Arty didn't wait for the next one to reach the fence.
The shape moving through the trees was enough, the way it stumbled without slowing, correcting itself without balance, pushing forward with a kind of relentless intent that didn't belong to anything normal.
He had seen enough in the last few minutes to know that whatever had taken that first man wasn't contained, and more importantly, wasn't slowing down.
He backed toward the front door, eyes flicking between the approaching figures and the broken gap in the fence, already calculating distance, timing, and the number of seconds it would take before the yard filled with more than he could handle.
He stepped inside and shut the door hard behind him, sliding the deadbolt across with a sharp metallic click that sounded far too small to matter.
The house felt different the moment he crossed the threshold, as if the walls had lost whatever quiet protection they once held and were now just thin barriers between him and something inevitable.
For a moment, he stood there, listening, nothing, then something hit the fence again, not one body this time, more than one.
The sound carried through the timber and into the house like a warning that had already arrived too late.
"Right," he said under his breath.
Moving quickly now, he didn't panic, as panic would only waste time.
Instead, he moved through the front room with purpose, grabbing what he could see first.
Arty grabbed a chair dragged across the floor, then another, a coffee table and anything else he could and started stacking them against the door more out of instinct than belief.
It wasn't going to stop anything determined, but it might slow it, and right now even seconds mattered.
Another impact hit the fence, closer this time, followed by the dry crack of timber protesting under a force it had never been built to withstand.
Arty moved faster heading to the kitchen he opened the drawers, finding a knife.
"No. Too short, I'd have to be way too close."
Still he grabbed it, then paused, reconsidered, and set it down again, reaching instead for something heavier, something that wouldn't rely on precision when everything started going wrong.
His gaze landed on the cast iron fry pan sitting on the stove.
"That'll do," he muttered,
Gabbing it and testing the weight in his hand.
Outside, something broke, not the fence this time, this time the sound of splintering wood.
His head snapped toward the front door.
"They don't stop," he said quietly.
The realisation settling in with a cold certainty that tightened everything inside him, there was no hesitation in them, no fear, no sense of self-preservation.
That changed the rules completely, the first impact hit the front door hard enough to rattle the frame.
Arty stepped back, gripping the pan in one hand and the wrench in the other, his stance shifting into something more grounded, less reactive.
Another hit followed, then another, each one stronger than the last, each one more deliberate.
The chairs shuddered with the force, scraping slightly against the floor as the pressure built.
"They're not thinking," he thought.
More to anchor himself than anything else.
"They're just coming."
The door bowed inward, not much but by a noticeable margin.
The wood around the lock creaked under strain, the screws beginning to shift as something outside slammed into it again with enough force to make the entire frame groan.
Arty's eyes flicked toward the back of the house.
Options, he knew he needed options, just staying here wasn't one.
He moved fast, backing away from the door and heading toward the rear hallway, his mind already running through what he had, what he didn't have, and how long he could realistically stay ahead of whatever was coming.
The house wasn't defendable, not like this, not with what he currently has.
That thought settled in quickly, brutally, and without room for argument, another crack split from the front, much louder this time.
He reached the back door and pulled it open, stepping out into the narrow strip of yard behind the house that led toward the shed and the open paddock beyond.
The air hit him differently out here, not fresher, just… wider and more exposed.
He didn't like that either.
A sound to his left made him turn, movement and it was fast.
Another one was already coming around the side of the house, cutting him off before he'd even cleared the doorway.
"Right, so that's not an option," he muttered, stepping back inside just as the thing reached the corner, its movements jerky but direct, like it had already locked onto him as a target.
The back door slammed shut, he locked it, it was utterly pointless, still he did it.
The front door completely gave way, with a sickening wet crunch.
The crack turned into a break, the wood splitting inward as the lock tore free from the frame, the barricade shifting under the sudden force as something slammed through with enough momentum to carry it halfway into the room.
Arty moved before it fully registered, forward, not backwards, it won't take them long to break through the backdoor.
A moment later, the first one came through the backdoor at an angle, half-falling, half-lunging, and he brought the wrench down hard, the impact jarring his arm as it connected with the side of its head, dropping it instantly.
There was no hesitation from Arty this time, no pause.
He stepped past it as another pushed through the gap, this one faster, more upright, its hands reaching, its mouth open in that same empty, hungry way.
The pan swung this time, heavy and solid.
It connected with a dull crack that sent the thing sideways into the wall, it didn't stay down.
"Of course not," Arty said, already moving again.
He brought the wrench down again, harder this time, aiming lower, adjusting without thinking, and this time the body dropped and stayed there, collapsing into the mess of broken timber and overturned and broken furniture.
Another shape forced its way through the door, then another, the gap widened with each one.
Arty backed toward the hallway, breathing harder now, his arms already starting to feel the strain from the repeated impacts, the adrenaline pushing him forward but not enough to ignore the obvious.
He couldn't hold this momentum, not here, not like this, then a hand caught his shoulder.
He twisted hard, wrench coming up instinctively, striking without thought, the impact connecting with something close enough that he felt it rather than saw it.
The body dropped, only to be replaced another, there was no space anymore, no control, just a small sea of movement no room to breath.
He fell back into the hallway, nearly losing his footing as something slammed into him from the side, sending him into the wall hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
The wrench slipped from his hand, the pan followed, that was it.
The shift happened instantly, the moment where the fight stopped being winnable and became something else entirely.
Hands grabbed at him, pulling and clawing all over him.
He pushed back, hard, driving one of them away long enough to regain his footing, but there were too many now, bodies forcing into the narrow space, collapsing over each other crushing those beneath who couldn't get back up fast enough.
A flash of light caught his eye.
The first one he'd dropped lay motionless near the broken doorway, but something about it refused to fit with everything else.
For the briefest moment, he caught a faint glint buried deep within the ruined skull, no bigger than a marble, almost hidden beneath shattered bone.
It wasn't metal, it wasn't blood, it almost looked... deliberate.
Arty didn't know why he noticed it, or why it mattered in that moment when everything else was collapsing around him, but his gaze locked onto it for just a fraction too long.
Something inside the skull, something… solid, then a hand closed around his arm, another around his shoulder.
He drove forward again, desperate now, forcing space where there wasn't any, but it wasn't enough, and he knew it wasn't enough even as he tried.
The hallway closed in, the weight increased, the noise became everything. Hot breath, rotting flesh, and grasping hands blurred together until he could no longer tell where one body ended and the next began.
And then... pain.
Not the sharp sting he expected, but a crushing wave that swallowed every other thought.
It came from everywhere at once, tearing through muscle, bone, tendons and sinew, until he couldn't separate one wound from the next.
He tried to scream, but no sound came, for one impossible moment he couldn't understand why... then the horrifying truth hit him.
Part of his throat was simply gone.
His world became nothing more than desperate movement, grasping hands, and unbearable pain as piece by piece he was torn apart while still conscious.
Arty hit the floor hard, the world tilting sideways as the pressure overwhelmed him, the last thing he saw not the faces above him.
Not the hands tearing into him, but that brief, impossible glint of something buried inside the skull of the thing he'd dropped.
Then nothing but silence followed, but after a moment Arty was breathing once more.
Air filled his lungs in a sharp, involuntary pull as his body jerked upright, hands gripping the steering wheel of his ute as though he'd never left it, the engine idling beneath him, the road stretching out ahead exactly as it had before.
The same dog stood exactly where it had before, still staring toward the same patch of scrub as though nothing had changed at all.
Arty blinked once, twice, three times.
"No way, what the heck was that," he said quietly.
Everything was the same, except for the vivid memories of being eaten alive.
He stared down the same road, the same lights, the same dog, the same moment he'd already lived before.
His grip tightened on the wheel as the memory hit him all at once, not fading like a dream but sitting there, sharp and intact, every second of it exactly as it had happened previously.
"That's not… right…" he started, then stopped.
His eyes shifted toward the dog again, it didn't move, neither did he, for the first time since it had all started, Arty Calder didn't feel confused.
He didn't feel uncertain, he didn't feel like he was missing something, he felt one thing.
Certain.
"This isn't over," he said quietly.
Somewhere deep beneath that certainty, something else began to take shape.