Behind her-actually, outside and somewhere to her right-a raucous storm of caws and flapping wings erupted.

Her nerves tight as a high tension wire, Stacey jerked her head out the door and whirled to her right before thinking...and she knew as she did it things were about to start happening very fast.

To her right, the puddle of crows in front of the locker room door had launched into a cloud of whirling night shadows as a hideous pale form lumbered into their midst. It plodded and mewled, and it took a brief instant for the young woman to realize what she saw.

It was a huge, naked man...with three different horrors like the one she had just faced clinging to him...and they were tearing him to pieces as they rode upon him. Deep bloody gashes flapped open and closed along his back and sides as he waded out the door and into the rain. Blood poured down him in streaming rivers, and great gobbets of meat hung from places where they had been half gouged out of his flesh. He sobbed and flailed at the things hanging on him, and even during the split second she watched several more of the dead things clambered out the door in pursuit.

In the next instant she remembered her own peril and tore her gaze from the ongoing carnage to look back into the garage. The dead woman had already dropped the severed arm and was halfway to her...hands outstretched and mouth agape like some kind of attacking animal.

This thing could move!

Stacey shrieked and turned to run. There was no time for considering options or even thoughts of helping the nearby man as he floundered to his knees under the weight of his attackers. As a matter of fact, one last glance at him revealed a couple of his tormenters had broken off the attack on him and were now doing a fast lurching lope in her direction instead.

Shit!

Stacey threw aside the cardboard and sprinted for the distant main building. While she didn't possess the long legs of her fellow waitress, the former pom-pom girl was in excellent shape and now put the conditioning from practicing all those dance routines to good use. Her legs pumped like pistons as she shot away from the garage in a standing start that would have done any of the girls on the track team proud. She wasted no time in hitting her stride while taking in gulping lungfuls of air.

"BEEEENNNNNNNNNNNIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"

She screamed at the top of her lungs as she ran. At this point the girl operated on terror and adrenaline, instinctually understanding her role as the deer in this scenario and the need to get back to her herd. And the pack of nightmares on her heels grew by the second. A glance to her left showed even more black figures loping in their strange lurching motion from the row of trucks...although those looked like they were heading for the store side of the main building, and were too far behind her to pose a threat.

But it was the ones to the rear that concerned her at the moment, for she had no idea how she fared in her race with them. Would there be time to reach the back door and pound for assistance, or did she need to change course and attempt a longer run for the front of the truck stop instead? The girl knew her life depended on that decision, and the wrong choice would have her go down under the teeth and claws of the ghoulish pack pursuing her...but she couldn't make it without knowing how close they were.

And that was when she made her first mistake.

A desperate look back revealed she had actually put distance between her and her pursuers, with them strung out in a line behind her due to their varying speeds. A couple of the predators who had been savaging the doomed man back at the locker room had passed the dead woman from the garage and now led the chase. They lunged after her with outstretched arms and jaws agape as if in silent screams. Framed in the now pouring rain, it was a vision straight out of hell.

But at the same time, even though they were far from slow, she now realized she could outpace these things. These monsters were deadly in close spaces, and could probably chase down the average trucker or middle aged person as well. But a healthy young adult could outrun them...at least for a while. She was going to win this race.

And just as she came to that conclusion her ankles clipped against each other...

...and exactly like those girls in horror movies, she fell.

Pain flared in her ankle and despair threatened to overwhelm the panicked girl.

No dammit! Not like this! Please God, not like this!

She half rolled to her feet almost in the same motion as she went down and stumbled desperately onward towards the back door, now slowed by a noticeable limp.

"BEEEEENNNNNNNNIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! HELP MEEEEE!!!"

At this point, the janitor remained her only hope. Injured, and having lost ground, the girl knew the things would catch her before she could ever make the longer run for the front door.

"BEEEENNNNIIIEEEEE PLEEEASSEEEE!!!!"

The door grew closer, but she could feel her pursuers closing in at the same time. They didn't breathe or pant, but the slap of their shoes on the wet asphalt came from almost directly behind her.

"BENNNIEEEEEEE!!!"

Ahead, the door cracked open like the gates of heaven, spilling the blue white light of the kitchen area out into the strengthening storm. Benny stood in the doorway, a look of horror frozen on his face.

Stacey could only imagine what he was seeing...a drenched and screaming girl being pursued by a bunch of skull faced demons...and the shock it must have been.

Please Benny, don't slam the door on me. Oh please don't do that..."

She wouldn't have blamed him if he did, knowing full well it would have been her first instinct if faced with the same scene. Any human would have been hard pressed not to.

Oh please, Benny! Just give me a few more seconds...."

Instead, the little janitor did the last thing she ever expected.

He charged.

In an act of seeming insanity, the older man leaped out the door towards her and ran in her direction.

"Nina, get inside!" he yelled as he flew past, and she heard him collide with the monsters right behind her.

She staggered the remaining feet to the doorway and wheeled to see what had become of her unlikely savior. Benny and the two creatures were all on the ground, and they fought to regain their feet as the rest of the horde closed in from behind.

"Benny. Come on! RUN!!"

Stacey gripped the doorknob so tight the whites of her knuckles stood out. Time was running out and the monsters would be upon them in seconds. They would both be overwhelmed by the vicious pack.

I won't do it, her mind screamed at the internal voice begging her to close the door, I won't leave Benny out there!

"BENNY! COME ON!"

The little man struggled to his feet and made for the open door as the pursuing horrors closed the distance. He staggered as one of the things still on the ground made a swipe at his ankle The blow connected and he lost his balance for a second, then righted himself with two more stumbling steps.

"BENNY!"

Stacey released her hold on the doorframe with her other hand and reached out for her friend instead. His face pale with exertion and fear, the man made one final lunge for the doorway...his arm outstretched for hers.

The horde fell upon him just as he reached the door.

The Storm - Rachel.

"SOMEBODY HELP MEEEEE!!!"

The ragged scream tore through the restaurant, bringing all conversation to a stop. It carried a raw edge of primal anguish so intense that Rachel had no doubt somebody was being murdered.

She dropped her e-reader and looked around to see the rest of the patrons staring at the door to the kitchen in wide-eyed shock. For a frozen second in time nobody moved, and then another agonized shriek ripped through the air.

Somebody was getting hurt...bad...and it sounded like one of the waitresses.

It was the second scream that jolted people into motion.

The two truckers at the bar were closest to the kitchen, and both leapt to their feet and charged through the door. The younger of the two rednecks at the window table shot after them, while the bigger one fought to scoot himself out of the booth so he could join in. Rachel ran after the younger man, wondering what in the hell she was going to do when she got there.

Help whoever's hurt, you idiot! You're a doctor, remember?

An enormous pool of acid filled her stomach at the thought.

The last time she had told herself that was when staring down at Matt's crushed skull, from where the horse had kicked him.

A person should never, ever, walk behind a horse... especially one in distress. It was such a basic tenet of animal husbandry she had never thought to warn her city bred husband, or consider the possibility he didn't know better. So when she asked him to run to her bag to fetch some tubing, she didn't even bother to notice the route he took to do so.

A second later the horse had bucked and lashed out, and she heard a sickening crunch from the behind the large animal. She had looked up just in time to see his body hit the ground like a rag doll.

And just like that, she had been a widow.

You're a doctor! Do something!

All she could think to do was cradle his ruined head, and scream at him to not to die.

Do something! You're a doctor! Do something, God Damn It!

And she hadn't.

She had just held him and cried his name over and over again.

Matt died within a minute...and then the world quit making sense.

The coroner had later assured her it was over before she ever reached him. The man swore to her there had been nothing she could have done even if she had been a fully qualified neurosurgeon for humans and had all her equipment on the spot. And her medical side agreed as it read the autopsy report with its usual clinical detachment...the damage had been immediately fatal.

But the part that had driven her into medicine, the same part that demanded the world make sense, railed back that she should have done something...anything...to see to it Matt would be there in the morning to greet her instead of being prepared for burial on a stainless steel table. If she couldn't have done anything, then it had to be because the thing to be done hadn't been discovered yet. But it had to be out there and she had failed to come up with it when it mattered.

Another scream brought Rachel back to the present as she pushed through the door. She snatched a towel off a counter as she ran past, both for the comfort of having something in hand and to be ready to staunch bleeding if necessary. She turned the corner and came to a stop, staring in shock at the scene before here.

The two truckers were just reaching the back door where the commotion seemed to be centered.

It was the short haired waitress...the one she had seen the young redneck talking to earlier.

The girl was on the floor with one foot braced against the wall, the other one against the back door, and she seemed to be fighting with all her might to keep the door from opening further while trying to pull somebody into the building with her. Rachel couldn't make out who the girl was trying to help as he was both obscured by the waitress's body, and the forest of arms reaching in through the opening of the door to grab both him and the girl.

The waitress screamed again as one of the strangely clawlike hands sank into her upper arm, drawing blood where the tips of the fingers buried into her flesh. A second later the first trucker, the paunchy man with white hair, reached her and grabbed her by the shoulders to pull her back.

"No! Not me!" the girl shrieked even as she cried out in pain over the damage being done to her arm, "Grab Benny! They're killing him!"

The young redneck tried to grab the man in her arms as directed, while the older trucker turned his attention to the hand ripping up the girls arm. At the same time, the skinny trucker started kicking at the head of one of the attackers who had forced himself partway in and was laying on top of the man the girl held. On the third kick he managed to dislodge the man from where it looked like he had been biting the shoulder of whoever the girl was trying to protect...and for the first time he saw the face of her attackers.

Apparently, he didn't like what he saw.

"Holy shit!" the thin man screamed and unbalanced himself trying to jerk away while being crowded in between the young redneck and older trucker at the same time. The result was him overbalancing and bending over, whereupon another grasping hand caught him by the hair and jerked him down on top of the girl and her charge.

In another second he was pulled headfirst and screaming halfway out the door.

Rachel could think of nothing else to do but run up and grab the skinny trucker's legs. It wasn't easy because he thrashed wildly, making grabbing him without getting kicked almost impossible. Even worse, the white tiled floor around the door was now red with great smears of blood, causing people to slip and slide as they fought to accomplish whatever each of them were trying to do.

"Let me in!"

The bigger redneck had arrived on the scene and was attempting to find a way through the melee to get where he could do some good.

"Harley!" the waitress screamed, "Harley! There's more coming around on the store side where Gladys is! You got to go get that door closed!"

"But..."

"Go!" the girl cried out as the older trucker pried the withered hand out of her arm. "Please! Help Marisa and Gladys! Don't let them get in here!"

The big man hesitated a second more, then turned and ran from the kitchen.

The battle at the back door continued...limbs thrashing wildly and people yelling and straining against a mostly unseen enemy.

Rachel didn't have time to make sense of the melee, and fought to hold on to the skinny trucker while slapping ineffectually at a wizened hand gripping her charges belt, right between the "Leaping" and the "Larry." Whoever owned that hand had serious health problems, but it didn't seem to be slowing him down. What the hell were they fighting against? Hobos? Some kind of gang of diseased vagrants? Lepers?

And then the older trucker shifted his position, allowing her to look down the length of the man she held, and straight into the face of the thing she was pulling against.

The woman didn't scream, or even recoil at the sight of the horrid monster staring back at her. That would have required believing her eyes. She just gaped in numb shock at the ghastly visage as it leered its deathly grin over the trucker's shoulder. At this distance, there could be no kidding herself into believing it was somebody in a mask or well crafted makeup.

This was the real thing. That was a real, blood drenched skull snarling back at her.

Somebody...some absolute maniac... had cut their own face off.

And as she watched, she could see its bare muscles flex as its jaws opened wide and it turned its face towards the trucker's neck.

"Nooooo!!!" Rachel cried out for the first time, redoubling her efforts to save the man even as she knew what was about to happen.

The horror's teeth sunk into the side of the thrashing man's neck as he attempted to twist away from it. Leaping Larry Brown screamed in a way Rachel would never forget. It was a cry of both pain and denial, a last agonized rejection of the reality that his time had come and this was how it would end. The rotten teeth sliced into his jugular and carotid artery, causing blood to fountain into and around the monsters jaws, and drenching the people underneath.

The trucker kicked and thrashed, but his struggles grew weaker by the second. Rachel held on for as for as long as he moved. She knew he was dying...and she could do nothing to save him...but still the woman clung to his legs for all she was worth. All she could think of was refusing to let him go to the animals out there in the dark until he was too far gone to ever know.

After another minute, Leaping Larry stopped moving.

She knew it hadn't been much, but at least the man had died knowing somebody had held on till the very end.

Now she changed tactics.

Gathering her feet under her, and trying not to slip in the amazing amount of blood now covering the tiles, she started pushing the trucker's corpse out the door.

"What are you doing?" the young redneck cried in horror, still pulling for all he was worth on the man the waitress still clung to.

"He's dead!" Rachel yelled. "I'm giving him to them!"

"WHAT!?"

"I'm giving them his body," she gasped with exertion and pushed harder on the corpse. To her relief she saw more hands snag on to it. "The more of them that grab it means the less that are pulling against you!"