pocket and answered it. “Hello?”

“Are you alright?” Dillon asked. “We just watched you attack Bertrand’s son. He’s furious. He wants to pull out of the race now because he thinks you’re unstable.”

Katrina looked over to Richard, who was still trying to avoid her gaze, before answering. “Yeah I did beat up this idiot. But you can tell his father that it’s his son who has a problem not me.”

“What can you tell me about the car?” Dillon asked. “We have a team coming to meet you in Circleville.”

Katrina brightened instantly. “Really? That’s great! Alright, I need new brake lines for the rear wheels. The transmission light is still on but it’s doing okay for now. If it’s replaced it should be a standard, he’s an idiot but he can drive. We need new rubber all around and a couple new tubes of epoxy. Pretty boy here screwed it up...”

The entire car surged forward and Katrina dropped her phone, cutting off the conversation. Richard rushed his free hand to the wheel to help with stability but the force was too great and the car began to cut out from the rear.

Richard’s skill as a driver took over. Although an hour ago she would have gladly wished to exchange some of his skill as a driver for integrity as a human being, at this moment she was glad he had the ability to stay in control. An older model maroon Ford Explorer had rear-ended their car. Luckily it had struck the push bar and not anywhere else.

Richard kept them from crashing after they had begun to spin from the strong hit but when he was done both cars were driving next to each other with the racecar in the wrong lane. Katrina’s head was still spinning, waiting for her stomach to catch up. Then she felt sick.

“Hang on!” Richard yelled. “We’re going to see what 400 horsepower feels like.” The MIT car shot off like a bullet, leaving the Ford explorer behind like it had been standing still.

After a few hundred feet separated them from the Explorer, they were both able to breathe again. They found their turn and got onto 495 hoping that the Explorer was far enough behind to miss seeing which direction they had gone. They were both fairly sure that that guy had been gunning for them. No one would crash into the rear of another vehicle that hard unless it was intentional.

It wasn’t long before Richard looked in the mirror and saw the Explorer coming up on them again. “I know there are a lot of rules for this race, I’m pretty sure that what they’re doing isn’t allowed. I wish I had some real speed to lose them for good. Can you disable the speed control module? If it comes up we can say the strike from that Ford knocked it out of whack and we had to drive faster to defend ourselves.” He pulled into the passing lane and went by an old Ford Escort that was in the slower middle lane.

Then the MIT car passed another racecar that was in the middle lane. “See, I told you we would make up lots of time on the interstate.” Katrina said and she watched it until it was behind them.

Katrina turned to look out the back window. The Ford was catching up quickly and it looked like it was going to try to hit them again. “I don’t think we’re going to outrun this guy and there’s not enough traffic to lose him.”

The Explorer had caught up to the other racecar. Suddenly it cut its wheels hard and ran through the driver’s corner of the fuselage shattering the body of the other car into thousands of pieces. The driver of the other car lost control and crashed into a pickup truck that had been next to it. The resulting mess of vehicles running into them and others that were trying to avoid the accident made Katrina’s eyes grow wide in shock.

Pushing a button on the dash, Katrina quickly activated another type of screen that rose out of the dashboard along with a removable keyboard. The screen came to life instantly. All kinds of information began to stream in a linear fashion from left to right. There was no time to check things out. She hit the key for the letter M and F1 key together. A menu popped up overlaying all of the other information. Quickly she went through the drop down menus that followed until she came to the speed governor override. At that point the Explorer had caught up again. Richard had begun to dart and weave through traffic to try to avoid what had happened to the other racecar.

Being tossed around the interstate, Katrina was having a difficult time typing in the override code to disable the seventy two mile-per-hour limit.

“Keep still or I’ll never get the password entered.”

“I need speed and brakes to get out of this mess! I can’t magically avoid getting hit forever, unless they run out of gas!”

Richard pulled hard to the right to switch lanes, tossing Katrina around in her seat. The computer screen blinked and went out for a second then came back up. Katrina had to start over again to get deep enough into the software. She was thrown again as Richard made another maneuver to try to keep them alive. Richard was getting very stressed. “I need speed and brakes or we’re dead! If I step onto the brake pedal now we will lose control because we only have front brakes.”

“For God’s sake, use the emergency brake. It’s on the rear wheels. It’s that handle there.” Katrina pointed and shouted as she made yet another attempt to log into the system.

The Maroon Explorer made another attempt to hit them but crashed into the side of a light blue Honda Civic just as the MIT car had vacated the spot next to it.

Richard was using an interesting maneuver based on the car’s current capabilities. He would slow down until the Explorer came in for a hit then he would floor it and dart ahead. But he could only keep it up as long as there was a way out.

The Civic had lost control and had hit the guardrail before rolling onto its roof. Running along the rail had caused a fire to break out. Richard craned his neck to watch the crash.

Katrina screamed at the near miss and as she watched the Civic catch on fire.

“I need speed!” Richard demanded.

“You keep moving too much for me to type in the code.” Katrina apologized.

Richard yanked on the steering wheel again, avoiding the Explorer once more. Katrina lost her position on the keyboard and the power flickered on her screen. She screamed again but this time out of frustration. She hammered both of her fists on the dashboard. The computer took that as a command to close up and withdrew back into its unused position.

Katrina felt like a waste of space, she had no idea how to help. Richard pulled the emergency brake and the car spun in a circle. Katrina screamed as she braced herself against the ceiling.

The car spun a whole three hundred and sixty degrees and ended up behind the Explorer. The weapon’s control module fell out and landed on Katrina’s lap. An idea struck her and she took the controls and touched the bluetooth link on her headset. “I need you to position the Ford on the passenger’s side for one second on my mark.”

“What! It’s not like I have a lot of control here without more speed.”

“Just do what you need to do and I’ll take care of the rest.” Katrina shouted.

“What can you do?” Richard asked suddenly becoming interested.

“Get ready to reposition the car.” She shouted.

Katrina was worried that this was too much of a radical step to get the Ford to back off. People could get seriously hurt and that bothered her. She wasn’t a soldier; she didn’t kill people; and most of all she didn’t think she could live with herself if she did. But she had to do something.

The weapon on the roof came to life. Katrina turned her head towards where the car was supposed to be any second and shouted. “I’m ready!” The arm stretched out before lowering to eye level. The wrist repositioned upwards slightly so the laser was pointing just higher than level. Richard pulled the emergency brake and spun the car around. They were suddenly going backwards in the other lane but keeping pace with the Explorer. The driver looked over at Katrina and pointed a pistol at her. It appeared that their last ditch contingency to get the racecar off the road involved more than just the destruction of their car. Katrina was scared to see the gun but she now knew that this was the only way to survive.

She moved the joystick and the weapon’s “On” LED flashed as the laser leveled on the Explorer’s window. The red light of the laser appeared on the Ford driver’s face. The smallest amount of time passed when nothing happened. It was clear that the laser worried the driver but he didn’t understand what it was for. When smoke appeared from his melting skin, an absolute loss of control of the Ford occurred. The gun dropped out of his hand as he used both of his hands to block the laser. The Explorer fell back and drifted toward the side of the road before running into a bridge abutment.

Richard yanked on the emergency brake again and straightened out. He sped up to put as much distance between them and the Explorer as he could. Katrina got a good look at the Explorer in her mirror just before it caught on fire.

Her heart felt conflicted. Part of her wanted to celebrate, after all she had saved them from a terrible crash, but in the process she had also maimed someone and caused a crash that had surely killed both the driver and the passenger of the Explorer. She felt terrible.

Richard cheered as Katrina cried.

h

Next Chapter: Chapter 9