Free End of the Road (The Rozzers) by Diem Burden Page B

changes you in subtle ways. I would never be able to fit in with a bunch of adolescent, immature college kids again.
    My rambling thoughts were silenced as efficiently as Donk and Pizza’s argument by the huge metallic crash from somewhere just behind us as something slammed through the truck. It smashed all thoughts from my wandering mind.
    We froze, brows furrowed, trying to identify the origin of the sound. Cat was startled enough to ease off the throttle.
    “What the fuck was that ?” I asked quietly, looking at Cat. He was checking his mirrors as he double-de-clutched his way down the gearbox, carefully bringing the vehicle to a stop, apprehension on his face.
    “Did any cars pass us, Cat?” I asked, suddenly fearful. Despite the very realistic first aid training we did every year, I dreaded having to deal with injured people. I always panicked when confronted with a realistically made-up battlefield casualty, guts spilling out through his hands.
    “Dunno,” replied Cat. “I didn’t notice any.”
    I turned and, standing up, looked through the rear window of the cab across the back of the cargo area to where the digger’s cab should have been visible. It took a moment for me to comprehend.
    “It’s gone! The digger! It’s fucking gone!”
    The colour drained from Cat’s face. We all knew what this meant – we were in deep, military coloured crap. We’d lost the digger due to loose chains and we’d have to take full responsibility, especially the driver and the sergeant in charge.
    “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck !” screamed Cat as he activated the truck’s hazard lights on the empty, darkening road in the middle of nowhere. He punched the dashboard as we jumped down from the cab into the silence of the plain, beer cans being thrown in panic into the darkness. When a squaddy throws his beer away, you know it’s serious.
    “Pizza! Run on ahead and wave down any approaching traffic!” I shouted. “We don’t want anyone piling into the digger.” I watched him swiftly disappear into the darkness and turned to the next man. “Donk, you do the same behind us until we know what we’ve got.”
    He quickly ran off in the direction we had come from as Cat and I legged it to the rear of the truck. We left Smudge flapping over the beers in the truck, anxiously throwing cans out of the window.
    We stopped and stared at the empty space behind the truck. The digger hadn’t just fallen off the trailer as we had feared; it had completely vanished, along with the trailer it was sitting on!
    Cat and I looked into each other’s eyes without saying a word – we both knew that this meant even bigger trouble than we initially thought. We’d lost the complete trailer! The whole damned thing had come uncoupled. Cat bent down with a view to checking the truck’s towing eye; he had to know – had he failed to lock it shut with the securing pin?
    The scream came out of nowhere and stopped him dead. Its volume was amplified by the absolute silence and darkness of the plain. It was right on cue and it scared the hell out of the pair of us. It was the most dreadful, painful, drawn out male scream I had ever heard. It came from the darkness, about fifty metres behind us.
    We stared into that void as the nightmare was unfolding around us, acutely aware of just how isolated we were out there on the plain.
     
    Part one of THE ROZZERS by DIEM BURDEN
    o0o

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    The trailer and digger combination – about twenty tonnes in all – had obviously flown off the side of the empty road, landing harmlessly on the grasses of the huge, empty plain. There was nothing but rabbits for miles around here, so who the hell was screaming and why?
    “Okay, so nobody passed us, but was there anybody behind us, Cat?” I asked.
    “No, definitely not,” said Cat. “I’m sure I would have noticed.”
    I believed him – Cat was a conscientious enough driver to be aware of what was behind him at all