Drive Shaft by Knight Robin

Author:Knight, Robin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Squid INQ Press
Published: 2018-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

20

The sun was high and the thick, stifling air was filled with a strange sound.

A buzz.

A hum.

A drone.

It wafted in waves across the rocky ridge, like the sound of an insect swarm.

As Hutch and Jensen climbed out of the dusty, shot-up Viper, they looked up at the sky, almost expecting to see a cloud of locusts or bees descend upon them. They had pulled the car to a stop as close to the ridge as they could, next to Cody’s parked Lamborghini. A short distance away was the Kissin’ Cousins empty pick-up, and parked farther along the ridge was the Trimboli’s Hummer. The cars shimmered in the haze of heat, the sun glinting off the metal. There were no insect clouds to darken the hot day.

Suddenly the sound of panting joined the droning chorus, and a second later Cody Carrington came running over the rocky ridge. His shirt was off, now tucked into the back of his jeans. His torso was shiny with sweat. His eyes were concealed behind his Aviator sunglasses. But there was no concealing the grin on his face.

As he bounded down the ridge to his car, Hutch and Jensen both noticed his fist, which was clenching the yellow key that Bertha had given him as well as a yellow ribbon—his first marker. As he passed Jensen and Hutch, he gave them both a bright, white smile and an encouraging slap on the shoulder.

“Good luck, boys. Watch out for the snakes down there, and I ain’t just talkin’ about the reptiles.”

With that, the handsome Californian hustler leapt into his sports car and hauled ass back down the ridge trail.

Jensen shot Hutch a disconcerting look. “That sound I can hear. That ain’t the happy chirp of crickets, is it?”

Hutch shook his head. “Afraid not.”

The two hurried up to the crest of the ridge. At the top, their eyes dropped down into a large canyon, the entire floor of which was moving—and rattling.

“Oh God,” Jensen swallowed. “I guess this is the Snakepit.”

Hutch nodded. “Yup. It’s the Snakepit alright.”

In the canyon below, the two watched, as thousands upon thousands of diamondback rattlesnakes slithered and coiled across the surface of seemingly every rock, every ledge, and every inch of the canyon. They spat and hissed at each other, they flashed their fangs, they rattled their tails in warning: Trespassers will be bitten!

But the other racers were already ignoring that warning.

In the pit below, Strawberry was already tiptoeing her way across the canyon, raising her legs high and slow with each step and placing them carefully and cautiously between the wriggling, writhing rattlers. A short distance away, Frankie was also making his way through the deadly pit, his brow wet with concentration. Each of them were making slow progress toward a small wooden chest chained to a boulder. There were five chests in the canyon, each sloppily painted with a different colored X on top: yellow, red, green, black and blue. The yellow chest was already open and was now empty, with the exception of a few curious snakes now sliding in and out of it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.