As the party of neighbors moved across their town, signs of carnage grew more frequent. Corpses lay every couple blocks, dismembered and in most cases, largely consumed by what they assumed was some beast. Most bodies, they found just inside the shattered remains of a store front, the wood and glass broken in by massive force. Silence reigned over the group for most of the journey as they split into small groups and canvassed their surroundings as they traveled under Dave's direction, sticking within a hundred feet of the nearest group at all times.
This oppressive silence was broken finally by a shout from Wendy, drawing the group together to see what she had discovered. As they approached the location of her voice, a bakery whose roof was visibly collapsing for some reason, they saw the cause of Wendy's call. There in the building, a spike of stone jutted from the earth, piercing up through the floors of the building and branching into many thorny spikes, one of which was impaling the corpse of a woman who hung near the ceiling on the spike. Wendy however, was not pointing at the corpse, but a part of the spike, which, to the shock of everyone there, was slowly growing, branching spikes like thorns from the stem of a rose growing at a rate visible to the naked eye. Within a minute as they watched, the thorns had grown nearly a full inch.
"We should move. Whatever killed the people out there could still be here. Vincent, use that knife of yours and cut this thing down before we go." Dave called orders to the group. Vincent nodded before approaching the stone pillar which seemed to grow almost like some sort of weed before cutting chunks from the foot radius stone, slicing out pieces until he was able to cut the whole thing down. As it began falling, he rushed out of the building to join his group just in time to watch the falling spike collapse the building around it.
Suddenly, a piercing howl filled the air, as the group froze, the sound of something large moving over gravel filled their ears as fright filled their hearts. The collapse of the building had caught the attention of something close, and it walked their way. "Run." Dave's voice calmly called out, but no one moved. "RUN DAMNIT!" The shout this time snapped them to their senses. The group looked through the dust cloud over the debris and the approaching silhouette of some shadowy beast the size of a car through it, and the gravity of their situation set in. Without hesitation, the group began sprinting away from the building, towards the water tower that they had come this distance to climb, one that, at the speed they now ran, they would approach within the next couple minutes after their journey thus far.
So they ran, Vincent, Dave, Jaime and Matthew, Wendy, Jake, and Randall sprinted like their lives depended on if. Jake, unable to help himself, looked over his shoulder and nearly froze in fear again. He saw now the absolute apex predator that was swiftly closing the distance between them. Nearly ten feet tall, perhaps five feet from shoulder to shoulder, and twelve feet from snout to tail, a wolf the size of a car barreled after them, drool falling from its maw as it ran.
Nearly tripping over himself in panic, Jake turned around and began running with the rest but it was too late for him. The rest of the party only heard as the monstrous wolf creature behind them ripped Jake's head from his shoulders with a single bite and twist of its massive maw. A sickening crunch as the wolf chewed and swallowed was the last Wendy and Randall saw of their room mate. Fueled by terror, the rest of the group of unlikely acquaintances sprinted to and up the side of the water tower, not pausing until they collapsed for breath at its top, even though the wolf had stopped to continue eating Jake's corpse.
The group looked on in horror at the town below them, sprawling down from their vantage point. Not far away they watched as a second wolf approached Jake's corpse and fought the first over a leg, playing a sickening game of tug of war. These massive creatures took the attention of most of the party. Vincent, however, was once again drawn by a wisp of energy from the star that had exploded as it flashed across the sky, this time down to the town below him.
As he watched, the wisp split into two, one diving down to a section of rubble in the town where he could distantly see three more of the massive wolves moving now that his attention was drawn to the area. He saw as one of the creatures padded through the ruined shadowed entrance of the local high school gymnasium, the wisp disappearing into the darkness with it.
His attention was then drawn to the other wisp of light which had hovered patiently in the sky after it had split. As soon as he focused on it again, it zoomed across town, past the bakery he had just collapsed, forcing him to walk to the other side of the water tower. His shout soon alerted the rest of the party. "Hey guys, you're gonna want to see this."
The group curiously moved to the other side of the tower to see what had drawn Vincent's attention, the awestruck silence that followed broken only by Dave's impressed whistle. Before the group, half of the town stood completely entangled in a massive briar thorn patch of some kind, spikes jutting through buildings and unfortunate victims. Little movement could be seen from that side of town, other than the slow growth and occasional twitching of the thorns, which the party knew from experience to be made of stone.
"What the fuck is happening to our town? We live in Post Falls, Idaho for god's sake, nothing EVER happens here." Wendy asked incredulously, still a bit in shock from the death of her friend Jake.
"I don't know Wendy. But we'll get through this. I promise." Randall hugged her tightly as she cried into his shoulder, a silence descending over much of the group.
"Not to break up this love fest, but we've got bigger problems to deal with." Dave's voice caught the attention of the group as he pointed down to where the two wolves had finished pulling apart Jake's corpse, and were now sniffing for seconds. It didn't take long for them to pick up the group's trail to the direction of the water tower, but they weren't able to locate them. The party sighed momentarily in relief before an excited howl was heard from one of the wolves nearby, followed by what could only be the screams of a woman and a child.
"Oh damn it." Dave cursed angrily before grabbing his gun and sliding down the ladder, opening fire on one of the wolves when he was perhaps twenty feet off the ground. Dave hung from the ladder with one hand as he yelled for the woman he saw to run, carrying in her arms what looked like a five year old girl. He released a full clip into the wolf, but the creature was hearty, it's thick hide like that of a bear keeping the bullets from doing much real damage, although he did manage to slow it down especially after hitting its legs.
The woman started climbing, but her progress was painfully slow. The child in her hand making any climbing incredibly difficult, but the adrenaline in her pushed her on. She was perhaps ten feet up the ladder when she felt the breath of the beast upon her back, turning to see the creature was now at eye level with her and only inches away. A deep growl seemed to carry the promise of death for her and her child as the loud BANG BANG of Dave's gun was abruptly replaced with the click of an empty clip.
Time seemed to freeze, the wolf opened its maw and lunged as if in slow motion. Refusing to close her eyes, the woman stared the beast in the eyes as she prepared to toss her child up to the man on the ladder above her. Before she could move however, a shadow crossed her peripheral vision.
A flash of light.
A thud of bodies impacting.
A splash of blood.