Chapter 3: Vehicular Supremacy

Shane was right. The truck was armored and did not belong, out of place and begging to get jacked. Zamson came upon the lone big-rig truck, and just as they figured before, the big-rig matched the strength of an ironclad knight with a seemingly thick shield. Its enormous size powered down the highway with no outside protection coasting along its seemingly one-track course. Zamson expected an escort of vehicles. There were none.

The lack of protection in that regard didn't sit right.

"Thoughts?" Logan asked.

"Only one." Zamson switched the shifters. Pandemona zoomed in for the clutch. The truck operator soon faced their soon-to-be hijackers. The heavily armed driver himself glanced upon Pandemona's fiery advance; it was his last.

Logan launched out of the passenger window in a burst of moondust, becoming the crimson werewolf that all of humanity accepted and feared. The truck passenger, another armed human, hurried to cock his pistol. Logan's monstrous red claws latched onto the driver's side, crushing steel as he yanked the door from its frame. He reached for the driver, who replied with a shotgun to Logan's face.

Logan slung himself against the side of the truck, one claw hanging onto the destroyed door frame as a silver burst of shotgun missed its mark. And it wasn't any ordinary silver, either. It was mythril—a common bane amongst those who called to the moon. A ticket to death, so Zamson had no choice but to hit the brake and hang back.

Logan could handle two men.

Then the freight's top hatch opened. Two more men climbed out. The first of the emerging guards fired off two shots. Logan snarled from the searing pain that took his shoulder. The red berserker bounced off of the cabin, drawing the two guards to fire overhead.

Streaks of silver reached into the night, failing to clip the airborne wolfman who slammed into the freight's roof near the hatch. The guards kept firing. Logan hurled into them. His ripped muscles like the making of a brute. Dark claws slashing in barbaric acts to dismember, the raged werewolf sent them sailing off the big rig. In pieces. Tossed aside like shredded ragdolls cast into the black oblivion.

More guards emerged from the hatch.

Shane warned them of difficulty. Expected and embraced. Zamson cursed as he pursued the transportation. The carriage's size was big enough to hold more than just a vault, after all. "I'm going!" Zamson said aloud. He quickly flashed a glare at one of the keepers before positioning Pandemona behind the freight's back-end. "Don't f*ck up my leather seats!"

One of the keepers shockingly understood. For the second Zamson climbed out of the window, the silent vampyrial took over the driver's seat. Perched at Pandemona's hood, Zamson launched from his car and—in a mid-burst of moondust—became the wulvyn of black. He landed behind the new men advancing Logan, who managed to face Zamson as soon as he crashed upon the transportation's roof. Zamson had to hurry.

Speed was a factor of life and death, with the account of them having precise aiming. Each pull of the trigger scored them a gash of fur and flesh, but not a single vital point in Zamson was pierced, only pain, annoyance, and their screams.

Going low, Zamson clutched a mortal leg and slung the shrieking guard into his partner. The two hit the road in a tumbling mass of bone-cracking death along the highway. The sheer brutality peeled Logan's teeth back into a carnivorous grin, earning Zamson the right to snort.

He turned to strip the hatch open. Zamson dropped in to meet a well-lit hull, the most fascinating vault he ever laid feral eyes on, and four more guards firing off at him. Bobbing and weaving, he wrestled one of the guards until they became his meat shield. Then, rushing forth, he slammed his man shield into the second guard. Agony ripped at his back; the mythril sting was real.

Zamson eluded the two shooters, the magnificent vault his cover. Then, without much regard for the vault's purpose and elegant shape, the black werewolf slammed his whole weight into the vault. The guards didn't see this one coming, thrown off their mark as the vault smashed against them. A terrible choir of sickly cracks and horrific screams filled the hull.

Screams loud enough to drown Zamson's wulvyn ears, throwing off from the oncoming dagger searing into his arm's tight flesh.

The mythril dagger lodged there, Zamson met the surviving guard, who'd wish that he took the cowards path and fled the vault's hull. Zamson was no stranger to mercy. Not that mercy was given.

The pain was his driving force, he swung his fist outward, catching the crack of man skull that crackled off behind the backward thrash of his fist. His last foe hit the steel wall like a pathetic sack of meat.

Avoiding the loss of his head, though, Logan decided a different approach. A quick one at that. By climbing the truck's cabin, he pounded his burly wulvyn fists into the cabin's armor top until a relentless pummel of rage-induced craters busted the roof open.

The truck driver tossed his partner the shotgun.

Another silvery boom forced Logan to lean back with such speed that he eyed the fragments of silver shooting into the sky like shimmering stars of death. Logan waited, then pounded some more. Holes after holes followed by shotgun explosions.

Indeed, the truck was a bulletproof challenge, packed a more potent punch than Zamson's Pandemona, but not as prepared for the terrible claws of a berserker riding its top. If only Logan could pluck out the annoyance packing a shotgun.

Annoyed to no foreseeable end, the blood-red wulvyn snarled an adrenaline-fused war cry to the night. Logan vaulted over the cabin, throwing himself into the windshield. The riders cursed in shock, shattering all hope of survival as glass shards, red fur, and burly muscle crashed into them.

The struggle for vehicular supremacy lasted for a few mutilating moments. Shots were fired. Human parts flung from the truck's driver side. The big rig swerved uncontrollably, charging off the road until smashing into jagged earth with Logan ejected through the smashed windshield.