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Lightning is always winding up where he isn't supposed to be.
Being fast isn't all confetti and roses. Some of the time, you overshoot your destination by ten, a hundred miles.
Or like. All of the time.
Tonight is one of those many times. Lightning was out for a run, and now? He’s… somewhere. Hopefully it's still the state of Arizona?
Yeah. He’s got no clue.
The dirt road he’s on curves up and over a few more dusty hills he was having fun catching air on, but for the first time, he notices a glow toward the end of it. Another crest, and there's the barred braces of a ROAD ENDS sign, orange against the blue darkness of the endless landscape.
Behind the sign is a chainlink, barbed wire, scaffold (a watch tower?), a brick control house- a construction site?
No. Voices.
At night?
Lightning lets his curiosity take over. He cuts power to his engine and rolls forward silently.
There’s all sorts of cars to be found out here. Usually, it's just alien-hunter conspiracy theorists. Sometimes paleontologists, cattle-rustlers, campers, grave-robbers, doomsday preppers, storm-chasers, cave divers, - but more often he bumps into locals. Ranchers and farmers and private mining companies, scratching their antenna on their roof wondering what the hell some racecar is doing scaring their sheep. (Lightning doesn't even know how he keeps winding up stuck in animal pens like that. He can never find the gate!)
He hopes it’s alien conspiracy theorists. Those are always funny to eavesdrop on. Nothing they say makes sense. It’s like they don't know a thing about science fiction.
The little brick building is making a loud humming noise, with a vent at the side that smells like fumes. He can't hear the speaking voices over it, so Lightning scoots even closer.
…Aaand they're talking about football. Great. Not only are these guys boring, they have terrible taste in sports. Lightning tunes the distant discussion back out again, glancing around. He scents the air; diesel, gasoline, …river water? No, more like that dusty goop in rivers, there's a word for it: silt. And other fumes, sort of like gas but sour, more subtle and not at all appetizing. Weird.
At the back of the lot, a spotlight illuminates a pumphousing next to a long row of large propane tanks. Several longhaulers idle, and a lone crane loads their trailers with the tanks. Lightning’s paint prickles, and he glances up at the guard tower again. He really shouldn't be here, should he?
“Hey, you!”
Dammit, he got too close to the lights!
Several of the workers turn to face Lightning where he’s hiding in a very unobscured manner behind the closed road sign. He grins at them awkwardly. “Who… me?”
“Yes, you. What are you doing out here? The road is closed.”
All of the workers have a blocky silhouette at their fender, that clicks slightly when they move.
Lightning telegraphs a glance at the ROAD CLOSED sign and pretends he’s never seen such a thing before. “Wow, would you look at that. I've got to be going now, bye!” Lightning goes to turn around, but he has to refire his motor. The sound is conspicuous- just like everything about him- and so is his careful idle as he slowly starts to drive away. If their bumpers weren't turned before, they definitely are now. Lightning can never just exist, can he?
Those aren't oilfield workers.
Machine guns, Lightning. Armed guards with machine guns.
“Where are you going? Hey! What did you see?”
Goddammit. He should have just stayed at Mater’s!
It takes Lightning’s wheels an extra hundredth of a second to get traction on dirt, but then he's going.
“Stop him!”
The automatic weapons click as they're stocked, and several cars are behind him in the dirt, racing forth not ten lengths behind. All V8s too- no easy shake.
A few rounds rip after him, close enough to his rear bumper he feels the bullets thwump into the dirt where he was a split-moment before. Lightning kills his lights and veers sharply to the right, abandoning the road for the plain, swerving around the low desert trees.
Oh sorry Mater, I can't play upside-down rooftop cornhole and drink gin and tonic tonight, I'm too restless. I've got to go out for a run and get shredded by a bunch of guys with ak-47s! Fuck!!
More distant shouting, and several more of the vehicles give chase. They stick to the road, while the initial group follows his trail directly.
Lightning scans the horizon desperately for anything familiar, trying to remember which way he came. There’s a plateau far ahead, overlapped with another and split by a canyon. He can lose them in there.
***
Marcus rushes to the tower platform and focuses the scope on his rifle. The V8 stranger-car has cut to the right, aimed toward a distant canyon just before the horizon.
“... he knows these roads,” Marcus says to his assistant Tireler, who followed him up the tower ramp with his reload rounds at the ready.
Marcus’s sniper rifle reloads faster with two cars.
He gets out the closed channel. “He’s going to the west canyon,” he tells the men on the ground, eye still unblinking through the night-vision scope.
The stranger isn't the only car who knows these roads.
He can't get out and tell anyone what he’s seen, or Marcus will lose everything he’s built. This site pays part of his salary, but if the EPA finds it...
“Take the shot while he's still close,” Tireler urges him.
“No,” Marcus says. “There will be a better opening.”
He watches the car, barely visible in the desert beyond a smoky cloud of moonlit-dust and the glow of his fire-hot exhaust. Smart, to run with no lights. But it's not enough. Marcus trains the crosshair to the glow, and waits patiently.
***
The canyon approaches.
His pursuers have barely kept pace; none have caught up. Lightning is about to get away. They're all idiots for thinking they could ever catch him.
Suddenly, a new form of ammunition makes contact with the dirt behind him. It's quieter, faster, ripples the dirt. No one chasing him had fired.
Sniper. …The tower! How had they seen him from so far away, in the dark??
Lightning pushes deeper into the redline, barely keeping traction on the ever-moving surface of the iron sand.
The plateaus are within reach.
Surely such a strong weapon can’t reload before he rounds the corner-
FWYPT-POP. His right rear tire goes down in a burst of air. The rest of the round tears through the far edge of his fender and cab in a brief brand of pain.
Lightning curses, losing speed around the edge of the canyon. Not the drivewheel…! (Not his bodywork! He was on such a good streak maintaining it.)
The safety cushion holds, and the belted rubber simply deflates. It'll only slow him down.
He rounds the bend-
-and the canyon is blocked.
“No!” Lightning shouts, and his voice echoes off the cold stone.
Motors approaching.
Never time to think, he slams into reverse, then up to second in a desperate k-turn, momentum sending him sideways a bit from the busted tire.
But they're here. He has to fight his way out.
Gunfire flashes off muzzles, pops of red in the dark.
“I can't fucking hit him!”
Of course they can't. He’s Lightning McQueen, not Slow Idiotface. They're too close in range now anyway to use their weapons, but still they try. Lightning can just dance around them, make them dizzy and they'll shoot each other down for him in the chaos.
But then, gunfire rains from above.
***
“Contact.”
“Flush him out of there,” Marcus says into his communicator.
***
The second group of pursuers went around the outside and scaled the plateau. Now, they have the perfect vantage point.
Lightning yipes as a stray bullet punches a hole through his spoiler. He dodges, but another nails him in the bumper, so very close to his fuel cel.
He should have stayed on the road!
In his panic, Lightning rushes out of the canyon.
***
Got you.
***
THWANG!
Something hits Lightning off-center on the hood, and smoke immediately pours into his eyes. By the time he rides his brakes to a stop, the pain starts to register.
The sniper round has cracked right through one of his cylinder-headers, exposing his jackets and springs. Hot oil coats the entire underside of his hood, where the pressure of his motor had started to eject it all over his bay.
A decisive blow. Lightning can't use his engine anymore lest he bleed to death.
He sits there in the dirt panting in rage.
The other cars surround him a few moments later. Lightning can't help but bare his teeth. One stupid bullet isn't enough to stop him.
He snarls in warning as one of them reaches for him with a ratchet-strap, the sound gurgling through his fucked up engine. Once the SUV is close enough, Lightning removes a chunk of his chrome front bumper faster than anyone can blink.
“Aahow!” The escalade says, reeling away from his sharp teeth. But the guard’s training kicks in, and he's back to pin Lightning’s frontend with force. Another SUV fumbles with his rear, looping something under the belly of his undercarriage, just in front of his rear axle. Lightning does his best to wriggle and thrash, making the job difficult. He uses the steel rim of his flat tire to kick one of them in the grille, and a third car rolls forward to help hold him down.
Then, his tail is hoisted into the air in a makeshift towing rig. They've got his rearend trussed up in a towing spreader bar, neon yellow and ratchet-strapped around his frame. His captors aren't taking any chances with his rearwheel configuration, even if his engine is toast. Idiots. Fucking idiots.
The angle tips more oil out of the puncture, and it runs thin as blood down over his serpentine belt. “I don't know anything! Let me go!” He demands, trying not to sneeze at the odd feeling. But no one responds.
The biggest SUV drags him back to the drill site, or whatever it is. Lightning isn't lying; he has no idea what any of it is. He doesn't even care what it is!
The car with the sniper rifle is peering down at him as the party arrives, locking the chainlink gates behind them. But as they move into the light, their proud expressions change, and it dawns on some of them who he is.
Lightning smirks up at them. Oh, they really should have let him go.
The sniper hisses down at him in fury. “Why are you Lightning McQueen?”
Interesting philosophical question. One with a great answer, actually. But no time right now; Lightning flicks on his long-distance radio. A final resort. “That’s right, you've got the one and only Lightning McQueen here at the weird little outpost to the southeast just past a rock cave-in, and you are a grey 2004-”
The sniper cuts him off in a howl. “He’s got a hotmic- find it and tear it out! Shut him up!”
Lightning talks over the screaming for as long as he’s able "-Mitsubishi sedan single turbo who shot me several ti-” He’s expecting to be gagged, but someone hits him on the roof with an empty propane tank.
Ow?
He loses his place as his vision crosses, and once it uncrosses he just starts listing off keywords, describing anything he can see as the gunmen grab him again. These guys are really bad at beating him. He’s still listing details into the emergency radio.
Then, they're tipping him sideways, clawing at the underside of his cabin with metal-cutters. Lightning’s stomach flips at the unnatural movement. His body has kept the score on rollovers.
“Woah, hey-” Lightning thrashes. “You ever heard of a window?” Shut up, Lightning!
“We need to move! Evacuation C!”
“Evacuation C!” Chaos breaks out around the site, vehicles rushing in all directions, red brakelights and truck reverse-alarms, the harsh clang of things stacking without care.
Lightning flinches away from the jaw of the metalcutters. For some reason, they don't seem to own a single torch. “Theyre moving me to uh, a second location I think-” he continues into the radio, praying that someone, anyone is listening, that he can be heard at all.
“Stop him! I don't care how, we’re already fucked. Bleed him like a pig!”
The metal cutters move downward, then to his right. They latch on to something on his passenger side. “What’s that?” one of them asks.
No. His sump tank- !
SCrhNPt.
They toss him back into the dirt, oil bleeding freely from his severed mainline. His entire oil tank starts to drain.
Oh. This is really not good.
It hits him fast. In just the first few seconds, he already feels woozy. He panics, thrashing again- only just barely remembering to not power his engine whatsoever (unless she wants to bleed out even faster)- and feels the straps and bar restraining his rearend, denting his fenders as he steps on the haphazard ties.
Panic bad, stop, stop now-
He hits the dirt again as he thinks it too late, and the world is already turning black at the edges. He can't feel his shocks. He can’t hear anything-
Everything tilts to the side. There’s so much oil in the dirt. Lightning stares at it open-mouthed, unable to move.
Blinking is very hard. He’s so tired, he
***
So tired.
Breathing heavy? Like a
Intake wired shut.
Motion. Rocking?
What does he see. Nothing.
Cold. Somewhere.
Heavy-
Ringingrunning.Rumbling.
He’s moving?
…
Lightning has bled out before.
It happens. Why do you think he’s got all those trophies? Running for years without a crew chief, no one like Doc or Roger to tell him ‘No, Lightning, don’t do that, you’ll kill yourself!’
Lotta trophies.
Slowly, he gains his bearings.
Oil in his engine still. Just enough. Cutting power when he did saved him.
He’s in some sort of plain trailer. No windows, just a little grate for airflow at the front. Diesel fumes.
The spreader bar is still tethered to him, but it's loose now, half off and hanging behind his tail. It clanks behind him as the trailer rocks over the uneven terrain. They must have been rough with him.
Hey: free blunt force object.
Unsteady, he shuffles out of the tethers, movements barely effective at first. The first time he gets a wheel back under him, he slips, stumbles back to the corrugated metal floor. Everything is damp with his own oil.
Drip, drip, drip.
Lightning pants as he works his tail free enough of the loosened bonds. He leans against the side of the trailer, eyes blankly staring downward. It's dark in here.
The spreader bar clanks to the floor behind him, and he pauses for a moment. Then, uses his rear wheels to scoot it under him, tipping it up on its side and angling the end-section right under-
He leans down with all of his weight into the steel bar with a grunt, bending the broken ends of his oil line upward to a j-shape. The dripping slows.
Yeah. He knows a few tricks about bleeding out.
Blood and champagne.
Lightning slides to the ground again to recover. A few minutes of gasping for breath, and he needs to move again. They won't expect him to be awake.
He pins the spreader bar between his tail and the rear door for leverage of force, and it swings open into the night under his weight. Huh. That was easy. Okay.
Lightning slides out of the trailer in a smear of used oil, spreader bar still haphazardly tangled on one rear axle, dragging awkwardly beneath him. He reverses into the dirt hard enough to jostle his broken cylinder-head, and his vision crosses with static. But the party rushes on forward without notice.
Lightning has been told he’s very good at inconspicuously falling out of moving trailers.
Now, the plan is… what. To crawl? With a blown engine and one tire down to the safety belt? He’ll figure it out in another minute. Lightning lists in the dirt, watching them leave. Everything aches.
Shit, nevermind. One guard did see, and is rushing back toward him with a gun-!
Lightning moves. He digs his front tires into the earth and spins his tail outward in an arc. The steel towbar flies out toward his assailant- CLANG! The guard stumbles in shock, gun clattering to the ground in a stupid fumble.
The rest of them are still driving away, so Lightning scrambles towards the weapon without thinking. His only chance. Groggy and still oilstained, he struggles to fit the stock into his wheelhousing. “C’mon,” he whines, dizzy and panting for breath. Click. He swings the end of the weapon to face his once-captor, the sight swaying next to his fender as he struggles to stay upright.
The guard curls their lip, like a half-laugh. “What, you're going to shoot me? I cannot take you seriously.” There’s a dent blooming on their A-frame, one pupil blown wide, windshield cracked.
Lightning gapes at the disarmed car, then down to the gun, squinting. “...I don't get it,” he slurs. He’s too lightheaded for riddles.
Luckily, the concussed guard explains. “You’re Lightning McQueen. You don't kill people.”
“Oh,” Lightning says. “That’s true. That’s not something I do,” he agrees. The gun stays pointed at the guard. “Doesn’t mean-” the world dips, and he locks his suspension to stay trembling upright. “Doesn’t mean I won't hurt you,” he threatens, and prays it lands to buy him time. Hell, he really doesn't want to do that either.
The guard has gone wide-eyed under the beam of his headlights- no, his headlights are off? Why is it suddenly so windy?
Lightning follows the beam of light upward, behind him, to the big helicopter it’s attached to.
It doesn't occur to him to check whose side the chopper is on before he faints.
***
Antiseptic. Nitrile. Solder.
Lightning wrinkles his bumper. It smells disgusting in here! He writhes toward consciousness, and ah hell, why is he tied down? Please, not again!
“Stop it!” A voice says. Someone is tugging on his bonds, which just makes Lightning squirm harder in a panic. “Agh! Stickers, quit it, stop moving- for two seconds- Let me help you-”
Lightning peels his eyes open. Phoenix specialty hospital room, Sally staring at him in relief. He stops moving so she can undo the rest of the ratchet-straps, basking in the return to normalcy.
“Aw, Sal, you're lookin’ at me like that again.”
“Illegal fracking operation? Gangs selling tainted natural gas unwitting vendors? Earthquakes? Poisoned groundwater?”
“Woah, hey, I don't know anything about any of that. I’m just an innocent victim.” He leans toward her off the hospital lift as far as he can reach, giving her one of those smiles.
“I shouldn't be surprised anymore,” Sally mutters, “but I can't help it sometimes. How do you do it?”
“Uh, you know. I was just out for a run,” he shuffles experimentally on the lift. With the movement, he can feel all his freshly-done repairs. It's good to have all his blood back in his body again: he needs it for stuff and things. “They were on the road I was on.” …They really should have put that closed road sign further back.
“Yuh-huh. Why do your innocent midnight joyrides always seem to result in days of phone calls for me. And paperwork,” she rips an IV catheter out from under his hood hard enough to make him jump, then leans over and jams a button on the equipment to make the alarm stop beeping.
Lightning smiles at her a bit more sheepishly this time. “Well, isn't the greatest lawyer in the world glad that I'm alive?”
Sally grins at him with teeth. “If you weren't, I’d kill you.” She kicks the lock out from beneath the lift and lowers it, level with the tile floor. “They had to take a machine gun off of you when they got you into emergency, you know.” She seems to find it funny, which works for him.
Gosh, she’s right though. All that for a midnight run? Next time he gets throttle-happy, he’s just going to have Mater tie him to a tree or something.
Speaking of weapons: “What happened to that guy who sniped me in the hood?”
“Your grey car? They found him earlier, all the way in Denver. That’s what your court case next Monday is for; they want you on the stand.”
Lightning groans and drives off the lift to follow her. “This whole thing is stupid. I don't even know what fracking is.”