The streets had gone eerily quiet. No doubt news stations had begun reporting what had happened at the campus, putting the town on high alert.

People were prepared for a disturbed man like Casper but had no idea what twisted threats prowled the night. Maddie and Adam retraced the path they had taken from the college, passing by abandoned looking storefronts.

"Looks like the whole town's on lockdown." Adam commented, looking around.

"Good." Maddie responded, "The less people wandering the streets, the better." It was almost uneasy seeing the town in such a state, so void of life, so unnaturally quiet. They walked the sidewalk in silence as the cool breeze grew bitterly cold.

A faint clicking snapped Maddie out of her empty stare, causing her to look up ahead of her once more. As she blinked back to reality, she made out movement ahead of them. Something moving towards them as they moved towards it.

She slowed her pace a bit, which caught Adam's attention. He too slowed his speed, glancing questioningly at Maddie before looking ahead to locate the source of her focus. The movement drew closer to them, a shape made out in the shadows cast by the line of buildings.

Merely a pedestrian, silhouette made obscure by the black, western style hat tipped towards them, the person watching the ground as they ambled carelessly. As they got closer and stepped into the dim moonlight, details about them became clear.

It was in fact a she, an alluring figure attempting to hide under a charcoal blue leather jacket left only partially open. She looked up at them as she approached them, revealing an equally captivating half smile and bright hazel eyes like beacons in the cold night.

"Excuse me," Maddie spoke up, "You've got to get inside, as fast as possible."

"So I've heard. Heading there now actually." the stranger responded.

"Might want to pick up the pace, a lot's going on out here lately." Adam added, "It's not safe out on the streets." Her eyes moved to him, searching him up and down briefly.

"Thanks for caring." she finally replied, flashing him a slight smile as she moved around them. They watched her walk away for a few moments before continuing on themselves.

The woman continued down the sidewalk for a while, getting to the right building and stopping. She glanced back, ensuring the two hadn't been watching her before entering the building. It was a smaller empty lot, only lit by a single LED lantern place on the floor.

"Guess it's time to move camp." she mumbled softly, making her way to the center of the room and picking up the lantern.

She held it up as she turned and moved towards the far wall. Dried blood painted half the dusty old wall, a fresh corpse laying in the corner with a small pool of crimson gathering under the slashes on his wrist. T

he woman clicked the lantern off, dropping it lazily next to the corpse and moving towards the rear exit. As she left, she picked up the one thing of value to her in the room, an unusually macabre lavender pink suit head.

----------------------------------------

Up the road, Maddie and Adam continued until dim headlights caught their sight. A battered old truck was heading their way, pulling up alongside them. Colby jumped out of the bed and caught his two friends in a brief, open armed hug, Emma practically falling out of the vehicle to join the group hug as Jess and Drake rounded the truck to join them.

A moment of relief, safety among friends, that lingered as long as possible before the group broke and stepped back into their dire reality.

"What the hell happened?" Maddie questioned, noticing the damaged state of the truck.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Our fuzzy friend decided to pop in." Drake answered, "Nearly forced us off the road, then followed us all the way to the store we stopped at."

"What, was she getting hungry?" Adam jokingly asked.

"Must have been. She snacked on the clerk then grabbed a Hershey and dashed." Colby responded.

"Jesus..." Maddie murmured, glancing to Emma and noticing the makeshift bandaging, "Emma, are you doing ok?"

"I'm fine, it's not as bad as it looks." Emma replied confidently.

"No, it's not. It's way worse." Jess added.

"Did you get her to the Hospital?" Maddie questioned, already figuring she knew the answer.

"On the way there." Colby responded, "Hop in." He helped Emma climb into the passenger's seat before reclaiming the driver's seat for himself. Maddie and Jess assisted Drake into the crew cab as Adam volunteered to ride in the bed.

"Guys, it's not that bad." Emma insisted, "I'm not leaving this thing roaming the town just because of a little bite."

"She has a point." Drake jumped in, "I mean that bite's not very little, but it shouldn't take us all out of play. I don't see anyone else figuring out what to do with Miss Claws and Teeth."

"He's right, we're it right now. We can't just sit around hoping someone else will step in." Maddie responded.

"Let's just get Emma taken care of," Jess spoke up, "And then we figure out how to kill this bitch."

Shel sat in the middle of her bed, gazing at her laptop screen. After Sam had explained what he'd seen that night, she was understandably a bit skeptical at first. A story of some fictional creature being real was, in itself, hard to believe.

Said creature suddenly appearing in a crowded campus and subsequently disappearing with only a small handful of witnesses sounded even more unlikely. Though Sam was thoroughly shaken, looking like he didn't even believe his own recounting of the night's events.

Adam was the first to mention a monster roaming about, and Maddie was visually anxious about something. If it were only Sam spinning a tale like this, she might have brushed it off much easier.

But to have the other two react as they had made it difficult to dismiss completely. She had found reports of the campus event, reading through the articles that had already been written and posted online.

The reports all talked of animalistic violence in the attacks and evidence suggestive of imposing physical power that no human could even come close to, stating the death toll was estimated to be close to 63.

Accompanying the articles were several sketches, explained to have been the result of eyewitness accounts. Each one was almost the exact same, despite being from various testimonies.

Even more so, the sketches matched up with Sam's own description of the mysterious creature. She studied the sketches, struggling to imagine something like this creature truly existing.

Sam sat in a desk chair at the foot of her bed, slowly turning back and forth in a feeble attempt at soothing his still racing mind. A soft sound from outside drew his focus to the window. He slowly got up and pushed the curtain aside, straining to see in the dark night.

"What is it?" Shel questioned, stepping up next to him.

"Thought I heard something." He mumbled quietly. Suddenly a large area became spontaneously well lit. Motion triggered lights had been activated, revealing the backyard of the neighboring house.

The Sergal was hunched over the yard's large pool, her snout partly submerged as she gently lapped up the cool liquid, the fresh corpse floating a few feet from her creating a gradually expanding cloud of crimson beneath the surface.

As the light flickered on, she gazed around for its source, licking her lips and shaking her head briefly, much like a canine. In her search for the light source, her gaze passed over the window they watched her from.

"Don't move...maybe she won't see us..." Sam whispered, both of them locked in place. Syth growled softly, rising from her crouched position and covering most of the pool's length with two strides, the third becoming a lunge that easily cleared the fence separating the two properties.

"She sees us." Sam mumbled, pulling the curtain closed as they both backed away. For a few minutes, an uncanny silence took over the darkened home. Shel got out her phone rapidly typing until soft scratching became just barely audible.

It seemed to move, working its way up the side of the house. The sounds slowly moved above them, abruptly stopping. Sam and Shel watched as the hallway window was slowly forced open almost a full inch.

Long claws wedged themselves between the wood panels, bending the frame until the lock popped off with a sharp crack. Shel leapt from her bed and whipped the door closed, slowing the last few inches to silently click it shut.

She then backed away slowly, both she and Sam frozen in terror as footsteps settled heavily in the hallway. Soft growling breaths approached the door, Shel retreating to her bed and Sam stumbling backwards into the chair, falling back into his seat.

Everything paused for a few seconds, but his heart practically exploded out of his chest when he saw the doorknob twitch. Tortuously slowly, the knob creaked as it rotated bit by bit. Finally, with a click, the door drifted open, a haunting resemblance to Abby's voice hissing and croaking softly.

"....why.......hide........?"