"What... what do we do?!" I shouted.

Jared looked back, his eyes frantically glancing from creature to creature, "There's not much we can do except put the pedal to the metal and hope we don't get away from them... If one of them gets too close I'll try to shoot... but I wouldn't count on me being able to hit them, not with one arm, this rain and us moving like we are..."

I kept us moving forward as fast as we could go, but had to let off on the gas whenever it felt like we would lose control.

There was nothing else we could do. The road was straight, the place we had stayed at was probably the only house around for miles, all that was around us was flat empty plains and the occasional patch of bushes or trees. There were no side roads or anything to turn in. There was no way to shake them off. We just had to keep moving forward until they ran out of breath or something. But driving like this, barely being able to see with the smashed windshield, moving at a speed where a slip up would mean death... in a world that we had been isolated from for months, with who knows what else lurking around...

To say it was dangerous was an incredible understatement.

I glanced back in the rear-view mirror. They were still after us, keeping the same pace; they had neither gained on us nor fallen behind.

I wondered... were they capable of anything beyond what a natural beast was capable of? The sadist had been able to create meat puppets from the people it had killed. The Storm... well, it was causing this entire mess (though to what extent I couldn't be sure). What could these dogs do, if anything? Their entire behavior was incredibly off-putting and bizarre, obviously, but there was something particular about the way they acted that was unlike any wild beast. They had had so many chances to cause us harm, and yet, other than jumping onto the windshield, none of them had done anything else other than stare at us.

Their glowing eyes gazed back at me from the darkness behind us. Just what were they trying to do?

I felt my body shaking as the car started to hydroplane. Shit! I let off the gas, and just barely managed to haul us back into a straight line right before we swerved off the road.

"They're gaining on us!" Jared shouted next to me.

I pushed on the gas again, this time not going as fast as I was before. The roads were slippery out here, with all of the constant rain. Combine that with the low visibility and we couldn't afford to go very fast for long periods of time. I just felt grateful for the fact that the road wasn't completely flooded like it logically should be. That was the one thing I was grateful for in this nightmare reality.

My eyes kept rapidly darting between the road ahead of me, the rear-view mirror and now the digital clock in the car.

We kept driving through the night, but the dogs were relentless.

"Why are they still chasing us?" Aaron yelled out.

Fifteen minutes had passed since we had first driven away from the house. Fifteen minutes, but the dogs showed no signs of slowing down.

Twenty five minutes. Many of the things that had been after us on all fours had suddenly leaped up onto two legs and were sprinting after us like madmen.

There was nothing we could do to slow them down or stop them. We had to wear them out.

...If they could even get tired.

None of us spoke. The anticipation of only being able to wait and hope weighed heavily on us.

Thirty minutes had passed. Not one of the dogs had slowed even a little. A buried trauma resurfaced and I was reminded of nightmares I would have as a child. Being chased by a monster, running with all your might, when suddenly it felt like you were walking through molasses. Sometimes, the chase would never end... but most of the time it would end with the monster effortlessly overtaking me and I would wake up in a cold sweat screaming. As my eyes darted to the gas meter, I hoped that this living nightmare wouldn't end the same way.

Forty minutes.

We had driven forty minutes.

The turn-less road that only went straight ahead, combined with the identical scenery of bushes and empty fields that had once been farmland gave the impression that we weren't even moving at all. As I glanced at the unchanging sky, black as pitch, then back to the unceasing horde of hounds that chased after us without missing a beat, it almost felt like time had stopped. If it wasn't for the fact that I had been looking at the clock every few seconds, I'd think that that was actually the case.

The thing that unnerved me the most was their whole attitude while chasing us. You would expect them to be snarling and barking as they chased us like prey... but they kept completely calm and neutral expressions.

"Maybe I should try shooting one of them from here..." Jared mumbled,

"Yeah! Even if I don't hit one, maybe it'll scare them off or something..." He didn't sound very sure.

I didn't know what to think. The things showed no signs of slowing down. This couldn't go on for much longer, or we'd soon run out of gas. But what if trying to shoot them would only piss them off... shit!

"Do it..." I muttered, "By now, we have to be really close to the city... We can't afford to have them still after us once the road starts to twist and turn."

Jared nodded, his body trembling with anticipation. He took a deep breath, then leaned out the window, aimed the gun back at the advancing pack of creatures and pulled the trigger.

"Shit! I missed!" he cursed.

The things had not even reacted to the gunshot. They kept moving forward at the same pace.

"God damn it!" I shouted in rage, "What the hell do we do?!"