DRIVER MACH 1 Read online

  DRIVER MACH 1

  ÆGEON DAVIS

  ÆGEON PRESS 2019

  For the rush.

  Contents

  1. Wall of Death

  2. Chicago

  3. The Car

  4. The Twin

  5. Planet Cauldron

  6. The Garage Pits

  7. The Visor

  8. Time Trial

  9. Tag Team The Captain

  10. The Pit Lane

  11. The Great Nurdle Reef

  12. A Present From The Past

  13. The Volcano of Virtue

  14. Mach 3000 Club

  15. A Gift

  16. Proxima’d

  17. Curelean Chasms

  18. Freedom

  Notes

  About the Author

  1

  Wall of Death

  My name is Lorean Michaels. I’m a stunt driver for the movies.

  A pounding heartbeat thudded in my throat. I gripped the wheel, watching the Director just off to the side. He held his hand high and we waited for the crew to take their places. Twisting my gloves, I could feel their leathery squeeze cut the tension in the air with a crinkling sound.

  “ACTION!” the Director fired out.

  I hit the accelerator and let the car’s muscle—that was, in fact, a V-8 engine under the hood of a standard grey Chevy Impala—rip and roar to life. The back end fishtailed and swayed as the positraction differential kicked in and sensed which wheel had the greatest grip to the street. I felt the G forces anchor me like I was in a centrifuge.

  “We ride together, we die together,” I said in my best Bad Boys II impression.

  The scene was simple. Barrel down the abandoned post-apocalyptic highway road and position my right passenger wheel over the 'car flipper,’ which was a device comprised of a steel plate attached to a lever that would rocket 2500 psi of force into a hydraulic ram cylinder.

  Depending on how I positioned the car over the hydraulic ram, it would flip my car twenty feet into the air. My goal was to get the right passenger wheel atop it, and then the stunt team would fire away to push up onto the frame of the vehicle.

  The car flipper was moments away. I peered into the side-view mirror, making sure the coast was clear. My eyes appeared stern, exposed only through the visor of a helmet. I was ready to take the hit. Soon I would be tossed high into the air and onto the topside.

  THUMP!

  The excitement waned. I looked down at the teensy speed bump under the small truck I was driving. Okay, so I wasn’t some big Hollywood stunt driver, but I had wanted to be. And like all things in my life, I‘d somehow derailed what I set out to do with my life and picked up a mundane job: a truck driver in Thailand.

  On my venturing out to California, I’d hung with an eclectic bunch of friends, waiting tables and working at minor jobs while trying to break into the movie industry. But when the opportunity to travel to Thailand to work a ‘stunt driving’ gig presented itself, I couldn’t resist.

  Sure, I might have not told my father what I was doing, but I saw it as a short detour to the bigger picture. I would learn some stunt skills, then return to Hollywood, qualified to take on the biggest of movie shows. But like anywhere, I just needed to be given the chance to succeed.

  I set the truck into gear, making sure I didn’t lose the trailer I hauled behind me that was full of tourist trinkets and teeny replicas of the Wall of Death. Against the Wall, the stuntmen had lined up the modest motor bikes along with a small stunt car.

  The large motordrome was a circular wooden track thirty feet in diameter with forty-five-degree banking corners, acrylic load-bearing columns, and seating for five thousand. Made of nailed-together rickety boards, the track was like driving on the inside of a lousily put together wooden barrel. Below, another rider would drive on a small motorcycle, keeping his equal distance from the car and the ground.

  This was the Wall of Death.

  Above, a drunken crowd of traveling tourists and Thai locals would cheer from a ramshackle stage as the team kept up their momentum. Hazy exhaust would sputter from the ill-kept cars and waft into the viewer’s face, ignoring the toxic fumes of the seldom-held event. This was what I sought-after: high octane, thrilling speed, and a roaring fandom.

  The Wall of Death was the latest attempt to bring back a daring stunt from the early nineteen hundreds. Management’s goal was to invigorate the sales of the local Chang Mai Massage Circus; it was the place for tourists to witness death-defying stunts and exotic animal tricks. You could get a small Thai woman walking on your back while laying stomach-side to watch the show.

  I pulled up my rig to the gate lit by an overhead tungsten blaze. Today was different. A hefty man stood alone smoking from a hand-rolled cigarette.

  For six months I had driven this piece-of-shit truck up and down the winding roads of the back country for him. Most of the friends I had traveled here with had already lost interest and returned home or gone to other countries. But I have been working on cars for my associates for weeks, and today was the day I would finally decide to ask the owners if I could take a chance on the Wall of Death.

  The hefty man was a supervisor and despite having an English name, everyone around the circus called him ‘Gau’ for short. He was an asshole and one enema away from losing his shit. Ever since I had started here he’d had a sore eye for my presence and wasn’t afraid to let me know. I glanced around for his partner Tep. Tep was the only person on the team that had the decency to treat me like a human being.

  “Aye, what you looking around for, boy?” Gua asked me. His raspy voice followed the lingering smoke that trailed from his teeth, which were black due to years of smoking.

  “Hey, Gau,” I said, trying to keep a positive tone despite the dislike I had for the man. “Have you seen Tep?”

  “Why you look for him?” Gau asked, taking another drag from the soggy cigarette.

  “I wanted to see about my training on the Wall this week.”

  Gua erupted in laughter, then started choking on the puff of smoke he inhaled. I cringed at the sight of tobacco trapped in his teeth from the splintered end of the cancer stick.

  I was tired of his shit and ready to give him more than my ‘two cents.’ More than anything, I wanted to tell him that experience was the best teacher, and that was what I needed, but his demeanor just aggravated me more.

  I pursed my lips and narrowed my brows. “What’s so funny?”

  “I just heard from Bo that you done with the truck driving. They have you scheduled on the Poo Poo Paper booth.”

  The Poo Poo Paper booth was as bad as sounded. It was a booth on the outside of the circus where the attendant would gather dung from the adjacent Elephant Show. From there, the custodian would process the feces for its bamboo content. Then, one could make paper from the fibrous leftovers and sell it to the naïve tourists.

  It was a crap job. Literally.

  “Bullshit,” I barked.

  “No… Elephant shit,” Gau fired back with a guffaw.

  Anger swelled inside me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My friends were right for leaving this hellhole. They’d warned me the owners would fuck me over, but I held onto the dream, displaying hard work met with a persistence to succeed.

  Gua stepped back, stomped out his cigarette, and waved me though the gate. I eased the wagon past him, trying to disregard his snickering as I drove away. After I pulled up to my usual parking spot, I waited for the locals to unload the truck and take away the hoard of trinkets in thin boxy crates. Leaning against the rig, I reflected on Gua’s words.

  There’s no way I’m going to work the Poo Poo Paper booth, I thought.

  A local walk past me and chuckled. I knew the small man from my past daily rounds. He g
rabbed a crate from the back of the truck. I squeezed my eyebrows together and burned with fury.

  “What the hell is so funny?” I said.

  “You make poo poo paper with me,” he said in a thick Thai accent.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I pushed myself off the truck and narrowed my eyes. Full-on tunnel vision hit me with only one object in my field of vision: the small stunt car parked near the bikes. Tired of the bullshit, I would show them once and for all the able driver I was.

  The car’s door was windowless and didn’t open. In all actuality, it was welded shut, preventing one from falling out during the death-defying feat. I pulled myself up and slipped my stocky frame into the driver's seat. What sounded like short yells from far away turned out to be just that. The panic ensued.

  I pushed in the clutch and the brake and started the engine. The vehicle roared to life.

  Just as nearby locals ran to intercept me, I slammed the car into reverse and released the clutch, throttling the engine with gas to send me screeching backward. The car whipped around, and then I pummeled the transmission into first gear.

  The motor rumbled to life. I balanced the clutch and gas evenly. The Wall of Death was just ten feet away when I grabbed the emergency brake and pulled as hard as I could. Cinching the steering wheel around, I swung the back end around, coasting me into the entrance.

  There was no one inside, as the stunt was in between sets. I hit the accelerator and picked up my speed. Around the track I went until the speedometer read thirty miles an hour. In passing, I had swamped Tep with questions about the stunt. He always said ‘Thirty makes you a Birdie’.

  The right passenger wheel struck the lip and began thudding in a consistent pattern as it passed over each board. This allowed the cars to start the climb and keep up the speed. For a second I caught the glimpse of a gathering crowd above, and my heart soared with joy.

  There was nothing left but to prove myself. I yanked the steering wheel right, and the car climbed up on the wall. Without lifting my foot from the accelerator, I coursed around the drum-like side. With every revolution I made, I rose up the wall, and then saw a small motorcycle enter the arena.

  It was Tep. And for a moment, what I thought was rage blanketing his face turned out to be a gunning smile. I waved at him with the same expression, showing him I could perform this stunt with aplomb. He knew I had years of experience on the go-kart track at my father’s house. Fixing cars and driving them was my forte. They just need to give me the chance.

  Tep met my speed like a pro and climbed his way just under me. The momentum was dizzying.

  “Lorean! Keep your speed up,”a voice called out into my helmet’s earpiece. Tep’s Thai accent was thick, but clear to understand. The car I handled clung to a vertical surface by sheer friction and centrifugal force. I maneuvered the boxy stunt car with a quick tug of the steering wheel and climbed even higher up the wall.

  “I got it, Tep. I got it,” I said as G forces dug me even further into my bucket seat. “You just stay under me and keep your distance.”

  Performing the risky stunt must have been quite the sight. The unsteady slats sounded off in a repeated pattern like shots from an automatic weapon. And with each pass around the annular track it seemed like I was stationary, watching the incomplete. The world tumble around me.

  Acclamation from the feverish spectators reverberated into the canister of a track and whipped my vehicle higher, closer and closer to them. I turned my head to my left, looking back down to see Tep watching me and with a high octane grin. I knew I was overstepping my boundaries, but this was what the crowd paid for.

  They wanted a show.

  Thailand was the go-to place for these kinds of motordrome racing tracks and stunts. Prohibited in the U.S. in the previous century, it was a sport that reached this culture with delight. And with the lax regulations on safety, Thailand was the perfect breeding ground for the infamous stunt to flourish.

  I pulled higher, watching the red-and-white-striped guard markers whip by the edge of the car. The pattern they created from the motion was almost epilepsy-inducing, repeating in a pulsating fashion. My driver-side mirror scraped along the markers and snapped off. The crowd ooh’d and ahh’d at the danger—for the show I gave them.

  “Damn it, Lorean!” Tep yelled into his helmet’s mic. “You will get yourself killed.”

  “They don’t call it the Wall of Death for nothing, Tep,” I said with a chuckle.

  I couldn’t quite place the words in the correct order to grasp their meaning. In that moment I was lost to the deluge. The-dozen-Thai-women-scantily clad in spaghetti strap bathing suits. All of them were holding signs that read my name. It was the action, the fame, and the danger that exhilarated me. And you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. I wanted the crowd to remember me—remember my stunts. The town needed a better dog and pony show, and I would give it to them.

  My helmet rang out another sound, but this time it wasn’t the high-strung voice of Tep. Instead, it was the familiar ring of a telephone. I looked down in between the console of my two seats to see my phone lit up with an incoming call. I peeled my eyes back to the track and concentrated on the moment.

  The incomplete roof above swirled in my vision. An extruded section connected from one side of the stadium to the other part formed a makeshift bridge. Excitement came over me just thinking of the possibility of completing a loop de loop on it. It would be the cherry on top to the already sought-after known as the Wall of Death.

  My phone rang again.

  The sudden sound threw me off my groove. I ignored the call, but then the front of the automobile hit the outer lip of the track. Thunderous applause roared in the stadium and I couldn’t help but look at Tep. His face was pale as a ghost, wide eyed and stricken with panic. Wait till they get a load of what I do next.

  I dove the car down the side toward Tep, who reacted and pulled away closer to the ground to give me space. That allowed just enough cornering room for me to rip back up the wall, climb up the acrylic guard rail, and head onto the ceiling. Speed would a factor here, and I just hoped this jury-rigged box car that Tep had helped build was fast enough to keep me on the roof.

  “What are you doing?” Tep yelled out, but then saw what was going for. “You idiot! Don’t even try for the roof. That’s no Indy car!”

  My tires screeched. The forces were tremendous on my body. I climbed up, just missing my fender getting clipped by a hanging light. At full throttle, the praising crowd recollected in my soul. I felt the centrifugal force pull me to the roof—defying all gravity. The crowd would call me something else from now on.

  “Success,” I murmured to myself.

  The roof strained in noise, almost buckling out from the car’s downforce pushing onto it. The exhilaration shot through my body, which was weightless at the moment. But then everything began to float upward. My arms were light. My phone rose in the air. The car pulled away from the ceiling. My insides rose from the fall and sank at the same time from the realization. I was falling down. I was again, making my descent toward the grounded Earth that wanted to hold me so close to it.

  BOOM!

  I cracked open my eyes only a slight bit, letting in the blinding light. The scintillating feeling of being alive permeated my soul, and I took a deep breath. The air smelled of antiseptic and sterilized metal. I discerned an ominous beeping sound and a muffled conversation just outside my room.

  I was glad I survived.

  Moving past those dreary thoughts and onto the present, I tried to replay the series of events that had occurred before I got here. There was the Wall of Death and then Tep riding after me. Then, there was my crazy move of becoming the top billing spectacle by driving on the roof and falling to my demise. Great one, I thought.

  I rose my head up to see that the modest room was a curtained-off section to a much larger facility. I picked up the voices from afar, and they grew louder as they approached my makeshift cubicle. Tep’s to
ne was the only one I could perceive until they were right outside the curtain. And then I discovered another familiar voice, but this one was raspy, yet bellowing, and louder than Tep’s. Which led me to believe it was Tep’s asshole brother, business partner, and manager of the Chang Mai Massage Circus, Bo Yilmaz.

  Bo Yilmaz was a tyrant. Entrusted with running their family firm since the passing of their father, Bo and Tep were the last ones to take the reins of the infamous traveling circus. I had always respected both Bo and Tep, save for the way Bo treated Tep. They were brothers, and they didn’t hold back their wicked tongues when they argued. Like they were doing now. Outside of my hospital curtain.

  “Then you fucking tell him,” Bo whispered, trying to restrain his anger.

  The white curtain swished back, and it drew more ambient light in. I saw three figures, all short in stature. The center person stepped forward, which highlighted her sleek features and dark skin in the light. She wore a silvery-white coat that seemed to cling to her body in ways that stressed her walk. The stethoscope around her neck dropped between two full, gorgeous breasts. It further reinforced the sexy-doctor stereotype I had seen so many times on T.V. Brilliant white stalkings lined her legs and ran up to a tight miniskirt.

  Bo and Tep were behind her and stepped into the light. Tep was in his usual crimson tight khakis, white v neck t-shirt, and a black leather jacket. It was like he was trying to imitate the ‘coolness’ of nineteen-sixties greaser. I mean, he was a greaser, but his style of clothing were super dated. All of Thailand felt that way sometimes. The result was a hodgepodge of assorted styles that ascended through the decades of showed all their colors here.