NASCAR

There was no warning. No bomb. Nothing that indicated an attack. Nothing sinister.

On one side of a scalding moment of raw high-speed entertainment, sixteen stock cars raced at more than 185 miles an hour. Danny Perry had bulled his way to 190.3.

On the other side of that moment the engines of every car on the track stopped.

There were no explosions. Not at first.

The electrical conduction within the transmissions ceased. Gone. Just as the video feeds from the cameras and the big screens mounted around the track went dark. Bang. The commentators’ voices were silenced. Just like that.

Only the sound of the crowd pushed its way past the moment. They were screaming, cheering, yelling. And then when the first cars spun out of control and the next wave struck them, it was only the screams that lingered.

Lingered, grew, rose, detonated into shrill blasts of horror as every car crunched together. The drivers had no chance. There was no power at all. No steering, nothing. Only the bull muscle of feet on brakes and desperate hands on dying steering wheels gave the cars any chance.

It was too small a chance, though. The speeds were too great. The shock was too much.

Engines exploded. Electricity was not flowing and there were no sparks from damaged wires. No, the sparks that touched off the fuel were from metal hitting metal. Not many sparks.

Enough.

Enough was too much.

A fireball punched upward from amid the crunched fist of the collision. The screams of the crowd changed in pitch, rising higher, sounding like a great flock of birds in pain.

-Kill Switch pg. 44-45, Kindle Edition.