Mud Mountain Mayhem!

The morning after Opening Night, the Mash Motors Crew had one big plan.

Rest.

The morning fuel-up was done. Big Stomp was parked in his bay with his headlights half closed. Smash was admiring a brand-new dent in her armor, the way some trucks admire a present. Torque was reading about bridges, because that is how Torque rested.

Mudslide was parked in his bay too. Under him, as always, was a puddle of mud. (It had not rained all week. Nobody knew where Mudslide’s puddles came from. Nobody asked anymore.)

Bounce was not resting. Bounce was telling the story again.

“And THEN I went up,” he said, “and I flipped once, and I flipped twice, and I flipped THREE times, and the whole Rumble Bowl went—”

“Bounce,” said Smash. “You’ve told us eleven times.”

“Twelve,” said Torque, without looking up.

“Twelve!” said Bounce happily. “Want to hear it again?”

And Nitro was not resting at all. Nitro was doing laps.

He zoomed around the main bay, past the lifts, past the tool racks, past the fuel pumps, and around again. Little blue sparks skipped off his tires.

“Nitro,” said Big Stomp. “We’re resting.”

“I AM resting!” said Nitro, zipping past. “These are resting laps! If I stop, my treads fall asleep!”

Then the Command Screen turned red.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Every truck in the Garage looked up. Even Bounce stopped talking, right in the middle of flip number three.

A map filled the screen. There was Rumble City, and there, outside it, was the big wild mountain with snow on its very top. Mud Mountain. Near the top, a red X blinked on a winding road.

Torque rolled up to the screen and read it fast.

“A rockslide on the pass road,” she said. “The school bus took her little cars up the mountain this morning to see the snow. On the way back down, rocks slid onto the road in front of them.”

Nitro screeched to a stop. “Are they okay?”

“They’re safe,” said Torque. “Nobody was near the rocks when they fell. But they’re stuck. The bus just called us on her radio. The pass road is the only road down.”

The map zoomed in. There was a tiny yellow school bus. Behind her sat a row of little cars, all in a line, like ducklings. And in front of them, right across the road, lay a heap of gray boulders.

“How big are the rocks?” asked Big Stomp.

“Some are as tall as we are,” said Torque. “The heaviest one is eight tons.”

“Eight TONS?” said Nitro. “That’s, like... a LOT of tons.”

“It’s eight tons, Nitro,” said Torque. “That’s how tons work.” She thought for a moment. “It’s almost as heavy as two Big Stomps.”

Big Stomp looked quietly pleased about that.

Then he looked at the red X, and at the tiny bus, and at his crew. His engine gave a long, low rumble.

“So much for resting,” he said.