Whether I took the mayor up on his offer or not is nobody’s fucking business.

  The week passed, and once we were on the road again everyone was in good spirits. They ought to be, since most of them had spent the entire week getting laid.

  The routine of the caravan continued for another two weeks before the next disruption, which was the worst yet.

  A line of spike traps were strewn across the road. Fortunately we had an outrider, one of the guards on a motorbike, who spotted them before we fell into the trap. Unfortunately, that meant that someone was gunning for us.

  We got turned around and onto a detour that would bring us fifty miles out of our scheduled route. We broke the forty miles-per-hour speed limit as we tried to get the fuck away from whoever it was that had laid the traps. And we continued running through the night.

  We skipped our next stop as well, although we never announced it until we were onto the next stage of our journey.

  Unfortunately this also put us low on diesel. One of the trucks was a tanker, but it was only a quarter filled at this point in the journey. The adults were worried about fuel and trying to adjust our path so that we could still hit most of our stops without running out of it.

  I listened and kept my mouth shut, since nobody wanted to hear from me anyway. I was just along for the ride.

  Miguel did explain how to drive the truck as we went. Not that anybody would trust me behind the wheel, but we were spending a lot of time in the same cab and listening to everyone bitch on the CB only filled so much of it.

  It happened in the middle of the night. The first round of gunshots made me jerk awake in my sleeping bag. I scrambled out in my underwear and grabbed my gunbelt, looking around as everyone else did pretty much the same thing.

  Atop the trailers, our guards were flashing spotlights out in the distance and shooting at things I couldn’t see from inside the caravan. I looked down and realized that I had my Ruger in hand, not remembering when I’d drawn it.

  “What the fuck is happening?” I asked.

  “Gremlins,” someone shouted. “Eighty, maybe a hundred of them. We need to get the fuck out.”

  I cursed and scrambled to the blue truck I shared with Miguel, but a shadow leaped from on top of the cab onto me. I raised my Ruger and pulled the trigger without thinking, and then the weight was on me. I felt the hot blood of the gremlin squirting onto me as I wrestled with the dying monster.

  It was child sized, but almost as strong as me, and it’s short claws left scratches in my flesh as it fought to take me with it. I managed to pin it to the ground, and a moment later it bled out into the dirt.

  I reached for where the Ruger had fallen in the dirt nearby and put it to the monster’s head, pulling the trigger once to make certain.

  Twenty eight bullets left.

  “Hey, kid, you know how to drive, right?” someone asked, grabbing me by the shoulder and pulling me up.

  “What? Yeah, Miguell—“

  “Get in that one and get it on the road,” the driver told me.

  “What? I’m not a driver, I—“

  “We’ve got you covered. Move your scrawny ass or get left behind,” he said.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  I scrambled into the white truck to follow the instructions. There were guards on top shooting out into the distance, but nobody stopped me from hopping into the cab and starting the engine.

  I shifted it into gear and pulled out onto the road, the engine screaming as I fumbled the clutch. When I got it going, someone knocked on the passenger window. I looked over and one of the guards was hanging down upside. I lowered the window.

  “Who the fuck told you to go?” he asked.

  “I have no fucking idea but someone did,” I shouted back.

  “Yeah, well, I guess Reggie is dead so someone needs to drive his rig. Look kid, stay on the fucking road and keep it at twenty. Don’t worry about the others. They’ll catch up.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said, and I followed the directions, pulling out of the circle and onto the road. I drove at a steady twenty miles an hour as the guards up top shot occasionally.

  I was bait, I realized suddenly, as I looked into the rear view mirror and saw the swarm of gremlins chasing after us. The guards up top and I were bait to lead the gremlins away.

  About two hours later, the gremlins gave up, and we left them behind. Uncertain, I slowed down, and the same guy as before shouted at me to stop.

  He pulled me out of the cab and looked me over. I was dressed in my underwear, covered in scratches and blood. He nodded at me once. “Good job, kid. I’ll take over in the cab. Get in back and we’ll get those scratches cleaned up before they get infected.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, and someone lifted the gate on the back of the trailer. It was mostly empty, but one of the men pulled out a bottle of moonshine.

  I cursed as I realized that it wasn’t for drinking. They disinfected my wounds as best they could and gave me a shirt that didn’t fit while the driver took us to meet up with the rest of the caravan. I didn’t have any pants, but nobody said a word about it as we sat around the rest of the day.

  When we finally stopped, I was reunited with my gear and Miguel, who told me I’d done good.

  And that was it.

  Not that I was expecting a fucking medal or anything.

  #

  The moonshine disinfectant wasn’t enough, and three days later the fever hit. I don’t remember much of the two weeks that followed. They put me in back of one of the trucks and had someone caring for me just enough that I didn’t die.

  I wasn’t alone back there. The other casualties of the gremlin attack were suffering through the same. Three of the men had died before the shooting had started and another two after that. Eight of us were sick.

  The caravan was down to a skeletal crew, but we kept going until we reached one of our stops, where the locals cared for the sick and injured until we recovered.

  When I had recovered enough to walk around, Niel came to talk with me.

  “You did good during the attack,” he told me. “Kept your head about you, followed directions, and helped lead the main swarm away from the trucks.”

  “Yes sir,” I agreed.

  “How would you feel about driving one of the trucks for us when we get going again?” he asked.

  “I think I could manage, sir,” I said.

  “It’s not a permanent position, you understand. We’re short handed. We’ve got a round hole and you’re the square peg we’re pounding into it for now, until we get back to base and fill our team back up properly.”

  “Yes sir,” I agreed. Then I realized “I’m not going back to the bend on time, am I?”

  “No. We’ll be stopping there and you can say hello to your family, but we need you to come to Texas with us. We’ve already negotiated it with your grandfather.”

  “Yes sir. Alright then,” I said.

  “How many bullets you got left?”

  “Twenty-eight, sir.”

  “We’ll get you a box from the stores in Texas when we get back,” he promised. Then he left, and that was it.

  #