||Series Removed|| OTB

3 - Wild Enemy

3

I was reluctant at first, but Tomás eventually wore me down into giving him control of the steering wheel after we’d woken up from our rest.

Driving for miles down the single road that never seemed to bend, from the backseat I held on for dear life as the musician swerved left and right nonsensically, giving me a newfound respect for my own abysmal driving skills.

“Care- Hey, careful! Do you know how much trouble I went through to get this car?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, I’ll slow her down a little… jeez.” As he revved the engine once or twice just to piss me off, I pointed my throbbing headache over to the nervously-drumming Alisha.

She had been plotting out points on the road map laid out on the dashboard with a rare smile plastered over her face, it was a rather contagious sight to behold.

What we’d heard last night was very hard to dismiss as a coincidence… I tried to think rationally, but every fibre of my being wanted it to be true.

If Stacie had somehow gotten off of Alisha’s school bus, then there was still a chance for every one of those kids. Tracking down the other end of the CB radio wasn’t going to be an easy task, though.

We were too far away to transmit any kind of message, and even if something did get through, it seemed as though nobody was there to answer. Our only solution was to keep heading forwards, with the blind hope that we were entering a better broadcasting range.

On Alisha’s stitched-together map, according to the surrounding landmarks at least, we were somewhere on the Western side of Oklahoma. Much closer to the coast than I had anticipated, we were already past the halfway point.

“…Holy…!! Hang on guys, we’ve got company!!” We all practically hit the roof as Tomás slammed the brakes abruptly, spinning the car out noisily on the dusty trail. After nearly a full revolution, my eyes darted to him in disbelief.

“…Company?! And you stopped the fucking car?! Get us the hell out of here!” I hadn’t even seen what he was referring to yet, and I honestly didn’t want to. The only thing I cared about was getting out of there as fast as possible, before we could get caught up in another disaster like last night.

Glaring back at me as though the answer was obvious, the musician jerked his head to the road in front of us. “I can’t!! Just… take a look!”

When I saw the cause of our delay, the wave of dread threw me back to my time in Scotland. The days when I still felt attached to any kind of family, the exact moment on the Forth bridge when I realised how unlikely it was that any of us were going to survive for long.

“F-Fenrir…” I breathed, and Tomás exhaled with a hint of recognition. Glancing between the two of us, Alisha knew that from the creature’s appearance alone, it was better not to ask.

If it was just one, I would’ve suggested driving straight past. Two, maybe we could distract them or something.

Five of the towering werewolf-like Flesh monsters lay in the middle of the road, still sleeping off the early hours of the morning without a care in the world.

Their pasty naked bodies were positioned in such a way that driving around them on the bumpy off-road would undoubtedly awaken every single one of the beasts.

The worst part was that the roadblock had nothing to do with any assault on us by Telos; we were used to having the things dropped on us via Carriers, but these creatures in particular were unleashed potentially months ago. After all of this time, they had become accustomed to living in the wilderness… some kind of sick joke on nature’s part.