Saviors 101

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Jeremy sandwiched himself into the back seat of Virgil’s car. The rear seat was small, even by modern standards, but he folded himself in willingly enough. Only twenty-nine of these machines had ever been made and he’d never expected to see one, much less ride in one that looked cherry-off-the-line.

Pontiac.

Trans Am.

1970.

White with a foot-wide blue racing stripe that started at the eagle rampant on the hood and trailed back to disappear over the rear airfoil.

4-speed stick with the RAM IV engine.

370 hp.

God!

It made him want to s**t just sitting in it. He’d searched around on the Internet and decided that if he were, like, a completely different person than he really was, this is the car that he’d drive.

The tach went up to eight thousand RPM which he wasn’t going to buy on a big-block V8, but there was a fluttering in his stomach that hoped Virgil would show him just how close they could get to the “160” on the speedometer.

Cassandra slid into the passenger seat with a litheness belying her age and a frantic scrabble for the lap belt that bespoke experience.

She slid her seat forward a little which actually removed his knees from his chest, allowing him just enough room to put on his own seatbelt, lap belt only in back. Virgil’s bucket seat was all the way back as if the poet was bigger and taller than most men. Which he wasn’t. But he did have long legs which gave the impression of height and gave him a fifty-fifty chance of reaching the gas and clutch from the seat’s position.

Based on what he could see of Cassandra’s white knuckles on the door handle, he must not worry much about reaching the brake.

Virgil finished buffing off the bird poop that had been left atop the chromed air scoop where it punched through the hood. He’d searched the skies looking for the guilty party, but there wasn’t a feathered denizen to be seen. Smart creatures. Jeremy wondered what a poet who’d been dead for two thousand years could do if he was really pissed. Zap ‘em outta the sky with an unrhymed couplet?

“Ready, Kid?” Virgil didn’t wait for an answer as he climbed in and kicked the engine to life with a deafening roar. He revved it right up to five thousand on the tach and the car shook to life and pounded against the base of Jeremy’s spine through the thin padding of the low rear buckets.

The poet punched in an eight-track tape and Norman Greenbaum blasted out the gnarly guitar cavalcade opening to Spirit in the Sky that made speech not only impossible, but also not advisable. You didn’t want to open your mouth or else you’d risk collapsing a lung when the air was driven out of your chest.

When I die— Jeremy didn’t like that lyric at all. He hadn’t thought about the poet killing him.

Virgil didn’t use the seatbelt, or apparently the rearview mirror, as he roared backwards out of the driveway onto the street, slewing the car hard to the left.

Jeremy hadn’t been braced, and slammed his head sharply on the window. Now he could appreciate Cassandra’s death grip on the upholstery. He grabbed the seat edge as well as he could and shouted he was ready, not that anyone was listening.

Virgil punched the machine and it leapt.

Jeremy counted barely fourteen seconds before the speedometer cracked a hundred with no sign of slowing down. Any old ladies walking their dogs incautiously through a crosswalk wouldn’t stand a chance. He caught air twice before the stoplight at Stone Way.

Cassandra’s scream matched his own shout as they slid sideways through four lanes of busy traffic to claw back up the hill toward Aurora.

As they slewed around and cut ahead of the traffic waiting to get on Southbound Aurora Avenue, they picked up a cop.

Virgil grinned at Jeremy in the mirror.

Cassandra put her head down. If the engine or the music were quieter, he expected he’d be able to hear her whimper. But not even the siren could outperform the sonic blast.

They rocketed across the Aurora bridge so fast, it was quite possible they never touched it. The big exhaust pipes roared with thunder as Virgil rammed the accelerator to the firewall. Weaving past the residential area of lower Queen Anne, they flew toward the city at 120 mph, the spire of the Space Needle growing in perspective surprisingly rapidly. A quick glance behind revealed the cop had been dusted.

A King 5 News chopper showed up just as they headed into the straightaway leading into the tunnel under Denny Way. They had an unfair advantage on the police, their landing pad was on the studio roof right off Denny.

They hit the tunnel at 145.

The tunnel had a sharp twist right then left that no one going over sixty had survived unscathed.

At 145 they were going to die.

Some lyric telling him to set him up with that spirit in the sky didn’t bode well at all.

Virgil hit 150 and howled along with the guitar solo.

Cassandra swore a blue streak at him.

Jeremy closed his eyes and screamed—his voice lost under the declaration that he and Jesus were gonna be such buddies. Oh man.