Samantha woke up on hard ground, "Argh my back hurts." She thought to herself.
She woke up in what looks like...a shopping mall? A huge one, but the lighting's off. The lights illuminating the place was an eerie dark red, with a slight hint of green, contributions from the few dim emergency exit lights.
She's not the only one waking up, perhaps around 100 more woke up right next to her, at the exact same time.
There is one question circulating around this crowd, "Where am I?" Samantha too ponders that question.
"Argh." Unlike Samantha who woke up in the centre of the crowd, Mike woke up at the edge of the crowd.
"What the fuck? How high am I?" Mike rants while rubbing his eyes.
"Grrrrrrrrr..." A deep, guttural growl echoes from behind Mike. The other people around him had already noticed what lies ahead and took a few steps back.
"What?" Mike asked half-drunk to the crowd who were utterly flabbergasted, then turns to face where the crowd's gaze were fixated at.
"Oh fuck..."
What he saw was three massive hounds, almost the height of a teenager, glaring at him with red eyes, with saliva leaking out their menacingly sharp teeth.
"RUUNNNNN!" The scream didn't come from his side of the crowd, there was another two rabid hounds attacking from another side of the crowd.
Distracted by the scream, Mike looked away from the hounds ahead of him for a second, then never got a chance to turn his head back ever again.
His head was bitten clear off his neck, and his skull was crushed into pieces of meat and splashes of blood inside the mouth of one of the hounds.
In mere seconds, chaos erupted.
"RUNN!"
"GET OUT OF MY WAY!"
"AHHHHHHHHH"
Samantha in the centre of the crowd were still unclear of the current situation, but soon after the panic yelling began she was scooped up by her father.
"It's fine Sam, just hold on to me."
The crowd dispersed, everyone wss running towards whichever direction the hounds are not. Some hurried up the escalators, some went into hiding in stores, some stood frozen out of fear from the sight of bloodshed.
The hounds teared through the crowd like paper, eliminating people left and right, leaving the hall of the mall a pool of blood and corpses.
"It's gonna be alright." Samantha's father said as he ran amain with Samantha in his arms. He ran into a massive multistorey clothing store along with around 50 ish people and one blood-thirsty rabid hound.
The people who chose this as their escape route flocked upstairs through the stairs, anyone who didn't make it in time is devoured promptly and brutally by the hound.
When Samantha and her father reaches the third floor along with some other survivors, he puts her down then shouts to the panicking crowd, "EVERYONE, THEY SELL PERFUME HERE, COVER YOUR SCENT AND HIDE SOMEWHERE!"
Most didn't catch what he said, there were too much panic screaming around for the message to spread clearly, but he doesn't give up.
"GUYS, GUYS, EVERYONEEEE!" He yells while dumping bottles of perfume onto Samantha and himself.
"GUYYYYYYYS!" Some of the panicking crowd heard it this time and flocked towards the perfume section to do exactly what was told.
Those who already went up all the way to the fifth floor didn't hear the message and is murdered by hounds waiting for them up there, whereas those on the second floor served the purpose of delaying the arrival of the hound to the third floor.
Instead of immediately going into hiding however, Samantha's father continued to desperately inform others of his strategy to survive, "EVERYONE, EVERYONE UPSTAIRS THAT CAN STILL HEAR ME, GET DOWN HERE, EVERYONEEEEE!!"
After he had screamed his literal lungs out, he finally turns back to Samantha. "You okay? Sam? You okay?" He asked frantically while slapping lightly on her face.
Samantha was frozen, utterly terrified by the scene and situation she's in, but she still manages to squeeze out a response, "I'm okay..."
"Okay listen, I'll try to save the people downstairs, you get to the fitting room and you hide, don't make a sound. Okay? Got that?"
Samantha nods lightly without fully understanding what that meant. Only after her father left for downstairs did she react.
"Wait! Dad! Don't go down there!"
"There's people down there that needs help!"
"Dad!"
Everyone on the third floor was panickingly seeking shelter in fitting rooms or other stores now with their scent covered with perfume. The only one still calm and collected was Samantha's father, who grabbed a mannequin and a few bottles of perfume before heading downstairs.
"Dad!" Rather than following her father's instructions, Samantha looked down at him from upstairs.
Her father throws the mannequin with all his strength and might at a random direction without any survivors, which successfully snatched the hunting hound's attention, who averted it's target to the mannequin.
While it's tearing the mannequin into pieces, Samantha's father called out again, "EVERYONE, UPSTAIRS WITH ME RIGHT NOW!"
He successfully saved 7 survivors from the second floor who followed him up. He drowned the survivors with perfume that he had and lead the way.
"MOVE MOVE MOVE. SAMANTHA WHY ARE YOU HERE?!" He once again scoops Samantha up but instead of heading for the fitting rooms to hide he went outside the clothing store and into the store next to it.
"EVERYONE, COME TO ME, FOLLOW MY VOICE!" He cries out, so that everyone follows his footsteps into the store next door.
"IN! IN! IN! IN!..." He gathers as many survivors as possible inside. Until when he heard intense growling from rabid hounds does he pull down the rolling steel door from above.
Considering the abnormal strength these hounds possess to be able to crush skulls with their mere jaws, the door probably isn't enough to keep them out, but it's enough to hide from them. With their scents already covered, the 30 something survivors, Samantha's father and Samantha is safe...for now.
Only after the door shuts and her dad turns around does she realises, there's a deep cut on his face and blood was pouring out of it. Some fell onto her when he was carrying her.
She wiped the blood off her own face with her trembling fingers. Her pupils constricted, this is real, it's not a dream.
Looking around, almost every survivor in the store had a bit of blood splattered on their clothes or face.
"Sam...hey, you okay?"
Samantha turned back to her father, asked with quavering voice while staring at his wound, "What's happening..."