Dragging feet between the two separate parts of the vehicle, the zombies finally finished tearing each other apart for the poor poultry... and they were now looking in their direction.
A few grunts were heard, as they began to walk toward them, clapping.
"Come on," Johnny shouted to his friend as they were finishing moving the old man. Once they had entered inside, he added, sliding the door close to him, "I believe that the digestion of the lions is over, and they need to go hunting again!"
As they stretched Hiroto out on the same bunk seat on which he had been before, they heard scratches on the closed door, and a few roars.
"Homecoming, now!" Harry exclaimed, and then he put his foot to the floor.
The truck jumped forward, mowing down the creatures trying to get in its way.
***
Choices
Harry seldom regretted being so big.
But this day was one of those times ...
The truck's steering wheel was like a toy in his massive hands, hard to hold.
Although he had made the driver's seat move backward as far as possible, he had to drive in a gathered position, legs bent, an uncomfortable position.
Not only that, but his big shoes – made, fortunately, by one of the last craftsman shoemakers still existing in the world – his shoes sometimes overflowed the brake pedal or accelerator, depending on which one he used, causing either swerving, or sudden braking.
"Be careful!" his son yelled once more, who was sitting at his side in the passenger seat.
They almost shaved again a large oak, while the rear tires of the vehicle slipped once more into muddy puddles, on a steeper curve than the others.
"It's OK, things are going well!" cried his father, clenching his teeth, obviously irritated.
"We almost slammed against that tree," Johnny told him. That's when Red arrived at their level, seeking, as much as possible, to hold on to the seats, and so avoiding to fall.
"Hey, what's happening? Bo and I, we were at one moment so much hustled, that we thought we were going to be knocked out!"
"Sorry, Red, but we don't want to lose a second, I want to catch up with that corrupt sonofabitch! I may not be able to catch them by foot again, but I'll have them by rolling!"
"Hey!" Bo shouted behind them, joining Red, who was also fighting to steady herself. "Red and me, we'll never be able to heal Hiroto, when we’re being shaken like that!"
"I have to catch up with Adams and Vlad, and it was too late from the start for me to leave the driver's seat to someone else. Every second lost gives them an extra chance to warn their accomplices, and to shoot us down!"
The big black guy was really pissed off, and no one dared to contradict him, but his zigzags between the trees were becoming more and more dangerous, more and more disturbing. He wrinkled his eyebrows and whispered, "I'll catch those sons of..."
That's when he closed his eyes and his head collapsed on the steering wheel, resulting in a loud horn sound, making his son jump. Stressed, but he tried to intervene.
He grabbed the steering wheel made heavy by his father's big head on it, steering the wheel as firmly as he could. He saw that they already close-shaved a tree, but he was quickly reassured, because the vehicle was slowing down. Fortunately, the big foot of his father had released the gas pedal, and the van was almost immobilized, now. Meanwhile, Red and Bo were trying to pull Harry out of the driver's seat, so that the young black could replace him at the wheel.
Their efforts were in vain; the big black man's enormous mass seemed literally screwed to the seat.
The slowdown of the van was not enough when a new tree appeared in their field of vision, a tree that Johnny couldn't avoid, despite him aggressively turning the wheel.
They struck the hard surface, and the three youngsters were shaken by the shock. Red and Bo fell onto the floor behind the front seats, as Johnny was thrown against the windshield.
The engine stopped and they all fainted in the truck. The vehicle's dashboard switched off and they were suddenly plunged into darkness.
***
"Red!"
The girl opened her eyes, but everything was dark and blurry.
She closed her eyes again, glad to let herself drift into unconsciousness, once more. Everything was neither hot nor cold, everything just seemed perfect...
"Red, wake up!" She barely recognized Bo's voice, which was very insistent.
She was given a slap and this gave her a reflex gesture, giving him a violent kick. It caught the tall blond guy in the stomach, and sent him against one of the metallic walls.
"Ouch!" exclaimed the young man, holding his stomach while correcting his balance near the wall.
The red-haired girl began to emerge from her limbo. The back of her skull, her spine, her buttocks hurt. As her eyes began to focus again, she saw the angry, aching face of her friend who was staring at her, above her.
Above her?
She then understood why she felt pain; she was lying on the floor on her back behind the two front seats. Red understood that she suffered because of a bad fall. But luckily, she didn't actually feel wounded.
She then stood up slowly, painfully, and seeming sorry while looking at Bo, and mumbled, "Excuse me..."
That's when, getting herself higher, one hand resting on the back of the passenger seat, she saw that Johnny was no longer seated there. Standing up more and stretching her head, she saw that he was behind the other seat, lying on the metal floor.
Harry was slumped on the steering wheel, his head no longer resting on the horn. We're lucky, she said to herself, I don't want him to attract all the zombies around!
"Bo, help me lift Johnny!" cried Red while scrambling over the passenger seat, joined by Bo, who helped her to lift the young black man from the floor, and they made him sit on the passenger's seat. He had some blood at one of his temples, making his two friends feel anxious, who looked at each other with worried eyes.
Suddenly Johnny opened his eyes, making Bo and Red smile, this time.
The young black asked, "What... What happened?"
"Your father almost killed all of us by making the van kiss a tree!" Bo exclaimed angrily.
"Technically," Red said, casting a reproachful look toward the blond young man, continuing, "it's more complicated than that, but it's pretty close to what happened."
"First of all, why did someone let him drive, after everything he went through?" Bo cried, anger in his voice.
"He won the wheel," Red retorted, casting a bad look at him. "And I don't dare argue with him, as you can guess!"
The young man bit his lip and replied by glancing at her. But because of the intensity with which the girl looked him straight in the eyes, he gave up, and eventually looked down. Their black friend looked severely at Bo, too.
All of a sudden Harry muttered something inaudible, capturing the attention of the others, lessening the tension.
He half-opened his eyes and, lifting his head painfully, asked, "What ... what happened?"
"We had a minor accident," Johnny said softly, lifting one of his father's heavy arms and putting it around his own shoulders.
"Come, Dad, get up, please. It's better for you to lie." His father stood up painfully, and allowed his son to carry him backwards, apparently groggy. Johnny shook his head toward the driver's seat and then at Bo.
The muscular young blond, immediately understanding, dropped into the seat.
"We're screwed," said Boris, now alone while watching the dark dashboard in front of him.
He struck his fist on it to see if it was reacting.
Nothing…
He then turned the key and, to his great comfort, the dashboard switched on and the engine restarted.
As he slowly reversed the vehicle, and after that, made it move forward.
While driving through the wood now, Bo shouted, hoping to be heard behind him, "Adams will arrive before us in the neighborhood of the Community, and will warn his henchmen. They'
ll get rid of us, as soon as they see us appear over the horizon!"
Later, after many hours, Johnny had taken over the driving, and they were rolling as fast as possible between the trees.
As he accelerated, Red, sitting near him, had suddenly a concentrated attitude, seeming to listen to something. Intrigued by her demeanor, her black friend asked her, "What's up?"
"You don't hear it?" the red-haired girl asked, looking almost annoyed. "It's like... stop and turn off the engine, please!"
"What..." Johnny shouted, casting at her a bad look between two glances on the wrong road.
"I said stop everything, Johnny!" cried his friend.
Grimacing, the young man braked and stopped short, turning off the engine.
Everything had fallen into silence again. It was just interrupted by a few last tremors of the suspension of the old vehicle, which was obviously in poor condition.
"Listen..." murmured the girl, looking at the road ahead. With a disillusioned, mocking air, her friend remained motionless in his seat, his hands resting on the steering wheel.
Then he heard...
A motorcycle noise was heard and they saw a flash of light passing through the dark forest before disappearing, just in time for them to recognize the silhouettes of Adams and his crony, perched on the bike.
"We finally caught them up!" Johnny shouted, restarting the engine and accelerating very quickly, taking a sharp turn to follow them.
The turn made them leave the horizontal position and they were jostled on the left. Red sat with difficulty on her seat, not having worn her seatbelt.
"Damn, the right wheels are lifted, we're balancing on the two left ones," Johnny exclaimed with panic.
"Shit!" Red cried as she tried to cling to her seat, the stress perceptible in her voice.
"Quiet," Johnny retorted, irritated as he violently turned the wheel, "I'll straighten the van... ah!"
He had shouted because he was surprised by the reaction of the vehicle, which was re-passing from the skewed position to the horizontal position, while he and his passenger felt themselves falling, feeling themselves in weightlessness for a split second, that seemed long for them.
"Hang on!" Johnny cried, but Red had hardly the time to follow his advice.
The vehicle struck the ground.
They were both jostled and heard a scream behind them, while the truck began rolling on the wrong road between the trees, which he barely avoided. As he was driving at full speed in the woods, the young black man shouted happily, "We'll catch those two motherfuckers!"
"Hey, what's going on?"
Bo was the one who had yelled, a hand on the side of his head, while arriving with difficulty at their level. He hung as best as he could with his other hand to the back of a seat, trying to avoid falling.
Glancing at him, Red noticed that blood flowed from a wound at his forehead. He had probably fallen hard on the floor, behind them, while he was busy caring for the two wounded persons they were transporting.
"Sorry," Johnny said, as he focused his attention on the red rear light of the bike, in front of them, further away in the darkness of the wood. "I think my father's behavior definitely got me nervous!"
"The bottom line now is that we catch up with them before they get to the Community," the red-haired girl said, and her two friends nodded, focusing on what was happening in front of them.
Meter by meter, to their surprise, they were catching up the motorcycle. It was rolling ever more slowly, and even, after a moment, began to zigzag.
"Faster!" Adams shouted, as his arms crossed around Vlad's athletic abdominals, he could see the van's lights flashing behind them.
Once again, to his astonishment, the henchman had begun to zigzag, and even, at times, to slow down sharply.
The Administrator then shouted to him, "What's happening to you, Vlad, you want them to catch up with us? Several times, you made mistakes as to which direction we should go! Now, they're approaching us dangerously, stupid!"
"OK, OK," the henchman replied, a trace of nervousness in his voice, before continuing, "Sorry, but I'm suffering very much! All because of what those fucking zombies infected me with. It's distracting me... I don't know how long I'll be able to drive the motorcycle."
He stopped, and swallowing his saliva, he resumed, "Could you take the handlebars?"
"You ask me to… Ride the motorcycle?" the old man asked, surprise in his voice. He continued, angrily, "I don't have the license to drive it, I never needed a license, because I always had someone to help me, to drive where I wanted!"
The old man stopped talking, red with anger now, whilst he clung as best as he could to the henchman. The latter merely mumbled something sarcastic, then he focused again on the worn pathway.
At some point the bike leaned dangerously to the side, and the henchman reacted almost too late to avoid them falling. If Vlad hadn't put his black boot on the dusty ground, they would probably have both fallen, since the short legs of the old Administrator wouldn't have helped. The boot lifted a great cloud of brown dust and finally they almost stopped.
The gunman throttled back fully, pain visible on his face, and they began to go in circles around his boot, which was still on the ground. Adams opened his eyes wide as he and his "chauffeur" were caught in a sort of infernal merry-go-round, raising even more dust. They received the dust in their faces and, quickly, found themselves in a kind of beige fog.
The dust made the old man cough strongly.
Then the motorcycle leapt out of the cloud of dust, and rolled up a small neighboring hill.
"What made you turn in circles like that, Vlad?" Adams cried. It made him cough loudly again, as if he was going to vomit up his lungs.
"You haven't understood or guessed why I did that," the henchman exclaimed, irritated while he drove the motorcycle toward the top of the hill. "I created this cloud to try to slow our pursuers. You know the octopus that throws ink around it when it's going to be caught by a predator?"
"Ah... Uh... I think..." said the old man in white, who was interrupted in his sentence when the motorcycle arrived at the top of a grassy hump and then fell abruptly.
They were shaken so violently by the impact that Adams nearly let go of his embrace around Vlad's abdominal.
The shock was a tough blow on his testicles. He suspected that the man who was riding the bike had done it on purpose. But he resumed and, looking at the cloud behind them, as they were now rolling over a more flat area of land, he continued: "Oh, you're going to lose them in that cloud of dust! Excuse me, I didn't understand... You're awesome!"
"That's why you hired me to ease your little tricks, right?" said the henchman, a mocking tone in his voice. In fact, he had been astonished, because the Administrator had always been sparing with his congratulations.
"Hmmm... Yeah..." mumbled the old director, who never wanted to admit the level of unpunished illegality to which he had devoted all these years.
"Where are they?" Johnny shouted, making their van stop abruptly in the cloud of dust, having been on the verge of bumping into a nearby bunch of trees in a grove.
Now he couldn't see anything on the left or the right, the dust clearing very slowly.
Red, near him, twisted her neck to look at both sides, but she couldn't see anything better than him in the beige 'fog'.
"I only see one solution so that we have a chance to catch up," she said, rummaging through one of her pockets.
"Yes?" Johnny asked, his face lightening with a smile as he saw the red-haired girl get out of her pocket... a coin.
The young man's smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
"Heads or tails?" Red asked, looking sly, adding, "Tell yourself that as far as we know, we still have a fifty percent chance of finding them, depending on where we are going." The young black man made a grimace, and then nervously pointed a finger to the feminine visage on the visible face of the coin.
"Wrong turn again, Vlad!" exclaimed the Administrator
, more than ever clinging to the motorcycle. "Are you sure you know where you're going, idiot?" he asked in a stern tone.
"I thought, boss… I thought," replied the henchman, his voice plaintive, "If you knew how uncomfortable I feel... It's a pain, and it invades my whole body. It disconcerts me, at times! "
"Don't worry," said Adams, his voice full of warmth, in an almost paternal, unusual tone, "as soon as we arrive at the Community, the good doctor will treat you, and all these pains will, soon, be nothing more than a bad memory. "
"I wish it well," said the biker, his voice loud with sorrow, before becoming silent again and focusing on the dirt track. An umpteenth pothole followed by a natural speed bump, which he took once again harshly, shook the two men seated on the machine.
The old man looked at the naked back of the henchman and said cynically within himself, If he can cure you...
The hum of an engine got his attention and, looking behind them, he saw the van of their pursuers arriving, jostling the bushes and zigzagging between the trees.
"Vlad, they're coming, try to lose them!" cried Adams.
"Impossible, the wood closes in farther away," roared the henchman, who throttled back fully.
The bike made a lurch under the acceleration, its front wheel losing contact with the road. The two-wheel-drive vehicle continued to roll on the rear wheel and the old man shouted, eyes bulging with fear.
"We'll get them!" Johnny shouted happily, as they saw the distance between them and the motorcycle becoming shorter. He grinned, showing a carnivorous smile worthy of his father's, and said, "I'll hit them so hard that they'll have to stop, you're gonna see!"
Having said this he put his foot to the floor, making the engine of the old vehicle roar like a raging beast. They arrived at the level of the old Administrator's back, while the motorcycle...
... disappeared on the right side!
Johnny stepped on the brake pedal and the truck was about to stop, when they heard gunshots.
BESIEGED (HUNGRY Series Book 2) Page 14
