Patriot Effect Chapter 7: Fast Cars and Fireballs.

I flicked the shifter paddle, and couldn't help letting out a laugh of sheer exhiliration as the engine howled louder. Oh, didn't I mention? After the hotel shootout, I stole a car. 1

A nice one too.2

Even at 120 miles an hour, the car surged forward hard enough to smash me into the ergonomic italian leather seat. The needle climbed higher, interpereting the Bristol's ascending speed. 3

125.4

130.5

140.6

160.7

180.8

210.9

250.10

The road should have begun blurring by this point. At this speed, non-moving objects should have been reduced to fuzzy streaks flashing by. 11

But I could still read the street signs as I passed. I could still list the license plates of the last four cars I had passed. I could still count the stripes flashing by. 12

I knew this couldn't be possible. But just as surely, according to that bill board I had just passed at 267 MPH, I could call the psychic hotline for answers, 888-754-8679. So evidently, it was possible. I had superhuman reflexes. I could see things happening in stages, when they should have been a sinlge event. 13

But for all of the superhuman skills, I still didn't know who the hell I was, or why I had these skills. I mean, all reflexes aside, in the last 48 hours I had plowed through men that seemed as highly trained as any I could think of. I could shoot a gun like Annie Oakley on speed, throw knives like a friggin ninja, and kill a man barehanded in too many ways to count. So the important question was: what in God's name was I?14

And that was the question I was pondering, when I met the first Patriot.15

By which I mean, a man in some kind of what I can only describe as "techno-armor" landed on the hood of the Bristol, and did it as casually as most people step off the curb. And then he drew a pistol (FN Five-seveN) and put a 5.7 mm tumbling slug into my head.16

Or would have, if I hadn't ducked and yanked the wheel to the left. 17

At which point, someone trying to shoot me became the least of my problems, as it was eclipsed by the fact that I had just yanked the wheel on a 270 mph accident-waiting-to-happen.18

Seems my lightning reflexes didn't prohibit stupid reactions. 19

When I looked back over the dash, the man was gone. As was the sky I should have seen above me. It was replaced by rough asphalt streaking by a spare 2 inches from the carbon-fiber roof. 20

Then sky.21

Then aspalt again.22

And repeat.23

I was spinning through the air only inches off of the ground. It was surreal. It was unimaginable. To actually be processing this, I would have to be operating at an unimaginable cognitive speed. I watched, entranced, as the world pirouetted outside of the car. I couldn't imagine how fast I was going, but I couldn't care less. I was watching my death happen in slow motion.24

And it was about then that I realized that if I could actualy think at this speed, there was chance I wasn't going to have to die. I drew my gun and put three shots into the driver's side window. It exploded in every direction. I ignored the shards of glass and the gashes left in my face and shoulders, and planted my feet on the columns on either side of the passenger window. As near as I could tell, the car was rolling side over side, Meaning the axis of the spin intersected the hood and trunk. Which meant if I timed it right...25

As the driver's side window rotated clear of the asphalt, I poured every ounce of strength I had into my legs and leapt. 26

In theory, if I jumped hard enough, in the opposite of the general direction of travel, I would cancel out at least the greater part of the car's speed.27

In theory. But then again, the car was still going a good 255 miles an hour. That was one hell of a jump. 28

So I was pretty surprised when I slammed into the concrete and rolled a good twenty feet, ending up on my back. On the whole, it worked. I was still alive, which was pretty shocking. I looked up from the ground in time to see the Bristol Fighter, all $700,000 of it, spin right into a warehouse. It shredded through the thin wall like it wasn't even there, and took out four load-supporting beams before it slammed through three racks of automotive parts and out the other side, into a parked tractor-trailor of even more auto parts, which it slammed into a nearby stack of propane tanks. 29

I drove myself off of the ground with my elbows, which actually works if you do it hard enough. I found my feet and repeated the leap from the car, pouring everything I had into moving in a "right-the-hell-now" sort of way. I made it almost fifty feet before propane and gasoline mixed with way more kinetic energy and twisted, red-hot metal than was right. My feet were ripped out from under me, and the trippy part was that I could actually see the wave of hardened air that had done it as it washed past me, tearing up a few mailboxes and leveling a light pole as it went. As I, for the second time in roughly a minute, found myself spinning, I caught a glimpse of two things:30

First, a 1000 pound I-beam, riding on a a fireball, headed straight for me. The second, as the spinning continued, was the techno-armor man, staring at me through a slit in his balaclava/helmet/ninja-thing, leaning casually against a building some fifty yards away, As if what had just happened was nothing unusual.31

That guy, I decided, must live in a shit-crazy world.32

Now as for that I-beam...