When morning came, we packed up everything we had and prepared ourselves mentally to head out again.

"The convenience store is really close," Jared said as he put his hand on the front door, "Just stick near each other and be sure to speak up if you feel something's off. Better to be safe than sorry..."

He opened the door, revealing two massive glowing red eyes. A shadowy owl-like shape blocked the entirety of the doorway.

On an impulse, Jared screamed wildly and leapt forward with the knife poised, swinging it down on the thing. The thing moved back as if it were jumping backwards but... it didn't look like it had physically moved, it looked more like the thing's shadowy form wisped and faded away to its new location. An afterimage of its form remained behind for an instant when it moved, like when you shut off a light and you can still see the outline for a second in the dark.

Again and again, Jared swung wildly at the thing, and I joined him. Again and again, it calmly faded away. Aaron and Sarah stood back, stupefied. Jared stopped to catch his breath, while I slipped and nearly fell on the wet asphalt. The thing flew a few feet off the ground, looking at us with its saucer-like red lights that were its eyes, turned midair, flapped its wings and flew away again.

As we watched its shadow-like form glide through the rain and into the darkness above, I felt a sense of unease at the pit of my stomach.

That last look it gave us...

I could have just been imagining things, but it almost looked like it was pitying us.

"Bastard... what the hell..." Jared muttered.

"Hey, what's this...?" Sarah pointed to the street to the right of the house.

There was an imprint in the asphalt, and I came closer to inspect it.

"Shit..." Jared said over my shoulder as he looked down on it.

It looked like animal tracks, maybe belonging to a canine or something, but... it was dug deep into the road, and whatever had made the trail was huge with equally huge claws.

Uneasily, we all looked around, expecting whatever had made the trail to be right behind us. Luckily, the trail looked like it went the opposite direction that we were going to be heading, leading straight to an apartment building and climbing directly up the wall.

If that thing found us... I looked down at my pitiful knife... we would be ripe for the taking...

Without another word, we got in the van.

The convenience store was only about a two minute drive away. After our encounter with the owl-thing, not to mention what had happened the day before, we were all on edge. Each of us kept watch on a different direction of the van.

There was no sign of that camera-headed thing anywhere. I still didn't even want to think about that.

In the end, we made it to the store undisturbed.

Unfortunately, the store had been ransacked, probably a long time ago. Most of the windows in the front had been smashed, one of the doors was missing completely. When we went in, most of the shelves were completely empty. There was a few cans of food lying around, and a few bags of "Bug Bites!", but only a few. I wasn't thrilled about those, but food was food and I wasn't used to complaining. We scrounged up enough food total to last us probably another day or two. There was a decent amount of non-essential things lying around though, like cleaning supplies and stuff. Nothing we could really use. Luckily, there were still some maps. We took one, looked for Arthur Street and found that it was less than twenty minutes away assuming we didn't run into any issues.

"Do you think we should look in the houses near here for food?" Sarah asked.

"It wouldn't hurt to try," Jared said, grabbing a can of oil and gas, "May as well take these, just in case."

I saw Sarah staring at a broom that was lying on the floor.

"What's up, Sarah?" I asked her.

"I was thinking... what if we attach the knives to the end of brooms or something long?"

"Hey, that's an awesome idea!" Jared said, "I saw some duct tape in the janitor's closet, if we attach the knives tightly enough we can use them as spears."

"Yeah," I said, "still not the best weapon but it's way better having something that will actually be able to reach a good distance."

We got to work, finding the sturdiest brooms we could find, removing the end from them and taping the knives securely to the end.

As soon as the first one was ready, I took it and stood guard near the entrance of the store, staring out through the endless rain at the apartments on the other side. Most of the buildings around there had been pretty badly damaged. The one just across from us was basically torn in half, and as far as I could see every other building at least had a few smashed windows or chunks torn out of it.

Aaron was the next one over, and I couldn't help but stare a little wide eyed as I saw him holding that makeshift spear, his clothes torn and splattered with dirt. He looked like a savage. I turned to Sarah and Jared, who appeared equally as rough, and I knew I looked the same.

With a slight shiver, I unconsciously reached my hand out and patted Aaron on the head. Sure, times were really rough before... but I never imagined my son would have to go through something like this.

"How you holding up buddy?" I asked Aaron, my voice quivering a little.

His eyes lit up a bit, though I could tell he was scared, "I'm alright... I'm just glad we're finally going to find more people. We're going to beat these things, right?"

"I hope so buddy... I hope so."

The two of us stood side by side, staring out into the rain for a moment.

"Okay, that should do it!" I heard Jared say, and the three of them picked up what they had gathered and walked over to me. We took one last glance inside the store, then went to go out but stopped before the door when we heard and felt a light rumbling coming from outside, to our right.

We froze, listening for it and heard it again, louder this time. Then, it repeatedly increased in rhythm as it came closer and closer... something big was running towards the street in front of us.

"Shit! Hide!" Jared tried to whisper but ended up shouting.

We all went behind the nearest aisles, Jared and Sarah on the left and Aaron and I on the right. We peered from behind them, trying to see whatever was coming.