Engine

By Sarah Stone and Sean-Michael Argo

With the right man behind the wheel, the car will always come for a fight. On the dusty highways of the near future, smuggler Mitchell Sylvia and his fiancee have their car destroyed and are brutally murdered by members of a violent road gang. Mitchell rises from the grave after making a gruesome bargain with Coyote, and his ghost returns along with his car as a supernatural avenger. Tracking down the thugs responsible and savagely murdering them, Mitchell eventually draws more gangs into an escalating confrontation to complete his macabre mission and his obligation to a desert thirsty for blood. This is a story about a car, its driver, and the earth beneath them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean-Michael Argo
• Release date: Sep 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201810962

Book preview

YESTERDAY: 2025

Mitchell tapped the pedal harder, his hands twitchy on the wheel, eyes never straying from the rearview mirror for a second longer than necessary. It was supposed to be Jessica’s responsibility, really. She did a good job of it, but she always got distracted with the slight giddiness that infected both of them after a successful job. Almost successful, he corrected himself; they weren’t back yet. Anything could happen. And anything would. He glanced to his right, watching as she busied herself with going through the take from their latest run. A cardboard box, patched with duct-tape in several places, sat on her lap as she dug through the contents. It had always been her ritual to take inventory on the way back, and, not wanting to begrudge her the excitement, he tended to overcompensate by checking the mirror constantly. In his line of work, paranoia paid off.

What do you say, Jess, are we happy?

Her hands clapped together, and she gave him a grin, before she leaned over to peck him on the cheek. An answering smirk pulled at Mitchell’s lips, even as his eyes moved to the mirror again.

"Penicillin?’ he continued.

M-hm

Anesthetics, antiseptics?

M-hm, Jessica echoed, giving the containers a shake, before continuing to rifle through the box. The sound of her digging was loud in the quiet, even with the growl of the engine in his ears.

How about those antibiotics? We got those right? He queried. Next to the anesthetics, those were the hardest to come by. Most places had been picked over ages ago. They’d lucked out on this pick up.

M-hm!

She was louder that time, and he didn’t miss the exclamation. He was almost as good at reading Jess as she was at reading lips. He snorted in amusement and dared a glance away from the rearview mirror to smirk at her again.

Calm down, baby. Just idiot checking.

He had to keep his eyes on for just another second, knowing she’d need to fire back with something more complex than a two-syllable noise. Mitchell watched her hands move, fluid, better than his own, always somewhat clumsier attempts at sign language.

We’re not idiots, her fingers, her hands said.

I know we’re not, he answered, keeping his face angled toward her as much as he could. Alright, be my eyes, I don’t want to get popped this close to town.

Her hands moved again. Chill out.

I’ll chill out when we’re behind the wall, he answered. They’d be expecting them by now. He’d made good time in the car, but it had taken him longer to put together than box and the supplies than he would have liked, even with both of them at their quickest.  He checked the side mirrors again, just as Jessica looked up from the box for the first time since they’d climbed back into the car. Headlights, dim, but closing in. Jess gasped noisily, cooing to grab his attention as she pointed at the mirrors.

Mitchell! Her voice always took him by surprise. She only talked when she felt she had too.

Had to open my fucking mouth didn’t I? His hands tightened around the leather of the wheel, his knuckles white with nerves, though his voice was steady. Strap in, we’re going hot.

Jessica nodded, her face solemn, her teeth worrying at her lower lip as she tugged the double strap seatbelt over her head and buckled it tight. She’d said before, when they were just driving fast, wasting extra fuel like they seldom did, that it made her feel like a racecar driver. She’d been laughing when she said it.

Mitchell ran his eyes over the center console, the dashboard with its long dead lights, picking over the array of knobs and levers as he ran through tactics in his head. First things first, he thought.

Ready the bomb drop.

Jess didn’t hesitate. She knew the steps as well as he did. Her slender fingers wrapped around the lever on the console, its placement long since memorized. She knew the car inside and out, maybe even better than he did. As she pulled it, it creaked, the muscles in her slight arms standing out with the strain. Damn thing was always sticking. Her jaw was clenched, but Mitchell relaxed as he heard it slot into place, the flap near the exhaust pipe opening up in back.

Adjusting his grip on the wheel, Mitchell spared another look for the side mirror, hoping to see that their pursuer had fallen behind. It hadn’t though. Two lone headlights had multiplied to six—three cars with nothing good inside them. A friendly might have honked the horn, or hung a peace flag out the window. Didn’t even have to be white; any old thing would do. He let himself hope for second, but that was a dangerous line of thinking and he stopped quick enough with another glance at Jessica. As he paused, the headlights gained ground.

Okay babe, finger on the trigger.

Jess steeled herself as he watched, her usually warm, friendly features turning to ice as she did as he said.

Steady, he instructed. Mitchell’s eyes went back to the mirror. Not close enough yet. He eased off the gas just a bit, counting in his head. And... His eyes left the mirror as he looked at the road ahead. One, two, three. Now!

Mitchell watched her squeeze the trigger, heard click of it sticking in place. Shit. He was going have to rewire the whole thing, and that was only if they made it out of this. Jessica gave it a second go, grunting in frustration, as her eyes locked with his.

Harder, pull it harder! he barked, the words a rush, lips moving too fast, probably unintelligible even if she could hear him. The look on his face must have been easy enough to read though, because she nodded once, and wrapped both hands around the lever. The trigger gave, and the rolling thunk of the bombs dropping out almost covered up their twin sighs. Behind the car, he watched the metal cylinders roll toward their targets in the mirror, scattering wide, as deadly to tires as bear traps to an ankle. Nothing yet. Jessica looked at him hard, her hands looking like they wanted to reach for him, but not daring to break his focus, to chance a distraction that might make his hands waver on the wheel. The slightest twitch could fuck them over, and she knew it as well as he did.

I know, he said, I know, I know. I’ll fix it. When he couldn’t touch her, like this, he always found himself putting more emotion in his voice, reassurance, even though she couldn’t hear it. He’d told himself how useless it was before, but he could never turn it off. He tried to smile at her instead, but with the present circumstances, it probably looked more like a grimace. He looked at the mirror again, all of him taut as a bowstring with anticipation. C’mon, c’mon...

The headlights reached them. Drove right over, the slight rattling of their frames, one adjusting course slightly, the only sign there had been anything in the road at all. The six headlights in back kept eating up the space between, maybe even speeding up, though it was hard to tell with no landmarks to judge by.

Fuck me, fuck me, they didn’t go off. They always went off.

Blow the caltrops, he amended. No way that wouldn’t work, or help at fucking least.

Jessica didn’t hesitate, grabbing the correct lever without pause and pulling the modified e-brake into position. She looked immediately to the side mirror afterward, watching them spill out into the dirt. Mitchell did the same, watching the near on six pounds of iron spikes blow out the fender and into the path of the three oncoming threats. He’d rigged it up so that they fell in a wide arc, and did it slow enough that they weren’t all piled on top of each other. It only took one to punch through a good tire and even shit tires were hard to come by. Jess had told him once that they looked like stars scattered out across the road, the headlights and the sun bearing down on them making them shine. He’d told her that only she would be type of woman to get poetic about fucking caltrops, and she had smacked him in the arm.

She looked at the mirror, still watching, and then back at him. Her eyes were an odd shade of green. There wasn’t much green left in the world.

C’mon, he thought.

BEDLAM:

The cars were light brown, like the desert dust, all three of them done up in shoddy paint jobs. It fooled most people, gave them enough of a jump. If you squinted across the flatlands you might just mistake the shape for a distortion of the heat and head back to the shade to think it over. Which gave him and the rest of his vultures ample time to gain ground.

Cyrus shrugged his shoulders under the patched biker jacket, his bare chest sweating under the leather, and spoke clearly into the headset strapped to his head, the dark hair shaved almost down to his scalp.

Watch out for the caltrops, ladies! His right hand held the wheel, while his left, down the last two fingers, touched the rattlesnake skull pendant that dangled from his neck, for luck or something like it. The man needed some luck. Looks like Mitchell’s car.

Red’s truck pulled almost even with Cyrus, where he held the lead in his sixties Cadillac. With the truck tires jacking him up he could see the dumb redneck’s face almost level with his own. Red’s mouth was always full of chaw, so much that Cyrus could barely understand the bastard when he answered. Thank fuck, all he had to say was:

Roger that, Cyrus.

And the dumb shit wasn’t even looking at him. His eyes were on the shotgun in his passenger seat like it was pretty as a woman.  He moved his eyes to the third car. The Mustang, too nice of a car to belong to that cocky kid, too much of a risk. And it wasn’t two seconds after Cyrus thought this that the dumbass stomped on the gas, in some kind of misplaced effort to catch up to him and Red, and rolled his front tires right over the caltrops. He heard the kid cuss over the radio, saw him fishtail off the semblance of road and into the rocks and dust, rubber shredded.

Too late. Jason said, He fucking got me.

He wasn’t giving the boy a car that nice again.

MITCHELL:

He watched the Mustang, brown as the other three, the only difference being the erratic driving in comparison, swerve off to the side. One down. Down and hopefully out.

The brown cars gave them away. Only person he knew who pulled that trick with such regularity was Cyrus.

Bedlam. Has to be, nobody else could sneak up on me like that. Hold on, he told Jessica, and watched as she obligingly braced herself, hands tightening on the seat below her, the door handle to her right. Mitchell yanked on the emergency break and cut the wheel hard to the left, his favorite trick. The car pulled around, the engine protesting under the squeal of the breaks, and the slight, nervous sound that Jessica made while she thought he couldn’t hear her. Sometimes, he thought, she must have forgotten how loud a person’s voice could be.

The dustcloud roared up behind him, and his foot came down on the gas again, surging forward, into another 180, and then another, the dust so thick he couldn’t see past the windshield. That was fine with him though; he knew the way out. He let his foot press hard on