Aftermath

Chapter Two: Licking Wounds

Konrad inhaled sharply as clean water soaked into his shoulder wound. The group doctor noted that the bullet had punched straight through his shoulder. He was lucky for that, it would've been a difficult surgery if it had gotten caught inside his body. Made especially so after the raid on the caravan. They had lost a good bit of their supplies in the destruction and chaos. The good portion that was left was being transferred into functioning vehicles for the trip.
Lucky my ass, he couldn't help but think, rolling his shoulder softly once his bandage was secured, wincing at the sharp sting he felt.
"Could you make this any more painful, Dick?" Konrad said, sucking air between teeth bared from the stinging pain.
"Yes," Dick, the group's only member with actual medical experience, began flatly, "but, I suddenly get the feeling that you don't actually want to experience more displeasure. Now, sit still!"

Xavias stood down a ways from the two, brow furrowed in deep thought, a hand rubbing gently at a stubble lined jaw. He prodded a dead man with his foot, flipping him over so that he was face up.
The man had an ugly face, made even more grotesque by the grasp of death. Blood smeared his neck, bubbling from a gaping stab wound. It pooled around his head, making a sticky wet mess of his hair. A large tattoo ran up his arm, a winding snake that coiled upwards until it was lost under thick, crimson blood.
Not that any of that mattered though. The dead were dead, nothing more, nothing less. Usually.
Xavias sighed, kicking the body over the ridge of the highway. It tumbled and flipped down the incline, limbs jerked in ways that they probably shouldn't have. Xavias watched with a twisted kind of amusement. He nodded, as though the violation of this particular corpse gave him a grim kind of satisfaction.

"The hell Xavias? Aren't you supposed to be watching out for any Nukeheads? The sun loving kind?" Carver calls out from the other side of the road.
Xavias grunted in response, eyes still fixated on the broken body. "Would hear them coming before we saw them."
Xavias wasn't the de-facto leader of the little faction-on-wheels, but he was a well respected and influential member. One of the original five founders, if Konrad remembered correctly.
He found it in his best interest not to get on his bad side.
Carver huffed in annoyance, "God, Xavias! Thought you had a brain rolling around in there!" Carver tapped the side of his noggin for emphasis. "Aren't you forgetting what comes after a fight like this?"
Carver wasn't talking about vultures.
Xavias nodded, seemingly unfazed by the bald man's badgering. He started to formulate a response, the words dying in his throat as something stirred from within the shadows of the ridge. A form suddenly darted out, skittering over to the broken body and dragging it away, back into the shadows.
Xavias watched the beast, shaking his head and making a little tsk tsk noise with his mouth.
Predictable.
Xavias turned back to Carver, still shaking his head. "Zargos are here."
Carver grinned, leaning over the ridge himself in excited anticipation. "I stand corrected. There is a brain rattling around in there, then."

Konrad heard the call to arms go up and felt a wave of relief wash over him. He was ready to do anything to get away from the doc at this point, and the guys had given him an opening.
"Ohdarnlooksliketheyneedmeelsewhereseeyoulater!" Konrad said, ripping away from Dick and tearing down the road. Dick was right on tail, profanities streaming out of his mouth with the intent of chasing down Konrad.
Konrad's arm was still a little sore, and more than a little painful if he put too much strain on it, but trouble had come a-knocking. It was his natural politeness and good manners that encouraged him to answer the door.
Xavias waved Konrad over as he jogged into view, the remaining dozen or so survivors from the earlier caravan attack already bunched up in a tight kill circle.
Konrad gave Xavias an apologetic glance. When that didn't seem to be enough, he sighed and elaborated. "Go easy on me, Xavias, Dick was patching up my arm." With comically coincidental timing, Dick trotted into view, the slightly out of shape man panting from the strain of keeping up with Konrad. As Dick shouldered past the man who was giving him his best shit eating grin, he scoffed and softly dubbed him an asshole.
"Quit pissing around. The Zargos are about already." Xavias muttered, with an edge of aggravation to his voice.
Konrad assimilated himself into the kill circle at Xavias' words, drawing his trusty cougher once again. He heard it now, a distant clicking noise and the scraping hiss of Zargo feet upon the pavement.
Then suddenly, a hulking form crested the ridge, a thin appendage flexing as the Zargo pulled itself onto the roadway a few dozen feet away from the kill circle.