I took Aaron's hand and I gazed ahead at the swaying trees, remembering there was dozens of skeletons not even thirty feet behind us, "Come on, the faster we find shelter, the better."

We started to move, "How far away are we from the city?" Aaron asked.

I shook my head, "I don't know... By now, we should be by some houses but..."

After what had just happened, I didn't know if avoiding the city would make any difference...

We started walking again. As the howling wind swayed the trees, they made a scratching noise as they scraped against each other. A soft crunch came from a few meters behind us.

Reflexively, I glanced to the source of the noise and saw... a deer standing in between the trees.

Huh? That's weird, this was the first animal I had seen since the beginning of the storm. It was a pretty big buck, with the largest antlers I had ever seen on a deer. Then again, I'd only seen a male deer in photos or illustrations, not in person, so I really couldn't be sure. It stared at us, eyes wide in surprise.

"Look at that Aaron," I said, pointing at the buck, "That's a deer."

Aaron turned around, and so did Jared, to see what I was pointing at. Hmm, maybe we could shoot the thing and use it for food... but it would be annoying lugging it around while we looked for a relatively safe shelter. Aaron looked at it in wonder, but then I was surprised to see his expression change into one of terror.

"What's that in its horns?" he asked.

I looked more closely, I couldn't see that well when I had first looked, but now I could make out the outline of something in its right antler.

It was a skeleton. One of the skeletons that had appeared after we killed the fairies.

And just when I made that realization, I made another that brought on a new wave of terror. There was something weird about the shape of its antlers... they didn't look like the pictures I had seen. They actually looked more like... hands. Huge human-like hands extending from its skull.

That is what they were. The damn thing had human hands coming from its head, and it was tightly gripping the skeleton in its right "hand" to the point where it was starting to crack. I noticed that the deer was also incredibly emaciated. It looked like it was beyond the point of starvation.

Aaron and I both screamed, the deer's eyes widened further and it threw the skeleton to the ground with violent force. I heard the bones crack and snap as they made impact with the ground.

The deer lowered its head and opened its mouth, revealing a set of sharpened teeth that looked completely out of place. Its mouth kept stretching... wider and wider... wider and wider. A sickening sloppy cracking noise filled the air as its mouth continued to grow to comical proportions. But there was nothing funny about it. It didn't stop stretching until it extended all the way to the ground. A slimy slithering thing, its tongue, emerged from the cavernous gap that was its mouth... and it swallowed all the bones whole. Its mouth slowly closed as the bones' outline made its way down its neck.

Jared no longer hesitated: he fired the gun and as he did a flash of light came from the deer's forehead. With an expression of absolute shock, I noticed that the pellets from the shotgun were suspended in the air in front of the deer, as if they had been frozen in place. A glow came from a third eye that had opened on its forehead, which glared at Jared with a menacing intelligence that its other passive eyes lacked. Then, so quickly that I barely even saw it happen, the deer's mouth snapped wide open and it ate all of the pellets whole.

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Its two normal eyes turned to look at Aaron, a strange expression of sheer panic in them, like a deer caught in headlights. I heard it stomp its feet behind us as I grabbed Aaron by the arm and started to sprint so fast I was practically dragging him behind me. Jared was right at my side.

A scream nearly escaped my throat, but I held it in. Screaming would only make me lose my breath. And I needed it. I needed everything I had to run.

It was coming. I heard it shuffling through the trees behind us. Would we be able to outrun it?

We had to... we had to! Run! That word became my being as we dashed through the forest: RUN! The branches smacked into my body, a few times scraping and cutting my skin, but I ignore the pain. That was nothing compared to what would happen if that thing caught up with us. We couldn't fight it. It had opened its gaping mouth so quickly, if we even got close to it... it would instantly swallow us whole. RUN! I was practically tripping with every step I took and with every rustling noise I heard I would increase my pace even further in a fit of panic. I was so focused on running, that I didn't even notice immediately that we had ran out of the forest and onto the street. Confused, I wildly spun around, expecting to see that deer somewhere. I just saw Jared, completely out of breath coming out of the trees onto the street.

Aaron's labored breathing fully snapped me back to reality, and I realized just how much I had exerted myself. By now, it must have been pretty late too. Add that on top of all the running we did and it was a wonder we hadn't collapsed by now. My breathing was so haggard and my throat so dry that it felt like there was a razor blade stuck inside of it.

Exactly how far had we ran?

I nearly collapsed as I reached in my bag for the water we had packed. Shit! The crowbar wasn't attached to the bag anymore... it must have fallen somewhere when we were running... shit!

Aaron slumped onto the ground and I handed him a bottle as I emptied mine.

"I... I think..." Jared started between ragged breaths, "I think we outran it!" I tossed him a bottle too as I took in our surroundings; we were standing on a paved street. There was a sidewalk and street lamps (none of which were on), driveways and parking lots all around and fences around the properties, but...

Goosebumps covered my body. The foundations of the houses and apartments were there... but there were no actual buildings.

It looked like they had been torn off the ground and taken somewhere else, or something...

"What the hell was that thing..." Jared said as he finished drinking, "And what the hell happened here?"

I looked down at Aaron heaving with heavy breaths on the ground, beyond tired.

"Who knows..." I had finally regained my normal breathing rhythm, but the exhaustion was getting to the point of being overwhelming, we had barely slept the past few days and after all that... I think I really would collapse if we went on for much longer, "But we better find a place where we can rest soon. If we run into another thing like that," I shuddered again at the recollection of the deer-thing's gaping maw, "...I don't know if we'll be able to outrun it or fight back anymore."

Aaron muttered, "Dad... I'm really tired..."

Jared nodded, "Yeah, we need to look around here. There's got to be some place we can rest, just for what remains of the night..."

But where? The only thing I could see were the tightly squeezed together fenced-in lots where buildings had once been, and empty parking lots.

Aaron spoke up, "The buildings might be gone... but what if they still have basements?"

I almost smiled, "Well, there's no reason not to check I guess. Let's go."

The three of us walked onto the nearest driveway, and I flicked on the flashlight, illuminating what was left of the concrete foundation and wooden floor. What the hell... it looked like the house had been removed cleanly and neatly, there was no debris or anything left behind.

"There!" Aaron pointed to a hole that led to a set of stairs. We moved across the foundation and I pointed the flashlight into the hole. There was a basement!

"I'll go ahead with the gun," Jared said, taking the first step down the stairs. I followed right after him with Aaron, shining the flashlight to guide our way.

The basement wasn't that big, it was more like a tiny cellar and it was completely devoid of any furniture or anything else, just an empty room with a concrete floor.

Jared yawned, "This'll do... we can tear apart the fence and use it to barricade ourselves in."

"Good idea." I said.

After we had finished making the barricade, we used our bags as pillows and laid down. Jared decided to be the first one to stay up on watch. He sat facing the barricaded stairs, while Aaron and I slept in the corner of the basement.

There was so much to talk about, so many things we had seen and experienced that day that brought on innumerable questions and apprehensions. But we were so tired, that the only thing on our mind was sleep. Aaron snuggled up close to me. And it was a close call today too. So many close calls. The concrete floor was not comfortable by any means, but we had exerted ourselves so much and had such little sleep in the past few days that it didn't take very long to fall asleep.