Metal Deep: Infinite - Damsels in Distress: Episode 1 (3 page)

The trip across town to the fairgrounds was as they say, “The best of times, and the worst of times.” My car was not simply running on fossil fuel alone, but on an unending supply of rage and guilt. So while I pulled off some amazing combat driving maneuvers that would have made any Sunday race day highlight reel, I managed to piss off half the town, and I was hailed into the fairground parking field by a chorus of angry horns, followed by flocks of flipped middle fingers. I didn’t care. I was a man on a mission. I should have turned around and slunk back home after crawling on my belly across miles of broken glass for what I had said to my father, but the angrier, and more prevailing part of me, decided that not only was I going to check out this supposed Amalgam-creating-mob-conglomerate-fronting-expo, but I was going to get in behind the scenes and prove to Dad once and for all that he truly and deeply needed help.

The expo was amazing. A racing team called the Street Vipers performed the sickest demonstrations of car handling. You name it and they did it. They drifted in formation through hairpin turns, they jumped through fiery rings, one guy, even did a crash demonstration where he ran his car into a brick wall at over a hundred miles-an-hour. He was flung through the shattering windshield and was hurled across the track and over a fiery moat. He landed safely into a large pile of hay bales to applauding cheers of “Oh’s” and “Ah’s.”

I lost track of the time and the number of popcorn buckets I went through as I sat mesmerized by the thumping techno music and never ending pyros that burned so hot, even where I was up in the nose-bleeds, I could feel the heat from the rolling balls of flame before they disappeared up into the night. A couple of times during the show they would take a break for a buttery voiced announcer to come in and advertise some new car part the team was using, give a PSA to the drooling high school kids about staying off drugs and “Saying No” to underage drinking, but also he would mention that the Street Vipers were always looking for
new blood
, whether it be to drive, do mechanic work, or even handle security. He mentioned often that everyone likely had a skill needed to keep the Vipers on the streets and he regularly insisted that anyone interested in seeing the world as a Viper stop by the booth after the show to fill out an application.

The fight with Dad and my reason for being there, while still hot and prevalent, suddenly felt secondary. All I could think about was joining their team, getting out of this stupid town, getting away from my dead end job, and finally being able to see the world for what it was, and not as some hokey vision of falsehood. I didn’t care what I had to do for them. I figured driving was out of the question, and doing anything mechanical was laughable considering the only time I tried to change my own oil it resulted in me needing to buy four new tires, a new distributer cap, and I still haven’t gotten the smell of burnt peanut butter out (don’t ask, because I’m not telling). But, there had to be
something
for me to do. After all, the announcer said there was, and I could feel every word he slipped into that microphone flutter into my ears like cool feathers on a breezy day. At the end of the show I could barely remember why I was mad at Dad. All I could reason in my head was that I had to join the Street Vipers.

A final “Goodnight” from the symphonic host fired in my mind like a starting gun, and I was down the bleachers and across the complex headed straight toward the Vipers’ row of pimped out semi-trucks before you could say “In a trance.” The only other time I had felt that kind of compulsion toward getting somewhere was back in the seventh grade when one of the guys in my class discovered a construction wiring hole had been accidentally left open behind the gym, and through it one had a straight line of sight shot into the girls shower. For all my hormone-fueled-yearning to get there, once it was my turn in line to peep I had remembered a story Dad told me that morning about the true Warrior Knights who still roamed the world, and how chivalry and the protection of a lady’s honor, in some places, was still held as important as one’s own life. I had wanted to be one of those Knights, and so I plugged the hole with my knightly finger like the little Dutch boy had with the dams of Holland. For my trouble I was hit over the knightly head with a knightly brick from the angry guys behind me who had not gotten their turn. I awoke to the principal standing over me.

Whoever hit me called the fuzz and told him I had been the one to discover the peep spot, and to add insult to injury, they said I had been trying to extort money from the other guys for a turn at the hole. Then they said I had started a fight when someone threatened to tell on me.

I was charged with peeping, extorting, and fighting, and as a result I was sentenced to detention for the rest of the school year. I think it’s also important to mention this happened in September. Do the detention math and groan with me. After that, I was an outcast from the guys, the girls found out by malicious rumor spreading, and so they treated me like a perv. Thus I was labeled as the trouble maker by all my teachers. Seventh grade sucked. From that point on I promised not to let honor get in the way of common sense ever again.

There were no peep holes, nor any moral fetters to overcome at the Street Viper booth. I filled out a few papers, they took a quick digital snapshot, I was given a brief tour through one of the garage trailers, I was given a free T-shirt, and then I was sent on my merry way with an autographed photo of Cade Arkman, the guy who did the crash stunt. They promised that I would hear something soon if they thought they could use me. The entire process took about fifteen minutes. In that time spent with the lovely Meg, my recruiter with the chocolate hair, daisy dukes, and Viper mini-tee, I did not feel this setup was anything but what it was… a fun tour by friendly and awesome people. Human-people, I might add. And people whom I would have done anything to please.

I didn’t want to go home. I felt as though my burden to join the Street Vipers had not quite abated after signing the papers, so I meandered out of the park stopping here and there to stare at a closed stand, or an old sign. I was looking for anything that might keep me from having to go back to the apartment and deal with what I had done, even though every moment I stood free from mystical boogey men proved me right.

I was one of the last ones out as the fairgrounds emptied, and so I stopped at the edge of the parking field to admire the large Street Viper promotional poster. It was amazing. A hooded cobra with razor sharp fangs that popped off the plastic waved in the wind. Between the fangs, set behind the top and in front of the bottom, “Street Vipers” was written in words that looked like they could cut your eyes if you stared at them too hard. I smiled and dreamed of the freedom that came from being a Street Viper.

For a moment I felt like a kind-of fog lifted, and I found it odd that I had become so taken with joining them. There was something unnatural about my fascination with the team. But it settled back in as I rationalized my hope. Perhaps it was destiny? Maybe after all the crap, Life finally decided to throw me a bone? People all the time talk about love at first sight. Usually it’s in the form of a relationship, but maybe in my case it was about a calling, a calling to drive fast and be awesome? It could happen?

The night air was cool, fresh off the rain. Springtime drizzle hung like a latent mist canopy. I found an empty bench cuddled back where the trams park for the night, set my shirt and picture beside me, and there I sat, hands shoved in my pockets, feet stretched out, my head draped over the seat back. I stared up into the violet void searching the stars hoping to catch at least one. Did I go home and do damage control? Did I stick to my guns? Clearly this group was normal, and my insane father had been wrong, so at least I had that going for me.

You know, and I know, there is nothing like someone else’s domestic squabbling to capture your attention. You try not pry, but at the same time, like a car wreck you rubber neck at a slower speed, without stopping, because at the end of the day, we all love to see the carnage. I certainly did. Plus, anyone else’s dysfunction besides my own was like a breath of fresh air. It meant I wasn’t the only one screwed up.

I was just sitting off to the side and a little back toward a fence hidden behind one of the parked trams beside the main gate where the impressive Street Viper banner hung. I watched unnoticed as the crashing stunt driver Cade Arkman and my recruiter Meg argued while they setup a ladder to start taking down their Street Viper sign.

“We’re not dating anymore.” Cade said to whatever she was haranguing him about before they finally landed within earshot. I hadn’t really noticed when I got his autograph, but he had what sounded like an Australian accent. Though he could have been an albino Serbian who was rattling off in Mandarin, I would still likely think his genesis was the land down under. I was mildly addicted to the culture, and I have often wrongly associated people from other parts of the world as Aussie. I would like to say I had some lofty reason for that, but I had fallen in love with one too many Aussie actresses, so I assumed that the entire island/continent was swimming with smoking hot blond bikini models with amazing voices. I’m a dude, color me guilty.

Meg was mad. She had legs that went on for miles, and she stomped every lovely inch of them across the concourse. Her Midwest accent was clearly not Australian in origin, but the fact that she was talking to an Aussie made her seem that much hotter. Her strappy heels clicked on the sidewalk as she paced back and forth past the ladder Cade used to take down the sign. “I don’t care who you see. You can sleep with the entire garage for all I care. All I’m saying is keep your ho-train to yourself and quit parading your skanks past me. I know it’s all part of some game you like to play, but I’m not playing anymore, Cade. So quit…” She paused and bit her lip in thought before summoning enough courage to spit out, “…or else.”

Cade was the rock star of his little world, and as with most rock stars they tend to want their way. Something else I knew about rock stars, they really don’t like ultimatums. Cade was no different. He ripped the sign down tearing out the rings that held it, and he jumped down from the top of the ladder landing on his feet with almost no give in his knees as if he had just stepped off a curb, and not sprung from eight feet in the air.

He dropped the sign, about the same time I dropped his obnoxious photograph, and I was on my feet. Cade was seething. He stood over Meg like a predator. He had black teen pop rocker hair that he shoved out of his eyes and he leaned in closer to her face until their noses touched. Meg tried to cower away by his hand like a bolt locked into her chocolate hair locks and tugged them tight so she couldn’t move. Like a horse on a reign she stopped as he challenged her, “Or else,
WHAT?”
He yelled that last word with venom befitting the snake he represented.

Does anyone see the potential for another seventh grade hole-in-the-gym-wall incident should I do anything but hide until their domestic spat was over? If so, that makes you better than me, because what I saw was an amazingly beautiful woman in distress, and while I’m sure the hope of Meg and I sharing a milkshake, should this go well, be impossible, I was not thinking with the logical part of my brain that promised to let common sense prevail. I had stopped wanting to be a knight in shining armor years ago, but for some reason I was still trying. I balled up the Viper shirt, stepped from around my eaves dropping corner and pelted Cade in the back of the head.

I knew the shirt wouldn’t hurt, it was his attention I wanted, and I got it.

So what do you say in the stare down? Our shadows raked across the sidewalk in every direction. Meg trembled from behind Cade, and I had no clue what to do next. I had never been in a real fight, and may I remind you, this guy flew through a windshield, over fire, and landed without a scratch. Think he knows how to take a hit? Yes. I had to go to the ER one time because I got a splinter in my thumb. Now before you judge, I would like to say, it was a big splinter.

Cade spoke first. I cheered on the inside, twice in one night I had won my stare-downs. “Well, well, if it isn’t one of the nuggets looking to join. Something you would like to say to me, Nugget?”

I mumbled out something that sounded like, “Leave her alone,” through very dry lips.

An amused sneer spread across his pale, thin face. “Make me,” was his challenge.

I was a statue. I had no hope of him walking away, but I had no fear of him kicking my ass either. I felt absolutely nothing. The entire world morphed into a hollow shell. If you strained to listen, you could have heard the ocean. That was until he turned with a backhand that landed across Meg’s face and sent her falling into a lamppost.

So that volcano from earlier? It was still there, and it turned the vacuum of nothing that surrounded me into pure fire. I ran the distance between us, and with my best one-two I landed a right-left to each cheek. He didn’t budge. I fell to my knees when the heat my mind was manufacturing around me got sucked in through my fingers. The sensation ran up the length of my arms and then changed. I missed the warmth of the anger as sharp icicles of paralysis stabbed me all the way up into my shoulders. Punching people always looked so much easier on TV. I didn’t realize it hurt that bad.

The few glances I could catch of Cade’s face when not gawking at my own broken hands was unnerving. I couldn’t move my fingers or raise my arms. It felt as if my bones had been turned into sticks and then put into a wood chipper. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t move. My body was going into shock. But that physical shock was nothing compared to the mental shock I felt as Meg joined Cade in looking over me, she now wearing her own maniacal smile.