Hate's Convoy
An Act of High-Octane Revenge...
Like a bolt from the black it came shrieking into view. 10 wheels, freed of the other eight, painted a deep blue, and roaring towards the raider camp at a hundred miles an hour.
The raiders were strange beasts. Hounds who went the one step beyond all scavengers. A step into madness, into pillaging, into gleeful abandon of any notions of decency. Now all was coming home to roost as the awesome machine hurtled towards the camp, the black tinted windows of the Peterbilt as alien as anything they’d ever seen on their piratic forages.
“Get everyone outta here Ian!” roared Kirk Morrow, the pack leader. He was a gray clad in black leather, and drove the hottest machine of the bunch, a red Ford Falcon straight out of ‘73. She was a rare beast from across the Pacific, and he would have to put her to the floor to distract this leviathan.
Kirk figured it was just another volley from a fellow clan, a massive one too. “Alright, let’s find a halfway decent cliff to kick you offa.” He swung his harness boot down and bolted for the truck. The muscle car swerved ahead of it to bait the driver, and sure enough, the Peterbilt came screaming for him. He knew of a canyon ridge close by, and made tracks for it. His motor screamed as desert dust swirled into the graying sky.
The canyon was coming up through the dead bushes. When the car got a few feet from the cliff, he slammed the brakes, cut the wheel and swung the Falcon’s rear away from the edge. To his shock, the truck made the exact same move with ease. “Agile little bitch,” he growled.
He tried the trick again and again, but found in his new-found foe a nimbleness and speed he hadn’t seen in other big rigs. At least none that he and his crew had hijacked. His needle was living at 120, and he figured so was the truck’s.
“Drop me some oil drums and a firestarter Ian.” Kirk barked over the radio. “This guy ain’t going down easy.” The skies grew darker as the pickup truck careened from out of the desert dust. She swung its bed out and a small figure kicked over three oil drums, dropping a highway flare to get the fire started. It was enough to blow any ride away if they hit them hard.
The crimson Falcon made tracks for the barrels as the pickup hurried away to join the rest of the clan. The Peterbilt was steadfast in its pursuit. Just in the nick of time, the Falcon cut a hard right turn. The big-rig couldn’t stop in time and blew through the drums, the highway flare sending the fuel igniting in all directions out from under the rig. Surely, Kirk thought, this was the bastard’s end. They’d rubbed out all sorts in their time, and there wasn’t anyone you couldn’t fix when you needed to. Or needed their shit.
Out from the burning hot baptism it rode, the sea-blue truck scorched black, but unwavering. Kirk cursed and bellowed, “Alright you sonofabitch! Let’s get right on you then.” He swung his mighty Falcon around and charged on the Peterbilt. Under the ever-darkening sky, thunder rolling and lightning whipping in the distance, the gray wolf pulled his rod close to the truck. He was going to hop on and take the driver on man-to-man. He was going to beat the devil out of that motherfucker if it was the last goddamn thing he did.
Just when the Falcon was good and snug alongside, the Peterbilt cut a hard left, and took the blood-red car under it. Brakes ground, metal screamed, and before he knew it, Kirk was staring down a two-foot wide tire, his legs crushed by the impact. He seethed and growled, but it was all just hot air leaving him.
As the rains fell, a mist dressing the arid battlefield, out she stepped from the towering truck. She was a black wolf. Tall, near-Amazonian, wrapped in a man’s clothes. Wrapped in clothes like his.
She walked to him in silence, and stared. Just a good, long, lingering gaze through the shotgun-side door. No emotion, no excitement, no pleasure.
Nothing.
“You’re cute, stranger.” he seethed, “I don’t know ya, but you’re cute.”
She held up a photo, pulled from the pocket of her leather jacket. Everything clicked for Kirk Morrow the second he saw the face of the black wolven couple. He could see the woman stood before him, and a black hound beside her, dressed as she is now.
“Well then,” he sighed. “I take it you want the scrap back.”
She didn’t shake her head; her baleful glower was enough of a rejection. “Took you long enough,” he cackled, the rain seeping in through the cracked windshield “All this, just for me?”
“Por él.” were her only words for him.
She pocketed the photograph, walked back up to the truck, shoved the clutch down, gripped the lever tight, ripped her titan in gear, and rammed the throttle down with all her might. And as the 12-ton machine screamed with all the rage of her driver, there was only one thought left in the raider’s mind as the rig bared down on him and his crumpled prized possession.
Fair trade.