Samuel’s face twisted into a grimace as his eyes followed the smoke rise from the front of the ambulance. ‘It’s always something, isn’t it’, he thought to himself as he pushed down on the clutch and reached down from the steering wheel with his right hand to lower the gears. As the 18-wheeler came to a stop, Sam pulled the keys from the ignition and threw them into his pocket. He hid his flask of whiskey beneath his seat before throwing open the door to his left and swinging his legs outward. He took his time getting down from the truck since his left leg was asleep from the drive and his back was giving him some trouble. 

As he shuffled to the ambulance he caught sight of Hunter kicking the Humvee. ‘Young kids – they’re such hot-heads’ he thought to himself and smiled. His face remained stolid as he leered into the open hood of the ambulance and caught a large whiff of the scent of burnt flesh. There wasn’t much that could surprise him before the outbreak and he was starting to get that way again with so much overexposure to these things. Hunter must have smelled that flesh too and by his ‘exhibition’, he probably estimated it would be a difficult fix.

“Now I don’t mean to step out of line or nuthin’ --” he began with a slow drawl, “but I reckon’ there ‘aught to be a stream or somethin’ nearby we could use to at least cool it down while ya’ll engineers work on a real solution. Worst comes to worst, we could hitch it up to another vehicle and drag it to the nearest city.” Samuel gave a light nod as he clarified, “But you’re the officer and all and it ain’t much matter to me so long as we get outta here. Georgia may seem to have her britches in a bunch but she has a point. I think them things can smell us and they’ll probably head this way soon.”

He noticed how stressed and down-trodden Hunter had been when he asked for ideas and he gave him a fatherly nod before giving the surroundings a quick look-over. Trees. Trees. Nothing but trees.