I sat in of a battered van, my few belongings being thrown around in the back. My best friend Classic Maverick was driving the van in a similar way to the driver of a getaway car, swerving in and out of oncoming traffic. By oncoming traffic I basically mean the Draculoids attempting to stop us. What is a Draculoid I hear you ask? A Drac is a human that has volunteered itself to be transformed into a vampire-like creation to work for their leader. No one is quite sure who their leader is, except for those that had seen him and survived to tell the story. One thing we were sure about though was that with each Killjoy kidnapped by them, the Drac force grew by one person; it seemed that Better Living Industries for (BL/ind for short) were becoming increasingly desperate for "recruits" these days.
We suddenly swerved violently to one side, as we shot off the edge of the road. I swore I could hear my stuff smashing against the side of the van.
"Woah! Maverick! Both hands on the wheel!" I screamed, but as usual Maverick paid no attention to my protests.
"Calm down Sunshine! It'll be fiiiiiiiiiiine!" She yelled, saying the last word in a southern accent. Yep my name is Sunshine, short for Screaming Sunshine; apparently it represents my crazy personality. However I wasn't too crazy about Maverick's driving at this particular moment in time. On the verge of being ill sounded more appropriate as to how I was feeling then.
We eventually disappeared from the Dracs' view, narrowly avoiding a cactus as we drove across the desert. I knew what she was looking for, the elusive Getaway Mile - also known as Route Guano. It used to be so easy to find, but since the recent sandstorms - which we were convinced were started by BL/ind in an attempt to cut the Killjoys from Doctor D, but more on him later - it was nearly impossible to find.
We were trying to find Doctor Death Defying, the host of the pirate radio of the zones. He gave us regular updates on the whereabouts of other Killjoys, and any potential run ins with Dracs, or the 'mysterious' changes of weather that regularly occurred in the zones. We all called him Doctor D for short, and for the Killjoys he was an almost fatherly figure - keeping us from harm, and telling us how best to survive and defend ourselves.
He even cared about us, Maverick and I. We'd encountered some hatred from the other Killjoys for being British - it wasn't exactly hard to tell from our voices - and he simply told us to stay strong and keep running. We had later heard a very stern radio update telling the Killjoys to accept any other Killjoy unless they seemed to be members of BL/ind, and that accents weren't enough to tell a BL/ind worker.
Maverick braked abruptly behind a pile of boulders and gave me a quick nod, telling me to get out the van for some reason. I pulled my bandana over my dried lips and put my sunglasses over my eyes. We'd just received an update on the weather and apparently another sandstorm was moving towards our area of the zone we were in. Maverick motioned towards the license plates and passed me a screwdriver - well, threw a screwdriver at my head before running to the back license plate wielding a hammer and chisel.
I rolled my eyes and began detaching the plate from the front of the car. Sudden loud chipping noises from the back of the van made me wince; let's just say that Maverick had her own way of doing things. The front plate fell with a light thud to the dusty ground, meanwhile the chipping noises from the back of the van were interrupted every now and again with shouts of "A-ha!" and "Gotcha!" and "Take that!". That back bumper would never be the same again.
I chose to sit in the van, and ignore the sound of attempted destruction from Maverick by turning the radio up. I listened to some new song called Bulletproof Heart or something like that before the lack of sound behind me told me that Maverick was done.
Soon we were moving again, and I noticed something on the horizon. Something which unmistakably was:
"Sandstorm!" Maverick and I yelled, while attempting to make the windows go all the way up. I ran out of the van and checked all the back doors were properly locked before running back into the van and clipping my seatbelt in. Naturally Maverick was patient and started to drive before I'd even had a chance to shut the door once I'd gotten in.
We drove head on into the storm and put all we had into going through it. We weren't worried about gas; we had three more cans of it in the back. Eventually we got out of the other end of it, without much damage apart from a scratched mirror on my side.
The sky started to darken, and we listened to Doctor D's final weather report for the day. The night wasn't really suitable weather for sleeping under the stars, so after rolling out our sleeping bags and hunting for a tin of beans for dinner, we were asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
