Author's Note: Hey everybody--Monster Nation is selling like hotcakes, in large part thanks to all your help and support. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy or is thinking of buying a copy or who just recommended it to a friend! You can still pick one up by following the links on this page. They shouldn't be hard to find--just look for the creepy baby doll head.

Also, please don't forget, you can order signed copies of the book here, thanks to Ann Towey and Nuke Con. It looks like there's been a great response so far. My wrist will ache after signing my name so many times, but I can't imagine any nicer way to develop Carpal Tunnel! -Dave

Her Dad—her Dad was dead. Dead. He was—he was dead.

She screamed and screamed. She thrust her hands into her eyes so she wouldn’t see it, pressed her face against her shoulder.

Screamed some more.

It didn’t change anything. It didn’t help. Breath whistled in and out of her lungs but she was just sitting there. She was just sitting there doing nothing.

She was still about to die. The wolf was still going to tear her apart and—and—

She was still screaming as she unfastened her seatbelt, but at least she was moving. Achieving something. What was she going to do? She was dead, certainly. The wolf would have her. It would destroy her. She was going to open her door, very slowly, and get out. And then she was going to run as fast as she could.

And it wouldn’t be enough. She knew it wouldn’t. The wolf would outrun her. It would catch her, and finish her off.

There had to be something she could do. Something other than running for it. She glanced over at all the blood on the driver’s seat. Her Dad’s blood. His seatbelt hung slack and stretched out across the blood. So much blood.

Her whole body shivered though she was not particularly cold. She slid across the seat, slid her legs down into the leg well on the driver’s side.

It was absolutely crazy. She was twelve years old—she’d never driven a car before, had no idea how. She’d played video games where you had to drive a car. She looked down and saw two pedals. She thought there were supposed to be three. Weren’t there supposed to be three? She stepped on one of them with all her weight and the car bobbed back and forth a little.

In the headlights the wolf tore something stringy out of her Dad’s torso. She wasn’t sure but it looked like one of his arms was already gone.

She stamped on the other pedal and the car surged around her but it didn’t go anywhere. She held down her foot and the engine made an angry whirring sound. It was enough to get the wolf’s attention. It pulled its face out of her father’s side and took a step around the side of the car.

“Get away,” Chey screamed. “Get away!” If neither pedal worked she had no idea what to do next. She was certain she was pressing the accelerator but—but why wouldn’t the car go? She stepped on it again and the car roared. The headlights flickered but—

What had her Dad said? Right before the wolf got him? He had said he was going to put the car into drive. What did that mean?

The wolf took another step. It was coming up around to the driver’s side door. Was it grinning at her?

She grabbed a stick on the side of the steering wheel—she’d seen her Dad move it before—and yanked it down as hard as she could. The windshield wipers swept up but then the one on her side got stuck in the broken glass and just sort of flopped there. The other one beat back and forth madly. She pushed the stick back up.

The wolf reared up and put both paws on her window sill. It licked at the window next to her face. Jesus, she thought, it was playing with her. It wanted to scare her.

“I’m already scared, you, you asshole!” she screamed at it. Then she grabbed another stick and pushed it down. The car jumped underneath her and started rolling backwards. Shit! She looked back and saw the side of the road there, saw a ditch. A big letter R had appeared on the control panel. It had to mean Reverse.

The wolf trotted away from her. It got maybe five meters away. She stepped on the brake pedal and the car stopped. Everybody stopped. She studied the stick and the dashboard and she figured out how to push it up two stops until it said D, for Drive. There was a 1 and a 2 as well but she had no idea what they meant.

Standing on the brake pedal, her legs not quite long enough to reach comfortably, she flipped the stick up to D. The car bobbed again and she looked over and saw the wolf. It was leaning back on its hind legs, ready to jump at the car again. To drag her out just like it had dragged her Dad.

Just as the wolf bounded toward her she shifted all her weight from the brake to the accelerator. The car lurched forward and she swung the steering wheel around to get back on the road. The wolf slashed at the side of the car and she heard the metal ring and tear. She looked back in the mirror and saw the animal falling away behind her in the red wash of her taillights.

That was the last she saw of it. The last thing she remembered before she skidded to a stop in a little town fifty kilometers away and the police took over. Before they put her in a little room that smelled like sweat and started asking her questions.

Only some nights, when she couldn’t sleep—which was pretty much every night after that—some nights she would sit in the dark and replay her escape. She would go over it in her head, each event, every little thing that had happened. Her hands would involuntarily reach for the gearshift, her feet would press down against the sheets. And she would remember looking in the rearview one last time and—

—she swore to herself every time it was a false memory, a guilt complex, her imagination running away with her but—

—just for a second, just for a split second she would see her Dad lying in the middle of the road, covered in blood and gore, and before she looked away, before tears made it impossible to see anything, she would watch him sit up and reach for her with his remaining hand. Reach out, begging her to come back and get him.