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“You think.”
“If it doesn’t work, just pull back the throttle all the way. You’ll stop eventually.”
He stares at the controls.
“How do you plan on getting them beasts to follow you?”
“Dance a can-can.”
“Lord preserve us from your brilliance.”
“See you soon, Bill.”
I go back to the Corvair and manifest my Gladius. Slicing the roof off is easier than I expected. Once it’s out of the way, I get in and fire it up. Gun the Corvair and head straight for the herd. The trick isn’t to find the head of the pack. I need the one that’s dumber than me.
I hang back far enough that I can make a run for it if things don’t work out, but I have to get close enough that one of the morons can see me. The problem is, they’re all concentrating on the tasty treats below.
Fine. I’ve got to do everything myself.
Hanging around the edge of the herd is a sort of giant crab/spider creature. A full-grown adult male. About twenty feet tall and dumb as a sackful of pudding. They’re fierce bastards in a fight, but I’ve killed their kind before. Of course, I’ve almost been cut in half by those claws, so that’s on my list of things to avoid.
As quietly as I can, I pull the Corvair right under its belly and honk the horn.
The thing quivers and its big armored legs scuttle around so that it can see me with all five of its black, hairy eyeballs. I’ll admit it. My fight-or-flight instinct kicks into full run-home-to-mommy mode. But mom is dead and I don’t have enough gas to get to L.A., so I throw the car into reverse and floor it before I get skewered by one of those legs.
I have mixed feelings at this point. On the one hand, the plan seems to be working, and on the other, I’m being pursued flat out by around thirty tons of angry stupid.
I head straight for the riverbank and stop. Honk my horn again to make sure it can find me. No problem there. It heads straight in my direction. I hop out of the car and start running, waving my arms and shouting.
This is where I really start to have mixed feelings. Before they were only kind of mixed feelings. But once I’m running, everything comes back to me. The smell of the arena. The screaming crowds. Multicolored blood pools in the dirt. Sometimes other hellbeasts and sometimes other fighters around me. I’ve imagined being back in the arena so many times since I crawled out of Hell, and here I am, my wish finally fulfilled. And part of me is enjoying it. I swear, if I could import a few of these hungry freaks back home, I’d never get a Trotsky headache again.
But that’s not what I should be thinking about. Right now it’s all about looking delicious without letting them find out if I am.
Crab Cakes follows me along the river to where an enormous drainpipe dumps blood into the tributary. The pipe is a few feet below me. I jump and slide down the riverbank, landing right next to the metal inlet.
Behind me, my new best friend runs at full speed.
Interesting fact: Most crabs don’t have even a basic grasp of physics. I don’t either, but I know that thirty tons running at full speed is going to have a lot harder time stopping than me.
Sure enough, Crab Cakes sprints right to the edge of the river, skitters, and falls, rolling onto its spiny back before sliding into the flowing blood. Its legs wave in the air as it tries to right itself, but it’s wedged in tight.
From the pipe, I climb up onto Crab Cakes’ belly and look for one particular break in its shell. It’s midway between its front set of legs and its moving mandibles. When I find it, I extend the na’at to its full length and plunge it as hard and as deep as I can between the armor plates.
It bellows like a foghorn and its legs twitch like it’s running the hurdles in the Olympics. With luck, the bellow got the attention of the other hellbeasts. All I have to do now is make sure they don’t lose interest.
Wet with river blood, I climb back up the bank. Shout some Hellion hoodoo while I run for the car.
Crab Cakes’ belly explodes in a foul-smelling shower of fish guts. Some thumps on me and into the car, but this isn’t the time for tidiness. I jump into the Corvair and peel out as the other hellbeasts get a whiff of the jumbo fillet-of-fish sandwich waiting for them in the river.
A moment later, the herd turns and lumbers and slithers toward the river.
I fucking hope Bill sees what’s going on. Revisiting the arena for a few minutes was fun, but like the fight pit back home, I don’t want to like it too much. I made and broke too many promises to Candy to let myself drift back into old habits.
When I’m far enough from the feasting dino bastards, I pull up near the train yard. The area around Tartarus is almost clear. Only a couple of extra-slow and dumb beasts remain, pawing at the ground.
The train starts to move. Picks up speed as it heads straight for Tartarus. Steam billows from the skull on the front of the train. Bill lays on the air horn. The last beasts turn toward the sound, but stumble back as the giant metal fire-breathing monstrosity thunders toward them. One of the beasts runs off into the train yard while the other heads for brunch at the river. Tartarus is clear.
I hit the accelerator and speed along the tracks, bouncing over ruts and tracks. The Corvair creaks and g
