“Bloody ’ell,” Satan commented from his spot at the far end of the park. The mountain-sized hedgehog yawned and then rolled onto his back. All the tubes attached to various parts of his body twisted with the giant animal’s movements. The fixed amusements on the ground, however, weren’t as flexible, and a distant roller coaster filled with riders broke apart and fell. Panicked screams filled the park.
“No refunds,” Satan grumbled.
“Carl,” Donut shouted, looking down at the distant destruction, “wasn’t that the path Florin was on? That idiot creature is ruining everything!”
The bottom section of the water park was part carnival with a few amusement rides and booths, all filled with “customers.” The customers were a mix of the gingers, who all carried axesand chainsaws, and level 40 splatter penguins, who were all water mages. A few demon-like pixies also flitted about.
From the edge of the half-pipe, a group of zipper shrews screamed as they rushed along the lip of the tube, keeping pace. They occasionally jumped toward the truck, only to get zapped by the shield. The little level 10 rodents were everywhere, infesting the park. They were like regular tiny shrews but had drills for heads.
Despite our shields, everyone in the cab was absolutely soaked, including Donut, who wouldn’t shut up about it. A wet slurry of gore filled the floor of the truck, making everything slippery. This new clockwork version of Olga no longer leaked fluid, but a spring or cog occasionally popped out of the open skull with aboing.
Florin: We gotta backtrack! Gonna try the loop. Unicorn doing it, too. I have the Denial of Service missiles, and I’ll hit the unicorn just as they start the loop. If they’re not going fast enough, they’ll drop right out and will have to start again.
Carl: Still no sign of the Lady Dominators?
Florin: Nope. Sorry, mate. I can see what place we’re in overall, so I know they’re behind us but ahead of you. Probably still in the basement.
Florin’s GPS gave detailed information on everyone in the race, but even the upgraded version only gave rudimentary info on the other three heats.
We still had a few minutes before we hit the ground level of the park. Dozens of the gingers and penguins kept attacking us from all angles, along with a constant rain of the zipper shrews, but our shield was more than enough to keep them off. We were mostly just ignoring and occasionally running over them, as we slipped and slided down the path, keeping steady thanks to our gyro.
While we had no idea for certain where the Lady Dominators were, we knew that Florin and team Sparkles had been harassing each other all the way down the track. Lucia Prime’s psycho personality had wandered back into the body, and she was the one driving. Florin was doing his best to keep her from actually killing the unicorn and the rodent.
The only surviving team from our own heat behind us was team Free Love.
We’d been going down this steep road for some time now, getting attacked left and right, but I could see the slide ended in a bunch of brambles. The clockworks were going to time out in a minute, and I pulled the large camel corpse out. This was the Bactrian who’d broken his neck against the ceiling of One Fine Pig’s garage. His name was Joel.
“Donut!” I called.
She castSecond Chanceon the camel just as we crashed through the brambles.
“Brake! Brake!” Donut called as we jumped over a barrier and slid through the ground-level walkway, knocking over the sign that gave directions to the various attractions. To our left, the toddler splash pad loomed, and a mix of small gingers and pixie demons played as spikes randomly popped up in the air. One such pipe hit a pixie, and the literal word “SPLASH” appeared in neon over the dead creature. The others all shouted with glee and jumped upon the body as the spike retracted.
“You!” Donut said to the large camel. “Stay there and watch her drive until she times out, and then take over.”
The camel’s neck was broken and his head hung down at a sharp angle. A line of black drool speckled with green dangled from his mouth, but he groaned in compliance. The second clockwork Olga moved farther back to give him a better view. That one had accidentally pulled her own tongue out, and it sparked where it had disengaged from her body.
“Activate the spider legs!” Donut called, pointing at the lever. “Olga! No, not there. Yes, yes, that. Pull it, and then turn the steering wheel all the way to the right!”
The clockwork zombie toad pulled the correct lever, and we all rose up in height as the legs took over. We skittered awkwardly to the right as the blind zombie jerked the steering wheel, skittering us toward the large concrete wall.
“Quit your bellyaching!” Satan rumbled. He was talking to someone else. The very ground shook. He let out a satisfied squeak. “Oh yes, yes. This water is so refreshing, so clean, so pure. Right into my delicate bum.”
“I told you they were all perverts!” Donut yelled.
This next part of the track was a trick, but it was one that Prepotente had already figured out even though he’d only had clues from the first half before the pit stop. Florin, Osvaldo, and all the others had already gone through this area. Florin had deliberately allowed the trick to activate, which delayed everyone passing through by about an hour.
We were going to skip this part completely.
The trap was that as soon as one passed through this central area where one had to choose a path for the final approach to the exit, the ground would drop out, dropping everyone into the waterworks and pipes under the park, where all the racers had to make a long, twisting circuit in the dark, fighting off Sheol demons and baby versions of the hedgehog, culminating in a Garden Gnome Sprinkler borough boss. Once the teams made it through this part, they would pop back up on the path they had been on before.
Team Sparkles had one-shot and shattered the boss with one of their guns. They hadn’t even paused.
Ourplan was to sidestep all of this, which would save us a good hour, helping us catch up. But we still wouldn’t be in the lead. We needed Florin to slow the unicorn down.
“Everyone, hold on!” I called as we hit the wall, then skittered up it. Just-replaced pots and pans spilled from the cabinets as we turned at a 90-degree angle, moving up the wall at the edge of the park. Thankfully, the system wouldn’t let us climb up and over. Donut shrieked at the clockwork Olga to steer as we rushed along the wall, moving toward the entrance to the lazy river. We just had to get past the entrance arch.
The driver’s-side door to the truck suddenly opened, and the clockwork Olga dropped away, leaving the driver’s seat empty.