REEVES SPED AHEAD, True Bob kept up by riding neck to neck.

He knew Reeves was quite upset with his mother, for giving away their precious commodity — their limited fuel to get to the border — when they had only covered less than half the distance of their journey so far.

While Joe was helping to fill the strangers’ SUV with gas, a moment ago — Kim Slater claimed seeing an abandoned eighteen-wheeler oil delivery truck in the nearby ghost town — the same vicinity where they claimed to be attacked, by a group of crazies in that town.

The four Intersexuals and Laura — were headed towards that new direction, to check it out...

The bikers stopped to stare in vacillation, at a rusted signboard that de-toured them to a side road...

The board was whitewashed, expunging the town’s name. It now read — 'Gasoline available'— in badly hand-painted words with a crooked arrow drawn pointing to a side road. The Mustang caught up, and all the three vehicles — took the road to follow the arrow sign.

They arrived minutes later into a present-day ruin of a once small town — abandoned after the Medusa Virus outbreak. The single road ran in between the small rows of decaying establishments, which were all rundown.

The deserted buildings of the ghost small town that might once have a population of about less than a thousand, stood ahead — with some vandalized and with rusting cars abandoned on the roadsides. Some were overturned, similarly to those on the Exodus Trail highways.

It was not a welcoming sight for the bikers when they rode through.

Reeves looked warily around but could not find a living soul at sight...

‘Fuck! We’ve been made...’

A crappy feeling built in his guts that the butch Kim had fleeced their limited fuel supply with a tall tale about crazies that attacked them. Her bitch-wife’s sob, crocodile teared story about her abandoned kids in the desert road had also softened Mimi’s heart, to comply to help...

His internal suppressed indignation subsided when True Bob pointed ahead at — a new black Firebird that was not rusted like the rest of the vehicles — it bore an Idaho license plate, but the tires were slashed...

‘Where are the crazies then?’ he thought, while still half-convinced. On the right of the main road, there was a short road that led to a dead end. It had some rudimentary business offices.

It was there was where Reeves caught the sight of the eighteen-wheeler oil truck — tilting on its side at the far end of the road — some of its tires were either flat or have gone missing...

Reeves signalled the Mustang to stop.

As a safety routine, the group leader rode ahead alone towards the truck with a pistol in hand. He studied a Ford Taurus police blacktop-cruiser along the way, with a smashed up windshield. Its peeled paint was oxidized over time, by the harsh desert elements.

Nearby to it was an overturned army desert dune buggy — some fighting might have happened here a long time back...

‘Who survived? Where is everyone?’

Laura looked out, and she remembered her small town Wellsville — where she cycled to go to school with her friends from their farms while growing up out in Utah. Joe wondered out aloud saying, after seeing the oil truck...

“Do you think there is gasoline in there?”

Troy now looked worried as their intel-guy — who had strategized their entire ride up to Canada since leaving the lake.

“I hope so man — or else, we will be stranded on the highway by tomorrow.” Joe then spotted Reeves ahead, waving to them. Joe gave back a slight toot on his horn as an acknowledgement — and followed behind True Bob's bike.

***

It had been almost two wasted hours — since they bumped into those stranded strangers on the road, Reeves was keeping watch of the fleeing time since they arrived, and also at the purlieus for inhabiting, in the nameless ghost town.

True Bob and Troy managed to open the rusted hatch on top of the wheeled tanker with makeshift-tools lying around. Troy tied a handkerchief to mask himself from fumes — and he looked into the dark void of the hatch. He then called down to Joe, "Throw me a flashlight! I can't see shit in here!"

A moment later, Troy shone the light beam at the base of the tanker belly. He looked over at Reeves. "Yeah dude, there is very little in the base. I need a bucket with a rope to scoop it." He then stood up and instructed those below.

"Joe, I am gonna dip it out — and you filter the sediments out, and fill it up in the plastic tanks."

Reeves was glad that there was some fuel now. The process would take another couple of hours before they could get out from there. But he still had this bugging and jumpy feeling about desolated places, which reminded him of the abandoned wing at Wesleyan.

It had now been forty minutes since the rest of them observed Troy alone on top of the truck, labouring and hauling up less than a few inches of the content, in the bucket with each effort. It was soiled with brown sediments of sand and muddy grunge. Joe carefully dripped it in a cloth layered below the funnel, separating the oil from the impurities — while Troy laboured on scooping with a second bucket.

True Bob looked around bored and stepped up to Reeves. “We are running short of food supplies — let me go window shopping around, and salvage anything possible." Laura overheard him from the backseat of the car, "Truman, I am coming with you.”

Laura turned to Reeves for his approval. True Bob shook his head to Reeves so that he wanted to go in alone...

"No, Mimi, you stay here!" Reeves spoke out firmly.

He had been cold to her since their encounter with the Idaho strangers some hours ago — where she had disdained his direct orders. Laura had felt it too, and she had remained in the car since they arrived. She now needed to pee and found an excuse to follow Bob...

They both noticed True Bob walking away. “Let me be helpful, Reeves. We both can cover the place faster — and boy, I need to go to the bathroom ." Laura requested.

After a second of vacillating thought, Reeves placed his pistol in her hand and admonished...

"Here take this, and stay close to Bob."

He had a change of mind, now that they had found some fuel to continue the journey — and all they had lost so far were a few hours of time. Laura grinned back like a thirteen-year-old girl on a road trip. She kissed Reeves in the cheek, before running after True Bob.

Reeves stepped out, passing by the cursing Joe, working the filtering of the impurities. He informed Joe that he would perch on the rooftop of a building, for a bird's eye view of the surrounding...

He only felt at ease if he knew Laura and Bob’s whereabouts from a vantage point.

The bugging feeling was still in his guts that some authorities might ambush them, after seeing their wrecked patrol vehicles earlier...

‘But who were the cops fighting?

‘What about the recent abandoned Idaho-plated Firebird — where did that butch’s what-ever-her-name-was’ sister had gone to?’

***

Laura walked beside True Bob. They were heading to a store mart ahead. Eyes of hiding unkempt children, watched the two strangers wandering in their sleepy small town. Their stealth scrawny limbs slink along the hidden side of the buildings. The veneer of those youngsters seemed if those who had not taken a bath in their entire lives. True Bob and Laura had stepped into the door that worked a bell — the kids peeking into the side windows of the store, observing the strangers inside...

Reeves was now at the rooftop of a three-storied Insurance agency building, looking down at Troy and Joe with their tasks. He was drowning back into his petty thoughts that the butch Kim had conned them of their fuel...

He thought about the possibility — that the strangers from Idaho were travelling in two cars — the Firebird and the Audi SUV. Maybe there was no such sister and friend who was abducted, and it was the scammer Kim herself — who was driving the brand new Firebird.

When they ran out of gas and were too lazy of a hassle to scoop it from the oil truck — so, Kim decided to drive the wife’s SUV to conserve gas, and abandoned the Firebird behind — she might have even slashed the tires so that no one would drive her fancy new car away even if anyone had the spare fuel...

They then had made up the bizarre story about a group of crazies attacking them.

‘What a bitch!’

He detached the rifle's telescopic scope and he scanned the encompassing of the entire town’s perimeter. No movements — not a living soul below nor a bird in sight in the sky. He looked behind him and was amazed — when he saw about more than a hundred cars abandoned in the desert. It was not a metal scape-yard, but numerous cars were junked away — cast out from sight in that nameless town.

He scoped, and then studied the rusting license plates — and they were of different neighbouring states...

‘Whose cars are those? Why are they there? Where is everybody?’

***

Laura foraged through the bare commissary racks and shelves — and she crossed the aisles of the dilapidated mercantile establishment. It reeked, littered with damp garbage and broken glass bottle bits on the floor. True Bob walked to the bare shelved of the fresh food section before he came to the fungal walled meat section — and he smelled fresh blood, and buzzing flies behind a counter...

He backed away cautiously seeing parts of the carrion — he was removing the safety of his .22 — and his eyes searched for Laura, who was not behind him...

Laura was standing behind the last checkout cash register counter, looking at the empty till drawers and at the display counters with sun-bleached discount signs, peeling off the wall. She was about to discreetly undo her jeans to urinate — but she kicked on something small on the floor, it rolled in front of her...

It was something familiar that immersed her attention and made her pick it up. It was a rusty key chain, aged over the years with a colourless rubber toy — that was once a bright yellow Sponged Bob figurine. It reminded of her deceased twin brothers, Johnny and Jimmy who loved that cartoon show...

A movement in her blind spot snapped her back from her thoughts of Utah.

Laura gaped at a woman rushing at her with a blunt rusty kitchen knife. She looked bestial in tattered defiled clothes, made a throaty growl, baring a mouthful of brownish-orange stained rotting incisors. Laura instinctively ran a few paces towards an aisle. She lunged to dive away from the woman's fast swinging arm — the knife slashing the space behind her...

True Bob's gun rang, and it splattered the woman's head...

Laura finally shrieked, to find the body with a half blown-away skull of that woman slumping hard beside her, spilling out a lump of the cerebrum. Laura’s screeching got even higher when she saw more women wielding sharp metals and weapons rushing, from both ends of the aisles. True Bob's hollering voice echoed along, with his blasting gunshots...

“Laura, shoot them!" But Laura peed in her jeans instead...

***

"You see anything?" Joe yelled from below while Reeves peered into the scope, with rapid gasps of terror. He was focusing on the food store façade’s roof as it was blocked by another taller store, in front — more shots and shrills were heard. His heart thumped hard, hearing Joe annoyingly crying out again...

"Reeves, are they not out of the store?"

***

True Bob’s back turned — as he dropped the third woman, with another shot.

Laura was lying on her back frozen with her chokes from crying. She saw a shrilling woman coming at her with a red fireman's axe raised up. Laura upstretched her shoulders off the floor, to hold up her gun steady with both hands. She pulled the trigger in-between her arched knees. The axe-woman took it on the chest, and she dropped backwards. Laura’s hands shook very badly, she dropped the gun down...

Laura sat up against a rack, her trembling palms and her fingers that were literally drumming on her own head. She sensed another movement on the opposite top rack. A pint-sized, naked Chinese woman was crawling on top — clenched with a cleaver in hand, ready to lunge forward at her, contorted on the floor. Laura shut her eyes and blanked her mind...

True Bob shot the diving cleaver armed Asian-woman in midair — and the dead woman fell at Laura's feet. Laura was still in shock — opened her eyes and was in the verge of passing out, from the red blood that had disgorged all over her own face. Bob came over, smacked her grimy cheeks, yelling out...

“Don’t pass out, Laura — Come on, let’s get out of here!”

He grabbed her up on her wobbly feet and dragged the disarray Laura along to the next aisle. True Bob observed some developments out the façade, of the front store’s tall windows — they both ducked away after noticing more crazies running into the street...

***

Reeves witnessed them coming out of the vacant buildings. He clipped the scope back to his sniper rifle, seeing a score of women with sharp weapons rushing towards them, sprinting for an attack. Joe tossed Troy's Rutger over to him. Troy remained in his position on-top of the eighteen-wheeler for vantage.

Reeve’s hand was steady from the earlier jitters, he started to fire rapidly — and his piecemealed shots dropped the women with headshots — targeting from the furthest, like his bullseye practice...

Joe was in spasmodic panic-mode, heaved the two large red containers of the fuel back in a hurry into the trunk of the Mustang — he then pulled out a 12 gauge shotgun and a half box of Foster shells. He had great respect for shotguns — after seeing ‘Uncle Jensen’ blasting the Jamaicans away in LA...

More women were appearing fast from the alleys ahead, their numbers doubled to fifty — their war cries were at the peak of their lungs. Troy too yelled out. "One bullet..." and Joe responded back, “for one bitch!"

They fired at will to the chant they all used to egg-on, while they were briefly target-training in the Mojave Desert with the rest of the God’s Army...

The three Intersexuals stood their ground and they fired ahead at the swarming enemy. Their guns transfixed to anything that moved forward. Their trigger-fingers were consistent — even though sometimes they both had to hit the same target twice due to lack of coordination — and also, the number of misses from their panic state, and lack of target-hitting accuracy.

But they did not feel human at that moment. They had to be insensate to the killing, of the charging armed women — for the sake of their own group to stay alive.

***

True Bob and Laura hid behind a shelf-rack, while he reloaded both their pistols.

He reminded her that they could not use the front door — he told Laura to keep a lookout for anyone, entering through the storefront. Laura looked over at a subtle movement, at one of the five killed corpses in the next aisle. The legs of one of the bodies were slowly dragged, on the floor...

"Truman, someone is already here,” her overwrought voice shook...

Bob looked back to where her pointing finger was directed...

He saw the moving, dragged feet that left a short trail of blood. True Bob and Laura guardedly crept up, between the racks to the approach to the other side. They both discovered a small, half-naked group of scrawny female children cutting up a dead woman, with small Swiss-knives.

They were devouring a handful of chunks of blood dripping, warm flesh.

Laura threw up beside. The hostile little, grimy naked-girls stared back in threat. They began to bare their teeth like wild beasts — and growled, to scare the strangers away from the kill. True Bob comprehended, whispered in low swallowing words...

"Oh my shit, this is a cannibal town…"

It explained the blood at the meat section earlier. It could have been the dead sister and friend of Kim Slater butchered. It also explained the slashed tires of the Firebird that he saw earlier outside. The adult crazies fed on those who came to town, searching for fuel...

The progenies that Bob was facing now, were the children of the victims — that came and never left that town — the young hungry scavengers were in the lower rung in the food chain — the monkey-see-monkey-do faction...

They foraged around in pacts for paltry victuals, for their own survival in that nameless town.

Sometimes they too were hunted as food — by the dominant adult females, who set out traps to snare for young meat...

***

Outside in the streets, Reeves reloaded his rifle on the roof, before he fired again — but more women kept appearing from the many derelict buildings, some awaken from their slumber. He heard Joe calling from below. “Reeves, there are too many of them!”

“Hold your position, and keep shooting!”

Troy next exclaimed, “I am running out of ammo, what do I do!!?”

Reeves knew that they were doomed to failure because he too had limited bullet supplies — and he could not snipe them all. They were also trapped with nowhere to run — as the purlieu was bottlenecked in the dead-end of the road...

Reeves figured out that this was how the women had faux pas the cops and army — and anyone, who set foot into their town. They had used the oil truck as their bait to lure them into the dead-end — before they ambushed and scupper. The victims’ vehicles were then discarded, in the forsaken wasteland behind the town.

A brilliant strategy for them — and now Reeves had ensnared his team in the middle of it, by deciding into coming here.

He gazed up ahead from the rooftop — riveted by the sight of two cars racing up, from the end of the road. Some of the dishevelled women were equally enthralled by the new development, as they stopped to see the approaching vehicles from their rear. Next, came two Army buggies pursuing at both the battered cars.

Half of the regressive women now charged to attack the four looming vehicles.

The Army opened fire with their high-calibrated machine guns mounted, on the buggy’s rear. Gomez and Santiago Isidro were mystified by the breed of feral women running towards their Dodge, most were half-naked.

The last time Gomez had seen this many bipeds of nudes on the streets was during the parade in New Orleans a month ago — on the night, the One God’s Army attacked Cory’s fundraiser. He heard Isidro exclaiming aback...

“Who the fuck are they!!?”

Gomez was equally lost, “No idea Santi, do they also celebrate Mardi Gras in Nevada?”

The two Chicanos’ fast cars burrowed, into the onrushing women. They were thrown over like bowling pins when their bodies slammed onto the vehicles’ metal hoods and roofs. The windscreen shattered, but Isidro was not slowing down, with the army buggies firing their machine guns from behind. The other pimped car, the low-rider Impala was hit at the fuel tank section and it exploded. The impact killed some of the savage women, who were clinging on the vehicle.

Reeves spotted the nub moment of Laura and True Bob coming out of the store, in the middle of the chaos. He now saw a fortuitous window of opportunity to escape away, from the escalating madness. He grabbed the handful of his bullets from the bulwark, pocketed it before he descended fast down the building, hollering to the rest...

"Let’s go, Troy!" Reeves needed Troy to ride True Bob’s chopper, while they made their getaway.

True Bob came out into the open streets, shooting at some swarming women, with the two guns in his hands. Laura was clinging fearfully onto his jacket from behind.

***

Santiago Isidro lost visibility, by the spider-web cracks on the Dodge’s smashed-up windshield. He crashed head-on into the stationary dilapidated police blacktop. The woman who was lying on the windshield was not dead yet — she punched through the glass and grabbed Isidro’s greasy hair. Cursing ‘puta’ in Spanish, Isidro pumped a few bullets, into her face at point-blank...

The logy Gomez staggered out from the opened side-door, his arm held out, firing his Uzi at close range. Another woman with an axe rushed from his blind spot and dismembered his arm that held the Uzi. Gomez hollered in agony and dropped on his knees, beside his wriggling severed arm. He could hear Isidro screaming out his name for help from inside the car. Two oily, naked Black women stood on the Dodge’s hood — impaling him with spears, stabbing his friend through the broken windshield.

Reeves and Troy rode the bikes and the Mustang with Joe following close by.

A woman with garden sears stabbed next the genuflecting Gomez in his back. He was waning, looking up at the oncoming bikes, seeking to be rescued even at his dying moment...

Gomez finally recognized the one named Reeves Jensen, from the other side of the fence in Tombscradle — he had seen him while picking up the stray soccer ball at the edge of the fence — where the austere loner who usually sat at the far end of the bleaches — and had very few friends inside the empty walls.

He was also the one named Jensen that Li Chi despised — and had sent him over to kill — while he had the motif to lucre from the situation, by claiming Roberta Jensen’s ransom instead.

Reeves’s anonymity face was the last visual depictions in his mind, when another one of the vicious women severed Gomez’s head with a machete, with a single clean hew. She held up the decapitated head high by the hair, screaming victoriously. Reeves rode pass her and shot her dead with his pistol.

The open-top desert patrolling Army buggy was jumped by several women. They dragged the driver and gunner to the tarmac before hacking them both to death. The second buggy came over to aid by opening fire — with the army gunner pounding out lead at the attacking females. Some women jumped down from the top floor of a building into the buggy — and they took out all of the fighting soldiers.

Joe filched the lead, by overtaking the bikes, and he was bumping down the fierce women in front.

A woman bit on to a blade, she ran and jumped off the single-storied building roof, before landing inside the convertible Mustang’s backseat. She then grabbed Joe by the hair — while he held her hand, with the cutthroat blade that was inches from slitting his throat...

The Mustang lurched out of control — and the fender scraped the sides of stationary, abandoned vehicles. Reeves rode beside the zigzagging car — and he fired, killing the attacker instantaneously.

“Get in, Laura!”

True Bob and Laura ran beside and dove, into the backseat of the slowing Mustang with the, slumped dead body inside. Joe then floored the gas pedal, turned the wheel, streaking into the main road — to avoid more advancing brutal women...

The two bikes followed the Mustang rear, shooting at will, at the women chasing on foot — and at others who were barricading their exit out...

True Bob rolled the bleeding corpse from the back, on to the car’s trunk top. It sounded like a smashed watermelon, thudding hard onto the concrete tarmac and rolled off. The entire backseat’s pale leather cover of the Mustang was stained with flowing fresh blood.

They accelerated and left the bloody nameless cannibal town in a hustle.

A sense of gladness and relief at once sank deep into everyone that they had all escaped — with no fatal casualties in the group. They sped away, and never to turn back to even glance again behind to that road of atrocity,

The instinctive Reeves who once again, leading them away from danger.