Sabotage el la Ciudad, parte 2

In our last episode of Freeway Warrior 3: The Omega Zone, we succeeded in our our guerilla strike against the bandit stronghold at Ciudad Juarez, destroying their heavy weapons shipment while the residents of El Paso escaped in the confusion.

We were pursued by several bikers for several miles, until we pulled off at a bridge to make our stand. Rather, the soldiers made a stand and I hid in a Dumpster. Either way, the bikers are dead and I don’t have bullet holes in me.

We get back on the road, but after an hour we’re stopped by another damned roadblock at Columbus. We have a choice to smash through the roadblock (highly dangerous) or to make a detour (longer, maybe missing our rendezvous). I remember the last few times we decided to drive through a roadblock, and I am not keen to repeat it.  Let’s go around.

The highway 9 bypass has only a few sentries, and we just hit the gas and plow through them. We make it as far as the town of Hachita before we notice that we’re losing gas quickly… because of bullet holes in the gas tank. Damn. I stay and help repair the gas tank, and the other guys find 2 gallons of gas, and we’re back on the road.

For a while. About 10 miles later, our ignition control module burns out.

I walk back to town with Marine Knott, where there were some spare parts. We find two biker-bandits nosing around, and they’ve found our tire tracks. Knott and I kill the two of them, but I get torn up badly. I spend my last 2 medkits to bring myself up to 14 health, but then I find out the good news: their loot includes lots of food and water and bullets, and new medkits. So that’s nice! I’m basically where I was before the fight, except restocked on food and water.

We decide to ride the bandits’ bikes back to where we left the car, turning a 3-hour walk into a 15-minute ride. It seemed like a great idea until the guys in the car mistake us for bandits, and open fire on us. I can’t say I really blame them, but here go my last medkits to recover from the injuries I sustained when they shot out my tire and put me into a ditch.

I nurse my wounds and focus on not holding a grudge, as we drive the 15 miles to the Interstate 10 junction and then turn west. We can see tracks left by a convoy in the last few hours, so that’s gotta be good news. A while later I see the familiar tire tracks of my roadster, which I left in Kate’s capable hands. So spirits are high… but fatigue is high also. They’re hours ahead of us, and we’ve been up for 24 hours, and we pull into an abandoned building in an abandoned town, and sleep.

We wake up to the sound of engines. Lots of them. No, the convoy didn’t come back looking for us – the bandit clan has caught up to us.

It’s starting off to be a bad morning.

To be continued…