It was just like these two had said, the zombies were all grayscale, black and white. There was no color to them at all. They were three-dimensional, solid, and a full part of the world (as much as anything could be a full part of what was apparently a mental construct), but completely gray. I had no idea what that meant at the heart of everything, but there it was. They were grayscale while we (and the rest of the world around us) were color. I’d think about that later. For now--
“Kid, step on it!” Bloodfall cut in. “Whatever those fucks are doing, they aren’t real like we are! They’re just constructs, and they’re not getting out of the way. So if you wanna save your frie--”
It was her turn to be cut off, words turning into a grunt and then a sharp curse as I floored the accelerator and sent the car flying… backwards once more, away from the crowd of zombies. My hand had shifted us back into reverse quickly just before I shoved my foot down. The speed and direction surprised both of my passengers. It was really their fault for not wearing seatbelts.
“What the fuck are you doing!?” Bloodfall shouted as I whipped the wheel around to send the car swerving around one of the smaller trash piles. “I told you, they aren’t real, you don’t have to avoid them! If you let all your goddamn friends die because you’re too squeamish to do what--”
“Maybe they’re not alive and conscious,” I grunted out, twisting the wheel to send the car into a one hundred and eighty degree spin even as the zombies gave chase and started to run right up to what was now the passenger side of the vehicle, “but they sure look solid to me.” Once more, I shifted into drive and sent the car barreling forward, drifting sideways a bit to avoid a low trash pile before taking a very hard right, kicking up dirt and garbage as the car groaned in desperate protest.
But it held together. It was close, but it held. And just like that, we were pointed back at the gate, this time on the far side of a larger trash pile as I floored it again. The zombies that had chased us when I reversed were caught off guard, the garbage and distance stopping them from getting back to block the gate in time, before we went sailing right through and out to the street beyond.
“This place works on basic real world physics, right!?” I called toward the other two while twisting the wheel once more to get onto the road proper. “So, even if those zombies aren’t real people and all that, they’re still physically here! Running over a bunch of actual, physical bodies like that doesn’t work like the movies, they’ll break the car, slow it down, get tangled up in it. We wouldn’t have made it more than twenty feet trying to drive through that whole crowd! Had to go around!”
There was a momentary pause as the two looked over the seats at each other, holding their gazes like that as I sent the car down another street before both snapped, “You’re not twelve!”
Oh great, that’s how I gave up part of my identity this time? Oh well, no time to think about that. I chose to ignore their accusation, focusing on the road ahead. “Just tell me where to go next!”
“Take a left there!” Mingle put in, leaning forward a bit between the seats to point at the next intersection ahead of us. “Left turn, then an immediate right to cut through an alley. It’s narrow, but trust me, we’ll fit!” She turned her head to look up through the windshield at the sky, an audible grimace in her voice that I really didn’t like, not one bit. “And you better step on it.”
“Yeah,” Bloodfall agreed immediately, hand moving to grab my shoulder and squeeze tightly, “no more driving like a pussy! Get the damn lead out, see what this piece of shit can actually do!”
I took the left, then the immediate right. And she wasn’t wrong, it really was immediate. I had to crank the wheel hard and pump the brakes, sending the car into a dramatic, painfully loud sideways skid before getting enough control to orient it properly. This was harder to do without my extra sense power chipping in, but I managed to eyeball it. Then we were flying down that narrow alley. The walls were close enough to almost scrape the doors of the car, but as she had promised, it was just barely wide enough for us to make it through to the far side. A slight incline at the end, combined with our speed, meant we caught a good bit of air on the way out.
The car landed hard enough to jolt all of us around, and I winced at the damage it was probably doing to the undercarriage. But, on the other hand, the car wasn't real. None of this was real. It did seem to obey basic physics and such, at least so far. But maybe it was just fake enough to let this thing hold together through damage that should logically have made it collapse. One thing was for sure, I was going to see just how far I could push that before this drive was over.
I didn't understand this mindscape stuff that well. I sure as hell didn't totally know what was going to happen once I got into that building and found my way to the top floor. I didn't have a clue how getting there would help me stop Casura, let alone escape this place and get back into the real world. I didn’t really know any of that. What I did know was driving. That, I could do, powers or no powers. And nothing was going to get in my way. Not when getting to that building was my only chance at saving my friends. I didn’t care if there were a million zombies in the way.
That, of course, was the moment I managed to steady the car and looked up to see what was waiting in front of us. Immediately, I found myself muttering a grim, “Well, you didn't have to take me so literally.” Because yes, it sure as hell looked like there were a million grayscale zombies blocking the street ahead of us. They were crammed in there so tightly they could barely move. Worse, from that quick glance, the crowd appeared to go all the way to the end of that street. Trying to drive through that many bodies would have been impossible, even if I had my paint to help. And boy, oh boy, did I wish that I had my paint to help with any of this. I missed it so much right then.
“I thought you said these zombies are based on people Casura absorbs blood from!” I snapped at the other two despite myself, that intense anxiety overruling any real common sense I might’ve had left by that point. “She’s killed a lot, but I don’t think her count is quite this high! And for that matter, didn’t you say they follow orders? Can’t you tell them to get out of the way?”
“You might be surprised,” Bloodfall informed me in a low voice that made me wonder just how she, the Fell who started all this, felt about all those murders now. “But sure, there's a bunch of duplicates. It's like a video game, they just copy and paste the same npc over and over again.”
“And they do listen, but not when she’s directing them from above,” Mingle put in. “Those guys only do what we tell them to when they aren’t on a mission from her. The control room trumps everything else. And right now, they’re clearly here to stop us from getting any closer. She must think you can do something too!”
Bloodfall agreed. “Exactly, go the other way to get around those fucks already! We're burning daylight!”
My head shook, a very slight grimace coming behind the helmet and mask. “We’re not going around. They’ll just block that too.” My gaze was centered on the mass of black and white zombies in our way, before I lifted it slightly to look in the rearview. Of course, there was already a crowd there too. With more seeming to appear by the second. We wouldn’t be going that way.
“Then where the hell are y--ohhhh fuck!” That was Bloodfall again, hurriedly (and finally) moving to slam her seatbelt into place as I hit the gas and twisted the wheel once more to send the old car right at one of the nearby office buildings. Rather, at the glass doors of that building. Either we’d break right through them and make it inside, or this would turn out to be a very short trip.
Fortunately, it was the former. The car slammed right into those double doors with enough force to knock them off entirely, the wince-inducing scream of protesting, twisting metal filling our ears. One of them flew off to the side, while the other got caught up on something on the bottom of the car long enough to send up a spray of sparks (along with more screaming metal noises) before finally falling away. Between that and the shower of glass shards that went absolutely everywhere with that impact, our arrival in that building was a loud and not at all subtle one.
Before any of the others, zombie or passenger, could recover from that, I was already flooring the gas once more to send the car careening through the front lobby of that place. There was some sort of waiting room full of padded folding chairs and small tables loaded down with old magazines, but none of that survived the next few seconds. The car demolished all of it, driving right through the chairs, coffee tables, sending glass, splinters of wood, and dozens of torn magazine pages flying in every direction while I swerved left, then right to avoid a couple pillars.
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It was a good thing none of this was actually real, because I would've hated to think of how much it would cost to replace all this. Especially when you added the damage we were doing to the floor, which absolutely wasn't made to put up with a full-size sedan driving (and skidding) over it at about seventy miles an hour. That probably would’ve turned into a pretty big bill.
There wasn’t a window, or any other glass, ahead of us. It was just a blank, solid wall. So, just before we would’ve slammed into that, I cranked the wheel and braked a bit to send the car into a violent sliding turn, smoke rising from the tires before we just barely made it around that corner. There was a set of double doors there, so I drove right through them to reach a hallway on the other side that was, if anything, even more narrow than the alley back outside had been.
“Fuck’s sake, what good is driving in here gonna do if we get the car wedged up against the damn walls!?” Bloodfall demanded, looking like she was about two seconds away from just yanking me out of the seat and taking over. Which I really would’ve liked to see her try right about then. It would’ve given me an excuse to punch something other than the steering wheel.
“I know what I’m doing!” I insisted, despite the fact that I was only about forty-six percent sure on that point. If I was wrong, we’d find out pretty soon. My hands tightened on the wheel, and I had yet another reason to be glad for my helmet hiding the grimace that came when I saw just how tight the confines really were. Please, please, stay wide enough, you can do it, walls, please…
Aaand there! The car hit another set of double doors, these ones wooden. We slammed through them, the sheer speed the car was traveling at enough to utterly demolish them, sending a ton of splinters flying all over as we ended up in some sort of loading dock area full of cardboard boxes and several dumpsters. We were skidding across the cement floor, sending up smoke from protesting tires as I cranked the wheel to aim for the exit out into the parking lot. The good news on that point was that the rolling doors were open. The bad news was that there was already a truck backed up in that space, ready to be unloaded. But there was enough room between the edge of that door and the side of the truck for the car to squeeze through, right?
“There’s not enough room, there’s not enough room, there’s not enough room!” That was Mingle, her hand gripping the back of my seat tightly as she repeated those words louder.
Ignoring that, I pressed the gas a little harder. The engine roared-- at least as much as it could, and we leapt across the loading dock floor, crossing the distance almost instantly. The uhh, side mirrors didn’t exactly survive the process, but they were barely necessary for what we were doing anyway. The main point was that the car totally mostly fit through that space, so all the screaming from my passengers was silly. Admittedly, we did come slamming down a bit roughly onto the asphalt, and the car clearly didn’t enjoy the impact. But still, we were totally fine. It kept moving and everything. The engine barely even changed pitch, and I was willing to bet the loud scraping sound as we raced out over the sidewalk and into the street wasn’t all that important.
I didn’t bother turning left or right out on the street beyond. There were already more of the black and white zombies lining both directions, so I drove almost directly straight across, aiming for the parking garage on the corner of the block. There was one of those parking gate bars in the way, but it didn’t stand a chance. We smashed through the thing, racing right into the garage beyond. All I needed was a quick glance at the signs on the wall showing where the way up was, and just like that we were headed that way, scraping, squealing undercarriage and all.
“Tell me he’s not doing what I think he’s doing,” Mingle protested from the backseat as I kept taking the car higher and higher in that parking garage. “I really don’t want him to be doing that.” She leaned a bit closer, hand squeezing my shoulder tightly, “I know I said the damage we take isn’t actually permanent, but it still hurts! And it can still put us out of commission for awhile!”
“Hey, blame her,” I replied with a nod to the woman next to me. “She’s the one who said to stop driving like a pussy! Besides, you said just getting into the building will affect Casura on the outside, right? Me being in that place should make her at least… hesitate a little?” Even as I said that, I was already cranking the wheel to get the car turned around to get up to the top level.
“This is gonna be awesome,” Bloodfall murmured, showing her teeth as she gave a tight grin. “If this turns out to be how we die for good in here, I just want you to know that it’s totally worth it.”
There was a lot I wanted to say about the fact that someone as murderous and vile as her was so approving of my plan (such that it could be called one), but now wasn’t the time to even think about that, let alone talk about it. I pushed the feelings aside and focused on driving. By that point, we’d reached the roof of the parking garage, where there were only a few cars scattered around. Not for the first time, I wondered what this city was and what actually determined where various buildings or vehicles were. Was it random? Did their combined brains just generate a city out of vague memories or something? It could’ve been a real place, taken from a real day (maybe the day they’d been fused?), or just totally made up, like a fake city from some game.
And yes, my brain was using the excuse to focus on something that trivial and pointless instead of what was going on in the real world with all my friends right then, how ever did you guess?
Of course, thinking about how I was using that as a distraction meant I reflexively glanced out the window to see the sky. Which showed me that… yeah, we were running out of time. Slow as it was, it wasn’t stopped completely. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened out there, but Dani was on the ground between Mars Bar and Bumbershoot, both of whom looked injured. She was holding one hand out like she was holding that sawed-off shotgun, but the weapon itself was in midair off to the side where it had clearly just been knocked out of the way. Casura was looming right over her.
Meanwhile, everyone else was scattered around that small area, clearly in bad shape. From the moment Casura had leapt to her feet after I knocked her down, it couldn’t have been more than a handful of seconds. But she had already put everyone on the ground and was clearly ready to start going for kills now. And she wouldn’t stop killing until everyone I cared about was dead.
“That’s the place, right!?” I shouted, tearing my gaze away from the sky as I pointed ahead. Yes, Casura’s hand was still moving toward Dani. No, I couldn’t stop her from here. I had one chance to stop her, and that was by getting into that fucking office building, and hoping they were right.
There was no answer to my question. But before I could follow-up, motion from outside and above caught my attention. When my eyes reflexively glanced that way, I saw the view in the real world. Casura had flung Dani to the side with one arm bent the wrong way. The Cuddles had fused into their Commander mode, but had been frozen in a block of solid ice. Twinkletoes, who had been invisible, was very visible now, lying on the ground with… with holes in his side. Bleeding holes. Murphy and Roald were both down. Hurt, very hurt and down. Sierra was attempting to use her power to heal Broadway, who looked like she’d taken one of the worst hits of all. Nor was Eits in much better shape, from the way he was laying there like a doll that had been tossed down the stairs. And Paige? Paige had some sort of metal spike sticking out of her leg, but she was ignoring it in favor of clinging to Casura’s shoulder with one hand while repeatedly slamming her other fist into the side of the woman’s head and screaming at her.
It was bad, it was bad, it was bad, it was really fucking bad! And all that had happened in just the past few seconds! Which meant-- “Why is time going so fast out there!?” I demanded, terror filling me even more than it already had. “It’s barely slowed down at all! What the hell is going--”
At that point, my eyes shifted over from looking out the window to see the other two. They were slumped over in their seats. If they were conscious at all, it really wasn’t by much. Something… something had clearly happened to them just now. Wait, okay, they’d said something about how they were slowing things down as much as they could. If they were so out of it now… that was why things were going faster out there. And-- and-- fuck, fuck! I couldn’t take the time to wake them up! I didn’t even know if that would work! I just-- I just had to cross my fingers and do this.
That was the building ahead, the tallest one. It had to be. This parking garage roof was about a third as high as that place, and the building itself was across the street. Judging by the speed I could get this sedan up to, the slight incline at that end of the roof, the distance it had to travel…
Up in the sky, Paige screamed, and nothing else mattered. My foot hit the accelerator as I grabbed the wheel tightly in both hands. In the background, I could hear those two muttering something about this being too much, but I didn’t have time to listen. Not when the view up in the sky was already showing Casura fling Paige off of her shoulders to the ground, hand gradually rising even as the other girl fell. It was still in ‘slow motion,’ but not nearly as slow as it should’ve been. This was closer to a sports instant replay.
Muttering a prayer, I continued to push the accelerator all the way to the floor. The poor, tortured sedan picked up speed, racing to the edge of the parking garage roof. We hit the incline, slammed through the flimsy barrier there, and sailed out into midair over the street far below. Above me, in the sky view, Paige had landed on her back, with Casura’s hand pointed at her. A hand that was glowing white-hot, the flames already starting to build up to engulf her.
The car dropped rapidly as it flew, before crashing violently through the second story windows of the building we were aiming for. We hit something, and went tumbling end over end, the car disintegrating around me while I was flung back and forth, rebounding off every surface of that vehicle. And the whole time, I just kept screaming, “STOP, STOP! DON’T HURT THEM! STOP IT! DON’T KILL THEM! DON’T HURT THEM! YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO HURT THEM!”
Did it work? Was just being in this building enough for me to exert that sort of control? I had no idea. Because in the midst of the car collapsing and spinning, I was flung free of it, through the shattered windshield. I caught a glimpse of a pillar coming up fast, before slamming visor-first into it.
Then… everything went dark.
Joke Tags: Are We Absolutely Sure It Was Exhaustion And The Stress Of Maintaining The Slow Motion That Knocked Those Two Out? Cuz I Feel Like They Might’ve Just Fainted From Paintball’s Driving
