On track, the black and white paint of the Dodge is scraped bald against the asphalt, nose crumpled into the bright red hood of the Ford. Smoke engulfs both cares in an instant and those closest in the stands will swear for years that the flames burned blue. 

Max Verstappen crawls out of the ruined cartilage with nothing more than a cracked helmet and some broken fingers. Brady Johnson is not so lucky. They find him next to his truck almost ripped in half. They say it happened when he hit the fence, must have gone through the windshield. Everyone thanks God, at least one of them survived, and then they mourn the dead. 

The footage is never aired. 

— 

Sam Clapton dies on the second to last lap of Daytona. Daniel swerves around the accident, riding farther back in the pack than he would like in the first race of his rookie season. All of them assume Sam will be fine, a nasty whip turn up into the concrete and a concussion probably. 

He’s walked off worse, they all have. 

But he doesn’t walk it off and while the coverage moves seamlessly into post-race commentary, Daniel becomes the senior driver of a team he has only just started in without even realizing it. 

He gets the call the next day, before the funeral, before the public memorial service, before the track flying the flags at half-mast. His phone skitters across the desk, playing the same obnoxious jingle he hasn’t figured out how to turn off yet. The team gave him the phone when he joined. He’s never had one before, could never afford it. Most of the time he forgets to charge it letting it slide around in the bottom of his backpack, dead weight. 

When he finally snatches it off of the desk he is met with the slow drawl of the team boss telling him what comes next. He tries not to think about how quickly they have it all worked out. How seamlessly the contingency plan came together. Daniel stops himself from wondering who the replacement driver would be if he was the one in the wall, waiting to be put in the ground. 

The call goes on for ages. Doug always speaks slowing, chewing on words and slurring into the next in an accent Daniel has only learned to decipher properly after three years of working at the local track near Aunt Beth’s place, desperate for the free driving time. But what does get through is that he cannot tell anyone, not until the rest of the world finds out first. Sam is dead. They are very sad, devastated, really, God rest his soul, but he will need to be replaced and there is enough time before the next race to do it respectfully. No need to run without their second car, no need to compromise their chance for a point. 

So Daniel knows before the news and the lifelong fans, before the dirt that will cover Sam. He will have a new teammate by the time they get to Rockingham in a few weeks. The new guy is some kid moving up from the Truck Series, jumping the second tier and straight into the first. Daniel knows Verstappen, there aren’t many people who don't, especially since the crash last October. 

Max the phenom turned miracle boy. The cross clutchers thanked God and the rest said dumb luck but whispered about voodoo, conjuring devils and curses as old as the swamps, way in the deep parts where the sun can’t quite touch the water. 

Daniel thinks Max is probably just lucky, young and indestructible the way they all start. 

—

Americans have a strange way about them. God fearing is what they always like to say in their weird, twanging accents. Smug with pride but still laced with fear like He might appear at any moment to give them a pat on the back or a bullet in the head. 

Aunt Beth is Pentecostal. Daniel’s mum says she wasn’t like that growing up. They were raised Catholic just like Daniel and Michelle. But Beth met Uncle Nick at the base near their childhood home, stationed with the US Army in Alice Springs. Mum always said Beth was ready to chew her own arm off for a way out of the middle of nowhere. They married fast and before his grandparents could blink, Beth was dug firmly into the Florida gulf coast, attending a church that set up in overgrown fields and marshy riverbanks. 

There is religion in Australia. They have superstitions and things in the night you can’t look in the eye, claws dragging in the dirt as they stalk your footsteps home. But in America, Daniel realizes it is an entirely different beast. 

A shield and a weapon, a ghost story to threaten children and comfort them in equal measure. The line between faith and superstition bleeds freely in the south, tangled in ghost stories and fertilized by a century of slaughter. 

In Aunt Beth’s church they speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick to call God’s power to heal them, to fix, to make right what has been corrupted by the Devil. But Daniel wonders if they are calling something else, jostling it from a resting place and dragging it to the surface. It hangs heavy in the willow trees and twists between grave stones. Haunting the sharp eyes and hushed whispers of the congregation. 

Racing is not exempt. The stories from Talladega existed long before the track carved itself through the valley. Thundering hooves of horses on their last ride, war cries drifting in the night drowned out by the roar of the engines. Everyone has heard about the weird shit that goes on at Indy. Lights that turn on by themselves, the sound of wheel guns at two in the morning echoing around the dark garages, doors wide open like heavy hanging jaws. Dayton has claimed far too many to be a coincidence. 

The unholy cross of faith and superstition hangs heavy. Something lurks in the wet humid air, lapping at exposed skin and whispering in nonbelieving ears. 

Daniel wakes up some nights gasping, waiting for the thick slide of murky river water. Hands pressing him down, down, under, into the mud that sticks to his back. The chanting sounds muffled even in his dreams. They held him there, hands wrapped around his ankles and curving against his shoulder, his aunt’s palm flat against his forehead. 

Staring up from the mud, tiny fish darting in front of his vision, Daniel never saw God. 

The fuzzy outline of the pastor, arms spread wide as he spoke in backwards syllables. His Aunt’s hand rippled as it blocked the sun, members of the congregation kneeling in the mud around him, sinking into the earth with him as he coughed up brown water when they finally let him up. 

He feels it under his nails sometimes, spreading like a rot, a living organism infecting his cells. The water had been so dark when he made the stupid mistake of opening his eyes, silt drifting around him as his body struggled in protest.  

—

The first time he meets Max, Daniel smells brackish water and humid air dripping from cypress trees, spider lilies and rotting wood. He is underwater, staring up at blurry suggestions of people, mud parting under his back, taking him into the earth. 

He is in a garage, feet on concrete, under fluorescents as Max stands with his hand outstretched, head tilted curiously. It rolls off of him, like he brought the earth in with him. When Daniel grasps his hand, he can’t tell which one of them is sweating. 

“It is nice to meet you, Daniel,” Max says, tripping up around the back half of his name, mouth working itself into a small smile. 

Daniel snaps to attention and realizes he is just uselessly moving his hand and staring, “Yeah man, good to meet you as well.” 

When he drops Max's hand, something clings to him, settles into the lines running across his palms. Max immediately launches into questions about the car and Daniel keeps flicking his fingers, clenching and twisting, expecting to hear the splat of mud on the floor.

What Daniel knows about Max is that he is from Louisiana. Raised somewhere deep in Bayou Tache, so far back the trees started growing in a knot, strangling each other to reach the light first. It was always him and his dad, that's all he ever says, even if everyone knows it isn't true.

His crew chief, GP, dug Max out of the dark, hot clutch of a town near the Atchafalaya. Max was already crashing his way through run down karting tracks at seven years old.

The rumor is that his momma brought him to the tracks, fingers curled through the chain link safety fence, muttering and crossing herself over and over whenever Max spun through the gravel. She was there every weekend until they let Jos out. Locked up for the third time for trying to break the record on the Cannonball Run. Unsuccessful, again, and angrier than ever.

When Jos came back, Max's momma disappeared, and Max didn't smile unless the checkered flag waved for him first.

—

Max is a strange creature, probably always has been. His accent is muddied, a twisted courtship of a southern drawl and the leftover Dutch from whichever of his ancestors made a wrong turn in the Atlantic and ended up in Patterson.

But creature is the only word that fits, Daniel thinks. There is something restless in him, hands moving like his skin doesn't fit, like his body is bigger than his bones allow. Energy rolls off him and Daniel feels it like a heavy hand on the back of his neck, head underwater, backwards prayers in made up tongues, mud in his hair.

What Daniel learns about Max is that he races hard, it is rarely clean, and being his teammate is more of a back-alley fight than a boxing match. His reputation toes a strange line of ruthless in his pursuit of perfection but respectful as good southern boys should be to the people who support him. His former teammates prefer not to speak about him and everyone assumes it is pride or jealousy. The wounded egos of young men still reeling from being knocked down and told to stay there. Bested by the apex predator with the baby face.

And maybe some people say other things. Things about what Max and his daddy got up to in that backwater, halloween monsters conjured up from between the blades of salt grass.

What Daniel hears about Max is at best, Sunday gossip, and at worst, heresy.

—

"Daniel," Max's mouth brushes against the shell of his ear, "it's okay." Daniel freezes, body going numb around the ten points of contact where Max's fingers dig into his hips.

He is in the water, he is in the mud, the earth is swallowing him whole, salt grass brushing against his fingers, Max pressed against him, hands on his forehead, hands on his ankles, hands on his hips, the pastor chanting, Max whispering, something coming.

The garage is dark but Daniel can see Max clearly. The tendon in his neck stretching towards his shoulder that Daniel's fingers brush against. Max pulls his head back, bright blue eyes, complete combustion.

It's all wrong, they aren't allowed to be here like this, Daniel knows. They told him and prayed over him and he said he wouldn't and they pushed him under again and he promised he wouldn't. He swallowed the river and gave himself to God and spoke the words as the spirit told it to him and promised.

—

Max puts his foot almost to the floor and pulls alongside Daniel's car, the three nothing more than a black blur as they whip through the first turn, banking and jostling for position. Daniel's head turns slightly, Max knows Daniel can see him, wonders if he can feel the thrum, the knowing of what's coming. Max waits. He knows it will tell him when it is time.

When they approach the second turn, Daniel turns fully to look at Max, indecision clear on the strip of his face not covered by his helmet. His eyes and the tops of his cheeks are moving, maybe in question, maybe in prayer. Max holds his gaze, traps Daniel there the same way he has been for months. By now all of those expressions are familiar to him.

The surprise, like Daniel is always noticing him for the first time. The recognition, when the animal part of Daniel reacts to what it knows max to be and rears back, while Daniel's logic claws and kicks to hold what reality is left together. The fear, the knowing that trickles back in pieces because Daniel has seen him before, more than once, in places and faces he tries his best not to remember. And before it used to all snap back, the one Daniel pulled tightly across his face, slapping Max on the back and leaving the room.

But this time there is something new.

The realization, horror and awe muddled and perfect. Simon must warn him about the curve, Daniel should already be turning, but they both know it is already too late and his faces forward again. Max pulls his wheel and watches as the nose of his car dives into Daniel's driver side door, shoving him neatly up the bank and into the concrete. Sparks burst white hot and shower across the hoods of both cars. Max grips his wheel, twisting viciously and braking to try and hook mor eof the crumping metal into the front of Daniel's car.

The angle needs to be right. It needs to look right.

When he glances up, Daniel is facing him again but his hands are threaded in the front of his harness. His eyes never leave Max as the passenger side slams into the concrete again and the windshield shatters across his lap.

Max grins and lets go of the wheel.

—

Brady doesn't know how it happened.

He would swear up and down he was in clear air a moment ago. His spotter let him know he was fine to push. But then there is a jolt from an impossible direction and a weight slamming into the side of his car, crumpling his door against his leg. His brain can't keep up with the spinning, scraping, loud, hot, pain until it comes to a standstill, whipping his head against the wheel. When the white clears from his vision he can see his mangled truck is nose to nose with the Ford. Max's car. Something is on fire, thick acrid smoke pluming around the cars, but he can see something moving behind the spider webbed shattered windshield.

He tries to move but his left arm is pinned where the door has collapsed into the dashboard and his right feels useless. He doesn't even want to check his legs, worried that they don't even hurt.

Something is jostling the car, Brady hopes it is fire rescue and medical, someone to fix him. Something to fix this. He blinks again, smoking stinging his eyes, and wonders if he's concussed.

Something is definitely moving, banging against the windshield of Max's truck, kicking and punching, trying to smash its way out.

He wonders how Max isn't hurt, the engine block looks like it should be in the cab with him. There is blood in his eyes from where he hit his head. Fire rescue and medical are coming, he just has to hang on.

Brady blinks and his vision clears again. He immediately wants to close his eyes.

Something, someone, Max, but it can't be, is crawling towards him, dragging itself across the molten, disfigured, bleeding hood of the Ford. It looks inhuman, arm bent backwards and flesh melting where it touches hot metal.

Brady blinks again.

The figure pulls itself closer, blistered fingers bending metal beneath them.

Brady starts screaming.

Max's neck is twisted, jaw hanging and teeth knocked loose falling sideways out of his mouth.

Brady Johnson dies. Max Verstappen survives by a miracle with only a cracked helmet and broken fingers. The blood blends seamlessly into the black of his suit. When he is asked how, he says his momma lights a candle for him every race day.