[center][hider=Concerning:][@themadasshatter][@SilverFallen][/hider][/center]Heads popped out from trees like they belonged to fat, tick-eaten gophers, prairie dogs, chipmunks, or any other manner of furry thing which knows it is vulnerable, and thus, peeks from its burrow in only the smallest increments. Neasa saw the hosing of cheap canvas gas masks, probably of Soviet make. Scott saw cheeks slathered in mud and bandannas soaked in piss, to repel mosquitoes and poisons in the air, respectively. Folk remedies as substitutes for proper gear. One couldn't put it altogether past them to be walking around with empty magazines, holding empty chambers at people's heads to rob them of a can of beans.

Their first verbal response affirmed this poverty: "H-hey. You guys friendly?" he asked. "I don't wanna shoot if you don't."

Still, they didn't look totally useless. They kept their fingers off the triggers, for one. No one cocked the hammer of a semi-auto, or pumped a live round out of the chamber, careening to the ground below. Maybe between the lot of them, they had enough brains to pose a decent threat after all.[hr][hr][hr][center][i][color=785D62]M[/color][color=7E6566]e[/color][color=856D6A]a[/color][color=8B756E]n[/color][color=927D72]w[/color][color=988576]h[/color][color=9F8E7A]i[/color][color=A78E7B]l[/color][color=AF8F7D]e[/color][color=B88F7F].[/color][color=C09081].[/color][color=C89083].[/color][/i][/center][hr][hr][hr][center][hider=Concerning:][@Xandrya][/hider][/center]It was like lightning, a single strike in the dark. A microsecond of blinding white. But the sound was unmistakable, and the tinnitus which rang in their ears afterward, too.

Somehow his legs had transported him to the left side of the road, when his brain was still not fully conscious of having been shot at. Instinct, he had to guess. "Everyone alive?"

"Momo took a grazer to the skull," someone said from the slope. It was Batter. Marcel had to know from the voice, since the muzzle flash had tightened up their pupils, blinding them against the night. "He's bleedin' bad."

"Keep him steady." Everyone was shouting at that point, and firing back. But nothing had come from the trees ever since the first shot. Why only one? Some kind of warning? A madman scavenger, thinking he'd come back to pick the pockets and cannibalize the remains once the main group lost interest? Or he thought there were fewer of them than there were, and he had already been spooked off. "Everyone shut the fuck up! [i]Ferme ta gueule![/i] Quiet!" The gunfire slowed, and still the trees only whispered. What the fuck was going on?

The flanks, maybe. One distraction to draw them out of cover; for a sniper up on the south hill, able to pick them off while they cowered behind the dirt of the raised road. Whoever it was, he just had to choose a nighttime raid, didn't he? Nothing could ever be easy.