My name’s Alyssa McGuire. And I am scared.

It’s been a week since everything started falling apart. I was at the University of Illinois at Chicago when it started. People doing weird things, like throwing fireballs, or the poor woman who couldn’t stop crying, except when she cried water would start acting weird around her.

I got out of there as quick as I could. As I left, the city had been put under some form of martial law, but I needed to get out. I had no idea how my family would react to this. And family seems like a good place to start trying to figure it all out.

Unfortunately for me, while our regular house was in Illinois, my dad spent the summer up in Michigan. Mackinaw Island to be exact. Which is how I ended up running north. I would have taken my car, but none of them were working. My car, my friend’s cars. None of them.

If it was just mine, I would have taken the time to try and get it fixed. Since it was all of our vehicles, I started walking. I figured it was something to do with all the weirdness.

I started the trip with a couple of friends. Alex, Mary, and Jeanette. Alex invited his brother Mark to come as well, but Mark wanted to stay and try to figure things out with his girlfriend, Ashley. So we started making our way out of Chicago and into Michigan.

Alex and Jeanette separated from us in Grand Rapids. Both of them were from there, and had chosen to go to college in Illinois to get away from home. As my dad used to tell me, “Far enough away that it isn’t convenient to visit, close enough that visiting is still possible.”

Mary and I kept going north. Mary was actually Canadian, and her mother lived in Sault St. Marie. We agreed that we’d see my family first, then head up to Sault St. Marie to get her mom and head back south. Figure everything else out after that.

The only problem was when we got to the Roscommon Forest Area.

It used to be a pretty nice park. Unfortunately, that was what it used to be. We noticed that as we got closer to the park, strange ice began to show up. It was black, and nasty looking. Sharp, jagged edges all over, and it didn’t act like normal snow or ice. It was fall, but it wasn’t quite cold enough for ice yet, but this stuff didn’t care, it wouldn’t melt and just stayed there.

We kept moving north, but when we hit the town of Houghton Lake, we knew something was wrong.

First of all, something had obviously come out of the lake. The waterfront area of the town looked like the aftermath of a Godzilla movie. And all over the place was that black ice.

We didn’t see anyone around the town, which was our second clue that something was seriously wrong, but we didn’t have the time to stop and look for anyone. We kept moving north.

But we stayed a bit farther away from any source of water. We didn’t know what was living in them.

*****

It took us almost a month to get all the way through the lower peninsula of Michigan. My dad normally went to Mackinac from Mackinaw City. It was an easy trip that I remembered making hundreds of times in my youth.

But as we approached Mackinaw City we began to see the problems.

First was the monsters. We had started encountering them after we left Houghton Lake. Most of them were strange wolves that didn’t act like wolves. We figured they were monsters when we saw a couple of them had those strange black ice bits on their backs. Just judging by that, whatever came out of the lake must have been truly monstrous, because these guys only had two to four of the icicles sticking out of their backs, normally making it look like the wolves had some kind of creepy mane.

Those were the easy ones to kill. I’d hunted before, as had Mary. We found her a gun, an older double barreled shotgun, at a general store in one of the small towns that was deserted on our way north. I had a bow, just a compound one that I picked up at the same store. We had seen the wolves earlier, but they hadn’t attacked us yet.

Once we were armed it wasn’t long after that the wolves attacked.

However, the monsters that would sometimes be with the wolves were more terrifying. Goblins. My little brother had always been more interested in videogames than hunting and such, much to my parent’s dismay. However, I remember from watching him play one of his games that goblins were a weak monster that people normally fought in the lower levels.

Except now they were here, working with twisted ice wolves to try and kill us.

And then there was the Thing. We hadn’t seen it yet, just the aftermath of what it had done. We stumbled across an entire family that had been impaled by meter long ice spikes, and the entire area they were at had the same. One of them, probably the dad from what we could tell of the aftermath, had served as somethings lunch.

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Neither of us felt like eating after that. That was in Trowbridge, almost forty miles away from where we were going.

*****

After that we decided to pick up more supplies. Traps, ammunition, everything we could carry that wouldn’t slow us down. I ended up having almost sixty arrows between three quivers. Still wasn’t sure it would help us if we ran into the Thing.

We kept moving though. Straight up through Indian River. That was another town that had clearly seen better days, though we did find some survivors. They were hiding in what used to be the Police Station. It was barricaded fairly heavily, and had more of those meter long ice spikes all over it, like the Thing had attacked and decided it wasn’t worth it.

That’s where we found out what the Thing was.

We met with the local Police chief. He wasn’t surprised that the entire world seemed to have gone crazy. He was a little surprised that we had walked all the way from Chicago. But it was his son that surprised us, running in saying, “Dad, I figured it out! That monster was almost straight from dungeons and dragons!”

He’s holding a book that says on its cover ‘Monster Manual’. I knew of D&D, but hadn’t ever really played, nor had the desire to. But he opens the book up to a page, and there is this creature portrayed on it.

“See,” he tells his father, “The only difference is the one that attacked us was all blue, and had ice instead of just normal spikes. But it’s a Manticore!”

The police chief nods his head, sighing a bit, “What does the book say about the creatures?”

“Hmmm,” the kid says, clearly thrilled to have figured out the mystery, “Well, they’re pack animals. They normally travel in some kind of pack. The monster manual says they are Evil Predators. They are sort of smart, they can talk and stuff. But according to this, they aren’t that smart. More minion than anything. Since the one that attacked us didn’t say anything, I imagine that it might not know our language yet, or something. It also didn’t fly, though it had those wings. Maybe it evolved from something in the area?”

I look at Mary. “It may have evolved from something, but it would have been a lion or something in that case. And I think there is something even bigger that it might be working for. Houghton is gone, something came out of the lake down there and wiped out the town.”

The police chiefs face pales as I tell him that.

“We’re going to have to evacuate.”

We stayed for another night, as the survivors that were here gathered what they could. They would be heading south, while we continued on our way North.

Now that we knew the Thing was a Manticore, we doubled our speed. We weren’t sure if it was actually capable of flight yet, but we had to reach Mackinaw City as fast as possible.

Unfortunately for us, we wouldn’t get there in one piece.

*****

It was a rest area that was labeled the Hebron I-75 South Bound Rest area. We had stopped for the night, barricading ourselves in the female restroom. Was the safest bet for us, and we had already smashed open the vending machines to get some additional food to go with the rabbits I had snared earlier in the evening.

That’s when we heard it.

“Come out, come out, come out little birdies.” A cold, sinister voice seemed to whisper through the wind. We looked at each other quickly, and then grabbed our weapons. I had set up some other traps in our area, including a couple of bear traps that I could only hope the Thing would step in.

“Just come out and join me for my dinner. It won’t hurt. Much,” the bastard chuckles. I can see him now. He’s got the face of a man, the body of a lion, and a strange scorpion like tail, except it has a bunch of icicles growing out of it instead of the normal stinger.

He’s also got a pair of wings that are simple massive.

I put an arrow on my string, and fire it directly at his throat. Unfortunately, he uses his tail to swipe it out of the air.

But fortunately, Mary chose that exact moment to fire with her gun. The shotgun slug rips into the tail, as the beast roars in pain. Both of us quickly duck back down behind the counter we’re using for cover.

“Little birds, you will regret that!” he continues to roar, before suddenly there are ice spikes all around us. None of them hit me, and I put another arrow to my string, before standing and firing it at his face.

I duck back down, and carefully peek over the counter. Then I smile. My arrow got lodged in his throat. It’s clearly not enough to kill him, but it is awkward enough that he can’t speak now. He glares at the counter we’re hiding behind, and tries to charge.

Thankfully, he’s a big bastard, and the area we’re in is pretty small. Also, he’s clearly not strong enough to actually destroy the building with a single slam like that.

I notch another arrow to my string, and shoot him in the face again. He’s really mad now, and when he steps back a little more, he isn’t paying attention.

With a snap, the bear trap that was behind him shuts on his hind paw. I think I hear an additional snap, the sound of breaking bones, but I can’t be sure. The monster starts flailing around, launching spikes of ice in every direction. I lay flat against the ground, to hopefully avoid the spikes, when I look over at Mary.

And realize why I never heard her fire a second shot. She has one of the meter long ice spikes through her chest. I gasp, in shock and horror. Her eyes are already glassy, and she is slumped over, almost looking like she’s just sleeping.

At that moment, my anger reaches out and grabs a hold of me. This bastard just killed my friend. I want to make him just as dead.

I pry the gun out of Mary’s fingers, quickly reloading it with the two shells that she had been trying to load when the spike hit her. I’ve used guns before, though I normally stick with the bow. The beast is done flailing about, as I stand up and walk out from behind the counter. At this point, I don’t care if it kills me, as long as I’m able to kill it as well.

He looks at me and says, “Human, free me from your accursed trap and I will serve you. Just free me first!”

I glare at him, as I put the gun to his head. He looks at me with disbelief. And then I pull the trigger.

*****

I take three days to bury Mary’s body and mourn. I burn the corpse of the Manticore, taking all the lighter fluid and dry brush I could find in the area to serve as kindling. And then I continue on my way North. Without Mary, I won’t go to Sault St. Marie. I didn’t know her family, and I have no idea on how to find them either.

The rest of the walk up to Mackinaw City is uneventful. Nothing attacks me, and I just walk along the highway until I see the city, and the bridge.

Then I pause in horror as I notice that the bridge is destroyed. Something ripped straight through it. I look over, to where I could normally see in the distance, Mackinac Island.

But it is gone as well.