Sabotage el la Ciudad, parte 3

We continue our playthrough of Freeway Warrior 3: The Omega Zone. Yesterday we joined the convoy’s intended route, and found signs that they got here and kept moving as planned. That’s good news all around. Still, they’re several hours ahead of us and we’ve been running on adrenaline for 24 hours now, and we stop to sleep. We’re awoken in the pre-dawn morning by the sound of a large bandit clan convoy pulling into town. Mad Dog Michigan screams some orders, and bandits with flashlights and guns fan out in every direction, looking for us.

They’ve already found our car, so they know we’re here. We make our way to the roof, and jump from rooftop to rooftop like an exciting action movie sequence. Bullets fly, people yell “move move move!”, and we’re out of sight and down to street level… but we are hardly safe. Making our way through the alleys, we find our way out of here: live-action Grand Theft Auto role-playing.

Fortunately, a childhood full of violent video games left scars deeper and more permanent than radioactive craters, and with a *SHLICK* and *UGHURGLEGUGRGLE* we have ourselves a jeep.

The jeep is the bandits’ own, and it’s still dark, so we make it nearly to the highway before he alarm goes out. A truck comes after us, but Haskell blows it away with the jeep’s mounted machine gun. There’s no further pursuit, though,which is weird; every other scene with a daring escape has us survive a few pursuing bikers. Eventually, we just quietly stop to refuel from the jerry can.

Then the ninja biker scouts show up. Holy heck, it’s ninja biker scouts. They’re dressed all in black, wearing infrared goggles, with their headlights off in the dark. That’s so flippin’ cool! They turn on their lights at the last second, to disorient us, and they open fire with a barrage of bullets. A bullet catches one of the soldiers, and in his throes he pulls my arm and causes the car to turn onto a freeway exit. We don’t crash… but now we’re headed the wrong way!

Then I have a brilliant idea: fake our own deaths. We get far enough ahead of the scouts that we rig up the car with a burning rag, lay out a blood-stained jacket, and push it off a cliff at a turn. Then we hide and watch as the hilarity ensues. It seems to work: they radio back the news, have a party and high fives all around, and head back north. … Leaving us stranded on foot, headed the wrong direction from our rendezvous, as the sun continues to rise. In a day or two, we may not be faking our own death anymore!

But as seems to always be the case in the Freeway Warrior books, we come to an abandoned town and find a truck and some gasoline which are somehow still usable after 8 years of sitting in the desert sun. In no time at all, we have a ride out of town…

…and suddenly Haskell is dead! I don’t even hear the gunshot until after it’s happened. A sniper? We G.T.F.O. but I’m so shocked that I lose 2 endurance. We drive for some time, until we think we’re safe, then stop to bury Haskell and have a brief funeral. But the solemn moment is interrupted by more sniper fire. Shit, they have a vehicle too, and they’re hunting us!

Another of the soldiers is killed, leaving only Marine Knott and myself alive. We make it away from the highway and into the forest, just trying to get under some cover and escape. A few hours later, we haven’t heard any sign of pursuit but I did run afoul of a recently-set snare trap (ouch), meaning that someone lives up here. .. And hey, there he is! Hello, over there!

He takes off running.

I don’t blame him. It’s not safe to trust people these days, and being a hermit in the mountains means they weren’t big on trust and friendliness to begin with. Still, Knott and I want to find out what he’s up to, maybe get some help, so we give chase…

To be continued…