After that, it all happened so fast.
Ewan, Judith's older brother and the one driving, had to slow down, then come to a full stop as traffic piled up in front of them in under a minute.
All around them, drivers were swearing and blasting their horns, while others were gawking at the weapons in their hands with the same stunned disbelief Judith and her brothers felt.
Then the bell started to toll.
When it rang the first time, everyone was still too confused to react.
At the second toll, confusion gave way to panic.
At the third, the ground shook so violently that several cars rocked on their suspensions.
Then, a few hundred meters ahead, off to the side of the road, a pillar of fire suddenly burst into the sky.
When it disappeared less than a minute later, it left behind a wide, gaping crater.
And barely a moment later, countless silhouettes began climbing out of it.
Judith didn't need a clear look to understand they were not friendly, and she wasn't the only one thinking that.
All around her, doors were flung open.
People were already scrambling out of their cars, convinced they would die if they stayed there.
She shared that fear, yet part of her still clung to the absurd hope that those things might stay near the crater.
Then one of them broke into a run.
And the numerous others followed right behind it, sprinting toward the line of cars at an inhuman speed.
Judith and her brothers froze, unsure what they were supposed to do.
The idea of leaving the car and fleeing on foot seemed ridiculous.
Those things were still far off, but the distance between them was shrinking so quickly that it was clear no one would be able to outrun them.
So they stayed in the car, stuck between fear and indecision.
But the creatures kept getting closer.
And with each passing second, their features became easier to make out.
They looked vaguely human, just enough to trigger a reflex of recognition, but everything else made Judith want to look away.
Their skin was torn up all over, as if it had been cut open over and over again.
Large gashes lay open on their arms, torsos, and bellies, and judging by the shape of them, Judith felt nauseatingly certain they had inflicted those wounds on themselves.
Worst of all were their faces.
They were not much more damaged than the rest of their bodies, but the rage twisting them was so extreme it barely looked human, as if it had reshaped their features into something monstrous.
"Fuck it." Ewan said abruptly.
Before Judith or Josh could understand what he intended to do, he yanked the wheel and drove off the road.
The car bounced out of the traffic line, shuddered hard over the roadside, then raced across the uneven terrain as fast as Ewan could push it.
Maybe it was not a great plan, but in those circumstances, it was far from the worst one.
Unfortunately, they would soon understand the risks of that choice.
All of a sudden, Judith and her brothers heard something.
A brutal crack, followed by the sound of rubber tearing and a heavy thud that shook the whole car.
One of the tires had blown.
But in that moment, none of them really processed it.
Not Ewan, whose hands were locked around the wheel as he fought to keep the car from spinning out.
Not Judith, who was too busy looking behind them, half-expecting one of those things to smash into her window at any second even though they were still some distance away.
Not Josh either, twisted in his seat to watch the mindless horde crash into the cars behind them, whether those cars were empty or not.
Right then, survival mattered more than the state of the car as long as it could keep going.
And somehow, it kept going, bouncing wildly across the rough ground before finally reaching terrain that was easier to handle.
Little by little, the jolts eased up.
The noise behind them faded too, and eventually they stopped thinking about it.
It was only about fifteen minutes later, on an isolated road, that the blown tire stopped feeling like a secondary problem.
The car was losing speed, worse, it was getting harder to control.
Ewan had to fight the wheel to keep it straight, and every correction seemed to come half a second too late.
The vehicle kept pulling to one side, shuddering so badly that Judith felt it might give out on them at any second.
"Goddamn it…" Ewan muttered through clenched teeth.
Judith looked at the deserted road ahead of them, then at the surroundings.
Nothing.
No car, no house, no reassuring sign of civilization, only the road and that tense silence that never felt built to last, as if something terrible could split it open at any second.
They did not even know if they had gotten far enough away from those creatures.
For all they knew, some of them might still be out there somewhere behind them, fast enough to catch up and do to them what they had failed to do earlier.
And even if they had truly shaken them off, their current situation was still hardly comforting.
They had no idea how they were supposed to reach Coatesville with the car in that state.
And even if they did make it back, nothing guaranteed the town would still be… normal.
A terrible thought then crossed Judith's mind.
What if this was not just happening here?
What if, while they were driving home, something similar was already happening there too?
Fortunately, that thought didn't have time to settle in, as a faint spark of hope appeared when they spotted a gas station far ahead.
But the closer they got, the more that hope slipped away.
The place was wrecked.
Blood was smeared across the shell of a ruined car, and beside it lay the corpse of some beast cut clean in half.
Judith had never seen anything like it.
It looked like some huge dog, but its body was too massive and too twisted to really be one, and the clean split through its middle made her pray she would never run into whatever had done that to it.
Ewan started to slow down.
For a few seconds, nobody said anything, but they were all thinking the same thing.
It would be smarter to keep driving.
Everything about that place screamed that something awful had happened there very recently, and Judith had no interest in finding out what with a blown tire trapping them there.
Then Josh leaned forward slightly.
"Hang on…" He whispered.
Judith followed his gaze.
Near one of the pumps, a young man was calmly refueling his car.
And as if the scene around him was not alarming enough to call for panic or urgency, once he was done, he started filling several jerrycans as well.
Maybe Judith should have felt more suspicious at the sight of him, because the whole scene was undeniably strange.
But her first reaction was relief more than anything else.
And Ewan felt the same.
So, he brought the car to a stop at a safe distance, and the three of them got out and started walking toward the young man.