"Hotch!" Jack slammed on the brakes. The Suburban ahead had all four tires blow out one after another, sparks flying as it skidded off the road and crashed heavily into a tree.
Jack stared at the long tire spike strip that had been flattened by the Suburban, bouncing on the road as his own vehicle slowed to a safer speed. He quickly pulled the handbrake and swerved the steering wheel. The Raptor's tires screeched against the road as it drifted sideways, narrowly stopping just before hitting the spike strip.
Just as they were catching their breath,
Whoosh!
An arrow pierced through the windshield, only to be caught by Jack in midair, its tip aimed squarely at Rossi's forehead.
Rossi, who had just been shaken awake by the violent movement of the car, blinked in stunned silence, still groggy from sleep.
"We're under attack! The enemy is at the roadside!" Jack shouted.
As if confirming his words, a series of thunk thunk thunk sounds followed, accompanied by eerie, high-pitched screeching.
Arrows rained down on the car, some of them suddenly lodging into the windshield. In the back seat, JJ woke up in a panic, briefly flashing back to a terrifying moment on that Southeast Asian island. Jack's shout brought her back to reality, making her instinctively withdraw her hand from the door handle, lowering her body while reaching for the gun case on the back seat.
"Jack, help Hotch!" Rossi, a former military man, wasn't entirely sure what was happening but reacted instantly, drawing his Glock and firing through the windshield while shouting.
Jack had the same thought. He opened the car door, paused for a second as if something occurred to him, and then switched on the high beams.
The headlights of the Raptor illuminated the bushes on the left side of the road. The ambushers hidden within were blinded by the sudden light.
Seizing the opportunity, Jack jumped out of the car, crouched low, and ran toward the rear of the vehicle. He fired off an entire magazine from his Glock 22 into the bushes before pulling out his FK 7.5, a powerful handgun that hadn't seen action in a while.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Rat-a-tat-tat!
The sound of a Noveske N4 rifle firing rhythmically from the Raptor filled the air. They had brought two assault rifles for this mission, one in Hotchner's car and the other in Jack's. JJ had pulled the rifle from the gun case and was firing short bursts, aiming at the shadowy figures moving behind the trees.
With the attackers seemingly suppressed, Jack kept his head low and sprinted toward the smoking Suburban.
Though the Suburban was a heavily armored vehicle with a full set of airbags, bad luck could still lead to unexpected injuries.
He rushed over to check on everyone inside, hoping to save them if necessary.
After crashing off the road, the Suburban had slammed into a large tree, causing significant impact. The 10-meter-high tree leaned to one side, and there was no movement from inside the vehicle.
Jack's heart raced, but he stayed calm. With all his senses on high alert, he jumped off the road, quickly reloaded his FK 7.5, and fired several shots into the bushes near the Suburban.
Two figures holding machetes stumbled out of the foliage and fell to the ground, unmoving.
Jack, learning from past experiences, emptied the remaining rounds into the fallen figures. As long as they were carbon-based life forms, they wouldn't be getting back up.
The gunfire from the Raptor gradually ceased. The ambushers in the bushes were smart; after JJ emptied two magazines, their eerie screeching had already begun to fade into the distance.
Though it felt like a long time, only about seven or eight minutes had passed since the Suburban had blown its tires and skidded off the road.
With no immediate threats around, Jack approached the wrecked Suburban and forcefully pulled open the driver's door.
Hotchner was still dazed, his face bloody from a nose injury. Jack cut his seatbelt with a Swiss Army knife and tried to wake him.
Emily, sitting in the back seat, seemed to have recovered faster than Hotchner. She was groggily reaching for her sidearm, startled by the sound of gunfire.
"Hey, it's me. You're safe now," Jack reassured her, holding her hand to stop her. He cut her seatbelt and suggested she stay seated for a moment.
When Jack circled to the other side to check on Reid in the passenger seat, he was taken aback. Reid was completely unconscious, and a branch had pierced through the windshield, narrowly missing him and embedding itself under his right armpit.
At first glance, it looked like Reid was impaled, making the scene quite shocking. Upon closer inspection, Jack realized that the branch had simply grazed his right arm, leaving only a minor wound—remarkably lucky under the circumstances.
Fortunately, there were no severely injured teammates. Even if there were internal injuries, as long as they weren't immediately visible, Jack could heal them with a bit of first aid, and they'd be considered lightly wounded.
"Are they okay?" JJ and Rossi had cautiously made their way over, covering each other as they approached.
"They're fine. Just some minor injuries," Jack replied. He helped Hotchner and Emily out of the vehicle and had them lean against the car to rest. Then he carefully carried the unconscious Reid out.
"What are these monsters?" Rossi asked, cautiously nudging one of the two bodies Jack had taken down. He kicked it lightly with his foot to confirm that the creatures were indeed dead.
JJ shone her tactical flashlight on the faces of the two bodies, and immediately turned away, nearly vomiting.
"Dammit, what is this? Mutants?"
The creatures were even more grotesque than the cannibals they had encountered in New Mexico.
If Jack had to describe them, he'd say they looked like what would happen if you poured acid onto a cannibal's face. Their skin appeared to be melting, covered in disgusting yellow-green pustules. Their facial features were barely recognizable, and "deformed" didn't even begin to describe them.
One of them had only one eye, located in the center of its forehead, while the other had part of its cheek missing, leaving its upper and lower jaws connected only by a few strands of muscle, exposing sharp, yellowed teeth.
It was like something straight out of a zombie movie.
"These things are completely unnatural. How are they even alive?" Jack poked one of the creature's exposed cheekbones with a stick, noticing its freakishly long tongue, reminiscent of a lizard's.
"They eat people. Looks like they're distant relatives of the cannibals you encountered before," Rossi said as he pulled a half-eaten human hand from a canvas bag on one of the bodies.
"Reid's satellite phone was smashed in the crash, so Garcia still doesn't know our location," Hotchner said after regaining some composure.
"Should we keep going?" Jack checked his phone. They were supposed to be close to Belle Lake, but there was still no signal.
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