Don didn't stop.
He shifted his weight and kept moving, boots hammering across shingles and broken concrete as more of the hound-things spilled into the open behind him.
They poured out of the earth in frantic waves—climbing, scrambling, clawing their way free as if the ground itself had turned against the town.
It wasn't just the fissure he'd crossed moments earlier.
Cracks were opening everywhere now.
He saw it happening in real time as he moved—hairline fractures splitting driveways, sidewalks tearing apart in long jagged seams, soil sinking inward before rupturing outright.
The rumbling deepened, no longer distant. It carried through walls and bones alike—GRRROOOOM~—and with it came more movement. Too much.
He cleared another roof and pushed toward the edge of the block. One more jump and he'd be out of this cluster of houses.
That was when a voice cut through the noise.
"Help! Please—someone help!"
Don snapped his head back.
