Godspeed
The wheels of Angel Shay’s transport crunched over a debris field between the concrete barriers of The Path as she raced forward into the next turn, picking up the speed she had lost in avoiding the crash. “Innocent lost, Angel fallen. I will weep later,” she whispered to herself, heart pinched briefly in mourning as she raced with the remaining Angels through the crowded pavement between the domed cities with her Innocent. The monsoons had come upon them early, the rain and winds creating mudslicks that tempted the Angels’ transports away from their carefully calculated lines into mortal danger.
The transport’s rad display grew greyer with every passing second. Shay prayed it would not turn black.
An alert pierced her concentration, and an image of the craft’s multi-layered hull flashed into her helmet’s display. It warned her of a new chip in its outer shielding near her Innocent’s right hip. Surely wrought by a piece of debris — she must fly faster. Angel of Mercy Shay, on her fifteenth undertaking of the Path of Righteousness, was carrying her Innocent, a girl of seven tender years newly diagnosed with an exceedingly rare cancer, to the research facility across The Waste, in Dome 12. She must deliver her Innocent, passing into the dome within the small sliver of time that its shield doors would open and close for the month.
Shay had studied the films of racers from the before times, on the Circuit de la Sarthe, the Nürburgring, but most importantly for her, Watkins Glen, the turns of its Boot section so closely resembling the hardships that beset her own righteous Path. Her forebearers did not have to race against radiation exposure with precious cargo, though. They finished when they finished — no impenetrable wall came down between them and the finish line, leaving them to die exposed in a wasteland.
As she came out of the leg of the Boot section, she saw another Angel take flight after slamming into the berm and spinning sunward in an arc like the brandishing of a vengeful sword. Her eyes locked onto the inside of the slight dogleg ahead, where another mudslick hid, partially obscured by the shadow of a boulder beyond the concrete barrier. This time, she could spare no thought for this newly Fallen and Lost, lest she forfeit her own life and her Innocent’s. On this, her fifteenth run, she must forge a new line through this last section of The Path.
The rising tone of the exposure klaxons vied for her attention — there was a distinct black spot growing in the rad display now — as she sighted a way out. Shay gunned her engine, flying into the void left by a slowing Angel who had chosen a less furious path. Turbulence buffeted the side of her transport as she barreled past the other Angel, her hips and shoulders countering the disturbance to keep her rooted to her seat, steady, focused, and unflinching.
The left front wheel of Shay’s transport slipped over the barest fringe of the mudslick’s outermost curved edge as her rear end flicked first away from it, and then back again as her trajectory straightened. In her display, the Angel behind her also slipped, straightened out, and regained speed. Two and a half miles ahead of her, she could see the top of Dome 12.
“Shield door closure commencing in 90 seconds,” her comms system informed her, and relief flooded through her like water from a breached main. Sixty-five seconds later, the sunlight blinked out as she slipped into the darkness of the entrance tunnel, where she finally felt safe enough to glance at the status of the Innocent’s stasis tube mounted behind her — all systems green — as the transport slowed.
After her rear wheels rolled onto the conveyor to the decontamination chamber, Angel Shay flipped the switches in the transport’s power system one by one to their off positions and removed her helmet, shedding a tear as she silently recited the Angel’s prayer: With no monsters but man and no gods but the goodness of one’s heart, we are delivered unto safety, bearing the hopes of the Fallen, the Lost, and the future.