The Martian Falcon (Lovecraft & Fort) by Alan K Baker

immediately behind was large and sleek, its windows tinted almost completely black. With a screech of tyres it swerved suddenly, revealing an identical car behind. The second car swerved in the opposite direction, and both accelerated until they were flanking Capone’s limo.
    ‘Oh, crap,’ said Fort. ‘Vampires.’

CHAPTER 12
Death Has No Speed Limit
    Without waiting to be told, Tony the driver gunned the car’s massive engine, and Lovecraft and Fort simultaneously grabbed the leather handgrips on each side of the cabin as the vehicle surged forward.
    ‘Oh good grief!’ cried Lovecraft.
    ‘Hang on to your hat, librarian,’ said Capone, his face contorted in a mirthless grin. ‘Tony’ll get us out of this.’
    ‘Right, boss,’ Tony gurgled, spinning the steering wheel suddenly.
    There was an ugly crunch of metal against metal as the limousine shunted the car in front out of its way. Lovecraft and Fort looked through the side window in time to see the car spinning off the road and into a storefront, where it disappeared in a messy, multicoloured cloud of exploding fruit and vegetables.
    ‘Mr Capone,’ said Lovecraft. ‘I wonder if you might drop us off and forge ahead without us. I assure you we’ll be wishing you the very best of luck.’
    ‘Hey Charlie,’ said Capone. ‘I like this guy: he’s got a sense of humour like yours!’
    Fort glanced at Lovecraft and saw in his eyes that he wasn’t joking; and that, he realised, was funny. He started laughing and held onto the handgrip with all his might as Tony barged another car off the road. The zombies sitting on either side of Capone looked straight ahead, their dead faces completely expressionless, like two bored passengers on a bus.
    The sleek, black vampire cars drew level with the limousine once again. Their rear passenger windows rolled down and the muzzles of a distressing number of Tommy guns poked out.
    ‘God damn it!’ said Fort. ‘Is this car armoured?’
    ‘Of course it is, Charlie,’ Capone replied nonchalantly, as the deafening stutter of machine gun fire erupted from the vampires’ cars, accompanied by the metallic clatter of shells striking the polished flanks of the limousine. ‘But they’re gonna get tired of that pretty soon, I’d say… and then they’ll try something else.’
    ‘And what might that be?’ asked Lovecraft, hanging onto his own handgrip as the car swerved this way and that, braking and accelerating in quick succession as Tony tried to shake their pursuers.
    ‘Probably try to run us off the road and use their strength to rip open the doors…’
    Lovecraft ratcheted up the look of horror on his face by several notches. ‘And then?’
    ‘They’ll probably rip your heads off and beat me to death with them.’
    ‘Charles,’ said Lovecraft.
    ‘Yes, Howard?’
    ‘I resign.’
    Tony swerved once again, this time taking the car onto the onramp leading to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. As they reached the elevated section, Lovecraft caught a glimpse of New York Harbor, with Governors Island sprawling in the near distance and the Statue of Liberty beyond. He realised that he would have given pretty much anything to be at either of those places at that moment.
    Tony gunned the engine again, and the limousine surged forward. Fort guessed their speed to be around eighty miles an hour. He glanced over his shoulder at the road ahead and prayed that Tony wouldn’t need to shunt anymore cars out of the way. If he did, the weight of the limousine would easily push them through the crash barriers and onto the road below. Fortunately, the traffic was fairly light, and Tony settled for swerving around the cars ahead instead of ploughing straight through them. Fort guessed that their driver did this in order to maintain their speed, rather than through any concern for the other road users.
    Capone was right in his assumption about the vampires’ next move. While the rain of bullets continued from one car, the other dropped