The ground trembled beneath his feet as Easton ran, almost toppling him off balance, a split second away from having his face on the dirt-covered grass.

People were flung from where they stood, splattered, falling back to the meadow, snuffed out their screams as soon as the club-like weapon struck them. There was no doubt that some were already dead before they hit the grass.

The creature, an ugly, foul abomination, a giant—for lack of a better word—swung its club once again to the left, mowing dozens more running away. With its free hand, The giant plucked a man cowering close to its big toe, or what looked like stubbed hooves, wrapped is log-like fingers around his body until only his head and shoulders were visible out of the giant’s curled fist, and threw him toward the city, hurtling like a cannon.

The poor man, screaming and flailing in the air, landed on the concrete pavement of the pier, though not before he got tangled in cables and wires hanging between two lamp posts, and clipped a large garbage tin can with his neck on his way down. Even from a long distance, Easton heard and felt all his bones snapped and contorted above the dying screams and the panicked roar of the crowd around him. The man was dead the moment he hit the ground.

The Thing plucked another man off the field and threw him toward the city. The man’s screams grew louder as he neared, arching toward them until he flew past Easton’s head. Easton felt a pair of hands grabbed his shoulder and he was yanked out of the way. The man landed on the roof of a Honda Civic a couple of feet in front of him. It was too late to look away as he witnessed the man’s head exploded like a pulp upon contact, blood splattered onto Easton’s face, caking him from the head down to his entire torso.

Easton couldn’t even manage a scream, wide-eyed with shock, wiped the pieces of brain and skull off of his face. It wasn’t until Marcus screeched about the kids that Easton found the energy to run again.

Easton nodded, and Marcus grabbed his arm, pulling him back to his feet. They ran for the gazebo where his father and the boys waved at them to hurry. His father had Jacob and Eli close to both his hips, gripping hard on their arm as he dragged them down the steps where Connor had his phone out, recording the chaos happening behind him. Easton reached Connor first, grabbed the phone out of his hand, and shoved it back on his chest, yelled, “Seriously? Go! Run!”

It took a second for Connor to register what Easton said, distracted by all the blood coating his jacket. Easton didn’t have time for it, forced the young man to turn around and pushed him forward. Connor took the hint and started running.

Gunshots rang behind him. The police officers that blocked the shoreline began firing on the approaching beast, undoubtedly trying to give everyone on the meadow time to run for the city’s safety.

The army. Where the hell is the army? Easton scrambled on his thoughts. This was a good time for the military to save the day, using their entire firepower on it. Though, Easton shuddered to imagine the giant managing to enter the city and would wreak havoc if the police didn’t stop it in time.

Easton made the mistake of looking back.

The giant was getting too close to the city. It swung its club and stomped on dozens of people underneath its feet. Then, beyond its looming figure, others like it began to come out of the woods, swinging their own clubs at the unfortunate souls that crossed its path.

God, what are they? Easton panicked.

There were six, ten, no, fifteen of them, but it was getting hard to count them as more exited the foliage and started killing everyone on the meadow. And what was worse was none of the bullets looked like it didn’t cause a dent on the giant, more like the shots only aggravated and angered it.

“Quick! Into the city!” Kenny screamed.

For a big and burly man, Kenny was the fastest among them, and he had Eli in his arms, who cried his eyes out, finger extended to point at the giant closing the gap.

So close. Almost there, Easton thought, his heart hammering like a battering ram against his ribcage, running faster toward the boulevard where thousands of people now swarmed to reach the inner-city streets.

Easton peered beyond the car-jammed boulevard to the sidewalk where a large crowd had gathered at the doorsteps of the dozens of hotels and apartments, desperately clawing their way inside to safety. Easton knew they wouldn’t be able to make it inside if they waited, and if they did, the giant would be on top of them. And it wasn’t a guarantee that the giant couldn’t easily knock the walls down on them.

Easton wouldn’t take that risk.

Which meant they had to go deeper into the city.

Marcus headed east, finding a less crowded gap between a bus and an SUV, and Easton followed after him, dragging Connor behind his heels, who was struggling to turn his phone back again, fully intent on recording the unfolding battle behind them.

“Connor!” Easton yelled, grabbed the phone, and placed it inside his pocket.

“Hey! That’s my phone!” Connor yelped.

“Do you want to fucking die? Then, move your ass, or I swear I’m gonna leave you behind!”

Easton whipped around to follow after the others when suddenly, the air got knocked out of his lungs. Easton stumbled onto the ground hard, dazed, clamoring to hold on to something only to fail in the end. In a second, Connor was beside him, asking if he was okay.

Easton glanced behind him, to the looming figure standing a couple of feet away. There, a slender woman stood, or what looked like a woman, cloaked from her dark robes that went down to the ground. She pushed her hood back, and Marcus realized it was no woman at all.

It was something else.

It had scales for its skin as crimson as red wine. Two svelte horns protruded out of its upper shoulders an inch wide and an inch tall, and its pair of eyes small and full with pupils slit-shaped like that of a cat or a snake, burning purple under the darkness. Its face was slender and gaunt, which matched its physique: thinner legs, leaner torso, and four upper limbs that ended with claw-like hands. Though humanoid, it was far from human. Where a human’s hair was supposed to be was replaced by a dozen pair of proboscis-like trunks, similar to that of an elephant, leathery and ruggedly muscled in texture, albeit much skinnier as it dangled from its head, covered in a lighter shade of red than the rest of its body.

It spared a glance at Easton for a split second, and a small smile crept on its lips, revealing little sharp fangs from its upper row of teeth. It held a simple wooden quarterstaff from one of its arms, and it whirled back around to face The Thing approaching the city.

Without hesitation, Red Scales—as Easton would name it—brought the quarterstaff at the front, slamming its tip on the ground, and Easton swore he felt the earth trembled from its weight. Red Scales pulled something out of its robe’s inner pockets, a glowing glass object smaller than the palm of Easton’s fist radiating a swirling hue of orange and pink. It grew brighter when Red Scales raised it high in the air and slammed it against the head of the quarterstaff.

The object shattered like glass, though no pieces fell off as if it vanished into thin air, the bright hue transferring to the quarterstaff. Red Scales firmly held the quarterstaff with all four hands, aimed the head toward the giant lumbering toward the city. Then a streak of burning orange exploded out from the bulbous top, sending a projectile scurrying toward the giant, growing brighter and more prominent the farther it went. It struck the giant right on the face, and its head instantly caught on fire.

The giant wailed a penetrating cry, desperately trying to snuff the fire out of its head, though it only worsened. It slithered down onto its neck, its shoulders, and then onto its torso. In seconds, the fire consumed the beast. The giant, screaming and lashing out, ran back for the woods.

Red Scales aimed the quarterstaff onto the meadow, shooting out another bolt. It arched further down the field beyond the people running for the city’s safety, and the grass caught on fire once the ball of light struck it.

Fire streaked across the meadow, burning brightly, shooting up high into the air. The rest of the giants stopped on their tracks, drew their arms out as they shield themselves from the expanding heat. Some were caught in the fire and ran back into the woods as the first one did. The inferno then formed into a fiery wall at least twenty feet high, expanding further until it surrounded the entrance to Crissy Beach, and beyond. As soon as the walls formed, it changed color to a deeper shade of red, intensifying as the minute ticked by.

Easton pried his eyes away from the spectacle to where Red Scales stood. It was gone. He searched through the running crowd, but it was hard to make them out in the darkness with only the lampposts, the buildings’ lights, and now the wall of fire to see around him. And there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the area, running and screaming from the commotion. Some stopped to gawk at it while others continued their sprint into the city.

Connor shook his shoulder and spun him around. “We need to go, uncle,” he said.

“Did you see? It’s the—“

“I know.”

“But it disappeared—“

Connor squeezed his shoulders “I know, uncle! Come on! Whoever it was...Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

“Yeah. Yeah. You’re right, I—” Easton tried to catch up to his thoughts…and maybe even his sanity. I am losing my mind, aren’t I? He wondered.

Connor helped him up to his feet, and it took them a few moments to reorient themselves and looked for the others. Easton almost went crazy when he thought that they lost the others, wondering how he’d ever find them when everything was in disarray and in chaos. He hoped on the roof of a car so he could see better across the boulevard. Marcus’s unmistakable red hair and his tall, hulking stature were easy to spot in the crowd. They were by the sidewalk, and it was Jacob who caught sight of them, tugging at Marcus’s shirt to get his attention.

“There they are!” Easton pointed and hopped off the car, held onto the hood of Connor’s jacket, afraid to let go and loose the boy through the crowd.

Another roar cut through the night, this one sounded distinctly different from the low cries of the giants behind the wall of flame. Laced with insurmountable raw power, of pure bestial rage embodied, surprising Easton that it didn’t implode the windows around him. On instinct, he ducked behind a Toyota, put his hands over his head, fearing the buildings were going to collapse all around him.

A hurricane-like gust of wind barreled through the boulevard, almost toppled his balance as he held onto the side view mirror, though still keeping a grip on Connor’s hood. The sudden flurry soon died down as people snapped their eyes in the sky.

Out of the frothing, chilling confusion of his fear and adrenaline, Easton mustered the will to peek up above.

The creature was bigger than anything Easton had seen, skin leathery-white, much larger than the towering giants as if it could dwarf the entire park by its sheer size alone. It zoomed past the wall of fire, leaving hurricane-like squalls at its wake, and disseminated a foul smell of burnt plastic, mildew, sulfur, and onion that made Easton’s throat itched. The beast reared up and spun in circles, then protruded its leathery wings as wide as that of an airbus plane, blotting the smaller moon with its shadow. It shrieked once again, primal and merciless, whipping its long tail out and lashed the air, swinging back for a dive toward the city.

With three powerful thrusts of its wings, it reached the wall of fire, reeled its neck back, and breathe out a chilling burst of air, a roaring detonation that almost split his ears. In a split second, the wall collapsed, replaced by ice and frost, blanketing a wide area of the meadow. The blast caught one of the giants trying to run away, only to be frozen in mid-stride, and then shattering onto the ground as the weight tipped it over to the side. The dragon flapped its wings once again and flew upward.

Is that a fucking dragon? Easton exclaimed.

With a significant gap in the wall of fire, several giants started marching into the city.

Easton felt a tug at the collar of his jacket, whirled around to find Marcus standing behind him and Connor.

“What the hell is that thing?” Connor yelped, pointing at the flying beast as it tried to make another dive.

Shit, Easton groaned. “Never mind that now! The fucker’s coming back!”

Easton grabbed hold of the side view mirror and hauled himself up, pushed past Marcus and Connor, and started running, the other two close behind him. Screams emanated several hundred feet away, screams that were suddenly snuffed out as a roaring blast of air, like a thousand jet engines all fired up at once, reverberated and shook the entire boulevard.

His father, Kenny, Jacob, and Eli already ran and disappeared behind a corner, and Easton pushed hard on his legs to go faster and catch up. A cold shiver ran up his spine, could feel the hard raw wind coming from behind, and Easton had no plans on finding out what that entailed. He clamored past through others, bumped onto another man who stumbled and fell on the ground. Easton turned, extended his hand out for the man, but Marcus—coming from behind—yanked it away, pushed him further down the road.

“Keep moving,” Marcus said between gritted teeth.

Easton locked down another shiver. In an attempt to look behind him to catch the man he just ran through, he found his eyes wandered up to the speeding beast breathing cold air right through the boulevard, turning everything into a frozen wasteland. He spun back to look ahead; the corner hundreds of feet away.

We’re not going to make it! Easton cried.

Marcus suddenly clutched onto his arm, felt it steer him to the right, and his legs involuntarily moved that way. He didn’t know where he was going only that he had to move forward, to get away from the flying monster plowing on their direction.

And then he saw it — a coffee shop.

With its doors wide open, Easton flung himself inside, crashing on top of a large rectangular table and landed on his back. Knowing he only had maybe a couple of seconds to spare, he flipped the table over to its side, bent to a mid-crouch, and pressed his back against the table, using it as a shield. Marcus ran in after, swiftly pulled Connor to the side between the door and a pillar, and shielded the boy as the cold blast of air blew through where they once stood a few seconds ago. The man Easton bumped into was snapped frozen in mid-scream and shattered into pieces from the blast’s force.

Easton peeled his eyes away from the sight.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Easton repeated, almost in tears as he shielded himself from the freezing air entering the coffee shop. He imagined his flesh and bones being frozen, how he’d die like the man he left behind in the boulevard, and how his body would crack from the force.

But as the seconds ticked by, he opened his eyes to find that he was still alive and intact.

“Easton! Are you okay, man?” Marcus hollered.

It took him a few seconds to sputter a response. “Uh—Um, yeah. Yeah! I’m over here!”

He hesitantly raised his hands out from behind the table.

A hand grabbed his wrist and yanked him out of his hiding hole, came face-to-face with Marcus.

Easton spared a glance at the coffee shop’s interior. All the windows were heavily frosted, and most of the entrance door was frozen solid. Snow flurries blanketed the floor from the entrance all the way to the barista counter. From behind upturned tables, the bathroom doors, and couches, several people peered out of their hiding spot with fear evident in their eyes.

Easton, to his utter surprise, recognized one of them: Joe, the biker arguing with Marcus earlier, now bloodied and covered with blood. Though Easton didn’t find any wounds on him, he realized with a quiver that it might not be his blood, but that of his friends. Their eyes met, and a veiled recognition showed on Joe’s face. He gave a slight nod, turned to his friend who wore the same jacket like his.

“Let’s get out of here before that thing comes back,” Marcus said, peeling Easton’s attention from the bikers, and drew him back to their situation.

“Dad and the others—” He trailed off.

“Right. Let’s catch up to them.”

The coffee shop’s entrance facing the boulevard was halfway blocked by a massive ice wall and snow, though the shop, fortunately, had another door that led to the same street where his father and the others ran off into, and Marcus headed off toward that direction; Easton and Connor followed close to his trail.

The screams on the streets were deafening, reverberating across the narrow concrete valley of the city. Car alarms joined the orchestra of cries and howls of the men and children, of the wounded and the dying, and the occasional pop resounding from the boulevard as the ice cracked and broke, thunderous like a chunk of glacier falling off and slipping into the water. Under it all, the giants’ roars lumbered across Crissy Beach and Marina Green, and the desperate, futile battle by the police officers bravely holding the line gradually died down as those beasts slaughtered them off one-by-one, as Easton surmised. Still, it was a horrible thing to hear.

As the gunshots went silent, only the frenzied screams remained.

Two police cars wheezed past the crowded streets, their sirens wailing through the cacophony, swerved maddeningly through upturned vehicles and debris, and narrowly hitting Easton and a pick-up truck. The police officers parked the cars right at the border where the boulevard began. They quickly hopped out, saw the destruction, and turned to look at each other with the same shock and bewilderment as the first time Easton saw those things emerged from the woods.

They wouldn’t be of much help, Easton knew. Before he saw the police officers as their refuge, depending on their skills to protect him and his family’s well-being, but now that Easton saw what those things in the woods could do, all of those feelings went away, taken in with pure dread.

“Which way?” Easton asked Marcus.

“Just keep heading down this street. Hopefully, we’ll pick up their trail,” Marcus said.

And so Easton did just that. Setting his jaw, he kept to the side, avoided the large cluster blocking half the street, pulled ahead through any gaps that he could find. He was exhausted by the time he made it halfway down the lane, felt like his legs were going to drop on him, and the more he pondered on it, the more tired he became. The only fuel he could throw at it was the flying creature coming for his hide.

Enough, Easton. Get your fucking shit together, he grumbled, sucking in air between his teeth.

“Dad!” Connor cried out, “Is that Jacob?”

Easton followed Connor’s finger, to a boy that looked like Jacob, shrinking back behind a bust stop. Squinting his eyes and taking a giant stride toward the boy, it was Jacob, drenched in sweat, blood, and tears. Easton’s heart skipped a beat when a streak of red ran from his neck down to the hem of his jacket, frightened that the boy got hurt. But sparing another glance, the blood wasn’t his. There was no sign of the others.

“Jacob!” Easton found himself screeching.

Jacob looked up and met his gaze; fear replaced his expression with familiar comfort, of safety in the sea of madness around them. Jacob, abandoning his hiding spot, ran up to him, wrapped his hands around Easton’s waste, tightened as if afraid to let go. Easton brought Jacob’s chin up to face him.

“Jacob? What happened to the others?” Easton asked.

“They ran and ran! But I—I was too slow! I couldn’t keep up until that thing was on top of us and I hid! Oh! I’m so sorry, uncle! I’m so sorry!”

“Oh, no, Jacob, you don’t have to apologize,” Easton reassured him, “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

Marcus sidled beside them and hoisted Jacob up into a tight embrace, the little boy let out a surprised yelp, but he settled snugly into the hold of his father.

Behind them, the flying creature’s monstrous roar grew near as it flew across the park, letting out its blasting cold breath on the poor souls who still remained on the open field. Easton and the others ran off and hid behind a corner, waiting until the creature was gone.

“That thing is still busy on the Marina,” Marcus said.

“—And the giants, don’t forget. They’re in the city now,” Connor whispered fearfully.

“Right. Well, there are those things, too. But we can’t run forever. We need to find a safe place to hunker down and plan our next move.”

“Military’s out?” Easton asked.

“The army is definitely out on top of the Presidio. Too open and vulnerable from above, hell, it might have taken them out already. They might move somewhere else, but we can’t sit around and speculate where they might go and head there.”

“Dad’s house is not too far away from here,” Easton said. “It might be where they’re going? He’s got a basement underneath, probably safe to stay low.”

Easton tried to gauge the distance of where they were now. He scanned for the street sign and found out they were on Broderick Street. His father’s house would be at least twenty blocks down and ten blocks west if they followed the road. He could picture the house now, nestled at the foot of the hill, hidden next to a park and the large linden tree out front — a safe haven out of prying eyes.

Marcus nodded, closed his eyes, and allowed himself a brief moment to think it through. “Alright. Andy’s house then.”

Marcus slowly peeked out of the corner, looking around for any signs of the creature. When the coast was clear, he gestured for the others to start running, and Easton darted out down Broderick Street, joined the rest of humanity running for their lives, told himself repeatedly not to look back even when the urge was greater than he could muster the strength to fight it off.

Easton let his pace bleed profusely into a wild sprint.

One boy, no older than eight, stumbled next to him, his father picked him right off the floor and continued running, straining against the boy’s weight. Another man down the road tried to start a vehicle, but Easton doubted he would be able to use it when the streets were filled with debris and with people. They came upon a sloped road that went downhill, and Easton saw thousands of people heading toward the same direction, deeper into the city’s interior, all streaming through the way like the current of a river under a rainy day.

The giants’ screeches and wails rumbled from behind, and for that, he was thankful to realize that they grew fainter the further he went down the road. With those abominable creatures invading the city, they would have no choice but to find somewhere else safe after they reached the house.

The city was lost. Gone. Easton didn’t believe the military could save it. Who could fight off that thing when it could kill you with a single breath? Not even bullets could kill those giants.

It was then Easton felt a sickly weight settled deep in his guts, a nauseating dread that overwhelmed his entire body.

They have to leave the city.

Out and into the woods.

Easton didn’t know which one was worse: Stay and be eaten or frozen to death, or step into the unknown and leave your fate to whatever lived in the woods with death lingering a step behind.

Easton shuddered, focused his attention on the city streets.

Fifteen more blocks, he thought.

But don’t you dare look back, Easton.

Don’t fucking look back.