The Skids Page 6

  But here, in this flat empty space, the Ones and Twos moved at half the speed that Johnny, Albert, and Torg could hit. Johnny knew they weren’t dogging it, they were desperately trying to keep up with the pack.

  They simply couldn’t.

  “Hey,” Johnny said, pulling in beside a pink-yellow skid. The Two’s stripes quivered and her eyes were wide with fear. At least she’d learned to trail one. “You need to relax a little,” he said gently.

  “Yeah?” the Two snapped. “How relaxed are you right now?”

  “Good point,” Johnny conceded. The black shapes had closed enough for details to emerge. They each looked like a black ball of fangs. “You have to try. Suck oxygen, deep breaths. Then—and this is real important—stop thinking about your treads.”

  The Two flicked a guilty glance his way.

  “Don’t worry,” Johnny said, keeping his voice cool. “Everybody does it when they start. But you’re straining.” He tapped an eye in the direction of the pack. “Instead, concentrate on where you’re going. Use two eyes.” The Two’s upper eye came forward and focused in the same direction as her forward eye. “Good,” Johnny said. “Now get there. Hard.”

  He saw her eyes narrow. Got some fire in there. She took a breath.

  And began to pick up speed.

  “Nice,” Johnny said. “Now stay focused. The pack’s matching speeds so it’s not going flat out. Once you get there, get a little inside, hold there. I’ll catch up.”

  “Thanks,” the Two gasped. Her upper eye twitched his way. “About up there . . .”

  “Not now. I gotta help the Ones.” He winked. “Keep moving, squid.” He was rewarded with a smile as he dropped back again.

  Albert was treading beside the purple-orange One, so Johnny fell in beside the other panzer, a maroon skid with a bronze stripe. We’re going to have to name these guys, he thought with a grim grin.

  “They’re catching up, aren’t they?” the panzer whined. Two eyes looked back in terror.

  “Relax,” Johnny said. “Get one of those eyes forward, that’s where you need the depth perception.”

  “Then how will I know if they’re getting close?”

  Johnny almost laughed. “They’ll get bigger.”

  Talking him through the same advice he’d given the Two, Johnny coached some more speed out of the One. It wasn’t much, but they’d catch the pack. Eventually.

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” the One protested. Despite Johnny’s advice, his second eye kept twitching back to look at the dark shapes. “They’re going to eat us.”

  If we don’t find a way out of here, Johnny thought. Aloud, he said, “You’re still alive, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, unless I’m wrong, half-an-hour ago you got vaped. And yet here you are. Which means you’re now one of only two Level One’s to survive evaporation.” He nudged the bronze stripe. “The other one’s over there talking to Albert.”

  “I only survived because of you,” the One said, although an uncertain pride snuck into his voice.

  “I helped you pull it together, but you did the pulling.” Johnny wasn’t certain that this was completely true—who knew exactly what had happened in the black—but it felt at least partially true.

  “Stay focused on the pack,” Johnny said, projecting as much confidence as he could. “We’ll get out of this.”

  That’s when Bian swore over the com: “Oh, Crisp Betty, guys, look up!”

  Johnny swung an eye.

  Remarkably, they were still under an edge of the black scar, after gunning at speed for almost twenty minutes. The corner from which the shapes had originally dropped was far, far behind.

  From the corner above their heads, however . . . more dark shapes were beginning to fall.

  Chapter Seven

  The urge to burn the panzer was almost impossible to fight.

  Johnny had no idea how many Ones and Twos had been vaped in his lifetime. Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands—all in less than five years. Panzers and squids were the cannon-fodder of the games; they made each contest exciting and deadly, which meant ratings from the Out There.

  It also meant getting left behind to die.

  “Sport, you have got to speed up,” Johnny said evenly, eyeing the dark shapes falling from above. They came in on a direct line, making them brutal to read for distance.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder. Torg, Bian, what’s going on up there?”

  “I managed to convey to some the benefits of coming home,” Torg drawled, “but others have decided to follow their own counsel. Alva told me to vape myself.”

  “Figures.” Alva was a cocky little Five who treated the skids above him as summits to be climbed. Usually, Johnny admired that. Once, he’d been the same—but that was back in the Skidsphere.

  “Alva,” Johnny barked into the com, “where do you think you’re going?”

  “Where do you think you’re going, old man?”

  Fair enough. “We have to stay together.”

  “Really? Last time I checked, you were getting chased from behind and bombed from above. I’m getting clear. Seems Jad and Peralta think the same.”

  Johnny tried playing the only card he had. “Vape it, Alva, I saved your life!”

  “Yeah, thanks for that.”

  Gearbox, Johnny thought, though it was hard not to admire the moxy. “Look, Alva—”

  “Hold up, flat-tread,” Alva said. “Jad, what the hole is that?”

  What the hole is what? Johnny thought.

  “Not sure, but it looks . . .”

  “Crisp Betty!”

  “Alva?!” Johnny barked. “Alva?”

  “It killed Peralta, it killed Peralta!”

  “Jad, get out—”

  The com went dead. Johnny scoped, but he didn’t know the bearing they’d taken. Dots of colour splashed the plain; he could see Torg returning to the pack, but so many were still spread out.

  I’m starting to get a serious hate-on for this place.

  “Pay attention!” Albert barked. “We have incoming.”

  “I’m trying.” It was ridiculous. He had three eyes. Probably the best peripherals of any skid in years. Yet things kept surprising him.

  The trailing shapes finally became clear. They reminded him . . .

  Oh snakes.

  They looked like the black moss.

  Each dark shape was slightly larger than a skid, not quite round. Pitch black. Chewing through the white landscape like a shifting ball of razor blades, the black surfaces seethed: random spikes popping up, covered in fangs. And the fangs were covered in spikes, which were covered in fangs, which were covered in . . .

  “Sport—” Johnny started to say.

  That’s when the first dark shape hit from above.

  It landed near the back of the pack, plunging into the pink-yellow squid Johnny had just coached up to speed. The Two screamed, a howl of terror that Johnny had never heard in a game. Black splotches like spores blistered over her skin—jagged and raw—spreading out to shred the yellow stripes and pink skin until nothing remained.

  The scream cut off as suddenly as it had begun.

  What the hole did I save them for? Johnny thought, despair crushing his heart as more dark spores struck the pack.

  Anger followed the despair. “Torg! Get us something to hide in, now!”

  “Johnny, there isn’t—”

  “There is or we die.” He eyed the One beside him. “You need speed. Arms front. Now.”

  To his credit, the One didn’t ask questions. He flung both Hasty-Arms forward as Johnny raced out front. Popping his own arms, Johnny reached back and grabbed the One. I hope this works.

  “Now hold on.” He gunned it. They accelerated, but not enough. “Grease your tread
s,” he growled, straining for speed.

  “I don’t know how!”

  Of course you don’t. The spores behind them were about thirty metres away. “Fine, go neutral. Let ’em spin.”

  “I don’t—”

  Oh for Crisp’s sake. “Think about your treads, then—”

  “I thought you told me not to think about my treads?”

  “Do you want to die?” All over his com, skids were screaming. The pack was getting bombed. Something had killed Peralta . . .

  “Feel the part that feels stronger than the rest? Don’t force it, just feel it out.” He didn’t have time to sympathize with a skid trying to absorb levels of experience into a few hole-filled seconds.

  “I think so.”

  “Pop it.”

  “Pop it? I don’t—oh.”

  Johnny felt it even as the One did. He surged forward. “Nice. That’s where your gears are. Pop it out, you’re in freeskid. Pop it back in, you’re pushing.”

  The lesson ended as a black spore landed in front of them.

  “Snakes!” Johnny swore, swerving hard and retracting his arms. “Hold on, squid!” I’ve got to give him a name.

  They sheared around the black shape and it turned to pursue. Now what? Johnny thought. The original pack of black spores trailed fifty metres back. The core of skids ahead was getting eaten alive. All around them, nothing but empty white space, peppered with skids trying to flee.

  Johnny could probably outrun the spores, even dragging the One. But that meant abandoning everyone, except maybe Torg, Albert—where the hole was Albert?—a couple of the Sevens . . . And where am I going to go? Frustration seethed beneath his stripes. What the hole had he saved them for?

  “Johnny!” Bian yelled. He couldn’t see her, she was on the other side of the pack. “I’ve got something. Fifteen degrees off the line!”

  Relief flooded through him even though he had no idea what she’d seen. “I’m on my—”

  Three spores—one on either side and one in front—landed and turned his way. Twisting his body to keep the panzer clear, Johnny felt something cold and searing gash his left side.

  Another spore landed in his path.

  Really? he had time to think before he and the black spore plowed into each other.

  Pain—almost exactly like he’d experienced in the black scar above. Almost. Something was different, but it was close enough. The black tore at his insides, ripping him apart, shredding its way between the cells of his skin. It happened so fast.

  Then, like before, Johnny got mad. Rage bloomed like a bomb in his heart and, with it, an epiphany: this time it was Johnny who surrounded the black. Let’s see how you like it. Focusing on his cells, he connected them and squeezed. Separating the darkness, tearing it apart piece-by-piece, then absorbing each piece until nothing remained.

  The whole process took less than a second.

  Woah, Johnny thought, veering a little. A wave of nausea swept over him, like the day after a sugar-binge. His trail-eye was messed up; he struggled to snap it back into focus. Not sure how many times I could do that, so let’s not . . .

  Another black shape landed in his path.

  I really hate this place . . .

  A flash of white-on-white came from his left and tore into the black spore. It blew apart without a sound.

  “What was that?!” someone screamed. Good question, Johnny thought as another white flash tore into the black shapes behind them. “How you doing back there, squid?”

  “My arms hurt.”

  “Just hold on.” Johnny gritted his teeth and tried to get around the pack. He could pick out the white shapes now. Whatever they were, they were shaped like knives. And they were attacking the black spores. So they’re on our side.

  He really wanted that to be true.

  “Everyone get clear of the black things. Whoever’s left, form on me.” Coming around the pack, he gunned it. Ahead and to their left, a dark shape could be seen rearing out of the white. Whatever it was, it was huge.

  Not the same dark, though, he thought, comparing the shape ahead to the rift in the sky.

  Bian rolled up. “So we head for that?”

  Johnny considered the riot going on behind them. The white knives were tearing into the black spores, the same way the spores had torn through the skids.

  “What do you think they are?” Torg breathed, treading up.

  “Don’t know,” Johnny murmured. Out of the corner of his damaged eye he saw Albert, taking a wide circle around the carnage, dragging the purple-orange One behind him the same way Johnny had dragged his.

  “Until we do, perhaps we might want put a little space between us and that,” Torg said, pointing back.

  “I don’t think the white things are after us,” Johnny said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Albert said, pulling up. “Something got Alva and the others, and they weren’t acting like it was the black things. They’d seen those already. Alva sounded like it was something else.”

  “Huh,” Johnny said, unwilling to concede the point. He watched a white shape slice into a black, instantly shredding it apart. “Guess a little more distance couldn’t hurt,” he said, ignoring Albert’s smirk. “Let’s go see what Bian’s found.”

  As they approached the new shape through the haze, Johnny saw further shapes emerge in the distance.

  “New territory?” Torg said.

  “Hole if I know,” Johnny muttered. It took them several minutes to get near Bian’s discovery. They stopped and stared. “Huh,” Johnny said.

  It was a thunderstorm, hitting a city. He didn’t recognize the architecture of the buildings; they resembled nothing in the Skidsphere. Clouds piled across a sky like a bruise. Strange trees tilted under assault from the wind; their long broad leaves flung out as if pleading for help.

  “Why isn’t it moving?” Shabaz asked.

  ’Cause that was the thing. The whole scene was trapped in a giant box, frozen in place like a holla on pause.

  “Where the hole are we?” someone breathed.

  Bian glanced at Johnny. “What do you think?”

  “What do you mean: ‘What do you think?’” Shabaz protested. “You’re not thinking of going in there?”

  Johnny had to admit he wasn’t sure the idea appealed to him either. There was something deeply creepy about the scene. He stared at raindrops—flat and driven at an angle—hanging in space.

  “Maybe we’ll skirt the outside, check around.” For what, he didn’t know. “See if we find something a little safer.”

  “That might not be an option,” Albert said, looking back.

  “Why?” Johnny asked, swinging an eye. “Oh. Just lovely.”

  The white knives had finished off the spores. Now they bundled together, each rotating like the needle of a compass.

  They came to a stop, pointing at the skids.

  Not on our side, then.

  “Maybe they want to make friends,” Torg drawled, already backing towards the frozen storm.

  “We need a place to hide. Friends come later,” Johnny said. Lifting his voice, he yelled: “We’re going in, stay tight.” He eyed the One still keeping a death-grip on his hands. “You all right, squid?”

  “Sure as sugar.” The bravado was false, but it was a good sign. Johnny was starting to like him.

  The white knives crept closer. They sure the hole didn’t look friendly. Jad’s final cry of terror: It killed Peralta! It killed Peralta! echoed in Johnny’s head. Gunning his treads, he raced into a storm that didn’t move.

  Two seconds later, he started to scream.

  Chapter Eight

  “Betty Crisp!” Johnny screamed as a thousand tiny scalpels ripped through his skin.

  He’d expected the storm. Once inside, he’d anticipated getting drenched as it came to life.
A stupid thought in hindsight, but then he wasn’t running a race he knew.

  Instead, as they accelerated, the skids hit a wall of rain suspended in space. A billion drops of water saturating the air. Frozen, mashed flat by the unmoving wind, each might as well have been a blade made of diamond.

  They tore through Johnny—or rather, Johnny tore through them. For the third time that day, his body felt like it was getting vaped. Not as bad as the spores or the dark—that had felt almost evil—but it wasn’t good.

  I’m getting real tired being treated like a knife-rack. Instinctively, he swerved from side-to-side.

  Which, sadly, was the worst thing to do.

  As Johnny swerved, the One behind him slid out from his wake and into the frozen rain. The panzer barely had time to scream.

  Then he evaporated.

  “No!” Johnny cried, as the One’s Hasty-Arms came apart in his hands. “No, no, no, no!” He swung around, rain tearing through his own skin, desperately reaching out—reaching out like he had in the darkness—reaching out to find the One. But it was too late.

  The panzer was gone.

  Screaming with rage, Johnny’s eyes bulged as he roared at the sky.

  “Get it together,” Albert hissed, suddenly at his side. “There’ll be time later. We need cover—from the rain and from those white things. Now.”

  Johnny almost swung at him. He was so angry and his hate of Albert ran deep. Then he saw the purple-orange panzer. Albert had reversed the curve of his back, forming a bowl, the sides further protecting the panzer from the rain. The combination of the One’s obvious fear and the shame that Albert had sheltered his charge better than Johnny knocked away the most of the rage.

  “Get behind me,” Johnny said. “I’ll cover.” He deserved the pain.

  “I’ll help,” Bian said, pulling up alongside.

  “Three’s a party,” Torg added.

  Forming a wedge in front of Albert, they made their way through the storm.

  The city was so strange. Skids lived in towers, but here the buildings were only one or two stories tall. Like skid buildings, the walls were smooth. But the windows were rectangular; windows in the Skidsphere were round. Here, there were angles everywhere.