Chapter 10

Chausiku

03-12-2021

6 hours after chapter 7

The sun had already risen. It still hung low above the horizon, and coloured the cloudy morning sky orange and pink. Chausiku sat slumped on the front chair. Her rifle rested against the dashboard. She rubbed her eyes as she looked into the world from behind the windshield. The raining had stopped. They went up and down a range of hills in the rough terrain. The car handled even the most slippery and dangerous dirt roads well.

'Ah, look who decided to wake up,' said Kaiyan, who still kept his eyes fixed on the road whilst talking.

'How long was I out?' asked Chausiku with a sleepy voice.

'Somewhat five or six hours, I think. You slept softly.'

They drove into a clearing. The treeline on either side of the road crawled back and took distance, leaving the road to cut through a marshy field. The car hit a rock under the mud and shook heavily.

'I don't have a desire to die yet!' shouted Krotan, who stood behind the gun.

'Did he ever get down from that thing?' whispered Chausiku.

Kaiyan scoffed. 'Of course not.' They both chuckled.

'Krotan, aren't your legs feeling a little tired?'

There was a moment of silence from the gun station. Chausiku threw a glance over her shoulder. There was a pair of legs between a sleepy Tryo, who rested his head on his arms, and a dreamy Rita, who stared out of the back of the car.

'Maybe a little,' sounded Krotan's voice under the rumble of the engine. He shouted, but his voice was carried away so much by the wind that it sounded faint.

They shifted around in the wide car and Chausiku carefully climbed from her seat to the back of the car, after which she had to reach out and grab her rifle from the dashboard. Tryo took Chausiku's place in the front of the vehicle, so that he could get some sleep. Krotan sat down opposite Rita to give his legs a rest, and Chausiku stood up into a blast of fresh air as she climbed the mounted gun.

The dirt road started to transform into a gravel one. Chausiku felt the rough shaking and scarily slipping of the car becoming less and less as the road had more grip and evenness. The tall jungle trees towered above the ground and formed an intimidating wall on either side of the road. It made Chausiku feel a little trapped.

The clearing lasted another 20 minutes of driving, before the treelines started to close in on the road again. Chausiku felt the intimidation of the tall trees even more now. The quality of the road did not reduce, however. Chausiku's legs started to feel a little tired. Krotan had lasted 6 hours, and she had just been on the gun for shorter than 30 minutes. What joy he must have felt, to be distracted from the aches of standing. Then again, she had just been woken up from her sleep.

She decided to ask how long it was until the estimated arrival time. She got down and sat on her knees, also resting her upper legs a little in the process.

'Hey uh, Kaiyan, where are we actually going?'

'The Baranu Ruins. No-one knows about it as far as we are aware.'

Kaiyan kept his focus on the road. A driver had to remain focused and calm when driving on roads such as these, where any mistake could turn out to be fatal.

'How long is the drive from this position?' asked Chausiku.

'Maybe another hour,' replied Kaiyan.

Chausiku stood up and held the gun again. Another hour. When the road became even narrower, Kaiyan reduced speed and switched gear. Maybe longer than an hour. The thick branches above them hung over the road. The thick vines which covered them had grown to hang down so far that Chausiku sometimes had to watch her head or risk getting a nasty strike across the face.

'Sorry for the trouble!' shouted Kaiyan from his seat.

After another 30 minutes, as they were enclosing the site of ruins with a greater speed again than before, Krotan asked to switch with Chausiku. He had eagerly awaited their arrival for six hours, so Chausiku granted him the joy. She kneeled down and let Krotan get up onto his feet. She sat down in his spot. She took the rifle which she had laid down on the floor. Rita looked at her.

'Had a good sleep?' asked Rita.

'Yeah, I slept well, thanks,' answered Chausiku. They sat in silence for the next few minutes and both glanced outside, at the passing trees. Chausiku caught herself stroking the cold steel of her rifle, as if it were some kind of pet. She stopped and gripped the handle tightly, looking up back at Rita. Rita looked back at her.

'Nervous?' asked Rita, not even in a taunting way.

'A little. Just nervous to see how we're going to do this. We have to move an entire tribe over this road, if these ruins are safe.'

'Yeah. IF these ruins are safe. For all we know, it could be swarming with-'

Kaiyan's loud voice broke the conversation. 'OH FUCK!'

Something banged hard against Chausiku's side of the car. She was thrown against Krotan's legs. Her rifle slid across the steel floor and against Rita's feet.

Chausiku scrambled onto her feet and dropped back into her seat. She was about to ask what was going on, when a truck came into her vision behind the car. Rita pushed the rifle back towards Chausiku with her feet, who picked it up and flicked off the safety. The pair of legs between Rita and Chausiku stepped around as Krotan went to face the back. His shrill and manic cry sounded a second before a heavy blast of gunfire. The gun was so powerful that Chausiku felt the clear vibrations in her feet. She looked at the truck. The front of the vehicle was being utterly destroyed by Krotan. Large gaping holes in the windshield appeared, and sparks of friction between bullet and plating flickered across the entire front.

A man in a grey and thickly armoured uniform leaned with his upper body down the side of the truck. Someone was holding his legs inside the truck, or else he would have already fallen by now. He held a rifle with two hands and aimed towards the inside of the car, where Rita and Chausiku were seated. They had no cover; no probability of survival if he were to open fire. Krotan's bullets tore through the metal and shredded the truck so badly that at one point, the front bumper started to come loose. When the heavy bar of steel broke off, it anchored itself hard into the ground. The other side of the bumper immediately broke off as well, but a sudden shock rippled into the truck. It was enough for the man to lose his balance completely and, beyond saviour by the other soldier inside, fall backwards. He landed painfully on the back of his neck and rolled wildly out of sight behind the truck. Chausiku tried to ignore the fact that she saw almost every single limb hang loosely whilst he was rolling and probably had broken his entire body. However, for some reason she could not lose the image in her head about the man lying on the side of this road, in pure agony, not able to move a thing, lying there to die, completely abandoned.

Krotan finally managed to strike the driver of the truck. It did not matter much though, because the large vehicle was already having trouble keeping up with the car. It just so happened to be in a turn, and the truck crashed head-on into the treeline. Rita looked at Chausiku.

Kaiyan shouted; 'Everyone alright!?' Confirmary yeses sounded in the car. Poor Tryo had not gotten much sleep. They were less than five minutes away from the ruins.

'Do you think they have a base in the ruins? Where did that truck even come from?' asked Rita.

'That truck came from the only goddamn intersection that this road has. They must have a tracer on this car. Whether they know about the ruins, I can't say for sure,' replied Kaiyan.

'The ruins aren't visible from the air. How would the Confederation know about their location, or even their existence?' said Tryo.

The car fell back to silence. All there was was Krotan's feet shuffeling sometimes. It was a silence, not out of tiredness, or relief. It wasn't out of awkwardness or comfort. It was a silence of anticipation. A tense silence, under the fierce rumbling of the engine. The road ended, and the ride got wilder. This was the part why the ruins weren't easy to find for those who didn't know where they were. There was not even a trail or a path which led to them.

The silence was broken by Rita's sudden scream, as a flash of blood flew over behind the car. Chausiku gasped and turned her head towards the pair of legs in front of her, as she realised what the only place was where the blood could have possible come from. Krotan's legs collapsed. His body crashed loudly onto the steel. His head had been struck by a large bullet. The entire piece from above his left eye to his left ear had been torn apart. Blood gushed out in massive amounts and spread across the floor. Bits and pieces of skull and brain were flushed out with it. Rita shrieked and Chausiku felt extremely nauseous at the sight of Krotan's severed head.

Chausiku turned her head to Kaiyan. As she did so, a split-second later, a small hole was punctured into the windshield with a loud crack, and Kaiyan's head kicked back silently into his headrest. Blood splattered into Chausiku's face. She shrieked as she felt a chunky and slimy piece of Kaiyan's head trickle across her lips. Her best friend's brains had splattered across her face. She thought about her mother, who had warned him to take care of her. Instead, she had failed to take car of him. The car steered out of control. Kaiyan's dead body rested its foot on the gas pedal.

Going at full speed and steering wildly, the vehicle hit a rock which rested in the ground, with its front right tire. Chausiku felt gravity disappearing from her limbs, she was blinded by light as she was launched out of the back of the car. She crashed into the ground and felt her left collar bone crack painfully. Her right leg spun under her body and was crushed as she landed on it. She threw her right wrist to the ground to try and come to a halt, which only ended in even more pain as it folded under the force of her fall. She came to a halt, lying on her back. Everything hurt intensely; it felt as if every nerve in her body was held between a tong and squeezed to agony. She coughed dryly and felt her ribs move unnaturally beneath her skin.

She heard footsteps approaching her and becoming increasingly loud, but she saw no-one as she tilted her head ever so slightly upwards. She couldn't force it much further, because it felt like she'd decapitate herself. She saw the smoke of the car wreck, and heard the groans of Rita and even Tryo. She heard a faint, electric-like ringing noise. In front of her, at her feet, a shape of sparks appeared. A distorted human shape came into vision, as if it appeared out of thin air. It was an actual person. He held a large, powerful looking sniper rifle, with all kinds of high-tech looking features. Two other persons appeared as well. All three of them had black suits over their entire body. Their faces were also covered. It was some sort of chameleon suit. However, Chausiku could no longer think about things like that. In fact, things like that didn't even bother her anymore. She felt the life leave her body.

She heard Tryo shout inaudible curses, and a gunshot sounded. One of the three soldiers staggered backwards. He had been hit, but there was no blood. It was as if nothing had happened. The man held his gun with one hand and took a handgun from his belt. He walked out of Chausiku's vision, towards Tryo's voice. The second person turned and walked away, disappearing into thin air as the suit was switched on again. The soldier who had appeared first, also rested his gun in one hand. He grabbed his handgun from his belt. Chausiku knew what awaited her. Who were these faceless and speechless assassins? Were they sent by the Confederation?

Tryo's shouting continued until another gunshot cracked through the air and stopped it abruptly. The soldier in front of Chausiku tilted his head slightly, as if to give her a pitiful look, and raised his gun towards her head. She looked straight into the barrel of the weapon; into her own death. The flash from the barrel marked the end of her, as the bullet erupted from the weapon and penetrated her skull.