“Move!” David called to Jasmin in the front. “Let me drive!”

 

The large bear monster whose head towered over the wall had turned its head to the direction of the van the moment it smelled something familiar.  Its brown eyes narrowed and a look of outrage crossed its face as it smelled the prey who got away from it when it was attacked by the supreme being who lived near the walls filled with humans. Ever since it had progressed into the mid-tier, it could sense something to the northwest that was drawing it, but it refused to leave until it got the prey that got away.

 

“It is looking right at us!” Harry called.

 

“It is after me! We need to get back to the property!” David yelled as he began to move around Jasmin who was crawling over the top of him. 

 

They changed places and David quickly sat into the gray leather seat as he flipped a light switch that acted as the ignition. The magical engine turned over silently since it was not capable of revving up, and David looked in the mirror behind him to see the wall of electricity formed by the javelins. He threw the van into reverse and started backing up and used the trailer to knock them out of the ground. 

 

“Such a waste!” David complained loudly.

 

Without a way to deactivate them quickly, he could only leave them behind. He had to keep adjusting the trailer to avoid it jackknifing and stopping him from being able to drive away. It was loaded with the corpses of the monsters who died to the caltrops they had spread on the ground.

 

Most of the monsters cleared a path for the large bear who pushed down a section of the concrete wall as it began charging towards the van and trailer. The ground shook under its bulk and several monsters were flattened into paste under its bulky paws that were the size of small cars. It had grown even larger since it had hit the mid-tier, David was wondering if it would become high-tier if it was given more time.

 

David slammed the brakes and slid the trailer and van across the dirt lot outside of the concrete wall and avoided several large flatbed trucks that were used for collecting wreckage. He could hear several gasps and groans from the people in the back and used this as an encouragement to press the gas pedal down further. Dirt was flying as he had to keep turning the steering wheel left and right to keep the van and trailer from going out of control on the loose gravel lot.

 

“Harry! Knock out the pin for the trailer hitch!” David called into the back.

 

“Won’t that cause the trailer to come off?” Harry called to him.

 

“We have no choice! It’s slowing us down too much!” David called as he saw the three-legged bear continuing to gain on them. Ahead of them was a windy dirt road that led from the junkyard to a paved road that got onto the highway.

 

“Are we not going back to the house?” Harry called.

 

“We can’t, this monster won’t stop because it has entered another monster’s territory! If we go back to the house we will be taking it with us!” David called out, deciding to take a gamble. “We’re going to Castle Rock instead!”

 

Harry decided not to question it as he used his seat belt like a cord and slung it over his torso as he reached for the backdoor of the van and pulled the latch. Looking behind him he could see the massive bear that was foaming at the mouth as its fangs that were longer than his arm snapped at the air. He gulped down the saliva in his throat and questioned once again how humans were supposed to deal with monsters of this size without artillery. 

 

Feeling underneath the van he could feel the square metal connector and the pin that was pushed through the tow hitch. A piece of metal wire was clipped through the side of it to keep the hitch in place and he began attacking it with his fingers.

 

“David! I can’t get it! The pin is wedged against the housing and it is under too much pressure!” He yelled out as he cut his fingers on the metal wire.

 

David looked in the rearview mirror and he could see that the bear would soon be able to bite onto the trailer. He was worried that if it got ahold of them then it would never let them go, this was the thing he was most worried about. Looking forward he could see the first bend coming up and he was starting to feather the break.

 

“Harry! Here!” Jasmin called as she pulled a metal bar out of a bucket that was hooked on one end. It was a small crowbar that David had insisted on bringing with them in case they needed to pry open something.

 

“Thanks!” Harry called as he took the crowbar and began trying to use it to hammer out the wire clamp holding in the pin, he then turned it around and started prying at the clip trying to bend it off the pin. “Come on!”

 

“Hold on!” David called, as he started to step on the gas and speed up now that he decided what to do.

 

The bend was caused by a depression beside the road that was caused by runoff, they added a bend to avoid the road getting washed out. David lined up the vehicle carefully as he took a deep breath as the van became airborne after driving off the road. The corpses in the back of the trailer were lifted into the air and several of them came out the back of the trailer. 

 

“Billy! My tackle box!” Pandora screamed to the boy who was holding onto his armrest for dear life. 

 

A large plastic box was wiggled free from the elastic strap that held it against the wall and flew towards the boy wearing a beanie. This warning gave him the time necessary to bend and duck out of the way of it.

 

“Nooooooooo!” The cat screamed in anguish as it bounced off the back of his seat and made its way towards the rear of the van.

 

The latch had been knocked by the seat and had slipped open, causing the tackle box to start opening and for various lures to start flying through the air. Harry watched in horror with barely enough time to get his arms in front of his face before he was hit by the tackle box and the various contents. Something with a strong fishy smell assaulted his nostrils as a bunch of small red salmon eggs were spilled all over his armor.

 

Several fishing lures got stuck to the leather layer of his armor, but the sudden impact while in his awkward position in the back of the van caused him to lose his balance. He started falling back and barely managed to keep a hold of the crowbar as the seat belt suddenly jerked against his chest and stopped him from sliding from the van. The seat belt was looped around him and stretched to the top of the van from where the back seat had been removed to make room for the coolers. 

 

“Harry! Grab him!” David called, watching the scene from the rearview mirror. 

 

Lena, Jasmin, and Billy all reached for his dangling legs and gripped onto his armored ankles. Pandora on the other hand used her claws to secure into the leather layer of his armor and began crawling towards where the lures were stuck in his armor. She was focused on gathering them from his armor as everyone was yelling and screaming as they tried to drag Harry back into the van.

 

The van touched down on the loose dirt and the tires began spinning as they fought to get a grip, David was turning the wheel left and right, to keep it from sliding as the trailer also touched down and started causing the van to slide. Wrenching the wheel towards the slide to gain traction he tilted the wheel out of it to get the van and trailer to cut straight. For the first time in the chase, the bear monster was forced to slow down to avoid falling forward since it was missing a leg.

 

Harry was a lot calmer than he should have been as he was hanging half out of the van with several people and a cat hanging onto him. Reaching over with his free arm he wrapped it around the hitch of the trailer and began using the pry bar to dig at the wire that was holding on the pin.  The trailer was sliding and the vehicle was shaking, but his grip on the trailer was firm as he held on for dear life.

 

Finally getting the clip to bend off of the pin, he began using the pry bar as a makeshift hammer to knock the clip from the center of the pin. A few good hits loosened it up enough that it started to slide out, but now he had the pin itself to deal with. Under the pressure from holding the trailer, the thick piece of metal was under an insane amount of friction. With enough time the vibrations would knock it loose, but the Ursok would catch up with them by then.

 

Still determined, he tried using the pry bar to knock it out but it wasn’t enough weight to even cause it to shake.

 

“I need a hammer!” Harry called.

 

“Harry! Get the hell in here! We're about to jump!” David yelled back.

 

“Jump?” Harry muttered before turning his head and bending to look under the van. He could see an incline ahead that was swiftly approaching. Looking behind he could see that the large bear monster had resumed lumbering forward and was swiftly gaining on them again.

 

“Hey, David! You said this thing is only interested in you?” Harry asked suddenly.

 

David felt a chill go down his spine as he was asked this question from the back, he wasn’t able to see Harry’s face.

 

“Harry! Don’t be stupid! Just because it won’t target you doesn’t mean something else won’t!” David yelled back at him. “Hold him! Don’t let go!”

 

Harry felt the hold on his ankles tighten, but he didn’t mind as he set the pry bar against the pin to act as a flat surface. Pounding his palm against the metal, a dull thumping was ringing out as he focused all of his strength into his palm. His angle wasn’t great, but he had been training hard with a lot of weight. 

 

“It’s almost out!” He yelled upfront. 

 

Finally getting the pin to slide a bit, he was able to expose the pinhead and set the teeth of the pry bar to surround it like a nail. Hitting the top of the pry bar, he was finally able to make some progress on getting the pinout. The problem he was facing was that he was holding onto the hitch and it would soon slide out of the trailer when the pin was removed. 

 

With his armor on, it took everything that the two women and young boy had just to keep Harry from falling out of the van. He didn’t want to get pulled away with the trailer, but he didn’t see another option with his position. He kept prying at the pin and finally got it partway out of the tow hitch when he encountered a new problem., without being able to use the tow hitch as leverage, he couldn’t get the pin out.

 

“Harry! We are about to jump!” David called out as the van hit the start of the slope.

 

Harry hung onto the tow hitch as the van began to incline; he could feel the hitch starting to slide as the pin started to bend under the pressure. Soon the trailer was also pulled up the hill and before long the van hit the top of it and started to go airborne. Harry could feel the pin starting to give as the tension was pulled out of the tow hitch and it began to push the van in the air. 

 

Harry let go of the trailer as the whole assembly began to disconnect from the van but now he was hanging in the air. Just as he was preparing to fall out of the back, the cat on his chest began to rapidly expand and grow to wedge him into the door. Meanwhile, it was using its large claws clumsily to try to pry fishing hooks out of his leather armor and using her tail to hold them.

 

“Billy! You are useless! I am losing my hooks!” Pandora shrieked back at the boy who was holding one of Harry’s legs. 

 

The cat's two back legs were wrapped around Harry’s knees and secured in place by her claws that were dug into the carpet. She sat firmly like a rock as the van moved around her and ignored the various odds and ends falling out of the back door. The only thing she was focused on was saving the few hooks she had left for her fishing pole.

 

“Pandora! Good job!” David called back. “Brace yourselves!” 

 

The van’s four tires hit the dirt one set at a time and the van began to slide as it tried to go out of David’s control. The large trailer was following behind but without its source of momentum, it was starting to fall behind the van. Suddenly a large head appeared over the hill followed by a large angry bear that used its shoulder to hit the trailer causing it to roll to the side.

 

The wooden timbers that made up the bed of the trailer snapped and the frame deformed from the impact. Blood and corpses flew through the air as the Ursok got back onto the dirt road and began to chase after the van again. Now that the trailer was gone David was having an easier time staying steady over the dirt, this allowed him to break the rear of the van free and slide through the dirt corners.

 

Brush had started to grow on the dirt roads but it was getting thrown into the air by the rubber tires. Dips, pits, and washboards were formed everywhere causing the van to shake and stutter as it drove down the dirt road with the bear slowly inching towards the rear.

 

“David! You said you could outrun it if the trailer was gone!” Harry yelled in accusation, still half hanging out the back of the van with a cat trying to pick lures off of his armor. Suddenly he began making coughing and spitting noises as some cat hair made its way down his throat. 

 

“These are dirt roads! I can only go so fast!” David was starting to sweat as he could feel the vibrations from the bear traveling through the road. 

 

His vision felt like it was narrowing and he could only focus on the road in front of him as he kept trying to navigate the turns in front of them. Just as he could hear Harry yelling loudly that the bear was gaining a thump was heard as the tires hit the paved section of road. While there were potholes and cracks everywhere, with no other traffic it was easy to avoid it all.

 

“We hit the pavement! Now we just need to get on the highway!” He yelled out as the van began to rapidly accelerate. 

 

The bear also began to move faster, while the van had gotten ahead slightly they weren’t pulling ahead like Harry would have wanted.

 

“David! Can we go faster?!” Harry didn’t want to look back and see the large bear staring at him with its giant teeth, but while he wasn’t sliding out of the van he couldn’t move with the large cat sitting on his legs.

 

“Harry, this isn’t going to be as simple as outrunning it… We have to wait it out! Why are you still hanging back there?!” He yelled back in anger as he tried to adjust his speed.

 

Most monsters have an incredible amount of stamina compared to a human, bears weren’t known for their endurance but an Ursok was an exception. They would often pursue their prey until they were too tired to continue moving and then take their time eating them. Only wolves and canines had better endurance, but they usually didn’t get as large or as dangerous.

 

“I can’t move, Pandora is in the way!” Harry called.

 

The cat had become the size of a Saint Bernard, she was so large that she was keeping him from sliding out of the van. Just as he was about to complain about it the large cat finally finished collecting the lures that had fallen from the tackle box. While the box was gone she was happy to have anything left.

 

The cat sat up and placed her front paws on the edges of the van door around Harry’s hips and leaned forward and grabbed the front of his armor with her mouth. Then like with a small kitten Pandora leaned back and pulled Harry into the van allowing everyone to breathe a sigh of relief. On her long tail were various lures in the shape of small fish dangling by their hooks, she was quite proud that she hadn’t fumbled any of them. 

 

“Look, Billy! I did it! No thanks to you!” The cat meowed to the boy in anger letting him know that she was going to torment him later.

 

Billy didn’t pay attention to any of this as he hugged Harry, hiding his face. Ever since the apocalypse had started there had been very few people with the capacity to be able to care about others.

 

“Hey, I am alright. No need to worry.” Harry said and patted him on the head.

 

David could see this scene in the rearview mirror and once again he was impressed by Harry’s resolve. Very few people would be able to choose to leave the group and separate at the risk of being alone in the wilderness. But while this behavior might seem nice on paper it wasn’t something that someone like David could appreciate.

 

“Hey, next time instead of thinking of going down with the trailer, start training that noodle of yours to look for new ways to get out of the trouble you have gotten yourself in,” David told him. “If your only choice is to sacrifice yourself then you won’t last very long out there, I am telling you this as your friend.” 

 

“What would you have done?” Harry asked him this because he was curious.

 

“There are a lot of things, part of it was your instincts. You didn’t roll onto your stomach and stayed on your back, not even a turtle would have done that.” David told him.

 

Harry thought about it himself and also realized that after David pointed it out. 

 

“To roll you would have needed to take your eyes off of the bear, you did everything while looking at it didn’t you?” David pointed out.

 

“Now that you point it out, I did…” Harry said with some hesitation.

 

“Humans will try to use their eyes to perceive 80% of the world around them. When they are in a dangerous situation they can be like a deer in the headlights and they will just stare at danger as it approaches. This happens because humans don’t trust their other senses to perceive what their sight can.” David explained. “I am going to build a training machine to help you train your other senses. Harry, you are going to be behind a shield a lot of the time, you have to learn to track them with your other senses.”

 

The skill that could make or break a tank was the ability to fight without being able to see, as sometimes they could end up holding the shield in front of them for the entire fight. You only need to fail to block a single attack to die. Many people will panic the moment they can’t see what is attacking them, even with an obstruction between them.

 

“You didn’t panic, that is the first step. Next is to be calm enough that the raging battlefield becomes like a peaceful garden and the sounds that your enemy makes can paint a picture that is as detailed as the one that comes from an artist.” David told him. “Don’t worry. I know it sounds intimidating but I already have plans in my head for how to build it.”

 

“How long is the monster going to chase us?” Jasmin asked.

 

“Oh right, it will probably chase us for a few hours, that is why I suggested going to Castle Rock. Lena and I passed through the outskirts but we never entered the town.” David said.

 

“Are we going to try to get seeds?” Lena asked.

 

“Yeah, to be honest aside from the junkyard, and maybe the mine, Ward is too small to have anything significant. We need more people, and we need to get the food situation sorted, if not for now then for next year.” While meat could sustain you, it did not have nearly enough of the minerals that you needed to survive. “I want to understand the situation there since we have some idea of what is going on in Denver.” 

 

“Was it because of those trees you mentioned?” Harry remembered the trees that David could say would release undead every few hours.

 

“That’s right, we need to know when it will be our turn to deal with them. I assume that they should have made it that far from Fort Carson by now.” David said worriedly. “The worst thing that can happen is getting cut off from the world by a sea of the undead. We can’t eat them and they will poison the soil if too many of them die in an area. They are just bad news in general.”

 

The van had finally reached the highway, and the gap between them and the bear was staying constant at 6-8 van lengths between them. While this made people uncomfortable, David was treating it as if it was another car on the highway. Since it had ruined his hunt and caused him to lose a trailer then he was going to run the creature until it gave up.

 

“Will the people in the compound be able to handle it if we are in the dungeon?” Harry asked.

 

“That is why we need more people. Guns are useful if you are weak to kill monsters but they require supplies like acids to make regularly. They are also loud and give away your position to the surroundings.” Melee weapons were good because monsters could be attracted to gunshots, they were attracted by a lot of different things.

 

***

Meanwhile…

On the international space station monitoring the Earth

 

“It is still at the north pole.” A man with a thick Slavic accent said in English. 

 

“It spends 33 days there. Sometimes it go to south pole, but it stay mostly north.” An Asian man chimed in. 

 

A group of men and women were floating weightlessly as they used the observation equipment on board the space station to monitor the Earth. From a display on the wall, they were able to see what the telescope was pointing at. Antarctica stood as a flat sheet of white snow and thick ice, however, it was certainly not empty.

 

“How much longer till we are in range to start dropping the warnings?” A woman with a British accent asked.

 

“62 hours.” A man with a Texan accent answered.

 

On the screen was a creature with a human appearance, but it had almost no definition. Its flesh looked like it was made from a plastic that shifted between black and purple, and its face and head were obscured by a mass of moving tendrils of what appeared like hair. The creature's legs were longer than its torso and head, and its arms hung down to its knees.

 

The creature was slender and its arms looked like they would break every time they moved, but instead, swatches of snow and ice would all be ripped from the ground and tossed through the air when it moved. The most impressive thing about it was its height of nearly 4000 feet(1220M) however it was as thin as most skyscrapers. It also did not move as much as it seemed to warp from place to place like a mirage.

 

“Are you sure it's the electromagnetic waves that attract it?” The Russian asked.

 

“I am certain of it! It destroyed all of the communication equipment until all of it stopped!” The British woman pointed at the monster with hatred. “Windsor Castle was destroyed after they tried sending an emergency broadcast to the people!”

 

“NASA is gone too, it even destroyed the White House.” The Texan replied.

 

“All our countries have changed, our time is over. Now we must warn our fellow humans of the danger.” The Asian man was Chinese, the other one was from Japan.

 

All of the crew was extremely emaciated, they hadn’t eaten in days since supplies weren’t able to be brought to them anymore. With death approaching, you would expect to see fear, but instead, their eyes all shone with grim determination. All of the systems in the space station that was no longer useful had been torn apart for parts by the astronauts.

 

In the beginning, they had had many fights and arguments since their beliefs were all different, but that changed a few months ago. Looking out the window the Earth had come into focus, but the planet that was shown was different from the planet that had been there for billions of years. It was almost twice the size that it had been previously, and most of the continents were unrecognizable from what they used to be. 

 

A lush and vibrant rain forest was growing in the middle of the Sahara desert, it stretched for hundreds of miles and was visible from the space station. Several large islands had appeared around the British Isles and Scotland had grown to become the largest island in the area after it had acquired a massive mountain that could put Everest to shame. South America had broken off of Mexico and a new continent with a wedge shape had appeared beside South America forming a triangle with North America.

 

“We will enter orbit in three days, we will have one pass of the planet to drop as many of the payloads as possible.” The Texan replied. “Then we will all burn up with the space station….”

 

“At least we can send a warning before we die.” The Russian said with laughter.

 

The crew had come up with this decision unanimously after they had put their differences aside. They had then taken apart anything with storage space and most of the shielding on the space station. Hundreds of small pods held together with duct tape and the ingenuity bred by the best minds of the various countries.

 

Russians and the Chinese were incredible at making things from almost nothing that could perform as well as even American products. But what America had always excelled at was their standards and it is why they were usually more reliable. Add that with a bit of European innovation and you have pods that look like duct-taped wrapped metal eggs with hard drives shielded inside of them. 

 

“We are going to be busy for the next 24 hours, so I want to say something now while I have time.” The Japanese man said solemnly before he took a bow. “It was an honor working with you all.” 

 

“I agree! It is my honor to have known you all.” The Chinese man agreed.

 

“Hehehe! I will buy you all drinks in the afterlife! They better have Stolichnaya there!” The Russian man said with longing.

 

“I’ll do the barbecuing.” The Texan added.

 

“I’ll bake the desserts!” The British woman laughed along.

 

For the first time since the apocalypse, the space station was filled with laughter even as the crew was preparing for their final mission.