The first Bonesmen bullet shattered the rear window of my Ford Bronco.

All around us, the sleepy town of Enchanted Rock was coming awake to the newly realized horror of an all-out assault. This wasn’t exactly how I’d planned on repaying the town that had taken us in, but we didn’t have much choice in the matter. The only thing we could do was try to fend off our attackers and hope for the best. Sheriff Peak and Deputy Glick weren’t going to be much help in this fight, and I knew it.

Air sucked through the cab of the truck as I yelled at Richard. “Goddammit! Start shooting back!”

The shots from his pistol were deafening next to my ear inside the cab of the truck.

Dammit, I knew I should’ve gone to the storage unit weeks before and pulled the long arms. Having a shotgun for him to fire out the rear window would have been nice.

A motorcycle engine roared as its rider opened up the throttle and came revving up next to me, pistol brandished in his left hand, a gruesome grin of cracked and rotten teeth filling his face.

I grinned back before I jerked the steering wheel and turned the truck into him before he could even fire.

The Bronco jumped and swerved, the tires losing traction for a moment as, screaming in surprise, his bike was pulled beneath the truck. The big tires just kept spinning around, though, and Richard and I kept on right along with them.

Behind us, another biker fell to the street. This one from Richard’s sidearm dropping him.

Two of them got right on our ass and waved their pistols menacingly as they tried to line up a clear shot on Richard.

“Hold on!” I shouted, slamming on the brakes.

The two bikers plowed into the backside of the Bronco, sending both me and Richard lurching in the seat and the truck into a fishtail. The traction caught again, though, in no time.

I slammed on the gas again, barely losing any momentum. I glanced up in the rearview mirror, checking to see how many more were coming.

There were at least a dozen more, all swerving and veering around their fallen buddies who were quickly disappearing behind us, their bikes twisted and broken on the street. Shit. I’d been a little too optimistic on my earlier count.

“There are too many of them!” Richard yelled, still firing. He downed another one, blowing out the front tire.

“We’ve gotta thin out the herd a little bit!” I shouted back as I braked hard and took a right. We didn’t have much further to Main Street, and rolling into a somewhat busy business district was the last thing I wanted to do, especially not with the way bullets were already flying around. Besides, once we came to a stop, we’d be completely surrounded.

“Go down near the sheriff’s office,” Richard said suddenly, “and let me off.”

“I can’t slow down!”

“Didn’t say you needed to slow down, Pete! You see if you can draw them off, and I’ll head around to check on the women.”

“That’s a shit plan!”

“You have a better one?” he shouted back, raising his pistol to shoot again.

“No,” I admitted. “Not really.”

Ahead of us, people were screaming as they ran for cover, getting off the street and inside the businesses and homes ahead of us. Two cars that had been headed our way braked hard and turned off, heading both left and right as they cleared a path for our insane caravan that looked like something straight out of a Mad Max film.

“Turn here!” he shouted as the turn went flying by.

“Dammit, Richard! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“Go back!”

“Hold on,” I said, slamming my foot so hard on the brake pedal that I was practically standing upright in the cab. I cut the wheel as hard as I could, spinning like a free wheel.

The car spun as Richard and I both yelled in a mixture of terror and exhilaration, the cab tilting hard to the driver side as the truck did a one-eighty, with the hood pointed back the way we’d just come.

“Is that Wyatt?” Richard asked as I slammed my foot back on the gas.

A biker with greasy hair, a scraggly beard, and terrified eyes came barreling at us on the back of his chopper. Behind him, the other bikers parted like the Red Sea before Moses.

“Think so!” I shouted back as we headed right for him.

Wyatt Axelrod, one of the local presidents of the Skull and Bones Motorcycle Club cut his handlebars to the side and gunned his bike, trying to get out of our way. My Bronco slammed into his rear wheel, sending him and his bike skidding across the asphalt like a stone over a placid pond. Only this stone left a trail of sparks and screams behind it as the bike collided with the underside of a parked car, and the rider rolled off into the gutter.

“Yeah!” Richard howled in delight as I kept going. Behind us, the bikers slowed and began to turn to catch back up with us.

Up ahead, I took the next left.

Behind us, there was more gunfire as the bikers whipped around the turn in our wake.

“Hold on,” I yelled as the turn onto Main Street loomed ahead.

I could hear the steady sound of more pistols and even the bass boom of a shotgun. Metal was clunking and thunking as bullets hit the back of my Bronco.

I sped on, holding my breath, as we approached the turn.

More bullets. And then a sudden heat in my lower back.

A painful burn that began to radiate throughout my body filled me with agony. “Shit,” I groaned. “Goddammit.”

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked, still facing towards the back of the truck, dropping another biker with a well-placed bullet. “What happened?”

“I think I’ve been shot in–”

Before I could finish my sentence, though, the world went black.