God is my Judge

Hometown Fever

Our hometown didn't look the same. Well, mine and Noah's, I'm not actually sure where Daniel came from. One day he was just there, at first he was the talk of the school, the town even, but people lost interest when they discovered he want very friendly. At least... most people. The smart people.
Noah and I had been friends for as long as I can remember, his mom was best friends with my mom. They used to joke about us growing up and getting married. Thinking about it now was laughable.
On any given Sunday in Huckabee, Utah, you would find people lining the street on the main square. It smelt like pie and the air was filled with excited chatter and music from some garage band that was never very good but ALWAYS home grown. The whole town grills out on Sunday like a giant barbecue. Well, giant as in like 200 people. So it was a shock when on the Sunday that Daniel and I rolled into town, the main square was completely empty. We drove through in stunned silence drinking in the surroundings when suddenly I saw a man leaning over another man. I grabbed my door handle, certain that they needed help, but right at that moment Daniel hit the gas.
"What the hell?!"
He didn't answer, he just kept driving. I stared at him for a second but my attention was pulled away quickly when I saw two cars crashed into each other. No one was around them or in them. Not even a cop or fire truck, and suddenly the man was forgotten.
"What is going on here?"
I might as well not have said it out loud. No response. Daniel kept driving, without speaking, until we came to the only grocery store in town. The one I worked out until I was 18 and left. Here, we spotted the most movement we had seen since driving in. Movement inside. We pulled in.
The parking lot was half full of cars, some with doors open but no one nearby. The window to the store was broken and in front of the door there was blood on the ground. I swallowed to lump in my throat and reached for the door handle.
"Wait."
I looked at him, fully prepared to argue, but saw that he was looking past me so I followed his gaze instead. We watched as a two teenagers, a blond and a brunette, ran out of the store with a grown man hot on their tail. They were too far away to make out much, but they were running toward us quickly. They each tried a different car, both locked, and then tried to run to a different one, but the blond was not quick enough and the man caught her. He spun her around toward him and I finally caught a look at his face. It was grotesque, hollow as if he were dead, his teeth looked as if they were a pair of ill-fitting dentures, too big for his mouth and sharper than human teeth should be, all accompanied by blood shot eyes. I had but a moment to absorb all of this as his teeth sunk into her shoulder.
She screamed and I let out a squeak before Daniel clamped his hand over my mouth. Too late, the brunette saw us and ran toward our car. Luckily the man was still preoccupied chomping on her friend. Daniel unlocked the doors and she hopped in the back. He slammed the car in drive and took off.
We were outside city limits when I finally broke the silence.
"What the fuck?"
No one answered.
"What the fuck was that?"
Still no answer so I turned to look at the girl. She was younger than I originally thought, no older than 12 or 13 and she looked surprisingly calm.
"I-"
And then life went black.