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I woke to the sound of drumming.

I blinked, the tent now doing little to obscure the morning light, merely diffusing the brightness into an eye pricking haze.

I looked around me, searching for some kind of sign of what was causing the bloody noise, but got nothing.

Slade snored quietly beside me, and my eyes caught for a moment on how relaxed his face looked.

He seemed younger somehow, with no sardonic twist to his mouth or sparkle in his eyes.

Well, there was no such sparkle when I shook his shoulder.

He looked blearily at me, unable to focus on what was happening around us, mouth hanging open as he said, “Wha…?”

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

Shouts came with the drumming, the tone frantic. “Come on!”

We mobilised quickly, Slade snatching up a shirt as we emerged from the tent. What we saw did not improve things at all. Aaron was ordering people about at a rapid rate, shouting instructions I couldn’t hear the details of. The reason became immediately apparent when we turned around.

“Oh, fuck…” Slade said.

I saw his cigarette packet drop to the ground from limp fingers as we caught the huge cloud of dust forming along the horizon.

But it was no dust storm creating this percussive sound.

The place we had camped at overnight had a river to the right, an open grassland to the left.

Trees grew thick along the water, but this seemed to be some kind of savanna with only low bushes and the occasional larger vegetation on the other side.

Which gave the animals a massive space with which to run.

And they did. I squinted, seeing their forms far in the distance as they stampeded towards us.

Quite possibly the close relatives of whatever we had for dinner last night were bearing down upon us at top speed.

“We gotta go,” Slade said, then grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt and hauled me along as I tripped over everything, his too long sweatpants tangling with my feet. I felt the tension in the fabric, heard it begin to give as he ripped open a car door and thrust me in the back seat.

“Slade!”

“Get in and be ready to go on my order!” Aaron snapped at Slade, appearing by the door. “We’re going to have to try and outrun whatever the fuck this is. I’ll be on the back strapped in and trying to shoot down whatever gets too close, but for fuck’s sake, don’t roll it.”

“Got it,” Slade said as keys were slapped into his hand.

“Aaron!” I said as he hauled himself into the tray, then another man toting a machine gun joined him. “Slade, what about the pack? Where are the rest of them?”

“We gotta get out of here, sweetheart. They’ll be?—”

“Right here,” Jack said as he yanked open the door. He climbed in beside me, a rifle in his hands, and Hawk swung into the front.

“Seatbelts on!” Slade said, putting the car in gear right as the door opened again.

“Room for one more?” Brandon quipped, jerking it shut as Slade took off. “Seatbelt, Jules,” he said, and pulled his own on.

We roared off, Slade cursing a steady stream as we drove. I watched his knuckles go white as he gripped the wheel, and the rest of us had to reach for the ‘oh shit’ bars or risk being tossed around the cabin.

“You OK, love?” Hawk asked, turning in his front seat to look back at me.

“No, what the fuck is happening?” A sudden flash of fear alerted me to what I’d neglected to notice. “Finn! Where’s Finn!”

“There,” Jack said, stabbing a finger at the glass to point at several other of our vehicles pulling up beside us. He took my hand as I craned my neck, searching for a sign of him. “It’s Prince Perfect, love. He’s gotta go with the heroics, but he’ll be fine. Guys like that always are.”

He was trying to be comforting, I knew, but it didn’t help. I watched the car next to us pull ahead slightly. Finn stood in the tray, strapped to the metal headboard, hands on a machine gun.

“What’s happening? What are those things?” I asked, shifting to try and look out the back window, but the guns and guys in the trays blocked it.

“No questions, love,” Jack said, standing up and popping open the sunroof. “Keep it steady,” he told Slade.

“Fucking trying! This isn’t exactly a freeway, so try not to blow our mates’ heads off!” Slade glanced at the rest of us in the rear vision mirror for a second before jerking them back to the expanse ahead. “No more talking. Time to discuss after we get through this.”

Brandon grabbed my hand and held it as we thundered on. Slade was right, the going was rocky as reverberations from the tires tracking over rough terrain shook the whole cab, and we couldn’t get anything like the speed we would have on asphalt.

“Here they come!” Jack shouted. Then came the noise.

Some was more muted, a rat-at-at from the other vehicles, but the sound of Jack’s rifle and the machine gun in the tray was deafening.

I clapped my hands over my ears, then found I was swaying wildly with the motion of the car.

Brandon leant forward, digging through the pouch on the back of the car seat, then passed me a crinkly plastic packet of ear plugs.

He passed them around, Slade shaking his head when offered.

So when the stampeding beasts appeared, they did so in a strange, muffled world.

That was a relief in some ways. They looked like some kind of deer, their pelt a curious blush blue grey with faint mottled patterns spreading across their backs and hind quarters.

Whatever they were, they ran fast, the first few drawing up to the sides of our car while we peered through the glass to take a look. And then they were shot.

Blood bloomed on the side of the one closest, its mouth opening to emit a scream I heard even through the earplugs.

Its stride faltered, those long slender legs no longer eating up the ground with frightening efficiency and instead folding messily underneath as the animal collapsed.

I caught the moment its eyes dimmed from wild to dull and empty before we sped past.

Brandon nodded to me as I shrank back against the car seat.

“Fuck!” Slade shouted as the rest of the herd started to make an appearance.

Animals streamed through the space between the cars, and the guys started shooting as many as they could, but that caused problems in itself.

The beasts grew even more panicked as the screams of their brethren stopped them from just flat out running, causing them to veer wildly and get dragged down by those that were shot.

“Get ‘em to stop fucking shooting! It's only making things worse!”

I tugged on Jack’s jeans a few times to get his attention.

“What?” he snapped, but when he ducked down, bracing himself against the back seats, he saw what was going on with a quick glance. He put the safety on the rifle and passed it to Hawk, and then stood up again.

“Aaron!” I couldn’t hear much of the conversation as the words were whipped away by the wind, but I felt something inside me loosen when the sound of gunfire halted. Of course, that wasn’t going to be it.

“Hold on!” Slade shouted as we charged up a rise.

“This Dukes of Hazard shit is not cool!” Jack yelped, hands snapping around the headrests as the car felt like it became airborne for a second—that weird, airy, weightless feeling that just doesn’t feel right when riding in a heavy metal cage on wheels.

Then gravity got her due, the ute slamming down hard.

“Well, that’s gonna fuck the suspension,” Slade growled, but pushed onwards.

“Is there more rough terrain?” I asked, craning my neck and looking out the windscreen. “What’s the plan? Do we just keep going until these things stop running? What’s chasing them, anyway?”

“Fuck.”

As if summoned by my words, horse-like beasts emerged from the trees that ran along the river, and on them were what looked like some scary motherfuckers.

I saw them for a moment as we zipped past. They wore black leather armour a lot like the Volken, theirs more elaborate from the gleaming silver I caught, but that’s where the resemblance ended.

Each was deathly pale, like albinos. They noted our passing and then urged their mounts forward.

“Heads up, we might have hostiles on our tail,” Hawk said.

“Of course, we fucking have,” Slade snarled. “Weapons?”

“No guns, just bows and arrows.”

“Well, we’re gonna have to hope Aaron and the boys can sort them out.”

It appeared they were on to it, if the sounds of the guns were anything to go by.

I pressed my nose to the glass, struggling to look behind us.

I went to lower the window so I could get a better look, when Jack grabbed me by the scruff and yanked me back.

I started to yell, then a barrage of arrows hit the door.

“Don’t make me use the child locks!” Slade shouted.

“Fucking hell, Jules!” Jack said, wrapping an arm around me and tugging me as close as the belt would allow. “They’re fighting out there.”

I knew that, academically. It was why my heart raced while my head felt kinda spacey and my palms were all clammy.

But sitting tight in the back seat while people put their lives on the line sat badly with me.

I had no abilities, nothing other than the capacity to enter a weird psychic space.

Really, I was powerless, required to be a good girl and stay safe, and I didn’t like it.

“There’s something… Looks like ruins off to the left,” Hawk said. “Walls are high, will protect us from the stampede.”

“Maybe. Make a nice little box for these white fuckers to herd us into as well,” Slade said.

“We’re gonna run out of petrol if we just keep running. We’re way off course. The map doesn’t cover this place.”

“Fuck.” Slade nodded and then slammed his fist down on the horn, pointing to the squat brown ruins on the horizon. “Let's hope these fucks are after meat and not us.”