Emily leaned over the left side of their truck to speak to us on our right. “Got any plans, Lord?” she shouted.
“Stay alive,” Luke replied.
Emily smirked and pulled out a double-barrel, sawed-off shotgun from behind her back. “I’ll see what I can do,” she told him.
Necessity forced us to duck as a hail of bullets welcomed us to within fifty yards of Lance’s convoy. The bullets chipped the windshields, but Burnbaum’s solid trucks didn’t break under the strain. Luke leaned down near the driver’s window. “Get us alongside the last truck.”
“I will try,” Burnbaum shouted back.
Burnbaum stepped on the gas and we sped forward. Rick wasn’t about to let us have all the fun and kept pace with us. Lance’s convoy still lay in a long line of single-file vehicles, and the last vehicle was an armored truck. Like the last in line this also had a Gatling gun, and they didn’t hesitate in shooting the thousand-rounds-a-minute load at us. The bullets were several inches long and penetrated the hoods of our truck, so Burnbaum and Rick swerved to opposite sides of the road. Our left tires swerved onto the high, steep wall of the hill, but Burnbaum turned us off before we flipped.
Rick was crazier. He turned the truck so the front tires faced the steep slope and then he floored it. The thick, wide tires caught the hard ground and the truck raced up the slope and jumped over the top. Its taillights disappeared over the hill, leaving only its trail as evidence it was ever there.
“What is he doing with my truck?” I heard Burnbaum scream from the cab.
We found out the next second when headlight beams broke over the top of the hill and the truck flew over the steep edge. Emily, Steve, and Adam clung onto the back of the cab and sides of the truck, and I swear I saw Stevens and Baker’s prostrate forms levitate above the bed. Emily mouthed some words that I couldn’t make out, but probably weren’t affectionate towards Rick’s driving. The truck defied gravity for all of a second and came crashing down near the Gatling truck. Rick sharply turned the wheel and the truck sides slammed into each other.
Adam unwillingly flew into the enemy truck and made use of their surprise attack by grabbing the operator and tossing him over the side. He caught the gun and aimed it toward the convoy and especially the shooters. The gun burned through its remaining bullets and took out a great deal of our trouble. The entire convoy came to a screeching halt as drivers and passengers alike were ventilated by the long bullets. With the way cleared of most obstacles Burnbaum pressed on the gas and we propelled forward.
Once our foes were sure Adam was out of bullets, those who didn’t look like Swiss cheese jumped from the convoy trucks and ducked down behind their vehicles. They fired at us, and Burnbaum turned the wheel. The truck fishtailed and the right side ended up pointed toward our enemies. Burnbaum, Luke and I jumped out of the bed while Stewart ducked down. The trucks behind us pulled up to us, but the transformed werewolves were gone.
It was then that the woods came alive with the howls of our green-armband brethren. Their dark shadows burst from the hills on either side of the convoy and they raced down the slope like lemmings over a cliff. Lance’s men turned their barrels on them and fired, but they had a few problems. The first was Emily who was armed to the teeth and willing to share her bounty with Adam and Steve. Rick had his own stash, no doubt picked up from his abandoned-but-beloved truck on the way over here. They fired their guns at the hidden shooters and distracted them so our wolfy friends could attack them from the sides.
The second of their problems was our group. Luke and Burnbaum transformed and rushed forward. They raced between the rear vehicles, and grabbed any foe they could find and dashed their heads against the vehicles, ground, and even each other. Our victory was again short-lived when feroce spilled from a few of the canvas-covered trucks and joined the fray. The fighting was savage as the monsters fought in hand-to-hand combat with our werewolf friends.
I raced after Burnbaum and Luke, but paused near the Gatling truck when I heard whimpers and yelps far ahead of us. On the far left side of the chaos was a group of our allies, and they were getting their asses handed to them in ugly black baskets. The source of the problem was Cranston, transformed into a monstrous feroce and swiping his claws in every direction. He took no prisoners as he strangled, choked, tore and broke our allies, leaving a mass of bodies at his feet. I bared my fangs and tore off after him as he tried to make his way to the head of the convoy.
Luke noticed me. “Stay back!” he growled.
I being myself didn’t listen, and he raced after me. We passed through the fighting and a few flaming vehicles from a bullet to their gas tank. The lead trucks and the front two semis were mostly undamaged by the Gatling thanks to the other vehicles having shielded them, but the semis had several flat tires. The door to one of the lead trucks opened and out stepped Lance. His face was twisted with fury and his eyes glowed a bright yellow as they swept across the carnage at our backs. Cranston ran up to Lance and turned to growl at us.
Lance put his hand atop Cranston’s head and grinned at us. He bowed his head. “A pleasure to see you, brother,, and your lovely mate,” he greeted us.
“Give up, Lance,” Luke growled.
Lance chuckled. “Not so long as I have a few men to fight for me. Or should I say feroce?” He snapped his fingers and from the trucks behind and in front of his came forth a half dozen feroce. Their mouths dripped with saliva and their claws twitched and carved long streaks into the dirt road as they itched to tear us to shreds. Lance stroked the top of Cranston’s head. “These feroce are ordinarily very dangerous, but just a whiff of my Alpha Formula and they are as passive as puppies for me. They are also very eager to obey my orders.” He raised his arm and pointed a finger at us. “Feroce, kill them.”
Cranston and the other six feroce leapt at us, but Luke crashed into them in mid-jump. He put two of them out of commission before they overpowered him. I leapt to his defense, but Cranston broke from the group and tackled me to the ground. He pinned my wolf legs to the ground and sank his jaws into my neck. I felt his teeth break the skin and inch toward my main arteries.
That’s when I heard the roar of an engine that broke through the howling and fighting around us. Cranston looked up and I followed his gaze to the tall hill on our right side. Headlights beamed into the sky and a ragged truck flew into the air. Wilson stuck his head out the window and hollered. “Yeah-ha!”
Ian, nice and healed, knelt on the hood. As their truck succumbed to gravity he leapt off and Wilson opened his door and jumped away from the truck. I noticed a few barrels in the bed drift upward over the convoy, particularly the rear semi and half of the assisting trucks. Wilson landed in the middle of Luke and my fighting while Ian took Emily and the others. Wilson smashed a fist into Cranston’s long face, grabbed me, and hauled me away from the convoy. Luke broke from his own group and limped toward the opposite side of the road from where the truck had appeared.
I couldn’t figure out what their plan was until the first barrel hit one of the trucks. The explosion knocked us off our feet and blew away anyone within a twenty-yard radius. That’s when I remembered those were the spare barrels of gas from our long trip to the border of Prospera, and judging by the explosions going off left and right I guessed that Ian and Wilson had refilled and bought more. His truck and its large tank of gas slammed into the second semi, and both of them burst into flames that reached fifty yards in the sky. Pity, I really liked that truck.
There were more friend than foe in this part of the convoy so I didn’t have much to worry about there. The feroce and their instincts told them to scatter, and Lance’s scent be damned. They ran everywhere, and most disappeared into the forest, including Cranston. We were safe from them, but there was the problem of the gushing wound on my neck. Wilson dragged me to the edge of the road and leaned me against the hillside. Luke joined us in a moment and looked me over.
“How do you feel?” he asked me.
I managed a grin. “Like a chew toy.”
He smiled and pecked a light kiss on my blood-covered cheek. “You will live to squeak again another day,” he told me.
I snorted and meant to reply about my rubbing off on him, but my eyes caught movement behind him. I glanced over his shoulder toward the front of the convoy. Flames shot up from most of the vehicles, and all were abandoned. Inside the flickering fire Lance stepped onto the running board of the front semi and pulled a bullet-riddled driver from the cab. He tossed the body onto the ground, climbed into the cab, and slammed the door shut. In a moment the engine roared to life, and Luke and Wilson turned at the noise. The handles on the rear doors were shot to hell and as he drove the semi forward the doors swung open. In the back were stacks of crates. My eyes widened. The only reason he would want that truck full of goods out of here would be because that was the load with the formulas.
Luke turned to Wilson. “Stay with her,” he ordered him.
Wilson could barely nod in reply before Luke took off on all fours for the truck. Luke didn’t reach the semi. Lance’s not-so-gentle pushing of the lead trucks caused one of the burning trucks at the front of the convoy to explode, and its shrapnel flew everywhere. That included backward into the engine of Lance’s semi. The front of the semi burst open and the force knocked friend and foe off their feet. The night was lit by the explosion. The trailer also erupted in flames and the chemicals in the back spilled over the remains of the cab, feeding the fire.