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“I’m hungry,” Lightning announces, and steers them off of the road into the treeline.
The three of them are… somewhere… Where was it again, Chick tries to remember, some town in Washington state? By the graces of Cruz’s good road navigation, they've managed to travel north for the hot summer months. The thick forests and rolling plains beyond the mountains provide ample hunting and wide open spaces, and gas stations are generally unlooted and brimming with fuel.
It's the total opposite of the mistake Los Angeles had been. His chassis still smarts from those grueling weeks, trapped and hunted in the sweltering concrete jungle, boxed in by piles of corpses and madcars with guns. Chick is just grateful they haven't encountered any more road warriors since then. Cities have too many desperate survivors in close proximity.
Why they left the road, Chick hasn't bothered to wonder, until the smell and sound of freshwater hits him from beyond the curtains of tender underbrush. A mountain river.
Lightning brings them to the smooth, glacier-rock bank of the sloping river, and tosses down the pack from his roof with a huff. A clear sign they'll be here a while. Chick shrugs and follows suit, unhitching their supply trailer from his chassis, kicks the trailer’s brake into place, and makes for the water.
Cruz rifles with the trailer and takes out a matchbook and a few cans of food. “Okay guys, beans or spam? I'm feeling beans today, we have carrots on the side too, what do we think?”
Lightning nearly cuts her off. “We’re not eating that canned shit today. C’mere. I wanna show you something,” he waves her over.
Chick drives out of earshot, into the water thirty or so feet upstream of whatever the hell it is Lightning is doing with the kid. He tries not to slip on any of the slick rocks as he makes his way through the river. The terrain is gently stepped- there are many flat sections with pooled water between each gentle slope. Chick reaches an ideal, pebbled stretch of shallow moving water. He sinks down on his suspension and shuts his eyes, letting the water flow under his chassis and lap at his panels. It's cool, clear, refreshing, and he sighs in relaxation, content to be lazy. He could use some goddamn pampering. And a bath. He could use a bath.
Chick opens his eyes again, curious to see what the other two are doing. Lightning has Cruz's attention, but he lingers at the water’s edge, grumbling and looking at it crossly. God knows the guy could also use a bath. Not that Chick actually minds being able to smell him from here, but-
There’s a flash of silver in the water downstream. Chick perks up. Rainbow trout- a whole school of them! Chick takes another whiff- yes, that’s what Lightning was on about then: he's treating them to a sushi lunch. Well, once he stops being chickenshit about the goddamn water- there you go .
Lightning is bumper-deep in the river now, frowning still, saying something to Cruz. Chick doesn’t bother trying to pick out the shape of their words over the rumble of the water. Lightning seems to steel his resolve, and then he's out deeper, lunging toward the school of dappled fish, fangs bared.
Huh. He really was hungry. Lightning eats one fish whole, then bites another and turns around with it to grin at Cruz, the poor thing still flapping from betwixt his white teeth. Cruel, McQueen, so cruel, Chick laments. Cruz gapes at him, and then breaks into a peal of astonished laughter as he finally snaps up the fish in front of her.
Her response is loud enough over the water. “Wait wait, I want to try!”
Always a good enthusiastic pup. Chick isn't smiling, no he isn't.
Chick drifts again, the sun warming his paint from where it dances through the treetops. Birds sing to each other across the slope of the mountainside. Stay in the moment.
Pasadena. The three of them, fools as they were, were drawn to it. Racecars… so predictable, right?
Don't think about it.
The coliseum. It was guarded. Of course it was fucking guarded! It's a defensible bowl! How could he have been so stupid-
Stop thinking about LA.
The spray of bullets, one hitting him in the quarter panel with such a loud noise. Maybe it was just so loud because of the contact, ringing through his metal. Nothing vital, but it burned.
Stay in the moment.
Lightning hyperventilating into his side, wobbling on his coils, already a mess before the attack even began. They shouldn't have come here, not to this track, not so soon, Chick thinks, trying to steer him away from the gunfire. Cruz, helpless and frozen, not knowing what to do.
Get them out of there!
Stay in the goddamn mo- oh for fuck’s sake.
Bah , he’s no good at meditating, that's Cruz's deal. Chick frowns. How many more times does he have to practice meditation before it makes sense, he should be at least decent at it by now. He's tried it four whole times!
Think about something happier, then.
His eyes focus instead on the sight laid before him, of his mate soaking wet and hunting him a meal.
Ah, now this is a billion times better than that hippie sunshine and rainbows shit. Stay in the moment, indeed.
A thousand droplets of water sparkle in the sun from where Lightning has gone and splashed himself through the river. The vain son of a bitch has kept up on his waxing, even after the end of the world, and any dust from the road has come right off of him, cherry paint aglow. Chick watches the water gather and fall down the ample curve of his fenders and dip of his flank, dripping back into the river’s flow.
The racer catches another fish with an excited little growl, and then pauses to work his mouth against his teeth. Perhaps a bone, caught near his top canine. His eyes absently scan the water, fat tongue working that one spot. Water falls from his chassis still, undercarriage kissing the surface again and again as he moves across the uneven riverbed.
Chick needs something to do with his mouth. He’s thirsty anyway, he realizes, and dips his nose down, pressing his lips into the water for a drink. The cool water cycles into his radiator after a few swallows, and he takes a deep breath through his intake to feel the mountain’s chill. His eyes remain on the prize.
He’s right about Lightning treating him to lunch- Chick knew better than to remind him. Soon, the younger car brings ashore five headless trout, lays them on the rocks and looks upstream towards Chick, tail cocked impatiently, one hip tilted higher than the other in a wordless beckon.
Lightning grumbles as Chick gets up from his spot in the rocks, deliberately slow and dramatic. Chick drives down to him, grinning at his impatience.
“Lazy. Aren't you hungry?” Lightning admonishes.
“I’m ravished,” Chick says.
“Don’t you mean ‘famished’?” Lightning cocks a brow at him.
“Yeah yeah, whatever. That word,” Chick gathers the fish up, mouth clasped on their tails right where Lightning’s mouth had been. He drags them away with a wink, which earns him another grumble.
“Aren't you going to thank me?” Lightning says.
“I’ll thank you in a minute,” Chick tells him, now parked sufficiently on the biggest, most sunwarmed rock he could find.
Lightning watches Chick eat, until he’s slowly picked through at least two of the fish. They're good- he just doesn't like how they're dead. He's soft on fish, okay? They're cute.
Satisfied, Lightning finally turns back to the water where Cruz has been romping around, now locked in a one-sided conversation with what appears to be a toad sitting on the shaded far bank. She had taken to her fishing lesson well, satiating her appetite like a natural. You'd never be able to tell she was born a streetcar sometimes; her racing instinct is strong. Chick catches Lightning watching her, a soft smile on his lips. A rare sight these days, but heart-clenching all the same.
Lightning drinks from the river now, careful to not be greedy with a belly full of meat. Like Chick, his cooling system mainly takes water, so the mountain's crystal clear offerings are far more refreshing to either of them than any bottle of looted coolant could be. They'll feed the coolant to Cruz.
That's another thing about Lightning, really. Chick likes knowing what makes him tick: that even under the hood, they're evenly matched. It just makes every part of the game that much sweeter, to know that anything they can come up with is just entirely theirs, with no manufactured advantage to tip the scales. The brunt of anything they can throw at each other, the other can catch. Lightning has him handled - Chick is safe to just be .
And Chick has Lightning handled. Maybe. He's ninety percent sure; he's known Lightning for fourteen years now, and those odds haven't failed him yet. Sometimes, in isolation, he feels old thinking about Lightning, like he can't actually compare. But when he's full throttle, Lightning ripping up his tailwind, he feels ageless, he feels crazy, like time doesn't exist at all. Pulled right in by the devil, heedless to his own warnings. Locked dancing with the burn-bright fire of him.
Jeez. And here Chick went and got all sentimental about some lunch, didn't he.
Lightning is watching him from the riverbank. Water trickles down his bumper, and his eyes don't blink.
Ah, Chick hasn't thanked him yet, has he?