Fifi's Revenge
by Road Samurai
 

Published on Crack in the Net by Tiziano "Uncle Entity" Caliendo, 2001
Reprinted by the Seattle Washington Autoduel Team, September 24, 2003

This is a "coming attraction" for a story that is currently being written by a fellow Mad Max fan known to us only as the "Road Samurai." He is a very talented individual and if the story is of the same caliber as this preview, no one will be disappointed. I must warn you that this preview contains strong language and should not be read by younger people. If you are offended by strong language, please go back to the main page now.

Without further adieu, I give you the preview to Road Samurai's Mad Max story.

-- Tiziano "Uncle Entity" Caliendo
 

The air was bad down here. It floated around, coated in oil and filth, and just made the whole situation that much more daunting. Fifi discovered he was wandering again, meandering about and avoiding the whole scene. He caught himself thinking about the air, the awful, dirt choked air.

"Well, it's goddamned better than thinkin' about what's lyin' at my feet!" he screamed.

Charlie looked at him for a moment and then turned his head to look into the murky recesses of the garage. The Pursuit, Big Bopper 2, was
still in the stall where Charlie had parked it three days before. It waited in the darkness, a silent sleeping machine, perhaps dreaming of chasing after road scum on bikes, Charlie thought. He didn't much like the way it sat there in the darkness, all cold and hungry. Charlie looked at it some more and realized he didn't like it at all. It stood for something, Charlie didn't know what. It stood for something that was huge and angry and eager to snatch up innocent flesh in its jagged metal teeth and gnash the life out of in violent, cheerful bites. His throat began to throb.

"I don't see the Interceptor!" he buzzed.

Fifi was looking at the thing at his feet. His face squirmed, his eyes swarmed everywhere in a frenzied search to find something inoffensive,
something sane, to fix upon. It was hopeless. The whole thing.

"This whole fuckin place STINKS of offense. I can smell the poison that started this whole shitty deal murderin the air. I can smell those bombs ripping their way through the air toward anything left alive just so's they can KILL IT! And I can smell HIM! I can SMELL HIS WHOLE KIND!"

Fifi spun himself around viciously and hurled his foot into the door of another Pursuit. Charlie looked sympathetic for a moment and then looked into another part of the garage. More sleeping beasts. His stomach turned just to look at them. He decided to look at Barry instead. Fifi now had his back to Barry. He let his head fall. Charlie felt alone when he saw Fifi do that. He felt like things truly were over, that the business that had
been building up for so long and had finally reached the flashpoint was really going to live up to everyone's expectations.

Fifi was a hero, and heroes don't have flaws. Heroes don't lose their way. Heroes don't let their heads fall. Charlie dropped his head, too. It
was true, it was all true. What everyone had said was true, except Fifi.

"Fifi, you're a goddamned liar," Charlie thought, and looked away once again into the dreary shadows with sparkling, angry eyes.

Fifi stared out into the darkness, mind and body ablaze with grief, hopelessness, and fury. Fury. He looked over his shoulder to see, to remind himself of what death looked like, of what evil truly was.

Barry, the mechanic, was sprawled on the greasy grit of the garage tarmac. One half of his skull and face was blown away. The amount of blood was quite small but it was sprayed in grisly, gaudy batches across the ground and over windscreens and light bars with flecks of brain matter and bone in them. It was the work of a sawed-off shotgun. Rage. Rage. Rage.

Fifi straightened his back and brought his chin up. He puffed out his chest as he turned to see where Charlie had gone. He was over by the wreck, Big Bopper 1, examining the passenger half of the windscreen like it was an archaeological find of the century. Fifi watched as Charlie reached out with his hand to touch the jagged edges of the destroyed windscreen. Fifi didn't know why Charlie was mesmerized with the windscreen, or why he was about to cut himself without even realizing it.

"Charlie! Get your ass behind the wheel of that Special! We got a pursuit in progress!"

Charlie jumped, startled out of his hypnotic state. He looked at Fifi with dawning awe. No, not dawning, rediscovered.

"Maybe . . . maybe you aren't a liar," he buzzed, a tenuous promise of a smile beginning to etch his lips.

"What?! We don't have time for this. I never goddamn lie, now get your ass behind the wheel of that CHRISTING SPECIAL!"

Fifi's barking was like shotgun blasts in the underground garage, and as Charlie hurried down one lane of the garage into smoky darkness he smiled like a child as the Fifi's echoes reverberated back to his pleased ears. Charlie was so overjoyed that he didn't even notice that Fifi had blasphemed. Twice. But Charlie hadn't noticed, because Fifi wasn't a liar.

"No! He is! About the first part!" Charlie buzzed to himself as he hauled ass toward the sleeping giant in Stall 22.

"He's lying when he says people don't believe in heroes anymore! I believe! I believe in him!" Charlie cried to himself, and as he yanked the door open on the red beast and dropped into the bucket driver seat, he imagined he heard Fifi call back: "You and me, Charlie! We're gonna give them back ALL their heroes!" but that may have been just the echoes of his footsteps or the voice of his heart. He found the key in the visor. He turned the ignition over and waited for the rumble. The beast awoke angry. It growled in this subterranean dungeon of violence, on this violent continent, on this violent world. What bellowed under the beasts hood was fury, what poured from its pipes was desire for vengeance.

Vengeance for being born. Charlie coaxed himself to release the brake and ease a foot upon the pedal. The beast was loose. He arrived just as Fifi threw a blanket over Barry. The beast growled as Charlie pulled on its reign. Fifi looked at it for a moment. Just a moment. A glad, quick sweep of the eyes and then he was at the driver's door and yelling through the open window at Charlie's face. "Shove over! I'm drivin'!"

They pulled out of the dungeon, and the predator emerged wreaking of octane, of naked fury, of lust. The hunt was on. The owner of the sawed-off shotgun that had killed Barry was on the run in a Pursuit Special.

"What's he drivin'?" Fifi asked as he manhandled the beast onto the blacktop.

"It's not exactly a duck's gut. We can catch up."

Charlie croaked, "Methane, I think."

"We'll catch him. He was one of us, but he's gone too far. He killed one of us. He's got to pay. Playtime is over."

Fifi looked over his shoulder. There were two shotguns and plenty of shells. He grinned tightly at Charlie as he returned his eyes to the road.

Charlie looked into the back and saw what was to be seen. He shook his head and buzzed, "Roop's had it this time."