Spliced

“Oi Reggie!” Cat rapped on the body of the car to get his attention. She kept her eyes ducked to avoid looking at the light from the tip of welding nozzle he was currently using to repair the vehicle’s roof. The faded dark blue, poorly repainted sports car had two large gashes in it’s roof. The owner had recently driven through the Dragon Mountains and found out first hand exactly why they were named so. The car was now in one of the semi open building’s out the back of Cat’s garage.

Reggie was a brand new mechanic, taken on as a favour to someone Cat had once worked with before. He’d come with a warning that he wasn’t the best at his job but given time his skills would probably improve. Her old coworker had promised her a guaranteed entry spot in this year’s Fever Rally, all she had to do was give Reggie a try for a couple months.

Fever Rally entry tickets were hard to come by and assigned based on a lottery so even good driver’s weren’t guaranteed an entry but that deal had been back before she’d found out she was pregnant. Worse still, she was starting to think saying Reggie wasn’t the best mechanic was one hell of an understatement. At this point it was unlikely he was going to last another week let alone months.

“Huh,” Reggie flipped up his mask.

“Why haven’t you put a welding blanket down? You’re spitting molten metal all over the window. We’re gonna have to replace that now. And didn’t I tell you to flip the sign by the entrance when you’re welding.”

He shrugged. “Anyone who’s coming can hear it. And this car’s a dump anyway, he’ll never notice.”

“He bloody well will. Look at it.”

“I can scratch it off.”

With fists on her hips, Cat gave him an incredulous look.

He stared blankly back. “Look, I’ll do it right now.” He glanced about for a metal scraper.

Cat took in a deep breath. “No. Reggie. Just... get out.”

“What?”

“You’re fired. Get out.”

“My cousin and you had a deal.”

Cat waved a hand. “Deals off. Tell him he can keep his entry ticket. Now get out before I have Bongo throw you out.”

Reggie got down off his step ladder. His eyes narrowed as he stepped toward her with clenched fists.

Cat stared fiercely back at him. She was taller than he was and was pretty certain she could take him in a fight if she had to. Normally she would have had no trouble dragging his arse out of here if it came to it, but the whole being pregnant thing did give her some pause. Enough that she was actually a little relieved when two of her other employees just happened to step out back, both of them quite large men.

One of them, who was nicknamed Gus, noticed Cat and Reggie’s postures and proximity. “Everything alright out here?” he asked.

“Reggie was just leaving,” Cat said looking pointedly at Reggie.

Reggie glared back then he glanced at the three of them. “Fine,” he snarled. He threw his welding mask down to the ground, kicked at a rock, and stormed off. “Didn’t want to work at this shithole anyway.”

They watched him leave. The other man followed him out to make sure he actually left and didn’t wreck anything on his way.

Once they were gone, Gus remarked, “You know I’m pretty sure his cousin just made that deal with you so he could get rid of him.”

“Probably,” Cat agreed. She was looking down at the window and remaining welding work, wondering who she should get to fix it, or if she should just do this one herself.

“Too bad about the rally entry, maybe you’ll still get drawn for it.”

Cat shrugged. She really should tell them all that she was pregnant but she should probably do that after she told the father first.

Gus noticed the car window and whistled. “Shit!” he commented. “You want me to finish that one boss? The coupe I’ve been working on’s only got a few hours left of work.”

Cat nodded. Then she paused. “Actually, it might be a good one for Joanie, if you can work with her once she gets in this afternoon. You can do a bit each. Teach her how to weld.”

“On this one?”

Cat nodded. “She’s gotten pretty good on the practice steel. This one’s as good as any.”

Gus ran a hand through his hair. “I ain’t much of a teacher.”

“I’ll give you a 50% bonus for each hour you work with her.”

“Oh second thoughts, I’ve always wanted to help educate and inspire the next generation.” He smiled.

Cat just nodded. “Good.” She left him to it and returned back to the front garage where she had a project of her own, a sleek green track car who’s owner had requested some engine modifications.

She was searching about for some tape when a piece of paper blew out from under a can she’d moved. It fluttered to the floor. Cat bent down to pick it up. It was a clipping from out of a newspaper. She frowned and turned it over a few times. On one side a happy looking family stared back at her, a father, a mother, and two you girls, maybe ten and eight years old. The title was more chilling, ‘Young Girl Slain. Were Werewolves Responsible?’. Cat knew enough to know that the bit about werewolves was probably just some sleazy journalist stirring up trouble. The local werewolf packs mostly kept to themselves and only hunted deer and rabbit. Sure, some of the younger werewolves sometimes struggled with control but the pack was pretty good about keeping them away from people and livestock. Unfortunately it was the fact that they kept to themselves that made some people more suspicious. They were mostly a minority though and not overly vocal. That wasn’t the part of the article that Cat found interesting.

Someone had taken a pen and drawn a circle around the father, along with an arrow just in case the bright red circle hadn’t been enough. That combined with the fact that they’d underlined the words ‘unknown assailant’ made Cat pretty confident of what they were trying to say. The whole thing sent a chill right through her. But who had drawn the lines on? Why was it here?

Cat checked with the others, but no one knew where the clipping had come from. She set it back down on the bench just as her phone vibrated from somewhere among several canisters of automotive paint. She checked the message. It was from Baz. All it said was, ‘need to talk.’

She frowned and tried to ignore the ache that statement put in her belly or the chill left over from reading that article. It could be about anything, Baz was a man of few words and he probably wasn’t the sort to think about how things he said might sound either. It wasn’t so much the words that bothered her though. It was the fact that he’d messaged her at all. For that to happen it must be something important. Had he found out about the baby? What would his reaction be? Would he request an abortion? She wasn’t so sure she could now but what were the alternatives? Raising it? She doubted she’d be any good at that. And yet, unwittingly she found herself wanting it. Wanting her.

She glanced at the time. It wasn’t quite midday yet. Baz tended to work odd hours. So did she. Sometimes she’d get up early and take the afternoon off to nap. Other days she’d sleep in and work into the evening. Time had never really meant much to Cat. She did what she wanted when she felt like it. For a mechanics shop the only person who really needed to clock in and clock out at a set time was the receptionist, and that was Bongo’s job. From 8am to 5pm he took the customer’s details and work orders, managed inventory, finances, and any other office type stuff that needed doing. Everyone else set their own hours. Everyone earned a wage, except for Cat who owned the place and took a certain percent of the profits whichever way they fell. In the early days there had been a lot of up and down, mostly down until she’d gotten the neighbouring rally track back up and running. But these days business was booming on both the track and the garage.

She told Bongo she was heading out, and then she hopped in her black 4-door V8. The wheels kicked up gravel and dust as she left the garage behind her.

The fastest route took Cat close to town, right by Little Rock’s main entrance and not that far from the bars, the law office, and the police station. Cat didn’t bother to slow down. She never did. The road was nothing but a large expanse of dirt here and all the pedestrians were further in or closer to the buildings themselves. She was just reentering the section of highway out of Little Rock, an area tar-sealed and surrounded by thick forest, when she heard sirens picking up behind her.

She cursed. She hadn’t really expected them to be able to get out of the building fast enough to pursue her. From the sounds of it, one of them must have been already in their vehicle. She considered her options. Stopping wasn’t one, not unless she had to, but she’d already had two tickets this month for speeding and in her experience three was always about the point where they started kicking down your door to collect. Cat would rather put off paying for as long as she could get away with it. The good news was, the tickets only counted if they could prove it was her that had been driving. That meant they had to catch her first.

She could keep going, shoot past Baz’s and do a whole loop, but that would take ages and force her back through the town again, and by that time they might be waiting. They were too close behind her now to stop or to hide before she reached Baz’s. She could lose them but not without being forced into the loop. There were other roads she could take but there was only one way into Little Rock and depending on which copper it was, they might just wait for her to turn around and come back. She didn’t really feel like driving all the way to Broomstick Beech or the Emerald City.

She glanced in the rear view mirror and between guiding the car smoothly at high speed around swooping corners, Cat tried to read the number plate. She eased off the accelerator just enough to gauge whether on not this was a cop she could bribe or sweet talk. She kissed those options good bye as she realised the car was one that belonged to a cop named Bliss. Bliss had given her one of the other tickets and Cat was pretty sure the woman had personal vendetta out for her at this point. Bliss was also a decent driver, Cat definitely wasn’t beating her to Baz’s. A loop would lose her but as the greenery outside blurred past, Cat had another idea.

She would need to time this right. She floored it past Baz’s place and counted in her head how far she went. Soon she reached a straight section of road, just long enough to allow her to perform the maneuver she had planned. She assessed the road ahead. A wide grassy berm on each side and no oncoming traffic made this a reasonably safe trick to pull off.

Still keeping count Cat slammed her foot on the brakes, sending the car into a controlled skid. With split-second precision and fine-tuned movements Cat angled the car just right. Then she yanked up the handbrake forcing the rear end of her car to spin around in a dramatic 180 degree arc. The smell of rubber filled the air and Cat smiled at the familiar thrill of feeling gravity-like forces pulling in all the wrong directions. It would be rough on the suspension but this car was built to handle these type of sharp maneuvers.

Cat lined up along the highway, facing the completely opposite direction to what she had been facing a moment ago. The cop car rounded the bend. Cat floored it right at her. The car surged forwards with an immense amount of power, one that never failed to make Cat feel invincible. At the last minute Cat spun the wheel and pulled her car back onto her own side of the road. Behind her, the cop swerved instinctively off into the grassy berm, coming to a stop a moment after Cat had disappeared out of sight.

Cat slowed right down to an almost crawl before turning down the road that led to Baz’s place. Here was gravel and dirt again and the less dust she kicked up the harder it would be for Bliss or any of the other cops to figure out where she had gone. By the time Cat stepped out in front of Baz’s tiny house, she was pretty sure she had lost them.