Author's Note:
This is a small story I wrote last year as a birthday present to a minotaur-obsessed friend. The title is a rather bad pun on the movie "The transporter", which was also about a getaway-driver. I'd particularly like comments on voice and style and on technical errors.
The Taursporter
The air vent was only covered by a light aluminium grating that was quickly and silently removed. Why bother with steel bars or an alarm when the air-duct behind it was too small to crawl through anyway? Antonio grinned and tied his bag of of tools to his ankle with a length of twine. Humans. They always thought too big. The halfling squirmed into the duct.
Less than twenty minutes later the halfling squirmed back out again, with sore elbows and knees but grinning widely. He pulled the bag out after him, quite a bit fatter than it had been going in. He secured it to his waist and ran across the roof, just as the first rays of the sun broke over the horizon.
He climbed over the edge and shimmied down a drain pipe that would never have carried the weight of a human thief. There wasn't much time left -- the patrolling guard would find the cracked safe any moment now, and once the alarm was sounded the police would be as thick as Boston harbor smog.
Antonio paused for a second a couple of meters above the ground to make sure that the still shadowy alley below him truly was deserted, then he jumped down and ran nimbly towards the mouth of the alley. The driver should be waiting there with the engine running. Antonio only hoped Cerry had found something less conspicuous than last time.
Exiting the alley, Antonio stopped dead for a second. Cerry was there all right, but she was anything but inconspicuous: The brick-red, broad-shouldered minotaur had somehow managed to squeeze herself in behind the steering wheel of a deep red Porsche speedster. Her own minotaur-sized appearance didn't help the matter any. With her old fur-lined bomber-jacket from the war, racing goggles and a long vivid green scarf tossed haphazardly around her neck, she looked like some crazed German flying ace out of World War I.
Cerry grinned at the halfling; a bizarre, twisted sight of white teeth below the bug-eyed goggles.
"Come on," she shouted with a wave.
A gunshot rang out behind him, and a bullet keened past a few feet from Antonio's head. He didn't remember getting in the car; one moment he was standing there gawking and the next he was in the car, somehow aware that someone had shot at him in the interval between those two states.
The bucket seats were elf-size and should have been more than ample for Antonio, but with Cerry's bulk in the driver's seat he found himself squeezed up against the passenger door, almost without room to move.
Another gunshot. With his primal mind screaming objections, Antonio lifted himself up and looked over the side of the car. A hook-tusked orc of a security guard stood in the alley, shooting at them with a .38 that almost disappeared in his meaty fist. Curiosity sated, Antonio's primal mind got the upper hand again and he hunched back down below the door of the cabriolet, pressing himself down into the seat. If there were more gunshots they were lost in the roar of the engine.
The car didn't so much kick or buck as suddenly grip Antonio about the chest and push him into the seat with a strong, steady pressure. Then they were at the crossing and Cerry nimbly flung the powerful car to the side to avoid a lorry coming from the right, smashing the hobbit first against the door and then against the minotaur's elbow.
Someone laughed, euphoric and wild. It had to be Cerry, she was the only person Antonio knew whose laugh was loud enough to overpower the constant lusty growl of the engine and the wild howl of the wind.
Other cars were just a blur of colour and a change of pitch in the wind, then they were gone; shops and street-signs were a kaleidescope of quickly changing colours and shapes as the minotaur threw the small car into turns, dodged sharply around obstructing cars and, for a brief, horrifying twenty seconds, threaded them through the oncoming traffic up the wrong way of a one-way-street.
Antonio realised someone was screaming and closed his mouth. The screaming stopped. A flash of blue light and a siren wailed loudly for a second, then it dopplered away and faded out behind them. Another siren, in from the side. Cerry flung the car into a sudden turn, turning frantically at the steering-wheel and missing a fire hydrant with scant inches. The second siren disappeared for a moment, but returned shortly and another joined it from the left.
Concrete columns flashed past beside them as Cerry sped them along under the over-pass, taking them out of the city towards the eastern highway. The sirens behind them were a symphony of wailing now. When the minotaur had man-handled the car at break-neck speed through the entry-ramp and gotten them safely onto the highway, Antonio climbed up in the seat and looked behind them.
He held onto the back of the seat with both hands and blinked away tears from his wind-whipped eyes to see clearly. Three, four,
five police cars with flashing blue lights were strung out in single file behind them. They were large, high-powered Dodge Coronets; no match for the quick and nimble Porsche, but they had staying-power and, more dangerously still, radios. If they couldn't shake the cops soon, they'd be run straight into a road-block.
If Cerry had picked any other car they could have done a bootlegger reverse and tried to get lost amidst the early morning traffic into the city, but with the Porsche that was hopeless.
A unexpected lurch almost threw Antonio out of the car as Cerry suddenly swung off the highway onto an old, one-lane road that forked off towards the south. The halfling scrambled panicky back into a sitting position, looking behind to see the police cars swing off the highway behind them, one by one. He turned to Cerry, shouting to be heard over the roar of the wind.
"Where the hell are you going? This road just leads to ... Oh no."
The minotaur hunched down further behind the steering wheel, as if to reduce the wind resistance to gain an extra fraction of a mile per hour, her forward sloping horns almost touching the top of the wind-screen. Her upper lip pulled back over her teeth in a wicked, expectant grin.
"Oh yes."
The end of the asphalt came with an explosive jolt. One moment the speedster was flying ahead as if it didn't know what the ground was, the next it was bucking and twisting on the gravel, taking all of Cerry's not inconsiderable skill and strength to keep on the road, shaking both her and the halfling so their teeth rattled.
On the narrow-laned gravel road, the broad-wheeled police car with their heavy, no-nonsense suspensions had the edge, and soon the lead car was riding on their tail. Cerry risked a quick glance in the rear-view mirror and frowned. An elf was leaning out of the passenger side window, trying to aim a shotgun as the cars sped across the bumpy gravel road. That was not good at all.
Small hands fumbled at her lap, and Cerry almost lost control of the car in utter shock. She heard the boom of the shotgun, but the elf must have missed. Struggling to keep the Porsche on the road, the minotaur couldn't spare a single glance down to see what on earth halfling was up to.
"Urr? This is
not the time to get frisky, Antonio!" she exclaimed, stamping on the brake to keep on the road as it turned sharply around an out-cropping of rock.
"I'm
trying to find your piece!" the halfling shouted back.
"
My piece?!"
"Your
pistol!"
"OH! In the glove compartment. Be careful, it kicks a little."
Antonio dove for the glove compartment and got it open, there was nothing there but Cerry's pistol and how she had managed to cram it inside in the first place was anybody's guess. The barrel was the length of his forearm, and Antonio literally had to pry it loose to get it out.
There was a stretch of straight road again, and the halfling moved to sit on his knees in the bucket-seat, facing backwards. That damned elf was stretching out of the window again. Antonio lifted the huge gun with both hands and rested the barrel on the back of the seat; he had to let go of the grip with one hand to reach the trigger.
The elf shouted something that was lost to the howling wind and raised his shotgun. Cerry's long, deep red hair and the ends of that glaringly green scarf streamed behind her, beating to and fro in the wind and kept obscuring Antonio's aim. Guessing, he pulled the trigger.
Two things happened at once. The windshield of the leading police-car exploded into a network of cracks, turning milky-white, and the gun wrenched itself out of the halfling's grip, flew through the air and gave him a passing crack over the head with the barrel before continuing out over the side of the car.
It had done its job. The driver of the police-car stamped on the brake, lost control on the loose gravel and skidded out into the ditch. It rolled twice, kicking up a cloud of dust, and came to a rest on its side. When the dust cleared Antonio could see that damned elf standing balanced on top of it, firing his shotgun, but the red Porsche was already out of firing-range.
The cops kept a more respectful distance after that, but they still clung on, tenacious as horseflies. The landscape around them changed character, now slooping ever so slightly downwards. The minotaur's expectant grin grew wider. An old, sun bleached warning-sign zoomed past besides them, too fast for Antonio to read what it said, but he could guess.
Then the land ahead of them ended in a sharp crest and was replaced by blue sky and a distant green haze of the valley floor far below. The road seemed to continue straight ahead into the sky. There was a faint tremor in the car as Cerry urged the accelerator a fraction of an inch further, the engine responding to her suggestion with hungry obedience.
Cerry pulled the hand-brake and yanked the car into a side-slip, then wheeled the steering-wheel frantically to the left; hedging through the sharp turn that had been hidden just beyond the crest. With the mountain side on their left and nothing but air on their right, Cerry got the skid under control just as the car accelerated out of the turn.
The car raced along a narrow gravel road that had been cut into the side of the mountain and zig-zagged down towards the valley floor far below. The first hairpin turn was approaching at an insane speed. Cerry pumped the brake fiercely with her hoof, worked madly at the too-small steering wheel and forced the car skidding through the hairpin turn with, keeping the car on the road more by force of will than force of traction. Someone was screaming again.
Antonio had a second's glimpse of a police car cresting the ridge above them at high speed, then they were through the turn and he could see nothing but Cerry's furry bulk to his left, blurry mountainside to his right and narrow, gravel-covered death in front. Then they were inside the second hairpin turn and mountainside and air switched sides once more.
A large black and white shape arched down over mountainside towards the road ahead of them; one of the police cars had failed to make the first turn. The Porsche roared in unbridled freedom as Cerry for the first time stamped the accelerator flat against the floor. The speedster leapt forward, straight for a meeting with the falling patrol car.
Two people howled, one in horror, the other in pure adrenaline rush. Then they were past, with only feet of clearance between the two cars. A loud crash behind them, the bone-jarring sound of tearing sheet-metal, and they were already at the next turn. Antonio was thrown forward the glove-compartment as Cerry stamped the brake, then smashed against her knee as the car screeched along the turn. He managed to climb back into the seat just in time for the next death-defying hairpin turn.
There were more turns but except for a blurry impression of pure speed and utter horror mixed with the sound of Cerry's wild, booming laughter, Antonio didn't remember anything more until the Porsche was cruising along a level road, flanked by tall evergreens on both sides. The cops where nowhere to be seen.
The minotaur turned her head and gave Antonio a grin from ear to ear.
"Gods, I love this car!" she shouted. Antonio only stared back in wide-eyed silence; his heart might have started beating again but his mind was still numbed with shock.
A few minutes later Cerry slowed down and swung off onto an old timber road; the car complained but she coaxed it along at a crawl.
"Hey, why are we stopping? The cops are bound to radio the other precincts and get patrols out."
"I've got a tail-cramp," Cerry replied, "Besides this is where I stashed the other car."
"What other car?"
"The inconspicuous one you told me to get, remember?"
"What?"
"That's what you said, 'Make sure you get a fast car, and one that's inconspicuous.' The Porsche is the fast car. I stashed the inconspicuous one further up this road."
"I meant a car that was fast
and inconspicuous!"
"Oh. Well, you should have said that, then."
"Wait," Antonio said and looked at the minotaur with a narrowed eyes. She looked perfectly innocent, which was always deeply suspicious when it came to Cerry.
"You planned this, didn't you?"
"Hurr?" Cerry still looked perfectly innocent.
"Our last real job here before we move the operation to Europe. You would want a grand finale, and those police-cars were onto us much too soon. They weren't looking for
me yet, they were looking for a crazy minotaur in a stolen Porsche!"
"What an imagination. I guess that's why it's you who plan all the heists, huh?" Cerry said, not a guilty bone in her body.
"One day, Cerry. One day. I'll get even, just you wait."
Cerry only grinned, still elated and light-headed from the chase. It wasn't the first time she'd heard that promise and she certainly didn't intend for it to be the last.
