Race

When you are moving at 130 kilometers an hour the world on either side of the road is really nothing more than a blur. A blur of browns and greys. And the road before you stands strangely still, so long as you straddle the yellow lines. It can become almost mesmeric with the sound of the engine superseding any other noise, the blurry lines to either side, the dark sunbaked black top shifting imperceptibly, and those yellow lines switching to dotted and solid creating an unreadable pattern like a secret code speaking to your soul.

Then the asshole behind you blasts her double barreled twelve gauge out the shattered rear window and ruins the mood.

There was nothing on the road but the blue car and the red car. The blue car was a 2017 Dodge Avenger that had been crudely spray painted with an almost neon true blue paint that now only remained in patches having been blown off with sand, shot gun pellets, and close calls. The red car was in pursuit and had been painted poorly in a bright red and was no less stripped of its heraldry. The game was always the same and it was simple. If the blue car made the finish line the driver and gunner got to live. If the red car took them out before they got there, that person got to live. This wasn’t rocket science, this was a death match.

He couldn’t push down on the gas pedal any harder and the 2016 Honda Accord wasn’t going to go any faster evidently. It was all he could do to keep the car close enough to squeeze off a one handed shot with the old Russian rifle he had been given. The alignment was out on the Accord and if he didn’t keep a hand on the wheel it pulled to the left and would take him off the road. There was no rules against leaving the road but he knew full well he would lose speed, which would cost him the race.

He rubbed his arm across his face to clear away sweat and smeared his lipstick and eye liner again, his face a mess of blues and reds. The rifle was heavy and hard to bring up with one hand but he slammed it onto the dash jutting out the hole he has made earlier trying to aim it at the swerving blue car. Just then a blast of buck shot smashed into his hood and tore great gouges of red paint rebounding up into the wind shield and lashing him with sound and fear but few pellets flew through the hole his rifle filled. He pulled the trigger reflexively and the rifle flew back through the car into the back seat from the kick and his jerky reactions.

At 2,600 meters a second the 180 grains of lead crossed the forty three yards of space between the two vehicles in a fraction of a second. There were a thousand vectors that could have made an important impact, but it happened to take the one that was most important.

She felt the bullet speed by her cheek, probably so close that it touched her on the way, and heard the driver’s head explode by the sound of his brains and flesh hitting the dash. The car immediately began to drift and she scrambled to get form the back to the front grabbing the wheel. Blood was everywhere, coating the wheel, the dash, the seat, and the hot wind blew it around.

She was suddenly very tired.