Chapter 39: Engine Troubles (Patreon)

“Heave!” Tom shouted to no one in particular. It was just him and Suzie, tugging on a leather strap looped around the truck’s hitch.

The red sun beat down on them as they pulled, trying to get the truck to budge.

“Okay, give it some slack.” Tom let go of the line and furtively darted into the truck’s kill-range to carve away a bit more of the dirt, using a piece of metal armor as a makeshift shovel.

Geez, Jacob couldn’t have had a tac-welder and a bunch of scrap in the back of his truck?Tom thought ungraciously as he dug away a bit more at the compact silt holding the truck in place, wishing for a shovel or pickaxe of some kind.

The knight’s sword might work for that. Unfortunately it was under the truck, if it existed at all.

The ultrafine fine dirt was almost ceramic in nature, baked as it was by the sun. Tom dreaded what would happen if the truck were still standing straight up when the rains came. It would, for all intents and purposes, become part of the landscape when the fine mud filled in every available cranny, then baked solid.

Once Tom had cleared away a little more, he gave a few experimental tugs, then dug away a little more.

He and Suzie took a break from about two o’clock to six, the hottest hours of the day, playing whatever board games they could scratch into the flat earth while they waited for the air temperature to descend from easy-bake.

A lot of desert living was more adjusting yourself to the environment than the other way ‘round. Tom had learned that pretty quick. All the gimmicky survival guides he’d read, and he couldn’t remember any of them stating in plain English ‘DON’T MOVE DURING THE HOTTEST TIME OF DAY.’

“Seems like they should lead with that.” Tom muttered to himself as he and Suzie played pente. Gramma and grampa had a weird plastic mat in their garage he’d found when he was younger, and Grampa had mentioned playing it with his parents.

It was basically grown-up tick tac toe, dirt simple and could be played by scratching lines in the dirt. As long as your partner wasn’t a dirty cheater.

Tom once again had to re-evaluate exactly how intelligent Suzie was, because after the first few games where he’s whupped her butt, she had started to cheat. At first it wasn’t that great, but she’d become quite adept at it.

“I swear to god there was an x here,” Tom said, pointing. Suzie gave him her most innocent look. The dirt showed no sign of being disturbed at all. Her lips were tightly sealed, but eventually her gaze began to stray away from it face.

Tom’s eyes narrowed.

“I thought you were hot, Suzie. Why isn’t your mouth open?”

Suzie gulped audibly, likely some water.

“Did you just spit water to wipe my mark off the board!?” Tom demanded, equal parts impressed and angry. The water had disappeared in seconds the moment his back was turned, and it had taken his X-mark with it.

“Water doesn’t grow on trees, you know. I don’t know what you think we’re doing here, but we’re still in emergency water-saving mode. I haven’t even taken a shower!”

Suzy gave him a look that told him she was painfully aware of that fact.

“Gah, maybe you’re right.” He might be able to take a shower. Tom’s work with his soul pulse production had showed modest gains. He was currently clocking in at an estimated three soul pulses per diem, giving him thirty soul pulses per month to play with.

Estimated.

“Gains, broh, gains. Get soul-swole.”

Suzie raised a single nonexistent eyebrow.

“What? I haven’t had anyone to talk to but you, and while your company keeps me sane, you’re not exactly the best conversationalist. Through no fault of your own, of course.”

Tom leaned back until he was nearly out of the shade and sighed.

“I miss people. I miss the internet.” He said with gravitas. “…I miss porn.”

I miss Lily….

I miss Ellie.

The unbidden thought that his last family member was in some random alien noble’s mustache-twirling clutches was infuriating. It lit a fire in Tom’s chest that made him want to stand up and get back to work on the truck right now. But that would break the cardinal rule:

DO NOT MOVE DURING THE HOTTEST TIME OF DAY.

So Tom shoved the aching worry into the far corner of his mind and kicked it a few times for good measure.

Stay in your hole, feelings. I’ve got no need for you right now.

Grampa would be proud of Tom’s budding machismo.

When they weren’t playing games, Tom was doing his best to etch the Assisted Repair spell phrase into a rachet, unfortunately, hardened steel was hecka hard, so Tom had to bust his ass to make any perceivable cuts in the material.

Hopefully there would be repair ‘synergy’ with a ratchet. Tom wasn’t sure how it was supposed to work, whether it would just be considered a lump of steel, or if the universe would look at the ratchet as a whole and say, ‘hey, that thing’s used to repair cars, let’s throw a bonus in there.’

In any case, a Craftsman rachet was a good choice as a ‘wand’ because stainless steel would take a long time to degrade, and if it ever did, he could send it in for a replacement. Guaranteed.

Tom chuckled to himself manically as he sawed away at the handle with the edge of the file, trying to fill in his guidelines as he pictured himself travelling interdimensionally to redeem his lifetime warranty.

When the light started getting too dim to work on his repair wand, He stopped and took a few hours to hunt before they headed to bed, ready to start it all over again.

******

“Timber!” Tom shouted, taking three healthy steps back as the truck fell down onto its wheels.

Tom yelped and flinched as the mummified remains of the blood knight popped up like a goddamn pop-up book, propelled upward by his breastplate caught in Jacob’s grill. His arms flopped around wildly, and for a brief instant Tom thought he might actually be alive.

This suspicion was reinforced when the crimson sword in the mummy’s hand whipped down and sank into the truck’s engine block, adding insult to injury. Or is it injury to insult?

Tom scrambled backward, heart beating wildly until he took in the dead guy’s withered face and limp form. He lay sprawled out on the front of the car, as he had been going through the portal. The odd sword being the only difference.

It was at this point that Tom sincerely wished for some kind of long stick he could poke the dude from a safe distance with. The corpse’s eyes were milky and wrinkled, his face was mummified and partially rotted…but the sword in his hand had just punctured steel like it was nothing, so Tom wasn’t feeling particularly brave.

The thing that finally got Tom moving was the telltale drip drip drip of fluids leaking down into the cracked earth under the truck.

Shit, it busted something!

Tom lunged forward and pried the mummy’s hands off the sword.

He was indeed dead.

The water content of the knight had long since vanished, so he was only about ninety pounds, with armor. Easy enough to heave off to the side, if a bit smelly on account of the aborted rotting.

Once that was done, Tom stood there, staring at the handle jutting out of the rusted sheet metal of the hood. Actually, I don’t think I should pull that out.

Many times in fiction, Tom had seen people leave large foreign objects in place because they were blocking the flow of blood. Was the sword blocking the flow of truck-guts?

Damnit.

Tom ran back to his rachet ‘wand’, grabbing the tool and studying the half-completed runes, comparing them to his drawn guide for the spell.

“son of a bitch.” Tom carefully tore the design out of the book and sprinted back to the truck. Tom slid the blade out of the truck as carefully and straight as he could, then tossed it aside as soon as it was clear, popping the hood up to look at the damage.

DAMN!

From the four hours of study, Tom could name all the major parts of an engine, what they did, and how they could go wrong. He probably couldn’t build one, be he knew enough to know what to repair.

The sword had nicked the oil line, air intake, and the brakes. Thankfully not the fuel line.

Tom held the scrap of paper with Assisted Repair carefully drawn on it up to the oil line and stimulated the thing.

Thump. Tom’s heart leapt in his chest, startled by the thing moving past it. Tom didn’t focus on that, though, he focused on moving the resulting soul-pulse into the scrap of paper. He kept his attention on the oil line.

Of the three damaged tubes, Tom was most concerned with the oil line. Without oil, the truck would die an ignoble death. As for the brakes, out in the middle of the desert, who needs to stop on a dime? And while the air intake was crucial, it would wait until he got the ‘wand’ completed.

The scrap of paper flared with power for an instant before it crumbled into dust.

A moment later, the dripping of oil stopped. Brake fluid was still leaking though, and Tom crimped the rubber tube then secured it with a bit of string he’d been peeling out of the upholstery.

When the truck triage was done, Tom inspected the oil line. It still had a huge gash in it, but somehow, it had a paper-thin margin of rubber remaining on the inside of the tube. It would never hold up to use, but just sitting there was fine.

“Cross your fingers,” Tom said, taking off his hat and wiping off sweat before replacing it.

The blood knight had decided to send him off with one last gift before shuffling off this mortal coil.

Freaking blood knight.Made the truck repair problem a million times more difficult. The sword had sheared through all kinds of things, but Tom had only been focusing on the ones that leaked.

Now he neededto finish the wand, and that would take ages, because he didn’t have anything that was harder than-

Tom paused, mid-gripe, and glanced over his shoulder. The blood sword was sitting on the cracked earth, its blade partially buried in the compact clay.

Tom reached down and picked up the sword. This time he really looked at it.

The entire thing was made of maybe a cup of blood, and the weight attested to that. The handle was empty. The cutting edges were the only solid pieces of blood, and they were joined by an organic looking cellular network that stretched through the empty space between the two edges.

It looked something like the wing of a dragonfly, except red, and blade shaped.

Tom held the sword up and studied the truck through its empty middle. The juxtaposition of something so goddamn fantastical, and something so thoroughly mundane made him chuckle a little.

“Maybe that blood knight did leave a parting gift.” Tom muttered to himself.

With a lot of finagling, Tom was able to secure the blood sword to the truck in such a way that its tip was available for him to mess with, pointing down at a thirty-degree angle about a foot and a half off the ground.

Tom sat crosslegged and put the ratchet under the sharp crimson tip, lined up one of the spell words he was working on, and pushed.

A ribbon of steel spiraled off the ratchet where the edge of the blade dug easily into the metal.

Twang. The steel curl jumped off as it detached from the ratchet and flew off into the distance, a testament to how hard the material really was.

This is gonna save a lot of time. Tom thought, lining up the next cut.

Tom glanced up at the truck and his eyes narrowed in thought between cuts on the rachet. Thinking about synergy.

Previously, Tom had figured he’d etch a faint design into the rachet then use that to do the most basic repairs to get the thing running again, but now that he was able to carve away larger portions, his options had expanded.

What was it that Luz said about wands? The interior of the words are backfilled with a synergistic material whose decay is backfed into soemthing that cannot decay?

Tom didn’t know how to backfeed the decay, but he really didn’t need to. He was planning on backfilling with rubber.

It took several more days, and the local lizards had been thoroughly exterminated by the time Tom finally finished his wand. He took a bit of the rubber that clung to the edge of the door and trimmed it down until it fit into the wand’s spell phrase, then secured it all together with a string wrapping.

Once it was all complete, Tom took it over to the front of the truck and raised the hood.

Well, if this doesn’t work, we’re gonna be walking.

Tom fed what felt like three soul-pulses through the wrench, tapping it against the top of the engine like a fairy godmother.

The deep gashes in the tubes repaired themselves, the severed copper wires reattached themselves seamlessly.

Tom directed his attention to the grill, which had been badly damaged by running over a human being and hitting the ground. The grill and the radiator fixed themselves. The frame of the truck shifted a bit as it sorted out a small bend.

The engine itself hadn’t been damaged very badly from the crash, but under Tom’s gaze, the whole thing was cleaned, until the engine looked like it belonged in a showroom instead of inside a rust-bucket.

The rust on the outside…stayed.

I wonder if that’s because I think of Jacob’s truck that way.

The scavenged upholstery didn’t regenerate, unfortunately. Which led Tom to believe that this spell couldn’t restore what was missing, like the Reset repair spell. It could simply correct, adjust, and reattach wherever possible, which was all he really needed anyway.

I’m so hungry.

Tom glanced at his ‘wand’. The rubber lining the spell phrase had become dry and cracked, while the stainless steel had taken on the slightest red-brown patina. It was still good to go for another couple uses, but Tom would probably need to replace the rubber lining with some plastic later.

Tom replaced the battery, climbed into the unpadded driver seat and turned the key with a trembling hand. Jacob’s truck roared to life with a vengeance, seemingly hungry for more knights to run over.

Tom breathed a sigh of relief, turned the key again, and the rumble died.

Suzie gave him a curious glance.

“We’re gonna drive at night,” Tom said, pointing at the sun beating down on them. “Don’t want the engine to catch fire.” Tom glanced out the window at his makeshift camp with all his stuff strewn around. “That and we’ve gotta load up. Can’t afford to let this baby idle.”