“Crap!” Niles clicked his tongue, frustrated by what he’d just recalled and learned the hard way.

  He had reached the east end of the block and was about to head into march along the edge of the woods towards the lake when he found, in that same direction, a tall young man covered in denim swinging a broken broom handle at three of those green humanoid monsters, trying to keep them at bay.

  Recognising him, Niles immediately tried to fire his rifle to eliminate the threats and save him. Unfortunately, when the hammer’s click failed to follow with the snap of the bullet fire, he remembered the first article he had read from those influencers he had seen before all this occurred.

  Their guns wouldn’t fire, and apparently, even grenades and other munitions failed to function as intended.

  Gunpowder and all other chemical reactions humanity had used as weapons of war had gone inert when the world changed. Leaving them with a bunch of highly engineered scrap and a generational habit of relying on said scrap to defend themselves.

  Thankfully, this was a rural town with people who didn’t fully depend on guns for self-defense.

  Niles dropped the rifle and slipped his bow out of the top flap of his bag, along with two arrows. He stepped on one end and bent it back to restring it. He didn’t waste any time checking how tight the bowstring was; a mix of confidence and urgency.

  Knocking an arrow and aiming, he let it fly.

  It didn’t hit the exact spot he wanted, but the gurgling yelp of the creature to the other man’s left and its sudden drop to the ground showed that the near headshot was a clear kill.

  The other two turned when they heard their companion’s abrupt end, giving the guy they were harassing an opening to jam the broken end of the broom into the gut of the middle one. He didn’t even bat an eye at the last one as he focused on his target.

  A second arrow flew in, missing the third’s vitals, but wounding it enough for it to reel in pain and back off for a moment.

  Just long enough for its previous prey to retrieve his makeshift spear, letting the second monster fall to the pavement, and swipe the splintered wood across its engorged throat. The brief gush of blood spilling out and its slow collapse brought an end to the rushed encounter.

  Leaving the two men to regroup.

  Niles walked over, yanked the arrow of the first kill out, and inspected the tip for damage. Seeing it was fine, he turned to the other guy and smiled.

  They clapped their hands together, pulling each other in to a half-hug.

  “The hell are you doing here, man?” He asked. “I thought you were gonna be in the Sault until next March.”

  The other man pulled away and sighed, “My dad needed some help with his truck, so I came back for the week.” Then, he looked at the corpses at their feet. “Don’t think I’m going back to the garage any time soon, now.”

  This was Dominic Fairbanks. Niles’ childhood best friend, and someone he considered a brother. Their fathers were both part of the same regimen in the Royal Canadian Armed Forces. Because of the bond they shared as they traveled for military work, Niles’ dad left him in the care of the Fairbanks family when he left in search of his wife.

  Dominic relaxed his arms a little and looked at his friend with a serious expression.

  “Dad’s leading a group of survivors out of town. He’s got my mom and Danica with him. Come on–” he urged– “before they get too far ahead.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Right.” Niles nodded and followed the hurried pace.

  As they jogged, both keeping a close eye on their surroundings and doing their best to ignore the blood and gore laid across the streets, he turned his gaze to Dominic and asked, “Why did you come looking for me?”

  In response, the taller man looked over his shoulder with tired eyes, his long, curled hair partly obstructing his face. “When we saw the gas station explode, Mom and Danica were panicking about you. So I volunteered to check the situation.”

  Niles looked at him with suspicion, then laughed, “Yeah, right. I bet you were the one who was freaking out and ran over after annoying the hell out of them.”

  “Like hell!” he barked back.

  The two chuckled like they used to when they were kids, and made a beeline for an intersection a little further up Highway 101, at the edge of town, without another word. The closer they got, the more tense they felt.

  There weren’t many of the wild creatures as they walked, while the rest of the town was a mess of smoke and distant screams.

  With the gas station explosion having just happened minutes ago, the directions the foreign entities scurried away to were practically unpredictable. Only three found Dominic, but how many might have located the group of survivors his dad was leading away?

  With that thought in mind, they began to run.

  Just in time to hear the low growl of several beasts.

  Once they reached the intersection, the two young men noticed a group of people huddled in a circle, surrounded by massive, gnarly-looking dogs. Standing roughly four and a half feet on all fours, with short hair everywhere except for along their long necks and their bushy tails. The most striking feature they had was not their size, nor was it their thin faces that could invoke nightmares; it was the fact that their spine and rib cages were exposed and looked like they were covered in an extra-hard layer of bone.

  Like a natural suit of armor.

  There were half a dozen or so of these big, horrid dogs, herding what looked like forty or fifty people of all ages. The men — holding makeshift weapons or not — held the outer circle, while the women, children, and the elderly were pushed together in the center.

  Hiding close enough to see, but not enough to be caught, Niles and Dominic ran through their options.

  Dominic was the first to suggest, “Do we just… run in guns blazing?” His eyes hovered over the rifle Niles had picked back up after saving him.

  “No.” He shook his head. “For whatever reason, my gun isn’t firing. Otherwise, I would have used it earlier.” Looking around, he counted the number of dogs again and focused on the gaps between them. “We can break through if we widen the gap between those two, there.” Niles pointed to the pair a bit further to the right of them.

  “Okay, but what do we do once we’re with the others?” His friend interjected.

  Thinking it over for a second, he shook his head. “Well, if we injure one or more on the way in, your dad and I can figure out how to scare them off. He’s a lot better with that kind of stuff than we are.”

  Sighing softly in nervous acceptance, the two bounced a couple of ideas around before settling on the simplest option for the sake of time.

  Dominic stood up, broken broom spear out front, and led the charge. Niles ran behind him, two arrows ready and one already knocked. He aimed the furthest of their targets and let one loose.

  With a soft whistle, the arrow flew through the air, missing the intended spot and instead just barely carving a large gash through its snout. By some miracle, this pushed just off course enough to fly at a different hound. However, it ended up deflected by the bony protrusions on its back.

  The first one yelped in pain and surprise, catching the others’ attention. Dominic slashed across the closer of the two’s hind leg. Though the old wood of the handle couldn’t cut through the thicker hide on that part of its body, it was enough to shock it into jumping away, thinking there was a large predator that had snuck up on it.

  Before the rest of the beasts could catch on to what was going on, Niles and Dominic had slipped into the circle with the other men.

  Between them was a man, maybe an inch taller than Dominic, who was already just over six feet tall, with bleach-blonde hair and a bulky, muscular build. To their left stood another, roughly average height, with mousey hair and wearing a fancy business suit. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with an older, short-haired version of Dominic.

  “Nice of you two to join us!” Réal Fairbanks exclaimed with a noticeable sarcastic tone.

  Niles scoffed, “Can we play with the dogs, too?”