Chapter 49: "On Your Left!"
"What the—"
The crowd had gone dead quiet. Rango tapped the steering wheel and looked down at the dashboard.
"Talk to me, buddy. Please tell me you didn't run out of gas on the starting line."
McQueen didn't answer him.
Instead, the way he always did — the way he had before every single race that had ever mattered — he went somewhere quiet inside himself and said the only words that needed saying:
"Speed. I am speed."
"Faster than fast. Quicker than quick."
"I am Lightning McQueen."
WHOOOM—
He went from a standing stop to a red blur in the time it takes to blink. The air cracked behind him like a whip. The spectators flinched back from the shockwave. Rango got slammed into his seat and grabbed for the belt with both hands.
"Oh— okay— okay—" He clicked the buckle home, eyes wide. "We're doing this."
Up ahead, Dom checked his mirror.
The red Viper was already thirty lengths back, shrinking.
He let out a slow breath and eased back slightly in his seat. The Challenger's engine rumbled under him — steady, enormous, exactly where he wanted it.
"Boring," he muttered.
He shook his head. If he'd known the guy was going to gap himself on the start line, he wouldn't have bothered coming out personally. Any one of his crew could've taken that car off him. It would've been a good way to give somebody a confidence boost.
He was already thinking about where the Viper would look in the garage — toward the back, he decided, facing the door, so you saw it the moment you walked in — when something appeared in his rearview mirror.
A red streak.
Coming fast.
Dom's eyes narrowed.
Very fast.
The gap that had been thirty lengths was twenty. Then fifteen. Then the Viper was right there, filling the mirror, closing like something had gone wrong with the laws of physics, and before Dom fully processed what was happening, McQueen was on his bumper — locked on, tight as a shadow, right behind the Challenger's tail.
"Impossible—"
They hit the first corner together, tires screaming off the concrete in long, tortured shrieks. Dom read the apex the way he'd read ten thousand apexes — late brake, trail in, rotate — the Challenger doing exactly what it was built to do.
Then McQueen flared his steering angle at the worst possible moment for Dom.
The Viper went sideways. Fully sideways — body nearly parallel with the wall, pulling an arc through the turn that had no business being as controlled as it was, scrubbing speed and direction simultaneously in a way that put him right at Dom's door.
And then a hand came out the window.
Thumb extended. Pointing left.
Rango's voice floated out, easy as a man asking for the check at a restaurant he goes to every week.
"On your left."
McQueen punched through the gap.
One clean, crisp move — and the Challenger was behind them.
Inside the Viper, Rango watched Dom shrink in the mirror and settled back in his seat.
"THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT—"
Dom's voice echoed across the industrial park, except those weren't the words he used, and it went on for considerably longer.
Inside the Challenger, Dominic had both hands white-knuckle tight on the wheel.
First time. In thirty years of racing — circuits, streets, parking structures, airport runways — no one had taken him on the outside of a corner and announced it beforehand.
He floored it. The Challenger dug in and ran.
He was getting that car back.
Inside the Viper, Rango was already bored.
The thing about McQueen was that he drove himself. Completely and entirely himself. The steering wheel in Rango's hands was essentially decorative. He was a passenger with a good view and a very comfortable seat.
"Bro. Do you have a stereo in here?"
"Obviously," McQueen said, and his voice carried the mild offense of someone who had just been asked if he had wheels.
"Put something on."
A beat. Then the speakers came to life — and the opening of Radar Love by Golden Earring hit at full volume, all rolling drums and driving guitar, building into that unmistakable highway rhythm that sounds like doing ninety on an empty road with nothing ahead of you but more road.
Rango pointed at the dashboard approvingly. "Okay. That's exactly right."
He leaned back. Propped one arm on the window frame. The wind came through at what was technically an illegal speed and he didn't care even slightly.
He was drifting toward an actual nap when the black Challenger reappeared in the mirror — running hard, about a hundred meters back, Dom clearly having found something extra in the engine.
Rango straightened up. A slow grin.
He stuck his left hand out the window again. Thumb up.
Dom saw it in his rearview mirror and the word he said would have gotten a movie an R rating.
Rango's voice, completely pleasant:
"On your left."
McQueen went past him like Dom was parked.
A lap later. Same mirror. Same hand. Same thumb.
Dom was already saying it before Rango opened his mouth: "Don't. Don't you dare—"
"On your left!"
"AAAAGH—"
The Challenger's wheel jerked. The rear tires broke loose. And all at once the car was doing something it wasn't supposed to do — sliding wide, then wider, the backend swinging out past the point of recovery, and then the wall came up fast and the impact was a single massive CRUNCH of metal and the car rolled — once, twice, three times — and came to a stop upside-down, then rocked back onto its side, then onto its wheels.
Steam from the hood. Silence from the engine.
Rango watched it happen in the mirror. Put his chin in his hand.
"Hm."
He tapped the dash. "He's sensitive."
McQueen completed lap twenty and came to a stop at the warehouse entrance in a drift so smooth it felt like a period at the end of a sentence.
The industrial park had somehow become a party while they weren't looking. Word had gone around the block fast — it always did in Brooklyn when something worth watching happened — and the crowd that pressed in now was twice the size of the one that had started the race. Cheering, phone cameras up, people standing on the hoods of parked cars to see.
Rango stepped out. Leaned against the door. Lit a cigarette.
"Anybody want another run?"
A gap opened in the crowd. Dom was walking through it — jacket gone now, a cut on his cheek from the rollover, moving with the deliberate control of a man who is extremely angry and is choosing not to show how extremely angry he is. He stopped in front of Rango and pointed at his face.
His mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Several seconds passed.
"Dom."
A woman's voice, clear and unbothered. The crowd parted again and she stepped through — tall, dark-skinned, with the easy confidence of someone who'd been watching her brother make things harder than they needed to be for a very long time.
She stepped between them, facing Rango, and extended her hand.
"Mia. Dom's sister." She sized him up with calm, direct eyes. "You won clean. The deal was the deal." She glanced back at her brother briefly. "The Torettos keep their word."
"Good to know." Rango shook her hand. "You're considerably more reasonable than he is."
"Most people are." She said it without inflection, which made it funnier.
Rango held her hand a half-second longer than necessary, glancing once at Dom — who was watching this with the expression of a man eating glass — and then leaned slightly toward Mia.
"You race?"
"Sometimes."
"Passenger seat's open, if you ever want to find out what fast actually feels like."
Mia looked at him with the particular smile of a woman who is both aware of exactly what's happening and not entirely opposed to it. "I might have to rearrange my schedule."
"I'll be around."
He let go of her hand, looked once more at Dom — who had gone the specific color of a man whose blood pressure has become a medical concern — shrugged pleasantly, and whistled at Kevin to follow.
The Viper pulled out of the industrial park slow, as if leaving on its own terms, which it was.
The crowd watched it go. The feeling that had settled over the block was the specific one that shows up when something has shifted — the same energy in the room after the last scene of Bullitt, when the car is gone and everything is different and you're not quite sure when it happened.
The East Coast street racing scene had a new name at the top of it.
Nobody was saying it out loud yet.
But everybody knew.
The Viper stopped.
Reversed.
Drove back in.
Rango's window came down. He leaned out and looked at Dom, who stared back at him with the look of a man who has run out of appropriate responses to the last hour of his life.
"Hey." Rango tapped the door frame. "I've got a shipment. Moving some merchandise, need somebody who knows the right people." He tilted his head. "You interested?"
Dom said nothing for a long moment.
Then, very carefully, as if each word was a decision he was making in real time:
"...What kind of merchandise?"
Rango smiled.
"The kind that's better discussed off the street."
[Milestone: 500 Power Stones = +1 Chapter]
[Milestone: 10 Reviews = +1 Chapter]
Enjoyed this chapter? Leave a review.
20+advanced chapters on P1treon Soulforger