An hour or so north of Bastille Point along the sun-baked road was a small town. Here July had traded the skins of two mutated foxes for a meal and a book to read. Silence permeated the streets now. Sand dunes swept over the roads and footpaths while buildings lay in blackened ruin surrounded by mounds of broken glass, and bullet casings littered the ground. July and Thomas drove through slowly, unable to pull their eyes away from the wreckage, unwilling to stop the car. There was no point in it anyway, either Raiders or Royalists plundered this place, which meant all the good supplies were already gone.
They continued up the main road and neither of them spoke a word. ‘Angie’ played over the car’s speakers and echoed through the entire ghostly town. They wondered if any of the locals survived, or whether they fled to some other settlement further north. Thomas swerved around a pile of bricks spilled from a half-collapsed building – some kind of town hall from the look of it. A busted sedan and a stripped bus blocked the road up ahead so Tom made a right.
July gasped at the sight before him; a large roundabout with a dead tree, from which hung a dozen shadows. Some burned, other butchered, their clothes torn to bloody rags, men and women strung up by the neck like some sick decoration. Dark circles appeared on each of them, blistered and rotting, on their breasts was a burn in the shape of a skull. July looked away.
Tom tried to focus on driving. “Mitch Buster’s symbol,” he said. “Raiders.” They left the town and didn’t look back, more eager than ever to make it home.
The next town was no more fortuitous than the last. The road sloped up to an overpass giving the travellers a perfect view of the devastation below, and the signs of Raiders were everywhere. Nature hadn’t reclaimed as much of this place as the last, and yet there was something off-putting about it, as if it were still smouldering. Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “We shouldn’t have come this way. I think it would have been safer to go around.”
A faint pillar of smoke trailed into the sky from behind a distant building. Tom’s visible anxiety put July on edge too. “No point turning back now.” He sat, scanning the streets below, with his elbow against the window and his hand on his cheek. A slim figure appeared, dressed head to toe in grey, pacing across the street. Biscuit barked and pressed his nose to the back window. July straightened up, quickly nudged Tom’s arm and pointed. “Look, it’s a woman.”
The car slid to a stop. Three men pursued the woman. They were dressed in hard leather and there was a silver glint in the hands of one of them. July stepped from the car and rushed to the edge of the overpass. The woman broke into a sprint. The three men soon did as well. July returned to the car.
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