Jill snatched up the mic to her radio and pushed the talk button.
“This is Junkmouth, I hear you,” she said. “I’m hammer down eastbound on 90 right off the pass with a rack o’guns, where are you?”
“Thank god!” said a man’s voice. The signal was weak, with static rising and falling, but Jill thought she could hear thumping and shrieking in the background. “We’re on 90 too! Got driven off the road by a whole swarm of monsters. You gotta help us!”
Jill scowled, left hand tightening involuntarily on the wheel. One monster she could handle, especially if she got the drop on it from fifty yards away. Two or three would be dangerous, but if she stayed in her cab she would have cover. But a whole swarm?
“Hang tight good buddy, I’m on my way.”
She had to go that direction anyways. Might as well be a big damn hero if it wasn’t extra miles.
Jill pressed the accelerator all the way down, but had to let up just a few seconds later when the normally smooth roar of Bertha’s engine stuttered alarmingly. There was definitely something wrong, some sort of damage that was getting worse, but none of the gauges showed any obvious problems. She was enough of a mechanic to do basic fixes on the road, so if the old girl died on her she might be able to get the engine running again, but that would take time. Time she doubted the stranded people had.
She crested the next ridge and her high beams swept from heaven to earth, lighting up a desperate scene less than a half mile away. On the side of a long straightaway, crashed into a tree just off the road, was a 20 foot U-Haul truck, its emergency lights flashing. Jill made out two people on the roof and at least two dozen small, four legged creatures scrabbling to climb on top. They only looked to each be the size of a mid-sized dog, and Jill gave a single snort of amusement as one tried to jump and only made it a few feet off the ground before falling onto its face. There was no way they would be getting up the back or the sides of the truck. But her amusement died when her lights reflected just right and she saw their massive teeth, oversized to the point of sticking out past both jaws.
As she watched, a monster got on the hood and lunged, but was driven back as one of the men swung what had to be an actual sword at it, slicing into its snout. It crouched, looking to lunge again, but a burst of fire from the other man’s outstretched hand blasted it off the hood entirely.
Jill’s jaw opened an inch in shock as she barreled down the hill. She should have expected someone else having magic shit happen to them, they were being attacked by monsters after all, but throwing fire was crazy. Killer monsters were similar enough to killer animals, but that was real magic.
The mage turned towards her and frantically waved an arm above his head, his other hand rising to his mouth. Jill squinted and could just make out a cord stretched back into the cab, miraculously unharmed by the teeth, sword, and flame.
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“Is that you?!” came crackling over the radio. “We can’t last much longer. I’m almost out of mana!”
“I’m gonna ram ‘em, might scrape some paint! Don’t fucking fall off,” Jill said. She tossed the mic down and gripped the wheel with both hands, aiming tons of truck as carefully as she could. Five knuckle-clenching seconds seemed to drag on for eternity as the U-Haul and monsters grew larger in her vision at an alarming rate. The corner of her mouth twitched up in satisfaction at the last second when she didn’t need to adjust her steering at all.
“Choke on it you twatwaffles!” she yelled as Bertha slammed into the monster horde, her side passing within half a foot of the U-Haul. Shrieks and bangs assaulted her hearing and she had to violently pull the steering to the side as something pulled her wheel over, barely managing to keep the truck from veering off course. One monster got flung into the air, crashing into the windshield with a bloody crunch. The tempered glass broke into a thousand shards, but the adhesive center held firm and the window only bent inwards by a few inches, a mad spiderweb of cracks streaked red.
Jill slammed on the brakes, leaning over so that she could still see the road past the monster corpse. She must have killed or maimed half of the swarm, but that meant there were still lots of monsters to go. Right before coming to a stop she brought the wheel over hard to the left, turning the cab so that she could see the monsters out of her driver’s side window. Most were still trying to climb the U-Haul, but three had broken off and were running at her instead. She reached for the seatbelt release and swore as she fumbled it, but soon enough she was free, grabbing her shotgun just as the first monster leapt at the cab door.
It didn’t even make it to the window, instead crunching teeth first onto the metal steps. It immediately leapt again, but didn’t manage any better. This close, Jill could see that the dog sized monsters were some kind of rodent with a very short tail.
Dire Lemming, Level 1
HP: ??/??
MP: ??/??
Status: Raging
“Well that explains the stupid,” she said, bringing the shotgun to her shoulder and coming to a half-standing, half-crouched, all-cramped position between the two seats. She growled as the long barrel of the shotgun got caught in the steering wheel; she really needed to saw this thing off if she was going to keep needing to shoot things at point blank range. Finally ready, she reached over and clicked the window down button. With almost comical slowness the glass receded.
As Jill leaned over and aimed down, she felt strangely let down. Somehow it didn’t seem sporting to shoot these big mice that couldn’t do anything but clunk into her door. But then her eyes flicked up to the men still fighting for their lives without the luxury of such sturdy cover.
“Fuck sporting,” she said, and pulled the trigger. Three blasts, three pulped monsters, but firing in the confines of the cab was ruinously loud. The sounds of monsters faded, replaced with a high squealing whine. She shifted her aim, but hesitated. The range was a bit long for a shotgun armed with buckshot.
Mentally urging the men to hold on against the reduced monsters for just a little while longer, she put her shotgun on the passenger seat and grabbed her rifle. It was only chambered for a .243 Winchester cartridge for deer hunting, but these targets were small enough that the light round should still do the job. She braced the barrel on the edge of the window to fire, but still had to be half crouched and every shot was a spike of fresh agony in her ears. But she hadn’t been raised hunting for nothing, and soon every monster lay crippled or dead.
“Who's a hero? This bitch, that's who.”