Page 14

Three.

Two.

One.

We hit the unlock button at the same time, and our cabin lights came to life, the locks popping up like gunshots in the silence of the night.

I ripped the driver’s door open, about to jump inside, when a shriek reverberated from one of the storefronts across the road.

“One must have stayed behind!” I yelled, jumping inside the truck to find Connor already in the passenger’s seat and Sarah sprawled out across the backseat.

I grabbed my handgun from under my seat and passed it back to her. “The bullets are at your feet!”

She grabbed for the ammo box as I jammed the key in the ignition.

Hunter signaled for me to go first as he started up his truck, Niall sitting shotgun.

I threw my truck in reverse and stepped on the gas, whipping backward out of my parking spot before shifting to drive.

Two creatures crawled out of a shop’s busted window, causing me to ease up on the gas for just a moment, so I could get a good look at them. Like a scene from a movie, their mangled jaws dripped neon-purple saliva, sliding sloppily down their chins.

“Make that two stayed behind!” Sarah’s hands shook as she tried to load the gun.

“What the fuck are those?” Connor yelled, jumping over the center console to help his fiancée.

My voice wavered. “I have no idea, but they aren’t from around here.”

“No shit!” Sarah cussed, gun ready in her hands.

Accelerating, my tires spun, turning onto the road, the speed more than my poor truck was used to. The truck had been my dad’s before he passed. A blood-red beater he’d kept in decent shape, but ran nothing like the brand-new pickup Hunter drove.

“We need to get them away from the bar,” I said, driving north toward base.

Sarah slid the rear window open and positioned the gun, readying for an attack. “No issues there. They’re thirty yards out heading straight for us.”

Hunter pulled onto the road behind us, putting himself between us and the creatures. His lifted black truck was a monster truck compared to mine.

The creatures’ rounded spines bounced up and down in the distance as they ran in a predator’s pursuit, their hind legs driving them forward.

I pressed the gas pedal down as far as it would go.

“We just have to make it a mile to the main gate,” Connor stated, reassuring himself. He opened his hand expectantly to Sarah, pressing the button to open the sunroof. “Give me the gun.”

She hesitated for only a moment, then turned the gun around and placed it in his hand.

Quickly looking left and right, I flew through a red light, while Connor stood on the center console, awkwardly bracing himself so he could stick his upper body out of the sunroof.

“Twenty yards out!” he shouted, motioning for me to pick up speed.

“I can’t go any faster! I’m coming up on pedestrians. Twelve o’clock!”

Up ahead, a small group of people stood in the middle of the road, not heeding the sirens’ advice to stay inside; instead, staring up at the sky, searching for a storm that wasn’t there.

I laid on my horn, trying to get their attention.

“Move!” Connor screamed, waving his arms. “Get inside. Now!”

“Ten yards out,” Sarah cried.