Black Rust Read Online Free

paid someone to mod the 416 horsepower engine so it would pull over 600.  When he first told me that, I figured it was pure braggadocio.  Of course I’d thought that.  Lutz was the type to tell such stories.  Then I rode out with him our first night together.  That was seven months ago.  If anything, he’d underestimated the horsepower.  The clumsy-looking black beast was ungodly fast.
    And beast it was, whatever color the machine had been when it was new—back when I was still playing with matchbox cars—that layer of paint was long gone, scraped off or sprayed over.  Every angular piece of metal that had once been smooth or square, wasn’t.  Every window was covered with metal rebar welded to the body.  And on the front, a sturdy brush guard protected the engine from impacts.  Through the years, there had been many.
    Lutz raced the beast up a dirt road pushing speeds that defied physics, at least my intuition of it.  At every curve, I just knew we’d slide into the trees, but Lutz kept the Mercedes on the gravel.  I didn’t look over at the speedometer.  I didn’t complain.  As much as Lutz didn’t like me, he trusted me to do my part when the shooting started.  As much as I didn’t like him, I trusted him to drive.
    My belt was buckled.  I had his rifle in my hands again, as I scanned the sky through the windshield, looking for a tiny flash of red LEDs.
    The tires rumbled over an old cattle guard across the road and Lutz smashed the brake pedal to the floor as he maneuvered the beast up an incline and around a tire-squealing corner.  He accelerated as the tires found the old asphalt of a narrow country road.  “Anything?” he asked, not taking his attention off the road in front of us that was illuminated by the bright headlights.
    I looked through my side window and then leaned over to look out Lutz’s side.
    The engine revved loudly.
    “Nothing.”
    We raced through a few fast miles before Lutz had to swerve the SUV off the road and into a steeply sloping ditch to avoid a giant piece of farm equipment that had been rusting in the road for what must’ve been a decade.  Once past, he gunned the engine, rolled up the side of the ditch and took the Mercedes airborne for a fraction of a second before we bounced again onto pavement.  He laughed.
    I laughed, too.  Why not? 
    Another mile passed before the road widened and I saw dilapidated gas stations and abandoned fast-food joints.  We’d reached the highway.  Lutz used most of the road to cut a turn onto the entrance ramp.  The wheels protested loudly on the pavement and the Mercedes leaned way over to the driver’s side.  Lutz righted the vehicle and straightened us out on the incline up to the highway lanes.
    A d-gen ran across the road right in front of us, so close I threw a hand to the dashboard to brace for an impact that frankly would have been minimal.  Six thousand pounds of Mercedes reinforced with a huge steel brush guard would mow down any single d-gen.  But it was moving fast, and just as I realized he was going to make it across without being hit, Lutz swerved onto the shoulder and caught the d-gen dead center on the hood.
    The Mercedes lurched but didn’t lose momentum.  The body banged under the floorboards and the Mercedes bounced a wheel over the body.
    “Fuck ‘em,” Lutz yelled, checking his rearview mirror as we raced ahead.
    I looked back to see a sack of broken bones, formerly in the shape of a man, rolling and skidding on the asphalt.  No doubt, dead.
    A dead d-gen in the road didn’t worry Lutz. 
    It didn’t worry me, either. 
    Lutz wasn’t worried because his hatred for the d-gens blessed him with a clear conscience whenever one died as a result of his doing. 
    As for me, I was like most people—I had a hard time seeing degenerates as human, that is as long as I didn’t look too closely when I was busy killing them. 
    Neither Lutz nor I had a worry about the legalities of hitting a