Basil waved in greeting at the boy, uncertain. Wary of the last time they had needed to stop along the road, he merely reduced their speed to a crawl. As Basil watched, the boy's nose twitched; a spastic, mechanical motion.

He tried to catch the child's eye, initiate some sort of acknowledgement through a connected gaze- but there was an eerie blankness to the child.

It was all the more sudden, then, when the boy suddenly opened his mouth and screeched. The noise was badly startling, and they all jumped in their seats. Maintaining the abrasive cry, the boy lunged out into the road toward them, finally revealing a body that left Basil breathless with disgust and horror.

He could only perceive the long, sinewy body as a creature- regardless of the human head attached to it.

They could all see it clearly now, out from under the canopy's shadows.

A long, snakelike neck stretched towards them. It emerged from a large, mottled, gray-brown barrel of a body, easily larger than a man. It had a reptilian appearance, the legs splayed out like some overgrown lizard, claws scrabbling at the ground.

As it moved closer, they could smell the awful thing. It was a thick, cloying waft of decay, the smell rising off of it in waves.

It whipped its head back and forth, coming closer to the strider. Basil was frozen, watching it approach. He couldn't take his eyes away from its face, locked into a snarl. Its features formed a terrible portrait, framed by stringy hair that ran all the way down past its back. It was the worst thing Basil had ever seen; an abomination of human and monster, made more grotesque with its disjointed hybridization.

"Move it!" Silva screamed, breaking the trance they'd fallen into. She spurred Basil into motion, who shoved the throttle forward as far as it could go.

The strider shot forward, its legs churning beneath them. With terrifying speed, the creature followed in pursuit, its once-placid face fractured into a snarl.

Despite the creature's awkward stance, it ate up the distance, scrabbling forward. Basil found himself moving in a perpetual swivel, whipping around to check the road, their pursuer, and back again.

The initial scream they had heard had since shriveled away, replaced by a harsh babble, a barrage of unintelligible shrieks.

Still, the strider raced down the road, gaining speed. A few moments more, and its engine would be firing hot enough to overcome the animal.

Their budding relief withered, however, when the entire strider jerked. In the second before the strider could pull away, It had stretched its neck out impossibly far; its human-boy head now had an impossibly strong jaw clamped around the back end of the strider.

Silva blanched at the sight of it, the strider slowing down with the increased baggage. She gazed down at the painfully innocent face. With the icy detachment of shock, Silva saw the boy's eyes roll madly in their sockets, the streams of mucus, the dark veins that stood stark along the jaw.

They were face-to-face at that moment, and Silva felt an incredible surge of pity run through her. Her maternal instincts were screaming, and she knew without a doubt that this once-child was in unfathomable pain.

Hannah shoved her out of the way, brandishing a knife she had taken from their cooking supplies. She was yelling, a long, drawn-out wail that petered out as she approached.

Her burst of courage faltered, beaten down by the stench of decay, the howls of the creature, the shuddering, shaking machine.

But her attempt made all the difference.

Silva wrenched herself into action. She pulled the knife from her daughter's grip and leaned over, plunging the blade deep into the creature's eye socket. She could feel each layer of tissue, the pressure snapping taut as each layer gave way.

It was a gruesome sight: an old woman twisting a knife into the face of a young boy, angry shrieks turning to wails of pain. It let go of the strider, and they immediately shot forward.

Behind them, the creature splayed across the road, writhing in pain, knife still embedded in its face. The thrashing tail and legs were those of a wild animal, but the boy's sobbing was eerily human; plaintive wails that made Silva grimace, forcing her to turn away.

As they built more distance, they watched it give up the pursuit, drag itself into the forest, pull away into the brush.

It was a spastic retreat, its body splintering trees in a blind rush. Each new collision elicited new squeals of pain.

Basil kept his eyes locked on it until the last of the tail disappeared into the forest. Despite its disappearance, he still kept up their breakneck speed, and no one was complaining.