Racing by Instinct

It was 12:45am. A skunk walked out of one of the only streetlights on this road and away from the crowd at the abandoned gas station, peering down the dark, tree-lined straightaway, hands on his black belt to adjust his jeans. He debated whether the belt should be tighter or his pants should be skinnier. A stiff breeze chilled his nose and made his dull blue windbreaker flutter. There was a swell of laughter as some guy made a joke about his frozen balls.

He saw the crowd of seven or so faunafolk milling about the old gas pumps that only stood because no one had bothered to rip them out. Where they hadn’t been defaced, the paint and stickers on the sides had worn and faded until the branding was unidentifiable. Some of the older residents remembered the place used to be a Clark.

The whine of a redlining engine reached the skunk’s ears first. Out in the rural Midwest, you could usually get away with stunts like that, though he wouldn’t try it outside of a race. He focused on the pitch and cadence of the sound to match it to a make and model he knew. Definitely not a stock motor; it was too intense, revved up between gears too fast, and—he waited a second—yeah, the muffler was still on. This was a legit engine rumble. Tires screeched as the machine took a curve at a daring speed.

“Dude, hear that slide?” someone said. “Who the hell is that?”

Headlights appeared at the end of the road, approaching fast. The skunk took several steps backwards towards the curb. The driver, speeding beyond safe stopping distance, had no choice but to slam on the brakes. The car screeched to a halt and swung towards the gas station, bathing it in light. This was the kind of move you’d see in a video game or an action movie. The skunk gritted his teeth and approached, and the crowd followed.

The car was a black Charger, a modern muscle car with a long nose for the internals and room to cut out a hole for a supercharger. Two radioactive green racing stripes streaked down the center from the top of the grill to the lip of the trunk lid, and matching green side skirts completed the look. The rims were decorated with a stock chrome finish, which surprised the skunk, as he expected everything to be black ‘n’ green. He was peering at the aftermarket brake calipers when the driver opened the door.

The most striking part of the driver’s appearance was his headfur as it caught the light, full and teased forward to hang beside his face in a single sickle, with the last finger-length or so dyed the same bright green as his car’s details. The wind blew and brushed it against his silver-and-white lupine muzzle, and the wolf pulled it back away from his amber eyes on reflex. He surveyed the crowd, all of whom had come in basic street clothes and jackets, but the wolf brought what had to be a custom-made leather jacket with purple stripes down the arms and some well-fitting black jeans, perhaps designer. He smiled, showing rows of sharp white teeth.

“So,” he said, “which one of you is Jacek?”

The skunk stepped forward, hands in his windbreaker’s pockets. “That’s me,” he said. “You’re the guy I’m racing?”

The wolf leaned on the roof of his car with his elbow on top. He was just short enough that the roof propped up his arm perfectly level to the ground. “Guess so,” he said. “Name’s Damien. Or Dame. Didn’t expect the audience, but I like it.”

Jacek crossed his arms. “Sure,” he said. “So, are we doing this now? You know the rules over here?”

Damien cocked a brow. “What, you in a hurry?” he asked. “Let’s wait a little, I’ve got some friends coming. Should be here any minute.”

A tall, imposing otter in a white tank top tapped on Jacek’s shoulder with an expectant look. “Yeah, yeah, I got it,” said the skunk, and he pulled out a bulging envelope. The otter took it and opened the flap for a quick count of what was inside: twenty creased $100 bills rubber-banded together. Jacek told the wolf, “Get yours out too. Hunter here’ll hold onto it until we get back.”

Damien sized up the otter with a flick of his eyes, then unzipped his jacket and pulled out a crisp bundle of $100s, whose only imperfection was a gray hair wedged under the paper band. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but the gray fur coat bristling under the jacket had to keep him plenty warm.

The otter snatched it from his fingers and flipped through the bills with his thumbclaw; it took only a second before he was satisfied. He looked at the two racers and asked, “Alright boys, y’all know the course? We’re doing Route 301 to Lehman Brakes.”

Jacek didn’t answer. Hunter was asking for the newcomer’s benefit. The skunk peered over at the wolf, who shrugged and said, “Yeah, we just drive down 301 until we get to the old brake shop outside Quarry.” He twirled his bangs around with his finger. “No big deal. I’ve done that before.”

Hunter counted additional points on his dark-furred digits. “No shortcuts, no trading paint, and respect traffic,” he warned the wolf. “Don’t give the cops a reason to come here at night. You paying attention?”

“Yeah,” said the wolf, who was looking at the sky. The stars were out, and the moon was half-full. “Normal stuff, heard that before, too.”

A radio on the otter’s belt buzzed to life. “Marker seven, two cars southbound three-oh-one,” said a fuzzy voice on the other end.

Hunter frowned. He picked up the radio and answered, “Start line, are they police?”

A pause, then, the radio answered, “No, looks like two civvies at the speed limit. Blue truck, gray Camry.”

Damien’s ears perked. “That’s my pack,” he said with a wag of his tail.

“Pack?” Jacek asked. He turned to the newcomer. “How big?”

“Like, four or five, bro,” the wolf said with a shrug and an easy smile. “It’ll just be those cars. They can hide out here no problem.”

Jacek and Hunter shared a look. There were already three cars parked around the abandoned gas station, not counting the two racers, though they did their best to park out of view of the street. It was a small building, and too many more cars would make it look like an event bigger than some college kids being dumbasses inside.

“So long as they’re not morons,” Hunter said. “But we need to hurry it up. We’ll start after they get here.” Radio to his face, he walked away spitting jargon to the sentries on the other side of the course. Jacek peered down the road ahead to the north, where those headlights should be arriving.

“So, you do a lot of racing here?” the wolf asked him. The skunk tilted an ear in his direction. “Guess you’re the local champ, really know the track?”

Jacek stifled a yawn. “Yeah,” he said.

“That’s cool, that’s cool,” said Damien. “Real honor and stuff. Looking forward to making you eat rubber, though.”

Jacek blinked. He wasn’t sure if the wolf’s cocky grin meant he thought he said something cool, or if that was the joke.

The two cars in question made their appearance in the right lane, single-file, nice and law-abiding. Someone in the crowd, a badger, flagged them over to where the other cars were parked behind the gas station. Damien bit his finger and watched for his audience while his tail thumped against the car door. Sure enough, a few wolves in brand-name jackets came around the corner, one with a cup of Starbucks coffee, surveying the scene like safety inspectors. Their hero overhead-waved to them. They smiled back, one giving a patient nod. On the other side of the gap between them and the other faunafolk, regulars asked each other if they knew these guys. No one did.

“Damn, this is perfect,” Damien said. “I feel like howling.”

“Please don’t,” Jacek said.

In minutes, Hunter signaled the racers to get into position. Each car lined up in the right lane: Damien’s Charger in front as the challenger, and behind it, Jacek’s tuned-up, royal blue Corvette ZR-1, a zippy two-seater with an aftermarket engine that would never have worked if the skunk hadn’t also cut slats in the hood and re-worked the cooling system. At least, he was pretty sure it was that modification out of a dozen that did it.

The otter stood on the dotted line between the two lanes, illuminated by the Charger’s headlights. He’d put on a mismatched pair of work gloves backwards so the reflective backings were on the palm side. In a wide stance, he raised his fists, and the onlookers cheered. He couldn’t see the racers, just the two hunks of steel and fiberglass about to come hurtling down the road.

One paw opened, showing bright yellow. The other one opened, Day-Glo orange. Then, with a brief delay, he reared up and swung his arms down.

Go. Tires squealed, and everyone cheered and watched the racers peel out around the otter and into the night.

##

To Jacek, the best time to race was late at night when the stretch of road in his headlights was the only visual information he needed to process, and all else he could feel in his bones and leave to instinct. A radio in his car would alert him to any oncoming traffic, but at any other time, he could follow the line just as practiced.

Gentle curves connected the first third’s series of straightaways, a lazy snake winding through plains and fields. The Charger proved its worth here, roaring to high speeds at a pace the Corvette couldn’t match and creating distance between them. Where the first bend demanded the brakes, a 45-degree turn between two cornfields, Damien eased off the throttle and took the turn early to shoot out the other side, a maneuver that wouldn’t turn out so well for the Corvette. Instead, Jacek slid into a drift, tires skidding on the asphalt as inertia carried him through the curve at the desired angle. He regained his grip with grace. The distance remained the same. They always pull ahead there.

The racers re-entered the forest and shook the low trees on arrival. A sign warned them that the speed limit was 45 MPH. Two hundred yards away, several paces from the road, someone kept watch for traffic.

“Racers in the forest,” crackled a voice on the radio. “Charger screaming in front, Corvette two cars behind, it’s close.”

This was all the crowd back at the gas station got to hear. No doubt they were all huddled around a cranked-up radio outside, drinking beer and collecting bets.

There was an S-bend ahead that was far more serious than the earlier curves. Jacek had seen how Damien made his entrance at the station, how his brakes seemed to work, and slowed down early to favor the inside. His bet had proven correct: the Charger attacked the first curve too fast, too confidently, and Damien slammed on the brakes to stop himself from going into the trees. The car skidded to a better position where it could accelerate again and regain its pace, but by the time it found its grip, the Corvette had overtaken it with a slight drift, now going at near-cruising speed. He knew better.

The Corvette squeaked out of the bends far ahead of the Charger. It was a lead Jacek knew he couldn’t keep, not at that magnitude, though it didn’t matter. Driving down the middle of the road to prevent an overtake wasn’t allowed, but he did his best to take the slight bends fast and make the prospect of passing a dangerous one. In his rear view mirror, he saw the Charger’s headlights drift to and from the center, looking for an in so it could speed ahead, but finding nothing.

“Past the S-bend, Corvette in front, no room for the Charger to pass!” said the radio. Even when the Corvette couldn’t keep its lead, it fought tooth-and-nail before giving it up.

Jacek knew Damien was running out of road, out of chances to overtake. Up ahead was the course’s last feature, a hard left spilling into a long right curve where, if the Charger could take the left, it could pull ahead just by hugging the left shoulder and flooring it. It was a stretch of road always marked with tire treads in the center; locals thought it was just a dangerous curve at night, but it was actually evidence of the skunk’s meanest trick. Just before the hard-left sign, the Corvette swerved to the right barrier and slowed a few notches to make the turn smooth. No way the Charger would dare T-boning him. Once the way was in his sights and the Charger had indeed pumped the brakes, he surged full-throttle into the turn and started a long, squealing drift that sang to his ears. His machine was sideways in the road, taking up too much space for the Charger to get ahead. This was a loophole in the rules; drifting at a wide angle was allowed because it was risky, and a fully perpendicular drift was a stunt for maniacs.

The steer was too sharp. The Corvette’s inertia faded and took it closer to the inside, threatening to send the back end flying forward. In moments, it would either spin out or drive into the trees. Jacek couldn’t risk finding out which. He pumped the brakes and swung the car to the left. Over the right curb, a tree clipped his right headlight and shattered it. The trade gave him his life and no more: he straightened out in the right lane going 35 MPH, well below what he should be doing right now. The Charger had its chance, and the skunk grimaced as he pushed his engine to make up time.

No headlights passed him to the left. The rear-view was dark. Last time he looked, Damien was on his rear bumper. Did the hard left take him out? No, he slowed down to match the Corvette. He couldn’t have wrecked. There was a soft left up ahead, the last real turn before the finish line. Jacek committed to his line and slowed down to take the curve safe and early, turning without drift and aligning with the right lane.

Then, the road lit up. The Charger was behind him. It approached fast with a deep rumble, and just as suddenly, it zoomed past his door, speeding towards the brake shop.

The skunk’s eyes went wide and his heart fell. “No way,” he said, mouth agape. “No way.”

##

“Jace, you’re a goddamn moron,” said a sandy coyote standing outside the skunk’s two-car garage, hands on her jean shorts. With the noonday sun behind her, she cast an angry shadow on the Corvette. Her coppery headfur’s ponytail blew in the breeze, and its shadow played with the fractured sunbeams reflecting out of the broken headlight. One of the spaghetti straps on her green Little Miss Sunshine top was threatening to slide off her shoulder. “You really bet two grand on a race? You didn’t think you were getting hustled?”

Jacek was under his Corvette on a rolling creeper with only his legs and tail poking out from underneath the front bumper. The car was jacked up a few inches off the ground so he could get a better look. “He was a city boy, Khrys,” he said into his car’s front suspension while he inspected it. “Overconfident with too much money for his pockets. Thought it’d be easy.”

Khrys chopped her paw. “That’s what a hustler does, man,” she said. “Just a salesman in a hot rod. You got played. Conned.” She watched him root around in the undercarriage. “You got more money in there or something?”

“Swear to Gaia, something wasn’t right about that race,” he said. He grabbed the bumper and hoisted himself out. “It happened just like I told you. He couldn’t have gone so far ahead at the end.” There were knee pads over his jeans, oil-stained like his formerly white tank top, that he rolled onto to crawl towards the front-left tire.

The coyote barked a single, harsh laugh. “Not even listening,” she said, sauntering across the empty space in the garage to the fridge in her flip-flops. “Hey, I’m stealing a beer.”

“Yeah-huh,” Jacek said while he peered at the tire’s treads.

The fridge held the essentials: a case of Lycan Ale, a case of Coke, a half-full bottle of water, and a receipt for an air compressor. Khrys grabbed a bottle of ale, took it over to the workbench next to the fridge, and popped the cap on its edge next to the marks and chips from where she’d done it before. She took a swig and checked out the calendar. A glamour shot of a shirtless, manly kangaroo posing in front of a Porsche accompanied September.

“S’not my business, but can you still pay the bills?” she asked the skunk, who was now sniffing the tire.

“Yeah...nah,” he said into the wheel well. “I’ll think of something.”

“I mean, you know I’d lend you the money if I had it,” Khrys said. “But I can’t pull two-K out of my pocket.”

“Thanks, but I didn’t ask,” he said, standing up. “You need that to fix your fridge so you can have cold beer again.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s not the problem, the fridge messes up the environment somehow,” she said. “What I need is, like, an out-building for the hydroponics, but that’d just look weird next to a trailer, y’know? Gets the MIB sniffing around your property.”

“Whatever,” Jacek said. He pressed a pedal on the jack that lowered his car in a smooth, slow motion. Its body bounced and creaked as its weight transferred from the jack to its suspension. The skunk stared at his machine, racking his brain for any relevant part of Corvette anatomy he hadn’t inspected twice yet.

Khrys took another drink. After the gulp, she said, “You ever think it’s not your car?”

“I know what I’m doing, Khrys,” Jacek said without looking at her.

“Not you, maybe the road,” Khrys said. “Or the wolf. Or both, or something. Just sayin’, if you think something’s wrong, maybe it is. Your gut’s pretty good.”

Jacek didn’t answer, not out loud. Khrys recognized the way his eyes unfocused and snapped to imaginary points as ideas turned over in his head. She let him think.

“You wanna go with me to 301?” he asked, finally looking up. “I’m gonna retrace the route.”

Khrys smiled. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather stay here and make sure your TV works,” she said. “You know better what you’re looking for, anyway.”

##

The leaves were still green along Ohio’s byways. Though the cornfields were tall and last night’s air bit through fur, the trees hadn’t decided it was time; the cold hadn’t crept into the day, and so Jacek didn’t bother to put on a jacket. His Corvette cruised down the back roads as a Sunday driver would, slow enough to appreciate the scenery. Scents flowed in through the wide-open windows: fresh air when passing by trees, manure by the farms.

The old gas station appeared on the horizon. It was here he began his survey in earnest, slowing to twenty below the speed limit. He rubbernecked down the roads and checked every shoulder for something he’d missed before, something he didn’t remember correctly last night.

The race played in slow motion for him around each curve. Damien’s Charger outmatched him in raw speed, but Jacek had better knowledge of the track and good control of his vehicle in a drift, something Damien seemed reluctant to try. At the S-bend, the tire treads veering away from the barrier illustrated the Charger’s overzealous attack on the curve. The wolf had all the hallmarks of a novice or, at worst, a poseur. He didn’t know the course and didn’t know his car.

Jacek pulled over between the shoulder and the barrier, switched on his hazard blinkers, and came to a stop near the hard left where he’d lost Damien. With the engine off, he could hear primes—“primal animals,” fauna-shaped fauna—rustling in the grass. He could smell when it was the real presence of an animal and not a scent carried downwind, and he could pick out at least four species nearby.

When he got out of his car, a particular scent bore dreadful news: rubber and carrion. Roadkill, and judging from the piercing, acrid odor that accompanied it, Jacek knew what it was. He frowned and went back to his trunk where he pulled out a five-gallon bucket that he hefted on the long walk to the scene. A pickup truck passed by on the left and missed the parked car and its driver, who stared at his destination to dissuade the truck driver from veering over too soon.

The bucket landed on a clean patch of asphalt near a flattened prime-skunk, pink tire treads cutting across its back. For all the good it did the wretched thing, it was hit in the middle of the right lane where drivers could position their wheels around it to avoid smashing skunky viscera into their treads, and its head remained intact, a permanent cry of shock, perhaps anguish if it held on. The overpowering smell of skunk spray that surely followed would’ve been its only wake.

Jacek reached into the bucket and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves and a large dustpan. “Hey, little buddy,” he said to its face. “Sorry about what happened to you on the road. Lucky I got to you before the sanitation guys, or you’d just go in a dumpster. We’ll scoop you up and put you in the grass so you can get back to Gaia.”

The prime-skunk didn’t respond. It still smelled and burned his nose, though after years of returning carcasses to nature to decompose in peace, he could tough it out for Gaia. Jacek knelt down to see how difficult it would be to gather it all up without any mess. Bloody trails drifted forward down the road and towards the curve, nothing fresh. He figured this must have happened recently, but not just now. Perhaps, then, it was from last night, not from his car—he would’ve felt it—but...

“You got something to tell me, little guy?” Jacek asked as his eyes followed the trail of blood and skunk spray. The scent was more powerful in that particular stretch of road and stood out stronger to him than the red streaks on the asphalt. It led him down the curve, nose pointed towards the ground - he would go on all fours if it wasn’t a public road. Where the hard left began, the scent led over the shoulder where there wasn’t a barrier. In the grass were two messy channels of upturned dirt that cut a path through the trees, invisible when looking head-on from the road, but snaking a few feet to the right, there it was: a straight path through the woods that connected with the road on the other side.

Jacek stared down the opening between the rows of trees. The wolf had taken a shortcut.

##

With a rusty pallet jack, Khrys pulled the last pallet of lavender-scented candles out of a semi truck and into the loading dock of the Foxfire Candle warehouse. When her tail was clear of the garage door, the buzz of its motor and the grinding of its wheels against its metal rails heralded its closure. She rolled the heavy pallet over to an empty, yellow-outlined space on the gray concrete floor and then pulled a lever on the jack to drop it into place.

“Last one,” she said to Jacek as he approached, another warehouse associate in a fluorescent yellow vest and a name tag. Their shift had ended an hour ago, and the night shift was already on the floor, counting inventory and preparing for the night deliveries.

Jacek whipped out his box cutter and slashed at the shrink wrap that held the boxes together. “I’m gonna strangle that cheetah the next time I see him,” he said.

“Hey, that’s workplace violence, bub,” Khrys said. “But tell Topaz it’s from me, too. It’s the third time he’s called off on us.” She pulled at the clingy plastic as it came undone. “Us specifically, man! Been missing my smoke breaks for him.”

“Mm,” grunted Jacek in agreement. They wadded up the plastic until the boxes were free, and Khrys held it in a ball under her arm. She opened her muzzle to say something, but Jacek had already hoisted a box and made two steps towards its destined shelf rack. That meant she had to lug one of the forty-pound things over there with him. He would not, she decided, avoid her so easily.

“So this rematch tonight,” she said between grunts as she caught up with him, candle-glasses a-clinking. “What’s your plan?”

Jacek lifted his box and pushed it to the back of the shelf to make room for the others. “Plan?” he asked.

Khrys channeled her frustration into hefting her box onto the shelf. “Yeah, plan,” she said. “Your plan to do this different, ‘cause God knows I can’t stop you.”

There wasn’t a response at first. The skunk trudged back to the pallet to grab another box, and the coyote did the same. She stayed hot on his heels and made sure he knew she was looking at him, expecting an answer. For a few trips, they worked in silence while a wordless argument charged the air between them.

“I’m taking the shortcut,” Jacek said on a return trip.

“Uh, no,” Khrys said. “I went out to where you told me it was, the shortcut, and...” She blew a low whistle. “Yeah, it’s a path I could take in my truck, and maybe the wolf knows how to work it. But I know you don’t ever take the Corvette off-road. That thing won’t make it, not in your paws. And you’re praying he doesn’t blab after the race.”

Jacek shrugged. “Got no choice, you know that,” he said. He didn’t say she was wrong. His eyes couldn’t focus on his work nor the coyote glowering at him and about to shake him by the shoulders.

A voice stopped her. “Hey, you two,” said a pine marten a good foot shorter than either of them.

Khrys glanced at his pink dress shirt and red tie, both barely protected from dirt by a mesh reflective vest. “Big meeting today, Russ?” she asked her second-favorite supervisor. It was the first time she’d seen him today.

The marten wiped his hands on his jeans. “And cleaning up after call-offs,” he said. “Look, I need a big favor from you guys.”

Khrys crossed her arms. Jacek lifted his head from the box pile and stood next to her, looking alive in case he had to beg for an advance later.

“You know the pile of broken pallets out in the lot?” he asked. “We gotta deal with that today. The safety boy at headquarters doesn’t like it. Can you jump in the forkli-”

“We’re already over by an hour on a Saturday,” Khrys said. “Make night shift do it.”

Russ winced and gestured with upward palms, the look of a man incredulous that no one will make the pain stop. “Please, you’re getting paid overtime for all of this,” he said. “Honestly, I’m in hot water, I can’t stay longer, and I need this thing to go away.”

The skunk’s tail waved, and his brow furrowed.

“Just put Boreal in the lift, she’d love that shit,” Khrys said. She was referring to a peppy polar bear who started a few months ago and hasn’t stopped talking about video games since.

“She’s not in today,” he said. “Look, if you want, we can load up a truck and have it hauled out first thing, save you some trips to the dumpster.”

Jacek stepped forward and said, “We’ll take care of it. Just get wherever you need to go, we got this.”

Russ breathed a sigh of relief and smiled. “Thank you so much, guys,” he said, and he tossed the keys to the skunk before the angry coyote could voice her dissent. “Just have it clear before you go!” he added as he made a beeline for the office door.

When he was out of earshot, Khrys growled right next to the skunk. “The fuck was that?” she asked, flecks of spit landing on his fur.

He turned to the coyote and said, “I need your truck.”

Her muzzle opened to fire back, but stopped and inspected his eyes while new thoughts connected. “You’re doing...something different,” she said.

The skunk nodded.

##

Hunter took a deep breath of cool nighttime air. All of this will work out, he told himself. Meanwhile, cars continued to pull up to the abandoned Clark at a crawl. He stood in their headlights and swung his arms toward the back of the building. Each vehicle seemed to need at least three arm-swings just for them before making unsure, unsteady progress towards the other parked cars in the dark. Newbies.

Damien was already here and managing the crowd at the gas station with the aid of his pack, who showed up with him instead of lagging behind like last time. The popularity surge was no doubt a consequence of his big yap, though to his credit, he managed to convince the younger newcomers that not having live video coverage of an illegal street race was fine and that only listening in with a radio was kinda cool, actually. The otter took his wins where he could get them and hoped everyone would just keep cool about this.

“So when’s the race starting?” someone asked the wolf, who was leaning on one of the gas station’s cleaner walls.

“As soon as the skunk gets here with my cash,” Damien answered, drawing some “OOOH”s. Most members of the old guard were standing in their own group closer to the road, paws in their pockets or tucked behind their arms. Indeed, Jacek hadn’t arrived yet. They didn’t think he would flake or be too late, but something about the situation tugged at the fur on their backs and made their tails twitch.

It was a long twenty minutes later when spotters reported the arrival of a royal blue Corvette, and the familiar roar of its engine perked up everyone’s ears. Once the speeding vehicle was in view, the brakes grabbed the wheels as hard as they could without squealing, and the car slipped into its starting position next to the Charger. Compared to the black-and-green muscle car, it didn’t look much like a street racing machine; to the newcomers, it resembled an account manager’s mid-life crisis.

The otter jogged up to the driver’s side of the car. The driver, a skunk with dirt on his windbreaker and jeans, cranked the window down.

“Jace, thank God,” Hunter said, leaning towards the open window. “Damien’s groupies are getting antsy. You mind if we speed this up?” He winced when he asked. This was a breach of protocol.

Jacek handed him a thick envelope. “Not at all,” he said. His fingers had a tighter grip on the envelope than he intended, and the otter had to tug it loose.

Hunter looked at his friend and frowned. “You good to go?” he asked.

Jacek gripped the steering wheel. Under his fur, his knuckles were white. “Yeah,” he said.

The otter gave a single nod and walked away. Jacek watched him whistle to the wolf and motion for him to stop showboating and enter his car. Damien shot some parting remarks to the crowd as he sauntered over, going right past his car and towards the Corvette. Hunter mouthed a swear to him before turning to that same crowd to stop them from following him. The sooner the race could start, the better, but first, Jacek had to put up with the wolf a little bit. He was already tired of it.

The wolf bent over and crossed his arms over the top of the car. His jacket hung open; like before, he went shirtless underneath. “Here we are, bro,” he said. He glanced at the bits of dirt on Jacek. “You trip or something on the way here?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Jacek responded.

The wolf shrugged. “I dunno, thought you’d put on more of a show for the rematch,” he said. The friendly mask fell. “You know, since you embarrassed me in front of my packmates to get it. I didn’t forget about that.” He bared his fangs just a little.

Jacek’s brows raised halfway. Irritation helped him mask the anticipation he felt for what was about to happen. “We’ll see,” he said.

Damien looked at the skunk’s outfit again. It was dirty with definite smears where there was an attempt to brush some of it off. The scent was wild, just dirt and grass with none of those lawn treatment chemicals or anything, but it had something else. There were some hints of perfumes, definitely lavender; weird, but that wasn’t it. No, he was picking up the source of those splinters on him: wood, more like lumber, chopped a long time ago. Maybe it was just whatever he did as a job, but...

He met the skunk’s gaze again and flashed him a smirk, redeploying his usual confident demeanor before pushing away from the car to head to his own, where his pack was waiting for him. Four wolves looked down at him with their paws in their pockets and cast harsh shadows on him and the road.

Hunter jogged over to the Charger to take the wolf’s share of the wager, and Jacek took a deep breath. He had to steel his nerves and make sure he didn’t make any mistakes due to stress. The one he made on the last curve the first time around should’ve cost him the race. He wouldn’t be so careless tonight. To drown out the distant sounds of the wolves’ hushed conversation, he rolled up his windows.

By now, everyone who was coming was probably there, and anyone else could find parking themselves. Hunter stood in front of the two racers’ machines with his reflective gloves on. The Charger’s loud-ass engine revved like the thundering growl of an angry wolf. The Corvette gave two short ones in response. The otter raised and opened his paws one at a time. At the gas station, the crowd whistled and barked.

When he swung his arms down, both cars peeled out and shot into the dark once more.

The din of the audience faded fast behind the steady, familiar roars of the racers’ engines. Soon, the only sounds were of wind rushing by and the cacophonies coming from their machines as they stormed down the road.

The Charger led the way in the right lane, and its tires inched closer to the shoulder. How many times had Damien actually driven this course? This wasn’t his second run. He knew the cornfield turn was coming up, but he wasn’t slowing down. Jacek saw the tail lights flash as it screeched and threatened to brake-check his front bumper. He slammed on the brakes in response. His chest hit the rim of the steering wheel—”Fuck!” he shouted—and he felt like he was standing on the pedal when his butt left the seat. Up ahead, the Charger made its turn, skidding into a hard left and allowing the inertia of the heavy muscle car to drag it through the turn. It was rough, but by Gaia, he was drifting.

Jacek took the turn without a drift, just an outside-to-outside turn. He’d lost speed thanks to the wolf’s little stunt. In the side mirror, he caught a glimpse of a dirt trail surrounded by ruined corn stalks coming from the inside of that corner. Damien had bit the turn and tore up that patch of farmland.

The radio crackled. “Charger in front!” the voice said through the static. “Corvette two, three seconds back!”

The skunk’s tail bristled as he floored the gas. He was done making assumptions.

##

Inside the Charger, loud electronic beats scored Damien’s driving and masked his rapid breath. His eyes were red; he felt like he hadn’t blinked since the start of the race. A laughing bark of surprise came out when he regained control after sliding around that turn, the thanks he gave to his instinct for guiding him through it. All of his mental resources were focused on two goals: winning the race, and not thinking about what would happen if he went off-road. The latter suddenly got more difficult after that turn, especially as he entered the forest and approached the S-bend.

A glance at the rear-view mirror told him he was far ahead of the Corvette. It was possible that, assuming he could take these turns better, he could finish the race without his ace in the hole. He’d party hard with nothing to hide after that, no lies to tell anyone, not to his new fans, not to his pack, and not to Jacek. He gulped down the fantasy and returned his focus to the road.

The wolf pumped the brakes to take a tighter turn and set himself up for the next one. His last drift felt damn good, but his nerves kicked in to tell him not to try it here. There were trees on the inside, not cornstalks. His steady approach to each turn gave the skunk time to catch up, and after he heard the screeching of the Corvette pulling a wicked drift around the last corner of the S-bend, those headlights reappeared larger and further apart in the mirror. That had to have been a better drift than what he did last time. Was the Charger just too heavy for this course, Damien thought, or was Jacek just that good?

The sign for the upcoming hard left was speeding towards him, and Jacek was a car-length behind. It was a simple choice: take the road and risk losing, or take the shortcut and let Jacek see him cheat. There were too many variables, too much uncertainty. Someone was bound to be hurt no matter what, but win or lose, he had to go home to his pack.

His brow knotted as he slowed down and allowed the Charger to careen off the curve and into the gap between the trees, vibrations from driving over the bumpy ground shaking him in his seat. Just like before, it felt like an accident in progress. This was not an off-road vehicle.

Up ahead, there was something different, something solid that shouldn’t be there: a pile of junk wood, right in his path. Damien slammed on the brakes and screamed over the music.

The Charger did its best to stop its wheels, though they slid forward on the forest floor. It spun counterclockwise as it stopped, and the right headlight took the brunt of the collision, shattering on impact. Planks from the back of the pile clunked as they tumbled off due to the impact.

The pile was still well-illuminated without his lights on it. He looked up and saw another pair of headlights about thirty feet away in the trees. In front of them, a coyote sauntered out and crossed her arms. He didn’t know who that was, nor did he care in that moment. The race was still going on, and he had a chance to save face.

Throwing the Charger into reverse, Damien backed up and started turning around. By the time the coyote reached the scene of the collision, he was kicking up dirt in a mad dash to get back to the road.

Khrys shook her head. “Persistent, I’ll give him that,” she said.

##

Jacek watched the Charger disappear down the tree-lined off-road path. “Idiot,” he said as he slowed down and took the hard left with a safer approach than he was planning.

Assuming the wolf wouldn’t try to burst through the pallets he and Khrys had piled there, he could just cruise at the speed limit from this point to the finish line. He almost did just that. He had the chance to try that crazy drift again, something he was looking forward to doing this race, but without a competitor, it seemed hollow and unappealing. It would be the second time the wolf would completely miss seeing it, even if the skunk fumbled the first attempt. No one else out here would see it, anyway.

He sped around the curve at just the right speed to maintain his grip. When he popped out on the other side, he stepped on the gas to make that last dash towards the finish line.

At Lehman Brakes, the abandoned brake repair shop on the side of an otherwise featureless state route, a couple of spotters, a badger and a red fox, waited for the racers to come in. While the badger looked down the road for traffic, the fox had his eyes towards the forest. He held up his radio when he heard an engine roar. By now, he could identify this one by sound.

“Corvette’s coming in hot,” he said, squinting into the distance. “No sign of the Charger yet.”

The badger neglected his post to watch it come in. In seconds, it came to a gentle stop right by the building. Jacek was the winner by a landslide.

“Corvette finished first!” said the fox. “Charger’s just now making its way here.”

If there was any fanfare at the gas station, no one at the finish could hear it. When Jacek got out of his car, he only heard the wind and the distant rumble of the Charger’s engine.

The fox approached Jacek, tail swaying. “Congrats, man,” he said. “Any idea what happened back there? I thought it was close.”

He knew exactly what happened. He could drive them and anyone else out to the woods to show them the scene at the wood pile and bring in Khrys as a witness, and they might even believe the two of them. His two grand was coming back to him either way, though.

When the Charger finally pulled up with its one working headlight, it screeched to a halt and sat askew in the right lane. The engine died, and a long moment after it had finished puttering out, Damien climbed out. His sickle-shaped headfur was parted at the end, and it blew in the wind as he strode towards Jacek, who adjusted his stance in the event he was about to catch claws. There were witnesses here, would he try something like that? His fists were clenched, claws digging into his own pads.

Damien stopped stock-still in front of the skunk. The wolf’s ears were flat. He opened his maw, took a breath, and said to Jacek, “I fucked up.”

Jacek crossed his arms. “Yeah,” he said. “Wanna elaborate?”

“You tell them,” Damien said through gritted fangs. “Pack’s gonna hate me either way.”

By now, the badger had come over to hear the story, and the fox tapped his foot. The blind spot in the woods meant everyone would have to get the details of the last leg from the racers themselves.

Jacek shrugged and turned to the spotters. “He tried to do the same drift I do on the last curve,” he said. His paws mimed the motion of the car around the curve. “Same thing happened: he swung too hard and knocked out a headlight. He’d almost stopped when I left him behind.”

Damien glanced at the skunk with one ear cocked.

The badger tilted his head and looked at the Charger’s busted headlight. “Dang, both of you got lucky,” he said. “Either one of you could’ve ended up in the trees.”

“Or he could’ve hit me,” Jacek said. “I barely got past him. Now he knows why I like taking the curve like that—ain’t that right, Damien?”

The wolf blinked. In a second, he yanked his despair back below the surface, and his expression snapped back to familiar self-confidence. With a little more oomph, his headfur might’ve also groomed itself back into place. “Yeah, you should’ve seen me slide around that curve in the first, like, second,” he said. “Gonna actually do it next time.”

The badger shrugged. “You’re both crazy, s’far as I’m concerned,” he said. “Anyway, you guys gonna hit the diner with the rest of them to celebrate?”

It was tradition, after all, and Jacek felt like demolishing a burger before passing out at home. Still, he said, “We’ll catch up,” referring to Damien. He didn’t elaborate, instead walking to the wolf’s car out of earshot of the two spotters.

Damien followed him. The skunk wouldn’t look at him, staring instead at the metal roof of the Charger. The wolf asked, “What?”

“You should’ve won,” he said. “If you didn’t try to cheat, yo—.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” Damien hissed between fangs. “That wasn’t my money to lose, that was the pack’s. I owed them that and more, skunk. Now I’m back where I started, and they’re gonna kill me for it.”

Jacek gave him a sideways look. “Don’t tell me you borrowed your car, too,” he said.

Damien shook his head. “No, bought it with my own money,” he said. “Saved up and shit for it. Might have to pawn it or something now, though.” He crossed his arms, which drew his jacket closer around him. “Not that you care.”

Jacek slipped his paws into his windbreaker’s pockets. “Not giving it back, so I guess not,” he said.

“I wasn’t asking for a handout,” Damien said. “Asshole.”

The skunk smiled, almost snickered but stopped himself. He turned to face the wolf. “Think that’s the realest thing you’ve said to me,” he said. “And I get it. I know you like this car and racing and stuff. Just wish you would’ve played fair, you know? I was having fun. That’s why I do it.”

Damien’s ears perked up a little, and his arms, still interlocked, relaxed.

“We’ve got somewhere to be,” Jacek said. The Corvette’s doors unlocked. “If you want. Probably better than going home right now.”

The skunk stepped into his Corvette and began driving away. When it was out of view, Damien threw open the door to his Charger and slid inside. He started the car and listened to the engine purr. Loan or not, that sound was his, and the primal, instinctual anger he felt cooled into a well of determination. If it meant he didn’t have to go home just yet, he could put his instincts aside for a couple hours tonight, drinking and laughing under the crescent moon.