Oh God…

The pink bunny charged after us, and we raced for all we had down the street, and take a hard left past the house where Jesse's minions were squatting.

The house had a good, unobscured stretch of side yard that led to a back alley that also went straight.

The bunny roared again, but I couldn’t hear its footsteps.

Teddy zagged left again, this time going down the street, and then swerving back into another side yard.

This one has a gated wooden fence, but we all ended up hurtling over it. Well, except me. I barreled right through the bottom of it, smashing through the Wood like a little armored tank.

“Did you see the numbers on that thing?” Teddy said as we ran, sounding excited and breathless.

“No,” I said. I hadn't thought to pull up my interface box to check it out. I just took it for granted that such a creature would be kind of hard to kill.

“Yeah,” said Ellie, and she zagged us again, this time to the right, and then across the intersection. “I'm pretty sure it said Bunny Monster level 666.”

“That's what I saw,” Wood said, not sounding a bit out of breath.

We tore down another back alley, and then went right, hot footing it past an above-ground pool.

Something inside the pool stirred, making the water slosh, and a couple pool noodles got thrown out of the pool with a splash of rancid water.

Ellie put on the brakes, and turned around to run the other way. “Wrong way!” she hollered.

before we can see whatever the heck is trying to get out of the pool, we run back to the alleyway that let us here, and turn to go straight towards the end of the alley, away from where we came from.

I kind of forgot that Oz was with us when he said, “Maybe we should split up.”

“What?” Teddy said, sounding pissy.

“We don't have to beat this thing,” Oz said. “All we have to do is stay away from it. Evade it.”

That was a good idea.

But I didn't get to say so.

With a reptilian roar, the damn pink bunny thing flew out from some bushes and grabbed a hold of Wood's arm with its very toothy face.

Wood and the bunny thing skidded to a halt, rolling over each other and to a stop in the gravel of the alley.

Wood called out in pain, and everybody stopped, running back to help him.

The damn thing had Wood by the arm, and even though Wood was bashing it with his other fist, it just kept chomping on his arm.

There is so much blood already, splattering out of the monster's mouth with every chomp.

I pulled my frying pan out of my inventory, and ran right over and smashed the damn thing as hard as I could over the head.

Okay, it wasn't the smartest move, and if I had thought about it I would know that nothing I had would even phase a creature with such a high level. Especially not a frying pan.

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Heedlessly, I ran toward him, and my frying pan started to glow with a golden light.

I wasn't thinking, so I just went ahead and bashed the damn bunny monster thing in the head with it.

It made one hell of a bang. I mean, kind of like that sound you hear when Thor’s enchanted hammer, Mjolnir, strikes something in the Marvel movies.

As I pulled away, I saw that the top of the bunny's head was dented in, and his ears were splayed sideways as if they were broken.

For a heartbeat I looked at my frying pan, as its golden light dimmed to nothing, and then back at the murderous pink bunny monster.

Its jaws released Wood's arm, as if spitting him out, and then it turned and glared at me. Its skull seemed to re-inflate where I had dented it in, and its ears whipped to and fro on top of its head.

It screeched, making an even higher pitched roar.

Okay, I guess that meant I was it now.

So I turned, looked square at Teddy and said, “Don’t follow me.” And then I started to run off down the alley towards the street.

I ran straight down the alley, across the street and straight down into another alley. Not that I’m super speedy, but I run straight faster than I can run in a zigzag.

But I also realized that the thing behind me was not only way bigger, but faster than me, so when I heard it starting to catch up with me on the gravel alley, I veered right, and past someone's makeshift greenhouse. All the glass was broken out, and I could swear some of the vines growing out of it tried to surge towards me. But I ran past them all the same.

As soon as I got to the front yard of that house, I zagged left, and ran down two or three front lawns, until I saw a side yard opening without a fence.

I turned down into that yard, I saw the pink bunny monster flash past where I'd turned. It skidded to a stop, and then started charging straight for me again.

Shit, fuck, damn!

I wasn't going to–

And that's when it tackled me, slamming me to the ground, making my face grind into the grass of the yard, and then its jaws latched on to me.

At first it didn't really hurt, but as it put more and more pressure on my terracotta head, I started to feel like I was about to crack.

I was getting sick of things almost making me crack into pieces.

I still had my frying pan in my hand, and though it wasn't glowing, I still flipped it back and smacked the thing in the head.

It didn't have near the affected did last time. If anything, it just made the bunny-beast grind its teeth against me even harder.

While it still had its jaws wrapped around my head, it lifted me up and started to shake me like a dog with a ragdoll.

I dropped my frying pan, I heard myself crying out as it shook me harder and harder. Its teeth dug into my terracotta head harder and harder.

And then came a hard bang sound. I could have sworn I saw that golden light again, too. But I was flying across the yard, apparently free of the bunny monsters toothy grip.

I landed in the soft branches of an azalea bush, and then fell to the ground with a dull thud. As I shook my head, I could swear I heard the terracotta of my body crackle.

That was way too close.

Suddenly something grabs a hold of me, and my face is pressed into something covered in Black material, so I can't see.

I struggle, sure that the bunny monster has gotten hold of me again.

“Stop wriggling around,” Oz said, and I feel him dart to the left.

Oh, Oz has me.

Relief floods me. But also, I feel a little… irritated. Part of me is still pissed at him for stealing Ellie away from me.

And yes, I know that’s not what really happened, but…

He flipped me up and around so that I could see where we were going.

I screamed.

We were on the roof of a house, and he’s sprinting straight toward the edge of the roof.

We're going to die!

That's what I thought as he jumped off the roof, and then effortlessly landed on the ground, barely slowing down as he sprinted down the street and toward the edge of town.

All I can think is, how is Oz going this fast?

And then, duh, he's a freaking vampire. Probably a freaking Twilight vampire at that.

I remembered Edward Cullen, with Bella hanging on to his back, and zipping through the forests of Forks, Washington.

That douchebag had called Bella his little spider monkey.

“You really are a Twilight vampire!” I screamed as we raced toward the road leading out of town.

I heard Oz sigh. “This isn't the time for you to try to piss me off, gnome boy.”

I laughed, and I couldn’t believe what things looked like when you're racing past them at Mach speed. “There's always time for me to piss you off, dude.”

This made him laugh.

We get to the state highway patrol barracks, and stop, turning back towards town.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He sniffed the air, turning his head slowly left to right. His eyes were glowing green.

“I’m seeing if the damn lop-eared thing is still following us.”

Oh…

I started counting backwards from ten. I didn’t hear the thing charging after us. And I didn’t hear it roaring its nasty roar.

“If it's not still coming after us,” I said, not wanting to say what I was thinking.

“Then it's gone after them,” Oz finished for me.

Fuck…