“I am going to fucking rip your heads off,” I roared, storming into the garage for One Fine Pig. Their gremlin, a male named Lipstick, cowered in the far back of the garage where he’d been inspecting the front bumper.

The two Tigrans hadn’t yet left their APV. An ethereal gun suddenly materialized, coming out the side of the vehicle right in the butt of the pig airbrushed on the side. The glowing blue weapon appeared non-corporeal. It was pointed directly at me. It started to hum.

“Oh, fuck!” I cried, jumping to the side as the gun fired.

Thwum!

The entire wall of the garage blew out. A wall of the next house over caved in, revealing the double-decker bus. The powerful blast hit the side of the vehicle, and it flipped, catching on fire.

“Hey! Hey! What the fucking fuck!” came the deep cry of a camel who had just exited the garage. There were three of them, all carrying baseball bats with spikes on them.

“You missed, motherfuckers!” I yelled, kicking the side of the truck right into the airbrushed face of Nico.

The top hatch opened, and Dario the Tigran appeared. “Get out of our garage!” He popped back down.

The three dromedarians entered the garage and started beating the shit out of the front of the APV with their baseball bats. Next door, the fire in the garage spread to the walls. Their gremlin was running around with a fire extinguisher, but a moment later, the entire double-decker bus was encased in ice, and the fire stopped. That was an Elle spell.

“We’re gonna turn your insides sloppy!” one of the camels yelled as he jumped to the hood of the truck and started smashing the windshield with his bat. A crack formed in the glass. Then another.

Panicked pig squeals emanated from within.

Lightning crackled against the sky outside even though it was a clear day.

“Stop! Stop!” cried Lipstick the gremlin.

I barely registered any of this.

“Get the fuck out here!” I continued to scream, banging my fist on the door. My gauntlet had formed, and the heavily armored door dented inward with each punch.

Slam.

Slam.

Slam.

My ears were ringing. I could hear Donut shouting. Imani was shouting, too, but I was so red-hot angry, I couldn’t comprehend what they were saying.

Zzzzzz. The square-shaped shield of the APV turned back on, pushing me back with a heavy electric shove. It was like I’d been walloped with a cattle prod. The camel on the hood of the truck flew upward and back, his head crunching sickeningly against the top lip of the garage door. He fell hard against the driveway and started to roll while another camel shouted his name. The camel’s neck was broken, and he was dead before he even hit the road.

From inside the truck, Penelope continued to squeal.

Each time the pig squealed in panic, the sky flashed, and lightning cracked louder and louder.

The edge of the shield had tossed me all the way out of the garage through the hole they’d blasted in their own wall. I tumbled and rolled, my skin sizzling and burning from where it had come in contact.

From inside the garage came a new scream. Lipstick the gremlin was pressed against the back wall of the garage, pinned between the shield and the barricade. The gremlin suddenly exploded, the gore held aloft by the shield and spread in a red flowerlike pattern against the wall like a drop of blood pressed under a piece of glass.

I started to get back up, wondering if my Wraith Phase would work.

“Stop,” Imani yelled, grabbing me by the shoulders, pulling me back. Jacobus the reverse tooth fairy buzzed around her head, laughing manically, clapping his hands.

“Carl, stop!” Donut cried at the same time. “Please, stop. Goodness, Carl. You can’t fight a car. And you’ll hurt Penelope!”

I just sort of missed what happened next. They’d walked me out of sight of their garage, and I sat at the curb, in front of the remains of our mercenaries. The two remaining camels dragged their now-dead friend away as they rushed back to their garage to look at their frozen bus.

I just sat there, breathing heavily. I stared at the splattered remains of the mercenaries on the street. Quemada had just poofed out in a flare, leaving a scorch mark. Finley’s legs were gone. Olga’s head had been caved in.

It had happened so fast. I was taken with how unfair it was. For weeks, months now, we’d been on the precipice of death. Crawlers I knew were dying left and right, and NPCs like these mercenaries were falling by the thousands.

But there was something about that simple act of defiance that Finley, an NPC I didn’t even know, had shown, protecting his two friends. He had been on his way to help them, and then all three of them had just been snuffed out.

“Fuck!” I cried out. I was so angry, so overwhelmed. After all that, for them to be hit and killed right there on the street? “Fuck!”

Jacobus buzzed near my head. He whispered in my ear. “Jeg hader også tigre. De har kun tredive tænder. Hvis du betaler mig, eller hvis du lader mig kneppe grisen, får jeg deres kranier til at eksplodere.”

I had no idea what he was saying or why it wasn’t translating. Donut hissed at him, and he buzzed away.

The two remaining camels were now sitting on the floor of their garage. One put his head into the lap of the other. Imani and Elle were in there talking to them, giving us space.

We were fucked. We couldn’t drive. We couldn’t hire new mercenaries between heats. The no-stealing-of-other-people’s-vehicles rule was still active, meaning if we borrowed a mercenary from another team, they wouldn’t be able to drive it. Imani couldn’t drive.

We couldn’t even use goddamned Jamal because he counted as a hired mercenary, and gremlins couldn’t drive.

Donut was on my shoulder, not sitting but wrapped around my neck, purring loudly.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay. We’ll find a way. We have plans in case this happens. Remember?”

Mongo squawked in concern from inside our garage. I took another breath. I reached up with a shaking hand and stroked Donut.

She was right. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t react like that. Now that I was thinking more clearly, I could see all wasn’t lost yet. We had options, none of them good, but we still had them.

“Donut,” I said, “can you please take the corpses? Finley and Olga at least.” The dromedarians had left the body of their friend outside their garage. “Take that one, too.”

She moved to the street and did as I asked.

Around the corner, I could hear the Tigrans fighting. I was pretty sure they didn’t know I was still nearby and could hear them. All the anger I’d been feeling had now fled and was replaced with determination.

We needed to take a team out, especially now, but we needed to be smart about it. The unicorn was the biggest threat, but for right now, I just needed to make sure one of the teams was gone because I was no longer confident in our chances to not come in last.

I thought again about the description of Penelope the pig. Of the lightning that had just flashed across the sky.

A tear rolled down my cheek. Goddamnit, I thought. Goddamnit.

There was a way out of this. Out of it all. But it wouldn’t be easy.

“I’m keeping her in the truck,” Dario was saying. “It’s safer in the truck.”

“Then you come out with me,” Nico, who was the buff one, said. “I don’t like you alone with her in there.”

“We should both stay in the truck,” Dario said. “We shouldn’t have run over those mercenaries. That human was pissed. Look what he did to the door. He did that with his hand. And now the camels are mad, too.”

“Fuck him and fuck them,” Nico said. “We’ll blow them all off the road if we see ’em. Remember the plan. We win this, and we get Penny to the safe place. She’s the important one.”

“Lipstick is dead,” Dario replied. “What are we going to do?”

“We need to find a new one on the track. There should be two out there. And if not, we can use a few Emergency Gremlins to keep it running until we find one. Eyes on the prize.”

“Okay,” Dario replied, sounding hesitant. “But don’t get in a fight with that human. If you see him, get back into the truck.”

“I can take that bitch,” Nico replied.

“Maybe. But you can’t take the cat. And if something happens to him, we’ll have to deal with her. If we fall, Penny will be defenseless against her sultry advances. I knew we should’ve gotten a mercenary this round.”

“They were charging too much.”

From the street, Donut let out a deep growl. From the garage came scrambling, and I heard the two Tigrans jump back into their truck and lock the doors. The shield turned back on.

Louis: Guys, make sure you go into town. The weird bat dudes are selling acid rain protection, but they’re going to run out.

Donut: HOW IS IT GOING? IS YOUR TEAM OKAY?

Louis: We’re in first place for once. First place in our heat. Prepotente is in first first. I don’t know if it’s going to last. But before the race that Bodi guy went into Hungry Eyes all by himself and ate like a thousand things from all the different stalls, and his buffs make Eileen go really fast.

Donut: IS EILEEN YOUR LOWRIDER?

Louis: Yeah. I didn’t name her. She has it painted on the side, but Britney thinks that’s the name of the person who drove the truck because the fuzzy dice are pink. Anyway, most of the tracks are like waterslide tubes, and there’s this Satan guy, who keeps saying, “I hope none of these tubes lead to my butthole.” It’s really weird. Sweety, that’s Prepotente’s tapir thing, really likes the water tubes, and we’ve just been following them. Prepotente says he knows the best path.

Carl: We’re on our way.