Guava, Fudge Ripple and Malt
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Her Finest Hour
Rating: PG-13 (violence)
Challenge: Fudge Ripple #18: sacrifice, Guava #9: may lightning strike me
Toppings/Extras: malt
Wordcount: 1315
Summary: The final vengeful moments of Pia Rees.
Notes: Malt prompt from Trick-or-Treat challenge from mary_dreaming:
All our times have come/ Here but now they’re gone/ Seasons don’t fear the reaper/ Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain... we can be like they are/ Come on baby, don’t fear the reaper/ Baby take my hand, don’t fear the reaper/ We’ll be able to fly, don’t fear the reaper/ Baby I’m your man... “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”, Blue Oyster Cult.
Ik+ for the BtS challenge.
Horatio Newson felt in his gut what was coming even before his mind had any comprehension of it at all. Glancing into the mirror, he saw an odd shape on the road behind him, and squinted. It was rare that he encountered another driver: only the truly rich had their own cars, and besides, this was his own personal mid-air road that circulated Hamlet Tower and traversed some way around Britannia City. The railings on either side of his gleaming silver pussycat of a vehicle, purring along the road, glinted by one after the other.
The mirror showed another shape, a smaller shape-and a damn fast one, too. It was gaining on him quickly. The colour drained from his face as he realised what it was. His hands began trembling against the wheel. His mind wasn’t quite grasping the idea yet, but his body was quaking with fear.
With a mosquito-pitched whine, the thing behind him reared and darted, winding this way and that on the gleaming, empty white road, screaming in its determination to catch up with him. Its rider was helmet-less, and he recognised the orange hair pouring like a banner of war behind her. He also recognised the vehicle as it got closer: it was a streetbike, of the kind ridden down on the lower levels. With a terrible feeling clutching coldly at his insides, he moved up a gear and roared faster.
The midair road had been Newson’s way of showing off his immense wealth. It roamed across the tops of various skyscrapers in elegant curves and loops, a massive white track that he used to show off his various cars. People didn’t ride cars any more-it was physically impossible now that the whole of society took place so high in the air. But Newson had insisted on having his own road: and what he said, went.
Despite his high speed, the streetbike had no problem catching up with him. Pia Rees was riding like she had never ridden before, riding with such rage and lust for revenge twisting her mind inside out that her bike and her body were nothing more than a single creature of merciless swiftness. Her fury, her hate, her grief was so bone-deep that it played like constant music in her head: loud, unhappy music that drowned out every other thought. It thrummed in her limbs, her head, her abdomen. It fuelled the beating of her heart.
At last the bike drew level with Newson’s gleaming contraption. Newson’s car was silver, shining, hot, clean, new-in comparison, Pia’s rusty, battered streetbike did not seem competition at all. Trevose was sprayed across the body in loving handwriting, and her hands were tight on the handles. Into Newson’s consciousness landed a drop of blood-like dread that spread through the water of his mind. He knew what he’d done.
Even as he thought this, the girl took a leap to a new level of insanity: suddenly she stood somewhat, knees bent, and launched herself from her bike into his car. He had not expected that. Her beloved bike wobbled, riderless, and then spun with a final desperate whine and smashed into the railings at the side, a metallic spray exploding over the edge, flames immediately licking over the bones of its corpse.
Newson did not particularly care for these details. Pia had clawed her way over the seat and had dove onto him like a wildcat-she was hitting him and hitting him and hitting him with every ounce of strength that she possessed. She was hitting him until his face bled from every crack, hitting him with small hard fists.
“I hate you!” she was screaming over the sound of his engine. Newson’s hands struggled to stay on the wheel, twitching in pain with each blow. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you...”
“You crazy bitch, you’re going to kill us both!” Newson shouted, pushing at her with an elbow. His opposite hand reached down the side of his seat, grasping Ashdown’s ivory-handled pistol that he had taken at the time of the incident.
“I don’t care!” There were tears in Pia’s rage-lit eyes. “You killed him, you killed him you stupid bastard, it was all happening at once and he never did anything to you and you killed him!” She was still landing him with immensely powerful blows, each one fuelled further by her rage and her pain. She finally allowed one tear to trickle loose of her lashes. “Why?” she shouted in his face.
Newson fumbled the pistol towards her, but it was no use. She wrested it from his hand instantly and smacked him across the face with the butt, before staring at it suddenly. This was the gun, the gun that had blown Simmins’ life from his body. In revulsion, she hurled it out of the vehicle, and it spun and danced across the road far behind them, launching sparks as it bounced at such high speed. Newson realised that Pia-practically sat on his lap-had her foot jammed back onto the accelerator. The speed of the car was ticking upwards.
“It was an accident!” Newson yelped in panic, still attempting to steer as the wheels of the vehicle juddered and squealed, unaccustomed to going so quick. It was an automatic, and had a ridiculous top speed of two hundred an hour: an unnecessary little show-off’s touch that he regretted.
“Lying bastard!” Pia screamed in his face.
“If this car goes off the road, we both die!”
Pia’s face cracked into a savage grin. Her heavy eye make-up was smeared around her face and her hair was wild and windswept. She looked exactly like the archetypal madwoman. Newson’s eyes widened as he suddenly realised. That’s the idea.
“Don’t,” he gasped.
Her response was a hearty slap around the face. His cheeks, his eyes, his nose and his brow already felt beaten raw, and another wave of pain convulsed through his body. He couldn’t see through one eye, and the speed was increasing, and she was blocking most of his view of the road and then she hit him more and more, he was seeing white and she was still hitting him, so angry and so hurt...
“I don’t need you to look after me, Sim!” shouted the deranged girl, suddenly ceasing her attack. She looked up towards the blue soar of sky above them: the only thing that wasn’t rushing by in a dizzying mess. In the lower levels, because of the Smog and the ‘scrapers, she had never been able to look at the sky properly. Now she laughed at the languid, smooth blueness over her head. “You need me!”
Newson began shouting meaninglessly as he realised what was coming. The car’s engine by now sounded like it was shrieking in anguish. It was going too fast, much too fast. The sloping curve he had had installed to loop around Chiswick Point was coming up and he knew that they weren’t going to be able to handle it at this speed. He smashed his heel into the brake regardless, even pulling up the handbrake, making the car hiss and screech and squeal. He yanked at the wheel hard-and launched the sparking vehicle into a series of rolls.
With every grinding impact on the ground, the car’s noise became angrier and buzzier. It rolled over and over and over again, bursting into flames around the sixth roll, and then smashed into the barrier and hurtled through it. The burning wreckage twisted once in the air, ballet-like, as it fell. It smashed through several walkways, sending civilians scattering away from the oncoming projectile. Wheels, doors, bits of engine scattered and rained from the falling car as it bounced off of one skyscraper and then another.
Then it plummeted through the Smog and vanished like a shooting star.