Chapter 7 Highway robbery is so old fashion

John and Luna drove down the highway, going east towards the truck stop that Oliver had pointed out as the possible location where the robbers resided. After a few hours, with some stops to siphon what was left of gasoline in deserted cars, they saw the signs for the truck stop. John figured they would have someone on look out for potential targets as well as aggressors. So, he elected to stop a mile away and park the car. John needed an elevated position to be able to get clean shots on the robbers, luckily there was overpass a couple hundred yards away from the truck stop. With a vantage point figured out, they just needed to find the scout, and kill him without the others finding out. John imagined the scout would be close enough to the stop, so that he could use cheap radios without interference. As they were slowly walking towards the overpass, John spotted something on the other side of the highway, in the forest, a hundred yards ahead. It was a man in a shabby hunting tower, smoking a cigarette looking at the horizon.

John quickly hid behind a car, the sight of the scout made him quite happy, because it meant that the robbers were in fact here. “Luna, are you able to get over there and kill him silently?” John asked telepathically. Luna glared at him as to say of course I can, before running of towards the forest on the other side of the road. The man either didn’t care about the oversized wolf running across the highway, or didn’t notice it at all. Luna entered the forest directly opposite from where John is standing, and started running towards the tower, staying at the edge of the forest while doing so. Eventually Luna arrived at the tower, the tower was only 10 or so feet high, making it very easy for her, with her new strength, to simply leap up there, and so she did. The scout hadn’t noticed anything at this point, however suddenly he heard a *thump* behind him, and turned around to see a massive jaw right in front of him. Luna directly bit through his throat ruining any chance of him screaming. The Scout produced some gurgling sounds before the massive blood loss killed him.

Once John saw the scout disappear from the tower, he knew that Luna had done here job perfectly. He quickly rushed up to the overpass. “Luna, you go a head to the stop and stay hidden, and take care of any stranglers, keep one of them alive” John told Luna telepathically which worked even at very long distances, although how long distance, John didn’t know. That was something he would have to test out at some point. John laid down on the ground with his rifle underneath the guard rail and started scouting out the truck stop. This truck stop had rows of semis, trucks and trailers all lined up. To the right of the trucks was a rain roof, covering most of the store and pumps underneath it. The first robbers he saw was three of them sitting around a thrash fire, presumably talking. Seeing that two of them sat opposite to each other, with both of them perfectly aliened for a double shot, John saw an opportunity. However, he couldn’t be to hasty, he wanted to know the full scope of the situation. Looking around further he saw one man tinkering with a truck engine a few yards away from the others. Those were the only ones he could see around here.

John could tell through their connection where Luna was, and at this point was just waiting for her to get into a good position. “Luna, I want you to take out the one by the trucks, when you hear my gunshot” John told her. “Understood” She responded back, with that response John confirmed that they could communicate over longer distances without problem. John lined up the two targets hoping his rifle could kill both in one shot. *Boom* the bullet went flying through the air, looking to be dead on. The bullet came flying, and hit the first robber, in the back, destroying his lunge and going through him like butter, the still had lots of energy left and tumbled through the air, keyholing right through the second robber, managing to shear a main artery.

 The first one to get hit simply slumped over as the massive amount of kinetic energy sent him straight into shock. The second one was not so lucky, he fell back wards, wheezing for air, while large amounts of blood started filling up his abdomen and also escaping through the keyhole in his stomach. John started working the bolt action just as the third robber realized what happened, and screamed “SNIPER” while looking at the open store door. Just as he was about to duck for cover, *boom* John got off another shot which hit him square in the upper arm, going straight through his heart. While all this was happening, Luna had already gotten into a good position. Just as the fourth robber turned around to look at his friends when he heard the shoot, Luna jumped out and bit him in the side of his neck, taking with her most of it. Needless to say, he fell dead on the spot.

John cycled another round in the rifle, getting ready incase there were more robbers, and judging by the third one’s behavior, there definitely was. While looking through the scope, John spotted a man looking through the glass wall of the store, making sure to only show the top part of his head. However, John’s rifle does not care about a glass wall and the thin wood stand that held magazines. John fired a round aiming where he assumed the man’s body was. The loud sound of the shot followed by the shattering of glass, boomed out as the man in the store keeled over. A few feet away from him stood the leader of this ragtag bunch of misfits hiding behind a refrigerator. He looked at his dyeing friend, who was gurgling blood out of his mouth. Needless to say, he was scared shitless. He didn’t even dare to look outside to see where the shoots came from.

He looked across too the other side, at the new guy they had taken in just a few weeks ago. Although he was weak, and had very scheming feel to him, he was still useful since he knew the layout of the closest town. However, he was extremely useless right now, he had dropped his gun, pissed himself and was weeping in the corner behind the ice cream fridge. Now it was just the two of them left. The leader felt fear and hopelessness at this situation, he didn’t know what to do.

Suddenly he heard snarling behind him, he turned around, only to lay eyes upon a gigantic ferocious beast. almost 5 feet tall standing on all four. He stepped out from behind the refrigerator standing in the open and pointed his gun at the wolf. However, just as he did, he realized his error as he looked to his right, where he saw a few hundred yards away the glinting of John’s sniper scope. He knew that if he did nothing he would be dead in a second, so he directly dropped his gun and yelled “I YIELD” and closed his eyes waiting for the shot. However after a second or two nothing happened, he opened his eyes and saw the wolf now was carrying his weapon in its mouth and he hadn’t heard any shots. He felt relief, the sniper must have seen him drop his gun.

Luna directly threw away his gun, back into the storage room that she just came from. She snarled more at the leader, making him walk backwards towards the other one that sat in the corner. The leader walked backwards scared out of him mind from this wolf that seemed to have human intelligence and sat down next to the other man. After a few minutes John showed up with his rifle in tow. He looked at the two pitiful men, who had just lost most of their friends. “w-who are you?” the leader asked, with fear clearly in his voice. “Oh I’m just a good-natured Samaritan, helping the good people” John answered with a smirk. “W-what do you want?” he continued to ask, hoping to find a loophole to save his life. “I want to know why you are robbing trucks and raiding towns, as well as where you are taking these supplies” John.

 “W-we stole it, to trade for food, water and bullets. We brought the supplies to bullet town and traded them there” he stuttered back. “Bullet town, what’s that?” John asked, genuinely curious, he hadn’t head about anything like that before. “It’s the town right over, its ruled by some guy called Warlord Kyle. It used to be called something else but nobody cares about that name anymore” the leader continued. “Hmm, where is bullet town?” John asked.” Y-you just follow the highway, east for about 2 hours and there is a sign by the road, hard to miss” The leader responded, clearly with some more spirit in his voice, as he though he might survive this encounter. “Thanks for the information, it was very helpful. Oh and who is newest recruit in this band of misfits?” John quizzed him further. The leader clearly looked a bit insulted by that name, however John didn’t care at all. “him” the leader said as he pointed at the man next to him.

“excellent” John said as he lifted his rifle and shot the leader point blank in the chest, who looked at John with a faced filled with mix emotions. Before he died with a heart filled with anger. John though of the phrase “to be merciful to your enemy, is to be ruthless to your friends”, even though he could have left the man alive, he feared they were going to wreck more havoc on his little hometown.

 The man next to him jumped in fright. However, just as he wanted to run away Luna bit his arm and slammed the man down into the floor with her overbearing muscles. “Make him suffer for what he did to Martha” John said clearly and loudly as he left, to further push the man into complete despair. John went over to the three dead men by the bonfire and picked up one of their cigarette packs. He hadn’t smoked since the military, however he felt this was the perfect time for a smoke.

After a while Luna came out with from the store, around her mouth and places on her pelt were painted with blood. “Well that was easy, I don’t understand how the sheriff couldn’t deal with this gang of idiots” John lamented. However, what John didn’t know was that this bunch of robbers, were quite ruthless when they were the ones in control of the situation. Shooting them from a far with a high caliber rifle however, was a very good way to not only kill a lot of them easily, but also frighten them to their very core.

John, with Luna in tow headed back towards his hometown before they were going to bullet town, he wanted to tell his uncle that the job was done. As well as return the rifle.