"You must hurry!" The Voice commands as Andrew trudges through the snow with the chimera following closely behind.

Though the trio had initially tried to follow the woman who had escaped them into the forest, they quickly found that the monster was too big and bulky to navigate through the trees without extreme difficulty. As a result, they'd been forced to return to the road and continue searching for people from there.

Since then, they had visited three more houses and found nothing. While this was to be expected by this point, so many people left Story during the winter that the town's population fell by nearly half from November through March, it seemed to be taking a toll on The Voice. With each empty house they investigated, she grew more agitated. She'd keep yelling at Andrew to hurry, over and over again, to find someone, anyone, to feed to the monster. When the day started, she seemed so calm, but now stress and worry permeated each word she yelled into Andrew's mind.

In spite of her growing fury and increasingly frantic demands, or maybe because of them, something had begun to change in Andrew.

It had started when he saw the woman fleeing into the woods. The hint of recognition he'd experienced had ignited a small fire within him. He still feels compelled to obey The Voice, to lead the chimera where she commanded, but he no longer did so without question or awareness.

With each house he watched the monster destroy, he repeated the same questions in his mind. What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Even now, as he walks through the snow, bathed in pale moonlight and completely numb to the cold, he wonders if he has to be doing this.

I could just stop, he thinks, and maybe he would if it were truly up to him. But right now, no matter what his feelings on the matter are, The Voice is still too overpowering. Her will, while it can now be questioned, cannot be ignored. And so, Andrew marches on toward the next house and toward the monster's next potential meal.

------------------------------------------

Linda guides the beam of her flashlight back and forth over the corner of her yard where Grace thought she dropped the gun. Though snow has stopped falling and the clouds in the sky have parted, a strong wind continues to blow, which means that the gun has probably been covered under a layer of snow. Nonetheless, Linda's holding out hope that she'll be able to find it with the light from her flashlight.

Inside, Grace is holding Charlie and trying to ignore the pain radiating from her extremities. She's concerned about Linda, who has been outside for more than ten minutes. If she isn't back soon, Grace has decided that she'll find a pair of boots and a coat and go out after her.

Charlie looks up at Grace and then back toward the sliding glass door. He's not in a good mood. Not only has he had to deal with the awful snow each time he's gone outside today, he's also been woken up from a very pleasant dream, and now, he's being held by someone who he barely knows while his mommy is off doing who-knows-what outside in the dark. Had he been a less polite dog, he surely would have expressed his displeasure with a whine, or even a growl. But, because he is very protective of his "good boy" reputation, he keeps his irritation inside and quietly waits for his human to come back.

Back outside, Linda has caught a glimpse of something that looks like metal with her flashlight and wades through the snow in order to get a closer look at it.

"Thank you, Jesus," she says aloud as she nears the object and recognizes it as the barrel of a gun. Carefully, she reaches out and plunges her hand into the snow drift where it's buried. Then, after a few seconds of blindly feeling around, she's able to grab the gun and pull it free.

She tucks the weapon under her arm and turns to head back inside, but before she takes a single step, she hears a loud crashing noise. Under normal circumstances, she'd assume it was just a tree breaking under the weight of snow and use her flashlight to investigate further. But before she points her light in the direction of the sound, she remembers Grace's story, and, as ridiculous as she knows her fears are, cautiously turns her flashlight off. Even without it, she thinks that she'll be able to make out the source of the noise with just the moonlight above. Unfortunately, she's right.

Through the trees she sees a massive creature, some thirty feet away, shrouded in shadow, and skulking down her neighbor's driveway. She reels in horror and panic as she realizes that Grace isn't crazy after all.

Grace is clutching Charlie tightly to her chest and is desperately trying to keep him from barking. She's turned her lantern off and backed herself up against the wall next to the wood burning stove. Oh, God, please no, she's thinking. She wants to go closer to the kitchen window and investigate the noise but she's too scared. What if it's the monster? What if it got Linda? What do I do? What do I do?!

Though her heart is pounding in her chest, Linda is trying to keep as calm and as silent as possible as she moves across her yard back toward her house. She doesn't know where she'll go, but she knows that she's got to get Charlie and Grace out of here.

Inside, Grace no longer has any doubts about what's causing the noise outside. She can hear the familiar sounds of wood splintering and glass shattering, and knows that it's only a matter of time before the creature completely destroys the empty house next door and moves over here.

Linda tears open the sliding glass door and bounds through it. The house is completely dark, save for the dim moonlight reflecting in through the windows, and Grace is nowhere to be seen. Linda calls her name into the darkness and hears a muffled whimper from the kitchen in response.

"Grace," Linda says as she runs toward the sound of her friend's voice, "we need to go. Now!"

"Where?" Grace sobs, " It's no use, I barely escaped it earlier and it just followed me here." In the darkness, Linda can make out her cowering figure on the floor as well as the shape of Charlie in her arms.

"Jesus Christ, God damn it!" Linda snaps, fully aware that neither of them have time for a breakdown, "knock it off!"

Grace keeps sobbing and Linda crouches down so that the two are eye level. "Listen to me," she says, "go out to the garage, and put the pair of snowboots and the snowsuit that are hanging by the door on." When she doesn't get a response, she sets her flashlight and the gun onto the floor and reaches out and grabs Grace by the shoulders. At this gesture, Grace finally stops crying and looks up at Linda.

"Did you hear what I just said?" Linda asks, she's trying her best not to sound impatient but isn't having much success.

Grace nods. "Good, then go do it, and here," Linda says as she picks up the shotgun and hands it to Grace, "take this and give me my dog."

With shaking hands, Grace does what she's told and takes the gun, in the process letting go of Charlie. The dog jumps out of her lap and onto the floor. Normally, he'd be barking frantically, trying to alert everyone to the strange sounds and smells he's getting from outside. But based on his mom's tone, and the crying of the human who had been holding him, he knows that he'd better keep quiet.

After the gun has been handed off, both women rise to their feet and then head in opposite directions. Linda and Charlie make their way to Linda's bedroom, where she rips open her underwear drawer. After a few seconds of rooting around, she produces a black bag and uzips it. Inside, she sees The Judge, the name she's given to her six shooter revolver, as well as two boxes of ammo. She's not sure if they'll be much help against the monster outside, but she's glad to have them, just in case.

From the garage window, Grace can barely make out the monster emerging from the wreckage of the house next door, but she can clearly hear it's ghostly wails. It's taking all of her will power to concentrate on the task at hand, to force her hands to stop shaking as the zips closed the heavy snowsuit that she found hanging by the door. Both it and the boots she's now trying to put on her feet are too big for her, meaning they must belong to Linda's husband.

Just as she pulls the second boot on, the door behind her opens with a woosh.

"Are you ready?" Linda asks in a whisper.

"Yes," Grace replies as she turns to look at her. She sees that Linda is now sporting a silver revolver attached to a belt around her waist.

"Good. Follow me."

Grace follows Linda up the small set of steps that lead back inside and into the laundry room next to the garage.

"Grab those," Linda says, pointing at the five shotgun shells lying on the counter by the drying rack where Grace's snow soaked sweatpants are hanging. As Grace takes the ammunition and loads two shells into her gun, Linda bends over to grab Charlie. She lifts him into the air and pulls him close to her chest before zipping him into her snowsuit. There's no way that he can walk through snow this deep, and there's no chance in hell she's leaving him behind, so she'll have to carry him like this. It's the only way that she can think of that will leave both of her hands free.

"We'll leave through this door and head into the forest" Linda says, taking Grace by the arm and leading her toward the door.

"Where will we go?" Grace asks. Though she knows that it's her only option, she's scared to go back into the forest, afraid that this time she actually will freeze to death.

"The Waterson's live further up the mountain. They've got snowmobiles that we can use to get out into town, so we'll go to them. Now come on!" As Linda yanks open the door and ushers Grace onto the steps leading outside, the house shakes, and the sound of a furious roar echoes through its halls.

The creature is upon them.