From the angle of the passenger side mirrors, Carrrion observed the Lovebug trying to gain traction and reach the front of the truck as it ran parallel beside them. Ahead, the dragnet of Dog Soldiers was now closing formation to sweep Audrey and the Corolla that was running at her driver's side. The warning light for the third engine continued to wink red, disconnected from power.
"Hold on. I'm gonna break through." She informed Liu and Weary.
Weary folded one of his arms through the safety belt to anchor himself to the high back cushion, reloading the rifle chamber in preparation. Liu remained in the truck's sleeper compartment, eyes wide at the sight of the enemy line drawing closer through the view slots in the armoured windshield.
Raising gears with a zig-zag motion of the shaft, the trucker delivered her rig right into the centre of the marauders, parting them like the sea as their resolve shattered before the weight of the Kenworth's reinforced grill. The Scorpion and a handful of other machines managed to side-step the truck's fury, whilst their companions smacked into one another to make sudden room in their escape.
Swivelling the harpoon tail of the trike, the Scorpion's gunner launched an iron stake into the truck's carriage, puncturing the armour like a matador fighting a bull. Other projectiles broadsided the Kenworth as it punched through the line, arrows and zip gun lead sparking on the panels, cracking a spider web hole through Carrion's side mirror as she flinched to avoid catching any glass in her remaining eye.
Lifting himself from the deck of the carriage after the initial onslaught, Irish crawled closer to the hatch as the background terrain swirled with the returning arcs of marauder vehicles now giving chase. He was almost at the latch when the whole carriage whipped across to sideswipe the Lovebug that was still flanking them, losing his grip to tumble near the edge, legs swinging in the air.
The same action slammed the carriage across the Corolla's panels, grinding off the remaining paint before the loaded energy swung back and collected the VW on the other side, the fireworks of its friction against the truck stripping away a wing of exhaust pipes until Tick-Tock relented to the larger beast, jerking the wheel to escape further contact, bouncing wide across the wastelands to recover.
Having waited for the opportunity, Weary released himself from the safety belt to emerge head and shoulders out of the cabin's roof hatch with a rifle barrel directed at the Lovebug's driver. The shot went wide as Tick-Tock tapped the brakes and fell back.
Ejecting the spent shell with a flick of the bolt, the ex-paramedic immediately inserted another round and returned the scope to his only eye, tracking the scarred VW as it drifted away.
By then Irish had recovered from the near fall, frantically working his way closer to the access hatch. Dirt bikes were gathering at the rear of the trailer, the googles and fly-eye visors of their macabre fashioned head gear watching him like fresh meat as they waited for the heavier vehicles to catch up.
Reaching for the wheel handle, the lid flipped open before he could turn it, numbing his hand against the steel as the rag features of a wind raider's arm struck his forearm with a knife edge. Wincing from the shock and pain, he caught the mesh surface along the top of the carriage as his legs went over the ledge a second time. That's when his shoulder joint stretched under the weight of something holding onto his ankles. Casting his gaze down to the blur of colours speeding underneath the truck revealed that one of the bikers had abandoned his machine to grip his ankles, dangling off his boots as a makeshift rope.
Above, the silhouette of the emerging engine saboteur raised its knife to strike the hand that was keeping him from going under the wheels.
Weary reacted to the struggle at the end of the carriage with a shot that made the Wind Raider go limp, reduced to a slumped figure now caught in the engine access, wobbling lifeless with the agitation of the truck's progress over the rocky plains.
Before he could reload, an arrow bolt took the rifle from his hands, whisked away and lost to the moving landscape.
"Axe!" Weary yelled back through cabin portal.
Frightened and confused by the alarming request, Liu looked back at him with a pleading face.
"Axe! Give me the axe! The Axe!" Curling his fingers to motion for the weapon, the edge to Weary's voice sharpened as the raider climbed over the Irishman and kicked him in the jaw to try and remove him from the carriage on the way up.
Watching the girl go dumb with panic in the frame of the cabin mirror, Carrion let go of the wheel to reach under the passenger seat, fingers wide and blindly searching for the haft of the axe. With nothing immediately recognizable by this tactile endeavour, she extended her arm further into the missing door trim opposite her, retrieving the hatchet from the cavity.
The fragmented reflection of the Scorpion was expanding with velocity in her broken side mirrors.
Placing the axe shaft into the needy hand of Weary, she immediately returned her palm to the gear shaft in preparation, her angry eye flitting between the path ahead and the menace of the trike coming alongside them.
As for Weary, the moment the handle met his grip he was climbing out of the cabin roof as the raider that had boarded the truck leapt from the trailer toward him. Swiping across to land a blow into their torso crumpled the Dog Soldier into a wounded ball, gloved digits scurrying for any kind of hold as they slipped over the panels. Before they could recover, the hatchet chopped them into severed worms, tumbling away into the wind like the body they had once been attached to.
Irish was still dangling over the ledge as Weary turned back to the length of the trailer. Without time to think he left the cabin roof and transitioned across the gap, fighting his way through the draft and projectiles to take the Irishman by the hand and lift him back to the mesh canopy.
During the rescue, Blue Tattoo had overtaken the bow of the Kenworth, realigning the Scorpion directly in their way as the gunner pivoted the harpoon toward the windshield. Glass and armoured slats exploded into Carrion's face as the projectile buried itself into the sleeper compartment, resting over the Trucker's left shoulder where it tremored with spent energy.
As the truck drifted aside in momentary loss of control, so too did the Scorpion.
"Again! Again! The rig is ours!" Blue Tattoo tapped the upper limit of his roll cage to signal the gunner, maniacal grin folding his dark tanned skin.
Feeding another metal stake into the harpoon barrel, the gunner cocked the gas valve to pressurize, swinging the bullseye sight onto the torn armour of Audrey's windshield. At that crucial moment the steady progress of the Scorpion was lost...
A black motorcycle emerged from behind the rolling dust cloud of a raider's bike flipping into ruin, sweeping across the Scorpion's aft to deliver a spray of flint that caught Blue Tattoo in the face. When he pulled the butterfly steering wheel suddenly to find clean air, the harpoon stake launched across the truck's bonnet to strike down a battle scarred Chevy pickup further afield.
Inside the third engine hatch, Irish was hanging inverted with the help of Weary on the outside, coming to the grim realization that the saboteur had cut the battery cable, leaving it too short to reach the connection.
"C'mon! Where are yeu when I need yeu?"
Hand searching around the inside of his grimy racing suit, he finally recovered the screwdriver shank.
"Hurry man! I'm bein' used as target practice!" Weary's voice pleaded as it echoed into the compartment.
Stripping the cable's rubber coating with his teeth to expose the braided copper, the Irishman coiled it around the metal shaft closest to the handle, jamming the sharper end into the severed cable hanging from the engine...
Audrey and the Scorpion had been swerving like serpents, one trying to focus their harpoon as the other zigzagged to keep away. With the windscreen now collapsed from the impact of the earlier shot, and the front tire burst from the friction against the damaged rail brace, Carrion was sweating as she wrestled the wheel, straining with outbursts of vexation with each movement as she gave it her all to keep the truck out of reach.
It was then that the engine warning light ceased flashing, the third engine had been connected. Pulling the lever switch with two fingers within seconds of the opportunity, speed dials climbing over their apex across the console as the Kenworth barrelled forward with extreme horsepower, slamming into the rear end of the trike as their paths aligned.
Compacted between the prow of the truck and the roll cage, the gunner's back arched in agony. The Scorpion's front wheel lifted from contact with the ground under the pressure, frame contorting into a comet of disintergrating fragments until it finally collapsed, flung out the side to bury itself at breakneck speed.
The Lovebug suddenly issued out of the chaos, making a kamikaze attempt toward the truck's flank. Before it could intercept the hull, the Nomad had drawn his long barrelled python, planting a foot on the ground to steady his bike as he narrowed the muzzle sight onto the insane villain behind the wheel.
In the blink of an eye the thunder-shot roared, echoing across the wastelands as the Volkswagen slid to a standstill.