Jackson Ford - Eye of the Sh*t Storm

Oh please, like you’ve never wanted to drive at high speed down a Los Angeles storm drain.

Although I’m guessing your fantasy doesn’t involve being chased by a gang of outlaw bikers. Who are shooting automatic weapons at you. And I’m a hundred per cent sure you would prefer not to be in a car holding forty pounds of stolen, high-grade methamphetamine.

It doesn’t help that we don’t actually have that much room to manoeuvre. The storm drain is three hundred feet wide, but the – let’s see – six bikes chasing us make it seem a lot smaller. The sides of the drain are steeply sloped – not too steep to drive down, but a bitch to get back up – and there’s a channel of water running right down the middle, too deep to cross.

Heat from the late morning sun bakes off the concrete in shimmering waves as Africa goes foot to floor, swerving to avoid a bike that’s gotten a little too close. I flinch back, white-knuckling the edges of the van’s passenger seat.

“This was a terrible idea!” I shout.

“It was your idea!” Annie Cruz roars from the back seat.

“Bullshit! I just wanted to steal their meth. It was you two who thought it would be fun to drop into the storm drain and— Fuck! ”

A bullet takes out the side mirror, inches from me. Africa reaches across and pulls me down, spitting an angry curse in French.

Another bike comes up alongside us, straddled by a thick-necked goon with bad facial tats. He’s carefully aiming a handgun the size of a prime rib roast and clearly hoping to get more than just the wing mirror this time. How the hell does he even stay on the bike with the recoil?

“Buh-bye,” I say, reaching out with my mind and jerking the gun out of his hands.

Didn’t I mention? I can move things with my mind. It’s called psychokinesis – PK for short. The rushing air whips the gun out of sight.

Technically, I’m not supposed to use my ability in public – or in ways that might reveal it to others. My scary government handler doesn’t like it. But what is this biker asshole going to do? No guys, really, she pulled it out of my hands with her mind, I swear! I totally don’t have butterfingers… Why are you laughing? Stop it!

“Teggan,” Africa’s Senegalese-inflected roar fills the car. “There’s too many. Use your dëma powers, huh?”

“I just did! Why do you think we’re not getting shot at more?”

“Stop their motorbikes. Break the engines.”

“Already tried that!”

When they first started chasing us, I used my PK to crunch the engine internals of one of the bikes, and the result was horrifying. The bike didn’t stop neatly, as I’d hoped. Instead, it wobbled and skidded and dumped its driver onto the tarmac at high speed, scraping him to a bloody, comatose pulp. And it’s not like these people stopped to put on helmets.

Sure, I’m a psychokinetic government agent, but I do not like killing people.

“You have to,” Africa snarls. “Otherwise they just chase and chase.”

“How about you drive somewhere they can’t see us, and then we’ll—”

“ Watch out! ” Annie screams from the back.

There’s a huge, jagged chunk of concrete jutting up from the centre of the channel, resting on a mound of black dirt. Waist-high, more enough to ruin the day for anybody who hits it at speed. The mound of dirt runs down to a long crack, the concrete split and broken, running maybe twenty feet across the storm drain.

Oh yeah. We had an earthquake two months ago. A really big one. Most of the storm drain is fine, but concrete is concrete. Shake it, it cracks.

We only just – just – manage to miss the concrete. Africa’s driving has gotten better over the past few months, his reaction times and wheel control improving. Behind us, there’s a giant, thudding crunch as one of the bikes slams into the obstacle.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Annie says. She glances at the meth, which is in an open-top plastic box on the seat next to her. Maybe forty thin Ziploc baggies filled with off-white, greasy-looking powder.

Now it’s just four bikes chasing us, and they’re a lot further back. I don’t think they’re going to be able to catch up – and it would take one hell of a lucky shot to hit us. We’re accelerating again, approaching the next bridge up – Main Street, I think, a simple four-lane job crossing the storm drain, with thick concrete supports.

“See?” I tell Africa. “We’re fine.”

He grunts a laugh. “You bloody toubab . You nearly get us ki— Wooooahshit! ”

The biggest SUV I’ve ever seen is roaring down the sloped side of the storm drain, heading right for us.

It’s a black tank, with a bull bar you could use to shift an elephant. Even inside our truck, I can hear the thundering growl of its engine. It bounces as it hits the flat, heading straight for us, thirty feet away and closing fast.

“Teggan?” Africa’s voice is high and panicky, and it fucking well should be, because that bull bar is getting very large.

“On it.”

I send out my PK in a huge wave, wrapping my mind around the SUV’s engine components like you’d close your hand around a glass of water. Then I squeeze, compacting steel and wire and gasoline.

The growling engine cuts off with a giant bang. But the truck doesn’t stop. It’s simply built up too much speed.

Africa accelerates, turning the wheel to the right, trying to get us some space. Not fast enough. Behind me, Annie sucks in a breath, the kind you make if you’re trying to squeeze past someone in a crowded room.

I reach out for the truck’s wheels, the body panels, trying to slow it down. But the truck just has too much momentum. Africa twists his body away as that black bull bar fills the window.

There’s a giant, world-obliterating bang .

The truck crunches into the metal above our vehicle’s back left wheel. The spin we go into is so violent that it snaps my head around on my shoulders. Africa is bellowing, fighting with the wheel as the storm drain spins around us, a flash of black as the SUV crosses behind our car – it spun us completely one-eighty – and then it’s gone and we’re still spinning and Annie is screaming and then another dark shape looms in my window and I have just enough time to realise it’s one of the Main Street Bridge supports and—

And then I don’t really know what happens.

An eternity of darkness and silence. Punctuated by short bursts of noise and light.

Africa ducking behind the door as a gunshot shatters the driver’s window. Broken glass nicking my cheeks.

Annie yelling that we have to get out. From somewhere behind me, there’s an odd crackling sound.

More darkness. I’m yanked out of it when Africa starts shaking me. The guy is seven feet tall with hands like dump truck scoops, so it’s hard to ignore him when he grabs hold of you. It also alerts me to just how much pain I’m in. My back, my shoulders, my neck… oh fuck me, my neck. That is going to suck later.

“They are coming,” he spits.