My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister

The floor shook below my feet.

Hm?

I staggered and Erika propped me up, but what was even happening?

“It’s hard to tell without any windows, but did this ship just tilt?”

“Fugu? You mean the giant UFO is falling toward earth!?”

Not necessarily, but the risk was the same no matter which way we were moving. We didn’t want to be carried away to the farthest reaches of space, after all.

Why had this happened all of a sudden?

Had the empress lost control when she lost consciousness?

Or was there someone else in control who had some other plans here?

Fortunately, the huge ship was controlled by a professional version of the familiar Winners line of OSs. There was not much I could do on my own. There was no way I could break through the firewall and figure out the program structure starting now. In fact, that kind of work was generally done using special tools, so you didn’t just type away on the keyboard like in movies. A computer was just a box if there was nothing inside it. Just like drawing a picture or writing a song, you needed the appropriate software if you wanted to do something.

But if you were already on the inside, you didn’t have to go to the trouble of hacking in. I could operate the computer to the extent that manual control was sufficient. And since it used the Winners format, I could call in that powerful, all-purpose tool named Maxwell.

If the signals from earth were affecting the spaceship’s travel, then it had to be able to pick up those earth signals. I managed to manually open up a port and then connected to Japan via a server on a small Pacific island using an IP I had set up as a burner account.

“Maxwell, can you hear me? If you have a connection, respond on my phone!”

“Sure. You appear to be accessing me from an unknown server, but where are you and what are you doing?”

Oh, right. My GPS app couldn’t tell Maxwell my position while off the planet.

“You’ve checked through the structure of that unknown server, right? I want to regain control of the giant UFO that’s started to tilt. Help me do that.”

“UFO stands for unidentified flying object, but if you have visual confirmation of it and can distinguish it from other flying objects, it would instead qualify as an identified flying-”

“No one cares, Maxwell! Just execute my command already!”

“User, why is that mystery craft crudely running ordinary Winners?”

“Don’t ask me. Now, which way is it tilting?”

“The angle is drifting between 1 and 6 degrees while it approaches earth. Its course forms a gentle parabolic arc. That is commonly known as an angle of reentry into the atmosphere.”

“Fugu. So we really are falling!”

This ship was so large we could not see the far end of it despite being indoors. If a structure that large hit the surface, it was bound to bring about another ice age.

“Could we change the angle so it burns up in the thermosphere?”

“No. Not only is the material extremely durable, its mass is very large. It should break through even if the angle of reentry is altered.”

“Then what if we give it a shallower angle? Y’know, have it skip off the edge of the atmosphere and fly away.”

“Recalculating.”

Please.

Please let it work!!

“The mass is again a concern. Even if it did briefly skip off the atmosphere, the earth’s gravitational pull on its great mass might be too strong to break free. It is more likely that it will simply break through the atmospheric wall, leading to the same situation as the other scenario.”

Was there nothing we could do!?

“Fugugugugu!”

“Ayumi-chan.”

Ayumi started meaninglessly shouting, so Erika gently held her slender shoulders through the mostly-unzipped track jacket.

Yes, that was right.

Giving Maxwell impossible commands was meaningless. I had to think and I did not have to find an answer right away. I had to do this one step at a time, like untangling some wires.

The ridiculous scale of the ship was the biggest problem here. Any ordinary logic would be crushed by that weight.

“No, wait. Maxwell, the UFO itself is working, right?”

“It has already begun to fall, but within those bounds, yes.”

“Search for as big a piece of debris as you can find in satellite orbit. We can place this huge thing on a collision course to break it apart like a rice cracker. The smaller pieces of the wreckage should burn up in the thermosphere or skip off!”

“That will likely increase the concentration of debris at a historically unprecedented rate,” said Maxwell.

“That’s better than having history come to an abrupt end. But if we’re going to do this, let’s try to burn up as many of the fragments as possible. Let’s try not to create a cage of debris.”

We could not just sit around while this happened. The ship we were going to smash to pieces and send through the thermosphere was the very one we were occupying.

“Maxwell, search for a means of escape!”

“I see nothing you could call an ‘escape pod’.”

“So can it only let people down in that antigravity whatever that looks like a spotlight? How did all those slimy brown servant species things get down to earth!?”

“Based on the footage recorded within the ship, several of them clumped together before being ejected toward the atmosphere. It is unclear what percentage arrived to the surface, but the ones on the outside must have been burned up.”

She really had been an empress. Her view of life was fundamentally different from ours!!

“Fuguu. But the empress herself had a hiding place to protect herself while using that ‘surrogate mother’ as the center of attention. I feel like she would have some insurance for herself.”

“Maxwell.”

“No. Perhaps she intended to gather that servant species around herself for protection.”

Doing that would increase her body temperature too much. For that matter, I doubted she could stand the scorching heat of the thermosphere if sauna levels of heat were enough to threaten her life. Maybe she was convinced she could never lose, so she had a theory but had never actually tested it out.

“If there isn’t one, we’ll just have to create one.”

“Satori-kun?”

“Maxwell, this spaceship is apparently made so its interior can be freely rearranged to match the current need. Search the ship’s storage for a specifications document on the interior control. We just need something that can break away and handle free fall or ballistic flight. There has to be tons of materials in here, so we can build an airtight shell capable of surviving reentry!”

“Checking data for unrecommended task. The physical work itself is possible, but several of the parameters necessary as a basis for the simulation are only taken from private space companies or websites run by hobbyists. Since this technology can be used in missiles, the security at universities and national agencies is strict and none of the concrete parameters are provided on the public sites. If the values gathered from the viewable part of the web are inaccurate, there is a severe risk of it breaking up during reentry or exposing you to radiation damage. Do you still wish to continue this task?”

…

Not even I could answer.

Not right away anyway.

This wasn’t just my own life on the line. I could be exposing my family to danger as well. Could I do that? Could I nod my head without knowing anything for sure?

“Satori-kun, we have no other option here. I don’t like making a gamble either, but our odds are zero if we stay here on the ship.”

“Fugu. That’s right, Onii-chan. And we can’t let this giant UFO fall on the earth. What about dad, mom, and everyone at school? I can’t let something happen to them!”

They really saved me there.

I wasn’t acting purely based on the odds of success or failure, but I was still really glad to have them with me.

“Maxwell, do it!”

“Sure. Continuing task.”

The surrounding walls rose up, complexly rearranged, and produced a new silhouette. They created a box smaller than a school classroom, but it did not end with that one. The same process repeated afterwards to create a long row of the boxy escape pods.

“How many of the servant species do you think can fit on board?”

“Theoretically, all of them,” said Maxwell. “But as we do not know how to contact them, it is unknown if we can get them to understand that will save them. I will send a message in as many languages as I can, but they probably think dropping down as-is is the natural form of atmospheric reentry.”

“…”

“Also, I estimate there are more than 10,000 of them still aboard the ship. It is unknown if they can reproduce, but sending them to the surface could lead to a situation similar to the release of black bass.”

I understood that.

They were clearly our enemy, but I still could not even consider leaving them to burn as the spaceship fell apart.

“I want to minimize the effects as much as possible. Don’t let them spread out too much and drop them to a single point.”

“Understood. I will search for an uninhabited island out at sea.”

“We also need to bring the empress and the girl in the pod…was she a Scylla?”

The skinny yellow empress had been acting base on lies, but that did not change what she had done. My efforts here were honestly less about feeling sorry for her and more about not wanting her to escape somehow.

“How will you restrain her?” asked Maxwell.

“Search for an open pod like the one that Scylla is in. We’ll treat her like a torture tool craftsman: shove her into the device she was so proud of.”

“Sure.”

“Hey, Onii-chan? We’ve heard about a Scylla before, haven’t we?”

“Yeah. My underclassman is a Circe Witch and when she was transforming herself with the potions she makes-”

“No, not that. Hmm, wasn’t there something in the Bright Cross’s underground facility?”

Once we were somewhere safe, we could remove her from the pod and ask her after she woke up.

If we wanted to increase our odds of survival, it would be best to all ride different escape pods, but the three of us naturally gathered in the same one.

We brought the clear pods containing the Scylla and the empress with us.

“Shut the door, Maxwell. And lock it from the inside. It’s airtight now, right?”

“Sure. That is not a problem.”

I was still wet, so I felt chilly even with my black coat.

Either to increase the strength of the shell or to protect my Vampire sister from the sunlight, there were no windows. Instead, there appeared to be a camera on the outside. That let me see things outside using my phone. Since it was so close, I was directly connecting with Redtooth, which did not require a server in between.

“How long can I keep this connection with you?” I asked Maxwell.

“I am using the mystery spaceship as a sort of satellite host, so until it is destroyed You will definitely lose the connection during reentry. For Miss Erika’s sake, I will try to send you to a landing point where it is currently night, but the margin of error is an unknown. Once you arrive on the surface, please send me accurate location data using GPS or the like. Once I have located you, I will reconstruct an access route using the best line available.”

In this case, we would not be using short rocket bursts to adjust our position along the way. Once we were thrown out there, we were in free fall. The very start mattered most, so we did not need Maxwell’s help throughout.

“It’s going to feel lonely again pretty soon.”

“I did not realize you were such a needy child, user. Once this is over, how about we have a VR festival? With a swimsuit and dancing theme.”

I felt a small vibration.

To reiterate, this escape pod had no engine. Once we were thrown out there, it was pure free fall. That meant this movement would be coming from the spaceship as a whole.

“Beginning countdown from 30. I will see you again on the surface, user.”

“Yeah.”

A 30 second countdown seemed long, but it was over in no time. I didn’t have time at all to gather my resolve. I felt a heavy sound of scraping metal while my stomach was lifted up. That was the force of inertia. The floor had opened up and the escape pod had fallen out.

I checked my phone and saw a real outer space-y kind of scene for the first time.

I saw the clear starry sky and the blue planet below.

If our lives were not at risk, I might have been struck speechless by the sight.

But now was not the time for tears. The escape pod camera spun around and captured the moment the giant saucer broke apart. A piece of deadly debris had crashed into it after building up plenty of speed circling the earth over and over. The spaceship bent, tilted, and cracked before falling apart. Still, each piece was several hundred meters long. Smashing it up several times over was still not enough to ensure it would burn up in the thermosphere. The explosion was enormous, but we could not hear it.

Sound could not travel through space. The noise we did hear must have been the small fragments hitting the escape pod like a scattershot of bullets or a sandstorm.

“Wh-what?” Pale-faced Ayumi looked wildly around while clinging to the cylindrical pod in which the paper underwear Scylla slept. “I don’t like the sound of that. Isn’t something scraping at the other side of the wall!?”

“We weren’t caught in the debris storm. We’ve hit the edge of the atmosphere. The real danger starts here!”

The boxes just like our own flew toward that orange burning curtain like a meteor shower.

We had no way of knowing which ones were full of the servant species and which ones were empty.

They didn’t all make it. Some were crushed after colliding with even bigger pieces of debris and some couldn’t withstand the friction and burned away.

“Dammit!!”

“Satori-kun, there’s no turning back now, so just bear with it!”

It could be us next.

All of the ejected boxes used the exact same design. The difference in results must have come down to being unlucky enough to hit some spaceship debris or the slight margins of error in the construction phase. That meant nothing we could do would change the result.

If we were going to die, we were going to die.

It was all about probability and statistics. It was like drawing lots.

“Kssshhh! …ser.”

“Maxwell, that’s enough. Break the connection or you’ll receive a ton of corrupted signals when the spaceship server is destroyed!”

“I will soon leave – ksshh – but first…something I – kssshhh – tell you. I found – ksshh – notes and memos within the Winners-based – ksh – OS’s scripts.”

“What?”

“I can only – kssshhh – they were intentionally placed where – ksshh – would find them. I thought I was making the choice – ksh – highest probability of success, but – ksh – possible that a third party was guiding – ksshh – your landing point.”

We had already been launched and the escape pod had no engine. That meant we could not change course.

“Understood. What should we be on the lookout for?”

“First of all, you – ksh – land safely. I will send you the – kshh – and memos that I found in text format. They may be of some use in – kssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

The transmission suddenly ended. I turned the exterior camera and saw the several broken blocks that had once been a giant saucer were glowing orange as they entered the thermosphere.

Receive error.

The files Maxwell had tried to send to my phone were corrupted and I had trouble even opening them. And even when I did, the text within was too corrupted to read.

Maxwell had mentioned a third party.

That meant there as someone else after all.

“Wh-what is going on?”

“We need to be careful, Ayumi.” That short response was all I could give. “This isn’t over once we land back on earth. There’s still more.”

A great roar surrounded us. It was just as disconcerting as being stuffed into a car’s trunk while the car was slowly crushed by a crane’s wrecking ball. Could we pass through the thermosphere? Would we avoid breaking apart and would the parachute open? And where would we land? Everything had been carefully calculated out, but that was all theoretical and we never knew what would happen in practice. The stress was too much and I had to scream. Heat built up in my head and an odd sweat soaked me, but I couldn’t tell if that was a psychological issue or if the temperature really had risen.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“…ri-kun.”

The next thing I knew, I was lying on the box’s floor.

“Satori-kun.”

I felt a strange warmth on the back of my head and assumed I was bleeding.

But it turned out I was wrong.

Since I saw Erika’s face peering down at me…was she giving me a lap pillow!?

“Stay right there. Don’t even think about forcing yourself up. You need to take your time and recover.”

“Ugh… Did I scream so much I fried my brain?”

She rubbed my head with the right hand extending from her torn sleeve. I just about sank into the depths of sisterly comfort, but then I heard my other sister’s voice.

“No, you bumped your head on the wall when the parachute opened. Fuguu, not fastening ourselves in place somehow was a mistake.”

My sisters appeared to be fine. Had they withstood the inertial forces with their Archenemy strength?

I would have loved to let Erika continue pampering me, but that was not an option.

I slowly got up from her lap and grabbed my phone, but it looked like the external camera had been destroyed. However, a glance at the clock showed it was 3 AM. My phone’s clock would automatically adjust itself for the country or region I was in, so this would not be a case of “it’s 3 AM in Japan but not in Brazil on the other side of the world.”

As long as it was nighttime outside.

We walked to the escape pod’s thick door. Just to be sure, I slowly cracked it open…but it was safe. It was dark outside. Also, there was a salty smell in the air. We may have been near the ocean.

“Erika, we only have 2 or 3 hours until dawn. If it comes to it, you need to get back inside the airtight escape pod. I don’t know where we are, but we need to consider the round trip time.”

“Got it.”

I opened the door wide this time.

We found a 50/50 mixture of natural landscape and artificial objects. It must have been a small island to begin with, but steel beams and metal pipes were complexly intertwined like a jungle gym and they jutted far out into the ocean.

Giant cranes extended into the air, obscuring the moon.

“What is all this?”

It was hard to tell whether this was the completed product or if it was under construction. Several metal floors were set up well off the ground. The tallest ones looked to be about three or four stories up. That created an oppressive atmosphere like someone was staring down at us.

The gusts of wind were powerful, but it was not raining like it had been in Tokyo. Where had we ended up, anyway? Was this still part of Japan?

“Fugu. Look at this sheet,” said Ayumi while her track jacket fluttered in the wind. “It says Nagasawa Construction.”

“And the pipes say Hishigami Materials. What is the point of this place?”

That did not mean much since both of those were international corporations, but there did seem to be a lot of Japanese writing. Was this a mine or something on a remote island within the country?

Oh, right.

I had to have an internet connection if my phone’s clock could update automatically. I could use GPS or another location service.

“Maxwell. Access my phone.”

“Sure. I have constructed an access route from Antenna Base Station B of the Tokyo Islands. Welcome back, my needy user.”

“Hm? Tokyo???”

“Tokyo technically refers to a very large region that includes many small islands in the ocean. Even Okinotorishima, the southernmost part of Japan, belongs to it.”

That was a surprise.

We had been alien abducted in Tokyo and traveled through space in order to fall right back in Tokyo.

“So where are we? How do we return to Honshu? By boat? Or airplane?”

“No. There are no regular ships or flights. As you will see if you check your map app, this island is not known to exist. The data has your cursor in the middle of the ocean, so I initially thought you were adrift in the water.”

“What?”

“I have checked with your phone’s camera, and while an entirely artificial oil platform or megafloat would be one thing, this is a mining base expanded from a natural island. It is clearly unusual for it to not appear on the map. I can only assume someone is intentionally hiding it.”

“Fugu. So like a military base?”

“No. In that case, there would be a blank area on the map; the terrain itself would not have been erased. Especially with an island since territorial waters tend to be a delicate matter.”

“So this is an even greater power, is it?” said Erika with a quiet look on her face.

According to Maxwell, some notes and memos had been used to leave a message in the Winners OS controlling the giant spaceship and it was possible some third party had been guiding where we landed. And once we did land, we found ourselves on a half-artificial island that had been erased from the records in a way even more unnatural than with a nation’s military base. This was starting to reach Area 51 levels of creepy.

“Nagasawa Construction and Hishigami Materials.”

“What about it, Erika? Those are pretty well-known companies.”

“That’s what strikes me as odd. Could it be…?” She looked around, her eyes chasing after the flood of Japanese writing. “Yes, the construction equipment and work machinery are from Michita Automobiles, the power system is from Honshu Power, the empty containers…that must have contained food are from Nichiro Foods and Gantry Drinks.”

“Fugu. Wait, don’t tell me…”

“Those were all supporters of the old Bright Cross…and Absolute Noah after that.” Erika placed the fingers of the arm with the torn sleeve on her skinny chin. “This may have been a candidate for the Calamity shelters. Although the one at the bottom of the Kukyou City dam was chosen in the end.”

The Bright Cross.

Absolute Noah.

I was surprised to hear those names here, but it also brought something else to mind.

“If the empress, the UFO, and everything else were set up by a third party, then the giant spaceship falling would have been part of their plan. But what were they going to do if our efforts weren’t enough and the ship really did fall? The entire planet would have entered an ice age. That would be suicide if you didn’t have a really large and sturdy shelter.”

It was even possible that the empress, the servant species, and the giant UFO had all been created here. It had all seemed so absurd before, but that organization could have done it.

I just had to remember the translucent red slimes that attacked Las Vegas.

Or the secret that was hidden at the bottom of the dam.

“Then is this related to mom’s organization? Has some remnant gone berserk or something?”

“It’s too soon to say. Someone else might be using a facility they abandoned.”

Either way, the danger level had just increased again. We had come here on an invitation from someone who knew the world’s secrets. We could not be certain they meant us no harm or ill will. Whether this was the Bright Cross, Absolute Noah, or someone who had hijacked their facility or knowledge, they might have the equipment and skills needed to combat Archenemies.

It would be best not to stay here for long.

That presented the same problem as before. As a Vampire, Erika could not move during the day, so we could not escape if the third party attacked after dawn.

And if we did find a boat and tried to leave the island, the odds were good dawn would break before we arrived on Honshu. But we could solve that problem with a sealed container to act as a coffin. We could even load the boxy escape pod on the boat. To be blunt, it would be far safer to force our way off the island than to hang around here for half a day while who-knows-who was wandering around.

“Let’s find a way to escape. It could be a boat or a helicopter for all I care. We may have been invited, but that’s no reason to fight some person we’ve never even seen before.”

“Fuguu. I just hope this is something we can do ourselves.”

Of course, there was only so much we could do even with Maxwell’s support.

We were going to have to walk around this dangerous island and all the metal structures there no matter what, but having a goal in mind would make a huge difference. If we simply followed some vague instructions and went around collecting hints, we would be walking headlong into whatever the third party had set up for us. After everything they had done, it was best to assume they were not planning to let us head home safely. Their path for us was headed straight toward a precipice, so we had no future if we did not break free of their scenario.

This tropical island was one of the secret paradises considered for Absolute Noah.

If it really was a giant shelter, it would have a vast underground area or a Ryugujo-style undersea base. But I honestly wasn’t interested in that. No matter what kind of labyrinth the villain had waiting for us, we only had to escape this island.

“Let’s get started. We need to find some way to survive.”

For now, we had no choice but to leave the small Scylla and the bizarre empress inside the cylindrical pods on the boxy escape pod. We would collect them once we had found a boat.

“What is the security like?” I asked Maxwell.

“Offline. There appear to be a full array of cameras and sensors set up around the artificial structures, but they have no power. Same with the electric locks on the doors.”

Even so, we had to be careful.

We had my Vampire older sister and Zombie little sister, but we had no idea who we were up against. Could a single person have done all this? Could it be a nonhuman Archenemy? There was always a possibility of finding ourselves surrounded by a brutally strong group of the undead.

“Any boats would be on the shore, right?”

“Let’s check all around.”

We did not have much time until dawn, but we were afraid to climb to the top of the jungle gym structure. Climbing the stairs would restrict our freedom of movement. We instead started by walking along the nighttime beach which was lined with metal pillars thick enough that all three of us together couldn’t have reached all the way around.

There really was nothing there.

And after taking a look around, it all looked much more weathered than I had expected. The pillars alone had the paint peeling off to reveal rusty metal. It looked a lot like playground equipment that had been abandoned without any sort of upkeep.

And I spotted something curious.

“Solar Computers?”

“Fugu?”

“That was the company name before the merger. But didn’t that happen before I was even born?”

Did that mean no one had been in or out of here since then?

It was becoming clear we were not going to find anything by crawling around down below. I was hesitant, but we climbed the metal ladder on a thick pillar to reach the top.

Oddly enough, the salty sea smell was stronger up there than by the water’s edge. It may have been an issue of airflow.

“Ah.”

“Erika.”

Erika wobbled, so I supported her from the side. I recalled that Vampires could not cross flowing water. That species weakness had reared its ugly head again once we moved to the part jutting out over the ocean and supported by all the pillars.

And regardless…

“There’s no one here, Onii-chan.”

“No, there isn’t.”

I had assumed the cameras and sensors were out because the power generators and main computer had been removed from the abandoned facility, but were their no soldiers either? There were no footprints or other signs of a human presence in the fine sand and dust coating everything thanks to the sea breeze. If I was being cynical, I couldn’t deny the possibility of winged Archenemies being stationed here, though. I was finding it harder and harder to figure out why the villain had guided us here.

Or was there no villain after all?

Or was the villain trying to trap us here just like we had dropped the slimy brown servant species on an uninhabited island?

I started considering pointless theories like those.

This ocean facility was made from steel beams and metal pipes arranged like a jungle gym, but there were giant plate-like areas of land prepared in places. Were those for cranes or heliports? I couldn’t see anything that remotely resembled a helicopter. Not that I would have known what to do with one anyway.

There were also some things hanging down from the other side of the railings. Those capsules were larger than bathtubs and they may have been deep sea research subs.

“It looks like the boats were lifted up with winches and lowered into the sea when needed. If we check areas like this, we might find a high-speed boat or motorboat.”

“Fugu?” Ayumi made a weird noise while staring off into the distance. “Look, Onii-chan. Isn’t that a proper boat hanging down over there!?”

She was right.

Two winches held a motorboat in place, just like a lifeboat on the side of a cruise ship. But this was more than a rubber boat with a crappy engine slapped on. This was a high-speed boat you could probably use in races. It would probably lift its bow up like it was doing a wheelie and move at more than 100km/h on the ocean.

It was the one oddly shiny thing in this seemingly forgotten mass of metal. It may have been what the villain had used to cross the sea.

“Yay, now we can get home. Fugu, but this is too small to carry that escape pod. Onee-chan, you might need to sleep inside a body bag to avoid the sunlight.”

“Is that any way to treat your beautiful, kind, and elegant big sister!?”

“How’s that any different from your usual coffin?”

But.

When I tried to follow after my sisters, I found my feet pinned to the spot. Because of my phone’s screen.

“Warning: I have detected a cyber-attack on your phone. Taking defensive action. Threat level: max. If I deem it impossible to avoid, I will forcibly shut off the power.”

“?”

A moment later, the motorboat hanging on the edge of the ocean structure erupted with flames and exploded.

This was no lightning strike.

Some dangerous object like a glowing beam or a ball of fire had dropped down on it with incredible speed.

I was more than 20m away, but I was still thrown to the chain mesh floor. I had trouble breathing, like my food had caught in my throat, and I felt a dry pain in my eyes, like I had moved too close to the heater. I choked, clung to the metal pipe railing, and shouted at the top of my lungs.

“Erika, Ayumi!!”

There was no response.

I only heard the roaring of flames despite this facility being made of metal. Nothing remained of the boat they had been approaching. Damn, what was below here? The ocean? Or the beach? Had the explosion thrown them over the railing!?

I doubted they were dead.

I had to believe they weren’t.

I heard something like the loud buzzing of bug wings.

Something cut by overhead in the night sky.

“A UFO drone? A JSDF one!?”

No, hadn’t the government labs developed those in response to a Bright Cross request?

“I was so busy handling the cyber-attack that I was slow to detect the suspicious signal,” said Maxwell. “Warning: running away is strongly recommended!”

“Dammit!!”

There was no escape if it got above me. You couldn’t shake that thing even if you floored it inside a supercar with a huge-ass engine inside.

Howe