Free Hurricane Fever by Tobias S. Buckell Page B

tin-roofed outdoor store selling fruit nestled deep into its leafy elbow. A pair of old, gray-haired rastas with long locks jumped up from their chairs to shout at them.
    Roo slammed the car over a rain gutter at an angle with a shudder and screech, using momentum to bounce over it. Then he pointed the car up the steep, half-dirt road, and climbed.
    They tore uphill again, the hatchback shuddering and wobbling, something in the axle or wheels knocked out of alignment.
    Behind them he could see the sports car try to take the hill as well. But at this speed, and with no warning, it bottomed out even harder on the gutter. Sparks flew, and the chassis screamed as it broke itself on concrete. The car came to a complete stop. They reversed, this time slowly approaching the dip at an angle.
    Roo pulled into a concrete driveway next to an explosion of pink frangipani plants. Again he used momentum to make the turn into the bend in the driveway, just out of sight of the road. He slammed on the parking brake and kicked the door open.
    “Stay here.”
    He grabbed the flare gun, hopped out of the car, and slid down the dirt alongside the road. He loaded the flare in just as he made it to the bottom and the sports car came wobbling up the road.
    They saw him and slammed on the brakes. Roo tracked it, aiming calmly and taking a breath, then fired down into the open window of the car. The gunman, in the middle of reloading his weapon, raised his hands and tried to duck as the brilliant flare flew between his legs to strike the floor by his feet.
    The car filled with hissing and sputtering red smoke. The entire interior glowed, filled suddenly with hell itself, and the car wandered wildly, then pitched off the side of the road.
    Roo walked across the road and looked down over the steep edge. The car rolled twice, picking up momentum as it bounced down the hill, then struck a thick mango tree. The carbon-fiber roof shattered and revealed aluminum ribs beneath it.
    It lay bent around the tree’s trunk, vomiting red smoke.
    Roo’s lip curled. He tossed the flare gun down the hill and walked back up to the Chinese hatchback. Kit stood at the passenger side, her door open. “Are we okay?”
    “Just about fucking anything but okay,” Roo said, getting in.
    “I didn’t know there were other people following us,” she said.
    Apparently she didn’t know a lot of things, Roo thought. But he chose not to say it. “Get in. I’ll take you somewhere safe.”
    She looked down the hill, seeing the red smoke slowly rising out from around the crooked trees downslope. And then came to a decision and got back in.
    “They followed you,” Roo said, thinking out loud as he popped the parking brake and rolled backward down the hill. “To get to me. I don’t know who they are, but they weren’t professionals. Or in the trade.”
    The fucking amateurs had been leaning out of windows shooting in a public area. Who the fuck was stupid enough to do that? Cheap, low-level chickenshit. Roo slammed the parking brakes on and spun the wheel in a textbook J-turn. The car whipped around to face downhill.
    He released the parking brake before the car fully spun and floored it. They bounced out of the driveway onto asphalt.
    At the bottom of the hill he eased them over the gutter this time, and they passed the now-flaming wreckage of the sports car as he accelerated westward.
    “The first man I shot in the yard.” Roo was replaying everything in his head, hunting for details. “He had tattoos. Swastikas. All of those men were white. Like European white. Nordic. None of them seen the sun in a while.” One of them had been already starting to sunburn … he’d been in the car. He’d be well past sunburnt now, Roo thought.
    “I swear, I don’t know who they are,” Kit said.
    Roo rubbed his forehead in frustration.
    “I shouldn’t have kept the phone,” he said out loud, more to himself than to her. But it was convenient to have someone to talk to,