John and Kristoff had eventually reached the outskirts of Augusta a couple of days after their near-death experience with the hellish Wild Ones. Even though neither of them would admit it, they had both been terrified at what they had witnessed, and neither had slept properly since. Every sound or unusual sighting still sent their nerves on edge, and they were both jumpy. John was trying to put on his usual brash, obnoxious, and disinterested manner, but Kristoff knew he was just as severely affected by the incident. Those Wild Ones had been new, and nothing they had ever seen or heard of before, and the worst of it had been the intelligence in the ape-like ones. Just thinking back at their deep yellow eyes made Kristoff shudder uncontrollably.
“What’s the plan, Boss?” Kristoff asked.
“There is a small township on the other side of Augusta, so we can stop off there for some rations before heading back towards the factory.”
“What about Golgo?”
“I think we need to head further east, as we discussed, and see what's out towards the coast.”
They had been traversing the I20, which had once been a wide and open highway. John always wondered about the number of vehicles that used to be on the roads when looking at the amount of abandoned and burned-out remains that they continually passed on their journey. Most had been reclaimed as everything else had been without human interaction.
Augusta was the typical cityscape as they drove towards it; they followed the I20 around to its Northern side before turning onto the 104; the road followed the flow of the Savannah River, which separated Augusta in two at the border between Georgia and South Carolina. John knew the township he was heading towards was in Jackson to the Southeast of the central city. He had not been down this way for several years and hoped it was still there. As they slowly made their way through the city, they came upon a herd of Elbou grazing by the river’s edge. The sight and sound of the truck startled them, and John watched them as they fled deeper into the city. The city had been abandoned; these roads had not been travelled on for a long time by any vehicle.
The 104 ended, and John followed the road as it split, heading onto Greene Street. On his right as he drove, there was what must have been some form of electrical power station at some point, as across the road were the remnants of the pylons and cables virtually blocking their way. John slowed the truck to even more of a crawling pace and carefully picked his way through the strewn rubble and debris. They proceeded down the street, keeping their eyes on the road ahead.
“Watch it!” Kristoff called.
“What?”
“There up ahead about 50 feet.” Kristoff started pointing.
Just ahead of them, John could see what he assumed was a metal cable running across the road about 3 feet from the ground. It looked taught and not natural in the way a cable would have laid if it had fallen. There were telegraph poles on either side of the road, but the cable should have drooped and laid flat or at an angle, at least not remained as tight and as horizontal as it now looked.
John eased his foot back onto the gas, slowly approaching it.
“Someone has placed that.” He stated.
“Yeah, not sure why there does not seem to be anything around here,” Kristoff said.
The windscreen suddenly imploded, peppering the inside of the cab with shards of glass. “Fuck,” John cried as he slammed his foot on the brake. He felt the sharp particles striking his upper torso, face, and hands. The echo of a rifle reached his ears as he wildly looked to see where the gunfire had come from. “Can you see anything?” John shouted.
“No,” was all Kristoff replied.
There was another crack of a rifle, and a second round struck the roof of the truck, ricocheting off it.
“Shit,” John cursed, ducking reflexively, fighting the truck into reverse, and placing his foot down on the accelerator. The truck lurched backwards, and John started to turn the wheel to the right as he moved, looking to get off the open street.
“I saw the muzzle flash. The shot came from that building ahead on the left, where that tower-looking thing is with the dome on it. It has a clear view of the store…..” Kristoff stopped talking as the third round was fired.
The shooter, whoever they were, had got lucky, considering they had missed a stationary target previously, but this third round had found its mark. The round had entered the cab perfectly aligned to Kristoff’s throat through the side window as the vehicle had been steered by John trying to get off the street. It entered his throat at the upper front right, tearing through his oesophagus and then through his artery on the lower left as it continued its journey, thudding into the side of John’s seat where it came to rest. Kristoff’s throat was obliterated, leaving a gaping wound. The inside of the cab was immediately covered in a warm spray of crimson as John was struck across his face with Kristoff’s life essence. He instinctively turned his head sideways away from the jet to protect his eyes and then turned back to see what remained of Kristoff’s throat. He could see where there used to be flesh. There was now nothing; the round had caused utter devastation, tearing through his skin, muscle, and tissue to make it look like his head was being held on by a thread. Kristoff’s head slumped to the left, the weight of his head toppling over following the motion of the vehicle towards where his now vacant throat had been.
This had two effects on John: the first was that he was no longer being directly squirted with blood, the spray being redirected by Kristoff’s head, and the second, he instantaneously vomited. He continued to steer the vehicle covered in his bile, and Kristoff’s still warm blood, trying to keep the focus on getting off the road and bumped up the roadside kerb as he managed to manoeuvre the truck so that it was behind some trees at the roadside. He was not going to stop and hang around, and immediately placed the truck back into gear and, staying behind the treeline, drove as best as he could back the way they had come, as quickly as the terrain allowed. After a minute, he pulled back onto the street further down, placed his foot on the accelerator, and drove back towards the 104.
His mind was in flight mode; he needed to get as much distance from the shooter as he could. ‘What the fuck just happened,’ he thought to himself. He dared not look at Kristoff again for fear of vomiting. Even considering looking at him made bile rise in his throat. He could vaguely see Kristoff’s lolling head resting against his chest, swinging like a pendulum from the truck's movement.
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John had been a party to violence his whole life. He loved torture, he loved inflicting pain and had no problems with blood and guts or killing, but these were all done under his control. He panicked once the shoe was on the other foot, and he had lost control. He knew the shooter had been lucky; otherwise, the first two rounds would have hit their marks. Maybe the person was not even trying to hit them but scare them; he would never know, as without a firearm himself, he was not even going to attempt to find out. John continued straight out of Augusta and did not stop until he reached the I20 and crossed the Savannah River into South Carolina. He pulled off the main highway into a vacant parking lot in front of a single-story building. He could make out the faded writing of a sign poking out from some bushes. ‘South Carolina Welcomes You’ It read.
He brought the truck to a stop and slowly climbed out of the vehicle, not looking at Kristoff’s body. His hands were violently shaking, and he felt dizzy and disorientated. Adrenaline and fear had kept him going until this point. He leaned forward, placing his hands on his knees, and took several deep, steadying breaths. His hands were covered in blood, and as his eyes focussed on them, he noticed a shard of glass sticking out of the back of his right hand. He had not even realised until now that it was stuck there. He carefully took hold of the edges of the glass and pulled it free with his left hand. Thankfully, it had not penetrated deeply and did not seem to be bleeding too badly. He cautiously felt his face where he had been peppered by the shards but found nothing protruding. He could not tell how badly his hand was bleeding or had bled through being covered by so much of Kristoff’s blood. There had been no escaping the jets of claret that had coated the inside of the truck.
He walked to the back of the truck, reached under the tarp covering, and pulled out a bottle of nectar, pulling the top off and downing it. He then repeated the exercise twice before burping violently and stopping. ‘I need to sort Kristoff out,’ he thought to himself. He walked around to the truck's right side and approached Kristoff’s door. He carefully pulled the door open and looked inside the truck. Kristoff’s body was still sitting upright in its seat, the belt holding him there, but his head was at an almost upside-down position, straining to stay attached to what remained of his neck. John gingerly reached across and unclipped the belt buckle. Kristoff’s weight instantly adjusted and fell onto John’s outstretched body. John immediately recoiled, pushing the body back upright, and pulled himself back out of the vehicle, resisting the gagging sensation rising from his stomach. Kristoff’s now free body slumped forward, crumbling towards the dashboard and flopping sideways until it slid out of the truck and landed with a thud on the asphalt at John’s feet. The force of the movement threw Kristoff’s head back, and John saw his face for the first time since the round had struck. His mouth was still open as if he was in mid-conversation with wide eyes and a fixed death stare. This time, John could not hold back, and his gag reflex took over, projecting the three bottles of nectar back up and out of his stomach.
“Fuck,” he screamed. Wiping bile from his mouth on the back of his sleeve.
John eventually composed himself again and, grabbing Kristoff’s remains by his shoulders, pulled the body away from the truck. With an unnatural gentleness, he straightened his head, which had been dragged sideways, and closed the eyelids covering the vacant stare before turning away. He thought about taking the body back with him to the factory, but considering that Kristoff had no family that he was aware of, he could not see the point.
He returned to the vehicle and looked inside properly for the first time since the attack. The vehicle's insides were ruined, and blood, piss, shit, and vomit coated the surfaces. Kristoff’s bowels and bladder must have given out as he died, and there was the distinct colouring and smell of shit and piss all over the front seat where he had been sat. John went to the back of the truck, grabbed whatever rags he could find, and then collected Kristoff’s blanket from his backpack. He slowly wiped down as much of the inside of the vehicle as he could with what he had available. The truck would never be the same again, and he would have left it if he had had any other means of getting back to the factory without it.
He then carefully scrapped out the few shards of the front windscreen and rolled up Kristoff’s window, which had thankfully been down when the round struck him, so it remained intact. It was getting dark when he finished his vague attempt at a clean-up job. There was no way he was staying in the truck overnight without a windscreen, so he made his way towards the single-storey building. The building had been ransacked historically, and most of the windows had been smashed at some point. He found a room with a door still on its hinges and, dropping his backpack down, decided it would be as good as anywhere to spend the night. He then returned to the truck and carried in the remainder of the nectar from the truck before securing the door closed.
Sitting in the small dark room, propping himself up on his backpack, he popped the top off a bottle. “Here is to you, Kristoff.” He said, taking a long, deep swig and raising the bottle. He sat contemplating his next steps while finishing the nectar off. Thankfully, it had started to take the edge off his level of fear, and his self-defining brashness started to return. “You were such a fuckling wimp today,” He said, cursing at himself. “Next time any shit like that happens, make sure you man up and deal with it.” He continued. He had often had conversations with himself after drinking, and it felt natural. “So, in the morning, we get our fat arse back into the truck and continue towards Jackson. Resupply and then head straight back to the factory. Fuck Golgo and his crowd. Silver can get his old lazy arse out here himself if he wants to find him,” He finished saying. With that, he completed a final check of the door to ensure it was securely held where he had closed it and lay himself down using his backpack as a pillow.
He was unsure how long it had taken him to fall asleep, but he must have at some point as he awoke with a start. The room he had slept in had no windows, so he had no idea what time of day it was. He forced himself to sit upright, feeling the familiar sensation of a hangover he regularly suffered with, and got up. He went to the doorway and pried it open again. The sun was high in the sky, fighting through the dark grey clouds as he walked back outside, and it must have been near the middle of the day. He relieved himself against the side of the building and then moved back to the truck. He walked up to the driver’s side, dropped his backpack into the rear, and then around to deal with Kristoff’s body.
The sight of what remained almost made him sick again. During the night, something or something had been at his corpse. Part of his face had been bitten and torn off, and John could see bite and claw marks on other areas of bare skin. “Fucking hell.” He exclaimed. John had no idea what had been at Kristoff’s corpse, but he did not want to hang around anymore and find out. He immediately climbed back into the truck and started the engine. Thankfully, it kicked in straightaway, and he moved it into gear and pulled away back onto the I20. Kristoff had been using the map to help navigate, and it was lying in the passenger side footwell. John reached over and grabbed it, lifting it. It was saturated in blood and other bodily substances, and he grimaced as he folded it to where he was on the map and got his bearings.
“Ok, so maybe two days, possibly three, to get to Jackson if the roads are good,” He said. He dropped the map onto the passenger seat and looked out of the glassless window at the road ahead. As he drove, the dark clouds opened and dropped their load onto the earth. The rain bounced off the truck's hood and was directed straight into the truck's cab with no window to stop it. “What a fucking shitstorm this has been.” He said as he proceeded down the road.