He yanked the door open. A single goblin stood at the top of the stairs, staring up at them in surprise, its hand outstretched and reaching for the now-absent door handle.

  Adam brought the hammer down between the goblin’s eyes with everything he had. The face of the hammer crushed its fleshy nose into its skull with an obscenely loud crunch. Its eyes folded inward, giving it a cross-eyed look. Adam yanked the hammer back, flecks of bone and gore arcing into the air. He lashed out with his foot and kicked the not-quite dead goblin down the stairs.

  "Go!" he shouted, sprinting down the steps toward his battered car. A sudden gunshot rang out as he rounded the back. A goblin on top of the vehicle clutched its belly and fell forward across the driver's side, tumbling onto the pavement.

  Three more goblins rounded the corner of the shop, one carrying a lit Molotov.

  "Meat, meat, meat!" they chanted, giggling as they advanced. The one in the back hurled the Molotov, and it shattered a few feet to Adam's left. Most of the flaming liquid splashed forward, missing him, but a burning drop hit his jacket. He slapped it out with his other hand, singing his palm but snuffing the flame before it could spread.

  He grabbed the edge of the car, swinging around the corner with his momentum. The gut-shot goblin writhed on the concrete, clutching at its stomach. Adam drove his heel into the creature's wounded gut as he reached for the door handle. It coughed wetly, groaning in pain.

  “No fair…” it wheezed before going limp. Adam yanked the car door open and leapt inside, slamming it shut behind him.

  “Go, go, go!” Hector barked from the backseat.

  Adam started the engine, glancing in the rearview mirror just in time to see a goblin climb halfway through the broken window. It sank its teeth into Hector's arm, and he roared, stabbing it in the back of the neck with a small pocketknife. The goblin shrieked and let go, and Hector shoved it back out of the window as Adam stomped on the gas. The car lurched forward, tires screaming.

  The headlights lit up two goblins standing in the middle of the road, jumping up and down as if they were trying to get his attention. Adam didn't slow down and their small figures vanished under the bumper with dual thumps. The car bounced over the goblin speedbumps, and a sound like exploding watermelons echoed up through the floorboards as he tore down the street, leaving the horde behind.

  "Everyone still in one piece?" he asked, risking another glance in the mirror. Natalie was already wrapping Hector's arm in a bandage, not bothering to remove his coat.

  "Car," Samantha said sharply, grabbing the wheel and pushing it to the left.

  Adam looked forward and yanked the wheel to the side, the car jolting up onto the sidewalk as they narrowly missed a burned-out wreck in the road. The suspension groaned as he jerked the wheel back, and the vehicle slammed down off the curb, two heavy thumps landing on the roof a second later.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "You have to be fucking kidding me," Natalie snapped from the backseat. "They're on the roof!"

  "What?!" Adam started to turn when a knife punched through the ceiling, burying itself two inches from his head, and he suddenly had his answer.

  "Hang on!" he shouted, whipping the car hard to the right, then to the left in quick succession, trying to dislodge the murderous stowaways.

  Natalie shrieked as a hatchet smashed through her window, the blade missing her face but burying itself in the headrest. An upside-down goblin grinned at her through the shattered window and blew her a kiss before yanking itself back out of sight.

  "Hector, grab the gun, it fell by your feet!" Natalie barked, failing to brace herself as Adam slammed on the breaks.

  The sudden stop launched Hector and Natalie against the front seats. Samantha let out a whooshing sound as the seatbelt kept her in place but drove the air from her lungs. Two goblins rolled down the windshield, landing on the hood with their clawed fingers scrabbling for purchase.

  Another hatchet blade cleaved through the roof, and a moment later a bulging eye appeared in the hole, staring straight down at them.

  Samantha calmly pulled a small canister from her pack, aimed it at the hole, and depressed the nozzle. A fine mist of bug spray blasted upward into the eye, filling the cabin with a stinging cloud of chemicals. Adam choked, his eyes watering as he stomped down on the accelerator.

  The goblin screamed, and Adam saw its hatchet tumble down the windshield, snatched up by one of the others clinging to the hood. It let out a gleeful laugh and started hacking at the glass.

  "Hector, gun!" Natalie bellowed, her eyes locked on the goblin tearing through the windshield.

  "I can't find it! I think it's under the seat!" Hector was bent double, frantically pawing at the floor.

  The windshield splintered, cracks racing to the edges while the goblin chopped its way in. Adam clutched the wheel and kept the car moving, trying to put as much distance between them and the horde as possible, but it was getting harder and harder to see. The glass was a spiderweb of fractures, and the squirming bodies on the hood blocked most of his view.

  “Alright, fuck this,” Adam growled, rolling down his window. He lifted himself off of the seat and leaned toward the door. "Take the wheel!"

  "What the hell are you doing?!" Samantha's voice cut through the chaos, edged with confusion, and for the first time, a trace of panic.

  “Everyone, get as far away from the edges of the car as you can! Anything metal!” Adam shouted, raising his left hand and pouring energy into it, surprising at how quickly the current built.

  “Oh. Oh no,” Samantha said, her eyes going wide. She immediately tucked herself into a ball on the seat, hugging her knees to her chest and leaning away from the door, but keeping one hand on the wheel.

  Adam glanced in the mirror and saw that Natalie and Hector were doing the same, knees pulled to their chests as they huddled together in the middle of the backseat.

  His hand had begun to hurt, the tips of his fingers snapping and popping like a tesla coil. Every nerve jittered as energy leapt across his skin, a pins-and-needles sensation climbing steadily up his arm as he forced more and more energy into the limb. His vision began to narrow, and a feverish chill overtook him, as if all the heat in his body were pouring into his hand.

  Adam shoved his hand through the open window and planted it flat against the car roof. “Please don’t bite my fingers off, please don’t bite my fingers off!”

  He felt the goblin’s razor-sharp teeth scrape awkwardly across his wrist and hand, struggling to find the right angle to bite. The arm still gripping the door shook so violently he almost lost his hold, his whole body feeling like he'd mainlined a truckload of speed.

  His vision narrowed further and began to swim, making it all but impossible to see. He chest seized as he fought to contain the energy, each breath coming in ragged gasps.

  That was enough. It has to be enough, he told himself.

  The goblin had hacked its way through the windshield and was starting to crawl inside.

  It was now or never.