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A noise starts to become apparent from the south. Its a strange, rhythmic kind of sound, yet it's fast. It grows steadily, yet quickly. Before long dark, obscure shapes appear on the southern horizon. It isn't apparent what, but it is coming, and quickly. Whatever it is, it's large, because the ground begins to hum and shiver with the weight of the approach.
It does not take long before you'll realize the sound is hoofbeats. The black mass is a herd of various creatures moving in one, single unit. The beast is thousands of them. All of them coming towards you.
This is not a normal stampede though. There is the normal fear, the typical chaos, the massive force of bodies moving swiftly - but where there is leaping deer there are also lunging cougars, loping wolves, and lumbering hogs. There's bouncing bunnies and frightened frogs, galloping gators and sprinting sheep. There is so many they cannot all be named, or seen, or known. They simply are - a mass of animals all united by one goal.
Escape.
Their cries are a terrible nose drowned out only by the thunder of their hooves, paws, claws, toes, and hearts. They have forgotten the food chain and natural law in their desperation. They have even forgotten the basics of physical pain, because as they run, they do so with limbs and jarring, jagged gaits. They have run so far, so fast, so needfully, that they have not stopped for days. Blood encases the stumps of flesh which they use as limbs, now nothing more than a bloody pulp. Sweat lines their haggard, withering bodies. Their eyes are dried white with fright while yellowed froth slings from their gaping, swollen tongues and tattered nares. In their frenzy they trample one another, each other, anything and everything. There is no stopping this wave of sinew and bone. They will pummel themselves into the dust and each other if need be, becoming one massive being if they must, anything is better than what lies behind them.
In their wake a bloody trail is smeared across the land, a testament to the crimson fluid leaking from their abused legs. Bits and pieces of their flesh, shorn away by the friction and the distance, scatters behind them like wreckage. Occasionally one falls completely and cannot find the ability to rise. It crawls for a while, bellowing some sickening, terrifying song before exhaustion and terror finally grip it in a rigid, immobile embrace.
They run on, with no intention of stopping.
A southern wind blows lightly, but coldly.
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