Mutant Beast

The wooden door, along with the surrounding walls crashed down! Jiang Liushi was surprised that the wall didn't withstand the collision. Looking at it more carefully, he saw that it was just a thin layer of metal, which was filled with the bubble, easy to be destroyed.

The wall fell and a third of the roof crumbled down. Liushi and Xiaotian were able to see the inside the small restaurant. It was quite a bloody scene, internal organs and debris, and about five people were lying on the ground, it was not known how many bodies were actually there as Jiang Liushi couldn't discriminate, surrounded by a pool of blood. Four zombies were lying on the ground, desperately scrambling for something.

"OH MY GOD!!"

Wen Xiaotian could not help but scream, she immediately covered her mouth with her hand. The scene was nauseating, and it reminded her that she almost ended in the same state. The zombies had stopped eating, and turned to see the truck, dripping blood and meat could be seen as they growled, and wildly rushed to the vehicle.

Liushi backed the truck away, luring the zombies out of the restaurant, then accelerated forward, using the truck as a weapon to kill the zombies. The speed and weight of the truck was enough to break bones, but for added security, he drove over them again.

Xiaotian was heaving, unable to bear the bloody scene. She looked at Liushi, and saw him watch the result of his actions with a stony face. She realised then, that she had to get used to such scenes and adapt if she wanted to survive in this new world.

"I ... I'm going to find food." she suddenly voluntured.

It was dangerous, but she had to do something. But he didn't let her go, she had no protective gear, and she wasn't calm enough. Instead, he showed her how to access the view from the differents cameras, and told her to push the horn if she saw something or someone. The driving and locking system were keyed to him, he could leave her inside without fearing for her to drive away or lock him out. With his biker gear and weapon harness on, he went into the restaurant.

He ignored the gory mess and went to the kitchen. The freezer was full of food, and Liushi was sad his truck didn't have more room. That was a lot of food that was going to be wasted, and Jiang Liushi cursed himself for not thinking about getting some ice chests.

Since she didn't get the food, Xiaotian decided to cook, and she was confident in her skills. And since there was a large amount available, she didn't need to be polite, a prepared a small feast. Both of them were quite hungry as well, and it wasn't a bad idea to stuff themselves when food was going to be hard to aquire later, so they would spoil themselves.

It was dusk and Xiaotian wasn't quite done cooking when the peace was broken.

"Roaaaaar!"

The sound came from the distant darkness. That roar, in the quiet mountains, mixed with the wind, had brought a frightening feeling!

Liushi turned off the lights inside the truck, as well as the kitchen vent. The emergency lights went on, they didn't provide enough light to be seen from outside, but enough for the people inside to see shapes. When he made the truck, he provided means to secure the items in the living module, espcially the kitchen.

All kitchen ware could be tightly locked even with food still inside, so he ordered Xiaotian to secure the kitchen. He went to the steering wheel and put the engine on standby, the gas engine would stay off but the electric one was silently ready. He didn't have any weapons and wanted to be able to drive at a moment's notice.

[Energy core detected] the Starseed suddenly announced in his head.

'What?'

Surrounded by darkness, the road was filled with extremely fresh air. The night sky was beautiful. A dark blue sky, full of stars, was visible through the window. A thin moon hung obliquely in the hills, above shedding its weak, cool light. But at this moment, Jiang Liushi felt his blood freezing.

In the moonlight, he saw a huge shadow staring at the MCV. It looked like a monster, yet he did not know what on earth it was. He didn't dare to turn on the headlights. He held his breath, lowered his body and signaled Xiaotian to get down when she arrived near him.

"Brother Jiang..." she said in a trembling, whispering voice.

"Go and strap yourself in the chair behind me. Do not make a sound!"

He didn't move the truck because he didn't want to agitate whatever was there. If the truck was overturned due to the thing attacking and him crashing, he would be in a terrible situation. As the shadow was getting closer, lit by the weak moonlight, Jiang Liushi could distinguish that the approaching shadow was actually an enormous boar.

He was shocked. Although it was far away, comparing it with the surrounding buildings, he estimated that this boar was at least as large as a light-weight truck. It was full of steel thorn-like black hair, which was stained with a large number of blood scabs, making it look like it had climbed out from a blood pool. Its tusks were like two huge machetes, and one of them even had a long intestine hanging. That was a fierce pig out of hell.

"This is... a mutant beast!"

He recalled what the Starseed had revealed before the outbreak. The super-virus would mutate not only humans, but also animals and plants. He had though of wild beasts when he made the Doomsday Ride, but he was mostly concerned with mutated humans because he was living in the city. And since the outbreak, he had only been thinking of them, completly forgetting the possibility of mutated animals.

"ROOAAAAAAARRRRR!!!!!"

The boar had suddenly issued a terrible roar. It raised its hoofs, rushing straightly towards the MCV, trampling the road and shattering it. A truck-sized mass of muscles, whose weight should be around ten tons was coming at them fast. Jiang Liushi put the gear on reverse and backed away from the charging beast as fast as possible. The engine roared to life as the truck picked up speed, but the boar still reached them.

BANG!!

Because he was backing away, the impact wasn't as devastating as it could have been, and the plow absorbed most of the damage. It also had the effect of stopping the boar and increasing the speed of the truck. Still, inside the vehicle, they were quite shaken by the impact.

Jiang Liushi cursed under his breath. He had to take care of that boar now. He wasn't a good enough truck driver to drive at night, let alone at high speed to escape a beast. The weapons he had were close-ranged ones only good enough to deal with very small numbers of zombies. Even if he had a gun, it would likely be ineffective aginst the beast.

The Starseed gave him the solution to his problem. He had made the last part of the engineering section to handle construction or repair of large objects. It had mechanical arms that could hold heavy tools, and one of those tools was a pile driver. Jiang Liushi decided to drive in circles around the restaurant. The boar would chase after him, and he would be able to use the pile driver when it got close enought.

VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

He pushed the throttle and swerved to the side, barely missing the boar, who had resumed his charge. In the living module, Xiaotian head banged against the wall due to the sharp turn. Even though it was padded for such occasions, it still stunned her. Jiang Liushi was very happy to have made the co-pilot program or he probably would have overturned his truck. The co-pilot program helped him drift around the corners by controlling the speed at which the wheels spun.

At the back, a section opened and slid to the side, revealing a mechanical arm at the end of which was a black tool with the top of a pike protubing. It lifted the tool high in the air, pointing toward the ground.

Rzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-psch!

The sound of something charging could be heard from the tool. When the head of the boar got right underneath, it drove the tool on top of its head.

Bam!! DJUMB!!!

A split second later, a discharging sound was heard, slightly muffled by the head of the boar. Said boar stopped all movements and fell on his belly, slidding forward due to its momentum. Its head was bleeding, but the pike was still in the pile driver. Jiang Liushi stopped, backed up to the body of the boar, replaced the pile driver on its head and fired it a second time. The sound of bones shattering could be heard on top of the discharge noise made by the tool.