We ran downstairs, making sure to kick open the doors we passed by. There was a chance we would stumble on more monsters that way, but if there were any other survivors in the clinic, we didn't want to miss them.

  It was strange, surreal even, thinking of myself as a survivor. When I was on my own, questioning my sanity was an easy way to cling to it. Now that I had Quint with me and he was seeing most of the things I did, that shortcut to keeping my wits about me flew out of the window. Or rather through a minotaur-shaped hole in the wall.

  Something unbelievably fucked up did happen, and we were now living through it. The human instinct to stick together when facing the unknown was working overtime for the two of us.

  None of the rooms we checked had anyone in them, be they people or monsters.

  The glass door leading outside refused to slide open when we approached it. I still had my cane with me, only now I carried it on my shoulder, like a long mace. I bashed the stubborn door, shattering it in a single blow.

  Quint responded to that feat with an impressed whistle.

  Doors like this, acting as the front entrance to a public place with expensive medical equipment inside, usually only appeared glass. They tended to be sturdy enough to withstand all but the most determined attempts to bust them down. My single tap broke it like it wasn't even there.

  I was still getting used to my new strength. I was beginning to like it, yet a part of me wondered if it would be enough to give me a fighting chance against the terrible things that now inhabited the world.

  Surveying the street from up-close stressed the sudden desolation way more than looking at it from a window. The cacophony of car horns and alarms joined there with the sounds of raging fires and otherworldly roars.

  And still there weren't any people out. In the distance monstrous shapes were exploring their surroundings, scraping the ground and lounging on overturned cars. But no people.

  I was once again questioning my sanity. Quint was taking this even harder. He now had a mad lopsided grin on his weathered and dirty face.

  "Ya know, Buck, being proven right has never felt this bitter," he said.

  "What's that?"

  "My kin always felt those Sensates were shadier than a parasol on a cloudy day. Everyone jumping on this revitalization bandwagon," he gave me a suspicious side eye, "was akin to buying an apple from a serpent manning a stand at a farmer's market. But even in our wildest discussions we never imagined they'd do a thing like this." Quint's eyes darted to a street corner where a creature that looked like an exceptionally shaggy werewolf was scratching a lamppost that had bent under the beast's weight.

  It was good to hear him say this and echo my own assessment of the situation. We may have been coming at it from different directions, what with his biblical references, but our conclusions for who to blame were the same.

  "I suggest we drive around and see how far this goes," Quint said as he struggled to straighten his ruined suit.

  I kept glancing at the vortex that raged in the distance. If Quint was hoping this was a localized event, I was afraid he'd find himself sorely disappointed. Still, at least on the move we'd feel like we were doing something. Besides, I've been running on adrenaline ever since stepping out of that machine. Getting a chance to slow down and think would be nice.

  "You okay to drive, Quint?" I asked. The lawyer looked woozy and disheveled after his horizontal date with that door. The last thing I needed with everything that's been going on was dying in a car crash. That would surely cause Alanis to materialize on the spot and add another verse to her definition of irony.

  "A lesser man would get insulted by you questioning his driving," Quint said with the slightest slur. "If you don't trust me, we can take your ride."

  "My place is not far from here, so I walked," I clarified without going into the particulars of retired city living and not having a need for a car.

  "Then giddy up," Quint said and took charge.

  I followed him at a brisk trot, noticing the total absence of pain in my knees. The rest of my body was now lightly bruised, but that was a fresh, fleeting pain, not the usual dull ache of worn-out joints.

  Further down the street, Quint stopped by a red Ford truck. It was an old-school vehicle made from hard metal, repainted multiple times over the years and showing a few spots of rust. A silver sedan was crumpled around the truck's bed. The old jalopy only had the slightest dent.

  Quint settled into the driver's seat, I took shotgun.

  Yesterday, I would never have considered getting in a car with a nut like Quint. I could just picture him graduating in the bottom half of his class, his prospects limited to representing similar crazies to himself on their pointless crusades.

  Now, he was my closest ally in the whole wide world on account of apparently being the only human other than me in said world. And all along, regardless of how misguided their reasoning was, his people were right to oppose the Sensates.

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  The truck started with a sputter.

  "Let's see how far this hellscape goes," Quint said, pulling away from the curb.

  "Get ready to floor it if this black hole for gas sounds as unpleasant to those guys as it does to me."

  "Hey! You're talking about a legend of American automotive industry here, Buck. Show some respect."

  "The Cadillac's a legend. What you've got here is a rust bucket."

  I didn't get the chance to hear Quint's comeback to me insulting his ride.

  From behind the clinic, covered in bits of plaster, stumbled the minotaur. The beast's bloodshot eyes locked with mine. He lowered his horns, scraped a hoof on the sidewalk, and charged.

  "I'll show you a rust bucket." Quint fiddled with the transmission stick, putting us on a collision course with the monster.

  "I don't think playing chicken with that thing is a good idea," I fired off as we were accelerating with the minotaur doing the same on his end.

  I looked at the beast, making the health bar appear again. It still said 7/48. Maybe it wasn't that bad, I thought. This hunk of metal could surely deal more than seven damage. Then again, even if we did manage to splatter the minotaur, I wasn't looking forward to his massive body potentially flying through our windshield and impaling us with the horns. The beast didn't need to be alive to do that.

  The next moment, just as Quint shifted gears, the minotaur's leafy health bar glowed red. His health changed to ???/48. I got a bad feeling about there being three of those question marks. The minotaur's body now appeared larger and more muscular. Actual smoke was coming out of his nostrils.

  I tried to warn Quint, tell him to change course.

  He ignored me and stared straight ahead, tightly gripping the wheel with both hands. "Solid. American. Engineering," he chanted as we kept gaining speed.

  I grabbed onto my seat.

  We collided into the minotaur with a squishy bang. The beast was tossed to the side. In return, my head got whipped on the dashboard, lowering my health by further two points to a total of 6/12. Quint bounced off the wheel with a loud grunt, but had enough vigor left in him to send his car into a controlled spin until we came to a screeching stop.

  Quint groaned in pain, yet his spirit was undaunted. "You go ahead and take a look at this parking job," he said, glancing past me at a parking meter inches away from my door. "This is why airbags are for suckers."

  I had no desire to get into that discussion with him now. I was preoccupied with examining our surroundings. There was now a large dent in the truck's hood. Other than that, it appeared undamaged.

  The minotaur was crumpled into a gory mess of horns and hooves. His health bar returned to its original leafy state, but was now fully drained. The numbers on it read -10/48. It was odd seeing health go into the negative. At least the beast seemed well and thoroughly dead.

  All the other creatures on the street, that almanac of assorted nightmares that up until that point had ignored our existence, were agitated. Their exploratory movements in our direction made me want to be far away from them.

  "I think you spooked them."

  "So I have," Quint replied, turning the keys.

  It took him a few tries to get the truck going. We drove off just as a curious tentacled thing was about to violate our exhaust pipe.

  "I'm not one for cussing," Quint broke the brief silence as we were leaving the clinic behind, "but what in the fuckity flying fuck is going on?"

  I was about to give him my take on the events of the past ten-fifteen minutes when we turned a corner.

  Quint's attention was with me, so he was slow to hit the brakes when a towering mass of rust-colored scales obscured his field of view. I slammed into the dashboard again. The man trusted seatbelts about as much as he did airbags.

  "Forget that last question, hoss." Quint craned his neck to move closer to the windshield and get a better look at the carapaced behemoth I saw strolling through the streets earlier. "Next round's on me if you can tell me what this ugly sonovabitch is."

  "Oh yeah, the tarasque. Forgot to mention it."

  "Tarasque?"

  From where we were sitting, only one of the thing's legs was visible. "It sure looks like one. Lion's head, turtle shell, big as shit," I described the rest of the monster to Quint. "Now start riding your steel horse, cowboy, unless you'd like to remove any uncertainty in whether you're wanted dead or alive."

  The joke didn't land. That didn't stop Quint from heeding the spirit of my plea. He backed away right as the beast began its delayed reaction to our invasion of its personal space.

  The creature roared. The noise it produced was on the intersection of a hunting horn and an air raid siren. It was also loud enough to scatter all the lesser monsters within several blocks.

  Tires squealed as Quint turned his truck around to get us away from the giant monster.

  It's hard to know how a thing so alien, in every sense of the word, thinks. Whether it took offense to us ramming into its foot, reacted to rapid movement as an invitation to chase, saw us as fast food, or was driven purely by hatred towards mankind, the moment we started to drive, chase it did.

  Each lumbering stride shook the nearby buildings and left deep impressions in the road. Despite this seeming lack of urgency, the sheer size of the beast was putting it closer to us.

  "Can this thing go any faster?" I asked, glancing over my shoulder.

  "My baby's built for distance, not speed," Quint informed me.

  "Your thrifty thinking will be a comfort as we're getting crushed into paste," I said through gritted teeth.

  "No need to fly off the handle, Buck. I've got this," Quint said in what would've been a nonchalant manner if not for his clattering teeth and whitened knuckles on the steering wheel.

  Not bothering to warn me, he swerved into a narrow alley. I could've sworn his truck was too wide to fit in there. To Quint's credit, he zipped through only adding a single new scrape to the side of his ride.

  He maintained this defensive driving style for several blocks, taking frequent sharp turns to get lost in the concrete jungle. The beast kept up its stubborn chase. Even when we couldn't see it, we could hear its roars and the earth-shaking reverberation of its steps.

  "Hey, there's my place," I pointed out a familiar outline in the distance.

  "We're in no position to swing by and grab your goldfish, hoss," Quint said.

  I wondered what made him think I was a goldfish guy. Before I got a chance to land on a satisfying theory, the tarasque barreled through the bricks, bulldozing my home into a cloud of orange dust.

  "Hijo de puta," I yelled.

  Quint was doing a good job of weaving through the beast's legs. His tenacity must have frustrated the beast. Eager to crush us, it took a false step, stumbling into a nearby office building. Unlike my home, that one was thirty floors of concrete, steel beams, and glass. It tumbled onto the monster with a terrible racket, crushing it under its weight.

  It was hard to tell if the creature was still alive, and in all the excitement it never occurred to me to check its health bar.

  "Condolences on that goldfish, Buck. Where to now?" Quint asked.

  I wasn't sure why he kept turning to me for advice. He was the one behind the wheel. I guessed my handling of the minotaur made me an expert in his eyes.

  "For now, the important thing is to keep moving," I said. "Maybe get out of the city, see how the countryside is faring."

  Billy Joel Facts - Chapter 4:

  Story Facts - Chapter 4: