Millions of four-legged creatures snapped, clawed and shrieked, crawling from their burrow after a sleep lasting a thousand years. Creatures, big and long, fast and sharp combined with cousins more muscled, yet slower, encircled the cheese-colored bus. Their red-ruby eyes glowed brightly afore the godless dark with claws scratching like finger nails on a chalk board. Scenting human blood drove the creatures mad, even driving their death bite into their own. Trees twisted drunk sheltering its eyes from the pasty-white moon, scattered along both sides of the ruptured street.

Twenty of us remained inside a bus with an empty gas tank on second street of old downtown Dayton Ohio. Embraced by the aversion of the mid-summer sun, the creatures burrow miles underground, or deep within dark structures, shielding their sensitive fur from a heat too intense for their liking. Twenty of us prayed to a god that left town long ago, leaving us within the purgatory dunes.

When we lost Phil two nights ago, the women panicked and the men felt helpless; unable to protect their dames. Phil was overcome by an overlapping darkness, cut down and eaten by hungry monsters in the time it takes to refill the bus’ gas tank. Phil’s body was no more; even bone dissolving in the stomach’s of these horrible beasts. It was Phil’s chocking when the creatures ripped his throat, almost smiling while blood dripped from the sides of their mouth, seared into a memory vast of nightmares.

Stubby arms with knife-like claws, muscle-packed hind legs, a third set of limbs to allow a four-legged sprint, a snout longer than the length of a broomstick, the creatures appeared like miniature dinosaurs, save for a fur-like black maim and a thin tail. Unlike God’s creatures on Earth, they spilled blood a shade of deep blue, or a light purple. With jaws that could sever thick steel, their snap could shred a man in two, feeding younglings and fending rivals.

These days were wicked, revelations realized.

“I’ve got to get the fuck out of here, now,” a panicked, banker cried, sprinting for the sliding front door. After I knock him out, they laid him out against the canvas seat. I hope the idiot realizes now, that opening the door invites the predators to feed on their flesh and bone.

A creature never seen approached. It walked, methodically and upright, almost human. The smaller creatures bowed away in fear. It stopped at the bus’s back door, darkened with a charred black chest smearing against the glass, scouting its prey gleaming with a slime-like polish. Its nose was partially torn away with smiling fangs exposed like a nineteenth century vampire. The eyes, the eyes were the most unsettling; big and wide, with a enamelled white around a fearsome black dot. The creature’s smile transformed into a menacing growl, mouth opening wider, and wider, and wider.

“What is that?” a blond beauty, days after an uncelebrated thirtieth birthday, asked.

“I don’t know,” her eldest son said while her daughter panicked, a deafening wail.

“We have to get out of here,” I said, adding to the horrifying nature of the hysteria.

“What, with that thing out there? You’re on your own boy, there’s no way I’m going out there,” a young black man named Michael complained.

“Do you actually think you’re safe in here,” Gloria, an elder Spanish grandmother expressed.

“We just have to wait out the night,” Michael calmly pointed out. “When the light comes, they will disappear, and we can leave their hive.”

“OK, so let’s put it to a vote,” someone started.

I broke in, rather irritated, “It’s not up to a vote. You either stay in here or go out there. The choice is up to you. We just need a distraction.”

Still staring through the back window, with its seven-digit hands pressed against the glass, licking its lips with a tongue split in two, the tall creature stared at a small ten-year boy. It growled again, with such a strength that the bus rattled, sending unsecured pans, pots, and belongings throughout the narrow isle.

Everyone spun when the front door open, amazed that a man ascended the three steps.

“You will do no such thing,” the man said with a long black cloak and a wool hood covering his face. “There’s hundreds out there, prowling on that four-story building over there, and some across the street on that two-floor building. They are too fast for you, and that one there has wings to fly.”

When he lowered the hood, it was a shocking perception to see this man. I’ve seen him before; everyone has seen him before, though I can’t place a name. In another time, this man had an outgrown stomach, a pair of broken glasses, and a cactus of curly hair. Now the man was ripped with a flat stomach, no glasses and hair passing beyond his broad shoulders. His black beard twisted to his chest hiding several metal medallions, in shades of copper, gold and silver. The thirty year old woman hugged him, digging to the surface a friendship buried long ago. Another woman, a bit shorter though equally as beautiful followed suit; as did pats on the back from the children and a few males. It was a reunion, of sorts. This was the man that everyone knew.

“Start up the bus,” the man everyone knew said.

“We have no gas,” I said.

“Don’t worry about that, it’ll start,” the man said. And it did.

The creatures tore along the sidewalks that flanked the road; some hopping along modestly tall buildings. The highway that passed through Dayton was broken and shattered, impossibly accommodating traffic; especially, with the weight of an old school bus. While the small creatures started to drag back, the big one kept up, flapping wings joined at its shoulders. The man everyone knew kicked the back door open, and cupped both his hands together. Inside his palms, a light-blue glow grew, forcing his hands apart. The creature drove for the bus’ rear door.

Growing, the light turned to a mini-blue sun. The man that everyone knew closed his hands together extending his palms toward the creature, projecting the mini-blue sun at the gusting creature. Within that second, the light expanded like a bomb made of light, knocking the creature sideways into a rough landing. The man that everyone knew turned to a darker haired woman, with vulnerable eyes saying goodbye without a spoken word.

The man that everyone knew turned, unleashed a blade several feet long and jumped from the back of the bus. “No,” everyone shouted. It was too late. With the speed of an Olympian sprinter, the man approached the grounded creature, spilling damp polls of its dark blood. Then, the big creature lifted up the man that everyone knew into the air, disappearing into the night sky.

For several hours the bus drove, until early morning sunrays broke the horizon. The petite darker haired woman spoke to no one, silently crying until exhaustion overwhelmed her. We just sat there, thinking about the man that everyone knew.

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