I could sit and bore you with talk about what I call the old days, but I won't. If you are able to look at things and say, "Okay, that's fine," when nothing is, then you won't want to hear this.
If you own a Division 80 subcompact with a turreted anti-tank gun on the side loaded with HDDS rounds with the whole works sittin' on metal off-road solid steelbelted radial fireproof racing slicks wrapped in tire chains, then you won't want to hear this.
In other words, if you're someone who says, "It'll work, screw the structural limitations, it'll work," then you don't want to hear this.
But you'd better hear it. Life's too short, especially when someone places a couple of well-aimed shots into your funky hero-tires and sends them to Goodyear Hell with you out of control before the last chunk of rubber hits the ground.
Not liking what you hear? Sorry, but I don't cater to the likes or dislikes of fools intent on killing themselves with cars contrapted out of a madman's nightmare. C'mon, really, no one has a chip that big up their . . . on their shoulder, do they? You can lose your ego long enough to hear a story, can't you? I got one, and it needs tellin'.
It's about a young man I knew once named Billy Joe Rob junior. His last name is unimportant, so I'll keep that to myself.
His mother was a chicken-lipped, horse-hipped bebop truck-stop queen with grease behind her ears and fatback under her fingernails. She only had four toes on her right foot from her days as a leg-in-the-road hitchhikin' highway squeeze. She named Billy Joe Rob junior after his dads. Don't ask.
She used to beat him while he was growin' up into a pale, skinny young man, and he sorta seemed to be a person meant to be beat on. It never fazed him, except for a look of total resignation on his face. You could tell his mama blamed him for her havin' to sling hash, charge power plants and sometimes run the grill when Sako, the Korean short order cook, would pass out from snortin' Armadillo Gold imported beer up his right nostril. His idea of a coffee break, I suppose.
However, I digress.
Billy Joe Rob always wanted his very own duelcar and livin' next to one of the biggest truck stops and auto garages in the state of Virginia just made him itch for the most formidable piece of vehicle any desperate mind could conceive of. Of course, it had to be black. Guys like him always get 'em black. Freakin' always. -
So what does he do to acquire his coveted dueling machine? Starts runnin' with these guys from Alabama who own an old van. You can tell it used to be an ambulance 'cause the lights are still on it, but they had painted it (you guessed it) black.
From what I heard, these jokers had put (I hate this. Someone might get ideas and die quick) an old surplus tank gun in it, runnin' the barrel through the cargo area, between the driver and gunner and out the damned windshield. Lovely. Not like the act of suicide is really easy without all that trouble.
And if there is such a thing as karma, well, they must have had the market on it back then, for a little while anyway, when you consider how much they fired that sucker. They'd be zippin' down the road, takin' hits of HD ammo from some courier's turret-mounted Vulcan, then BLAMM!!! The van would rise up on its rear wheels, tilt some, hang onto the asphalt by its side wheels and somehow Jordy (the driver) would hold that rolling death box on and in the road. By the time it was under control, the smoke would be gone (that old 105 would get hot. Billy told me once that they had heated coffee on the breach after firm' three rounds from it) and so would most of the delivery vehicle's rear armor. Couriers are not stupid, and all it took after that was one of the guys to radio said courier and instruct him to pull over, ditch his weapons, and lie face down on the pavement. 80% of your rear armor being blown off in one nice, tidy chunk is a heck of a convincer.
So they pirated private couriers. Great way to pick up some spare cash. Not to mention a sizeable price on your head. When you leave witnesses (They were decent that way. Foolish, but decent), witnesses talk.
And describe things.
Like faces.
So pretty soon, Billy Joe Rob junior had "acquired" for himself enough money to purchase his own duelin' machine, but it was clear that he'd need it and any other kind of help to fight off the bounty huntin' boys and the thirty-dollar pistol heroes.
He had gotten two old guys to build it for him. They claimed to have been on the pit crew for Salvatore Ingram at the last non-combat running of the Indy 500 back in 1998.1 think they made it from an old can-am body with the engine of a wrecked dragster. Whatever it was, it was fast. That car would hit sixty mph in four seconds and after that it was just plain gone. And, of course, it was black.
Now don't get me wrong. I think we all like to play dark and mysterious every once in a while, but Billy Joe was going silly with it. Black car, black clothes, black sweatsocks, black motorcycle boots, black leather jacket, black bandana. Black sunglasses. jeez! Give a guy a break! My eyes were going black-blind around him.
And the attitude that boy copped, cripes! Lots of folks think I'm not all there myself, but that's from their perceptions with surface stuff. Most people judge me on the sole fact that I drive a '35 Fnord pickup painted metal-flake purple with green flames on the front and a picture of Daffy Duck in a straightjacket on the hood scoop (I run a gasburner myself, but I don't think my old granny-geared transmission will ever let me get to sixty mph in four seconds).
Again, I digress.
I should have known that the breakneck madness of riding in that van with the tank gun going off and the frame bendin' and the tires squealin' and the smoke and . . . and yes, the sheer insane fun of it would be bad for Billy Joe. That's why I wasn't one bit surprised when he pulled up into the truck stop one morning I saw three autocannon bolted to an old rocket platform on his roof.
He came in, his skinny body cloaked in his usual aforementioned garments, looking like a sinister scarecrow animated by frustration.
He spoke his usual cutting words to his mother (not kind was Time's unforgiving touch to her features or her disposition), then came over and sat down at my table.
just like that. Like there wasn't a thing in the world he should be worried about, as if by his own willpower, the business of his being a hunted criminal had ceased.
"Randall, what's up?" He asked jovially.
"Not much," I replied. "What are you doing these days, Billy Joe?"
"Oh, the usual." He said, obviously meaning that he was doing things that didn't need doin'.
"I was thinkin'," he continued, "that we should talk."
"About what?" I hated the conversation already.
"Let's just take a ride, Randall."
"Sure." I said, resigning myself to whatever fate the gods of lunacy had bestowed upon me that day.
Silence ruled the diner as truckers and regular customers watched us over their breakfasts as we left.
In his car, I barely had room to sit, even though he'd put an old bucket seat in it for a passenger. Still, there wasn't a lot of room because the car was not meant to accommodate persons other than the driver.
He started the engine, which could have been mistaken for a small war under the hood. I though it was loud before, but inside, I had a full-fledged taste of it. When he popped the clutch and let the engine rip us out of the parking lot, all the noise seemed a small price for the punch that car had.
"Where we goin'?" I asked, letting the car's acceleration push me back into the seat.
"Randall, did you really used to be in the AADA?"
"Now who told you that one?" I asked. I had quit the association six years ago, after Brian Arthur, a close friend of mine, was hit with three linked Vulcans from a luxury, nullifying any chance of his brain being read for cloning. He took all of his hits to his face behind the wheel of his Division 20 convertible sedan. I cried about it, then cursed him for being stylishly stupid enough to duel topless. Eventually, I opted out for my present occupation as a painter, doing mostly customized murals or graphic striping for local hot rods, whackos and bike jockeys. Custom-painted motorcycle gas tanks are making a comeback since the Free Oil States started making their own modern-day benign OPEC and began exporting to the United States.
"Word gets around." Billy Joe said, slyly.
"Well, the word is true. But that was all a million years ago."
"You don't miss it? Not even a little?"
"Billy, I miss every day of my life that's behind me. Not just the dueling, but my whole life."
"Would you do any of it any different?"
"Probably not." I paused, thinking of Brian. "Most folks compensate themselves enough when they look back to justify any mistakes they've made. I'm as guilty of it as anyone."
"But the dueling . .
"Skip it, Billy Joe."
He sulked at me for a few minutes, then told me how his friends in their van got caught. I'd heard vague rumors about it, nothing more. Billy filled me in.
After Billy Joe Rob got his car, he didn't run with them very much, except for an occasional hijacking. They pulled a job without Billy and that was his saving grace. They pulled up behind an Appalachian Courier Service minibus and fired the tank gun point-blank into the rear. It seems the minibus was wearin' a thin layer of plastic armor over a lot of metal and the shot had little effect, save trashin' the plastic. Jordy wrestled the steering wheel, but hadn't quite gotten the van under control from the recoil of the initial shot when Larry (the gunner) fired again.
To shorten the story, the van flipped sideways, then end over end. After a stay in the hospital, Jordy and Larry went to jail and were awaiting trial on seven hijacking charges.
"So what do you think, Randall?"
"Bad scene. Could be your scene if you're not more careful."
"Oh, I'll be careful, I'll be Texas careful."
"Huh?"
"Texas. Tay-hahs my friend. I'm headin' there tonight."
"Where'd you get the gas to cruise out west? And even if you got the juice, you'll not get across the border. They keep an eye Out for folks who are wanted for felony charges."
"I'll make it across the border. There's always ways around that, and gas is no problem. Me, Larry and Jordy have a stash. I guess it's all mine, now. 200 gallons of high-octane racing fuel. Got it off of an Allied Courier van. It was our second job. His cargo, our booty. That was what we said at the time. I got this covered trailer to haul it in."
"Jesus. You're nuts, Billy Joe. Even if you don't have trouble with the law, there're bike gangs out there who can smell gas 30 miles away.
"Motorcycles make good hood ornaments. Especially for metal armor."
I gave up. I asked him if he had anything more specific to talk about and he said why no, he had always liked me and just wanted to say goodbye all proper and right. He took me to the truck stop and those right and proper good-byes were said.
Inside the diner, I ordered a cup of coffee before the dust from his gravel-spitting, tire-spinning takeoff had settled.
Billy Joe Rob Junior's mother served the java to me and asked in a reserved tone, "Leavin', ain't he?"
"Looks that way." I said, not wanting to engage her too deeply in conversation.
"Just as well," she continued. "He's a hot item with the law 'round here."
"Yeah." I agreed.
She shrugged and went back to her duties elsewhere.
It was all on the evening news (now there's a strange cliché), in starting detail and living color.
Billy Joe Rob Junior had made it to Knoxville, Tennessee when the police caught up with him on a straight, two-lane highway. The news copter brought back excellent zoom-in shots of the whole messy affair.
They had him in a sandwich. A four-car interlocked roadblock to defeat ramming it, and two police cruisers closing in behind him from out of nowhere.
He did as well as he could, given the situation. Hell, he did pretty outstanding, considering.
When the two cruisers opened up on the back of his trailer, he triggered the explosive hitch, ditching it, and the tongue dug deep into the pavement, causing the trailer to nosedive and flip over into the path of one of the police cars. The cruiser hit it at about 60 mph and then there was one of the most fiery explosions I've seen in a good many years. The burning car r6Iled sideways into the tree line next to the road and something volatile inside it caused another big eruption of fire and fragmentation.
The second cruiser avoided most of the fireworks but still caught fire on the side near them. He began to hammer away at Billy Joe's back armor just as Billy Joe started plugging away with his rooftop autocannon.
His first volley tore a chunk out of the side armor of one of the roadblock vehicles. The news camera zoom-in also showed Billy's maniacal grin and that all his windows had cracked from his autocannon recoil.
The burning cruiser decided that Billy's armor was too tough, so he opted for his tires. Cowards' tactics, on national television yet.
Billy Joe, in the meantime, kept firing the sitting ducks up. His second three-cannon burst breached the side armor of the wounded roadblock car and made meat chunks out of the blue boy inside. This time the recoil caused the rest of the glass to shatter completely and disintegrate.
Just as the policeman behind him took out what of left of Billy's left-rear solid radial, Billy opened up on another parked police car. Two of the shots missed and it was then that I realized I should have advised him against mounting powerful weapons. His car couldn't take any more. The roof ripped off and he completely lost control.
No roof, one tire missing and 85 mph are three bad things when they're together. Billy Joe spun out. His roof was flung into the windshield of the tire-shootin' smokey, causing him to go into a slide. All that tire screeching coming across my quadraphonic TV speakers was hellish.
When Billy Joe Rob Junior hit the roadblock spinning, his car exploded like an H-bomb. The flaming cruiser b~ hind him slid into the inferno and added to the ferocity of the blast. Obviously, the Knoxville police pack napalm mines or flamethrowers or some such incendiary goodies because I'm sure they were driving electric vehicles, which usually don't have the habit of blowing up like a forty-dollar firecracker.
When the flames and smoke cleared, only one of the six officers remained alive and kickin'. The news boys focussed in close on Billy Joe's body. Just a kid from the sticks with whacko glory dreams in his head and no clone, thrown clear by the blast but dead as dead gets. His hair was burned off and his old black leather jacket was still smoking from the heat of his erupting car.
Looking at him like that on my average-sized TV screen brought a kind of gut-rupturing sadness but no tears to me. He wouldn't have wanted me to cry over him, and yeah, I know, it sounds like a load of macho crap, but it also seemed right. Dreadfully right.
I shut the set off and got up and went to my bedroom.
On the wall in there is a picture of a younger me, one that seems to have never existed, dressed in black body armor, black helmet leaning on a black Division 20 luxury with three linked Vulcans on the front and a ridiculously low amount of armor on it. In the picture with me is Brian Arthur, the friend I killed.
At one time in my silly life, I wouldn't have said that these things such as Brian and Billy Joe wouldn't bother me. Wouldn't dig into my mind and play funky little games with my emotions. At one time, I would've called it Fate or the way of the world or even laid it all on the doorstep of Bad Luck.
At one time.
I'm a little older now.
There are none, save that anyone attempting to use any of the vehicles in this story should be strung up by their intestines and painted black. Except for the metal-flake purple, Iime-green flamed '35 Fnord pickup. Using it should qualify the person for serious in-depth psychiatric evaluation.
By the way, there's no such thing as HDDS ammo, and, Fangio help us, there never will be, so don't even ask.