"We need to get to the shelter!" Judy shouted as she tried to collect her breath. "It's our only safe haven until military comes to fight it off."

Panting as equally heavy from all of the running he had endured, Nick surveyed his surroundings. The sights that encompassed the beloved city streets had been destroyed in an unbelievable manner, and it was all done by the very thing that they and many other citizens had been fleeing from. He looked over to his right—where the shelter Judy just mentioned was located—to see if the coast was clear.

Just as he was about to tell the doe that they should make a run for it, he registered the sound of a chorus of distant screams coming from that direction. The shouts of terror quickly got closer, and he started to see that a crowd of mammals were sprinting up the street, heading towards where they had just came from moments ago.

Nick internally wondered why they were running away from where shelter stood, but within seconds he got the answer to his question. His mouth hung wide open in horror, and he pointed a shaky paw in that direction.

"C-Carrots?" he said upon regaining his ability to speak, his words oozing with more fright than he had ever felt before. It was almost unbelievable to him that it was under these bizarre circumstances that he was feeling the most trepidation in his life. The whole situation felt more like something that belonged in a fever dream, and it was all happening right in front of him. "I think we're gonna need a different plan!"

Judy looked over in the direction Nick was pointing in, and an equally-frightened expression took shape over her muzzle as well. As what that crowd of mammals was running from before got closer, they started to feel the ground rumble beneath their paws. That was when they knew to run back to where they had just came from, and make sure neither of them fell in harm's way in the process.

The fox and rabbit started to dart away, the ground continuing to shake below them as they did so. The two sprinted their way around all of the debris scattered along the streets, but it was when Judy turned her head around to look back that she saw that the causer of the destruction was getting much closer.

The rabbit found her running coming to a sudden halt, and Nick stopped alongside her and took notice of what was steadily approaching. Right behind them was the gray squirrel, standing a towering forty feet tall, that was responsible for everything that had occurred around them.

Nick and Judy both shouted in unison, holding onto each other as they stared towards danger. The colossal squirrel started to stomp its way forward, a nearby car that had been parked on the left side of the street getting crushed underneath the weight of its massive paw. It clumsily crashed itself into the front of a nearby storefront, and a roar from the rodent filled the air.

The fox and rabbit saw someone running up to where they were standing, and they turned their heads to see their timber wolf friend running towards them. He started to pant for air as he came to a stop, looking around with a mixture of fear and confusion.

"Now wait a minute!" the wolf said, suddenly turning his attention towards Nick.

"What is it, Wolford?" Nick said with a sigh. "I was just getting to the good part of the story."

"How exactly did the squirrel become forty feet tall in the first place?" Wolford questioned.

It had been an eventful evening at the Halloween party that Clawhauser hosted every year on this particular day. After feasting on some of the festive treats that had been made for the party, everyone had taken a seat to carry on the tradition of telling scary stories, seeing who told the best one.

The fox's story so far, in his mind, had been quite silly compared to the rest that had been told before him. He was pretty much expecting the squirrel in the story to climb a skyscraper with bi-planes circling around it by now.

The vulpine answered, "A reaction to radiation or something is most likely why it happened."

"You mean you don't even have a backstory for how it got that way?" the timber wolf replied.

"Hey, coming up with a good scary story is pretty hard," Nick said.

"You think you could come up with something scarier?" the fox asked after a momentary pause.

"I'll give it a whirl." Wolford cleared his throat before continuing. "This one I'm about to tell you is about a mysterious cave, where no one venture into it ever returns. Returning the way they were when they first entered it, that is…"

Everyone that was in the room looked over at Wolford attentively, ready for him to tell the story about this cave that he had mentioned.

"I'll admit it looks a lot creepier here than it did from a distance."

"That's a bit of an understatement."

"Regardless of its appearance, we have to scope the area. It's our duty. And it was somewhere 'round here was where he was last seen before he disappeared."

"I'm startin' to get scared. What if we end up going missing too because we ventured in there?"

"Just listen to my instructions when I give 'em to you and everything'll be fine. We need to get him back to his parents. No doubt that they're both worried sick about him."

Grizzoli simply responded with a nod of his head, deciding that it was best not to argue about what they were setting out to do. After all, whether he liked it or not, it was their damned duty, just as Wolford had told him not even a few seconds ago.

The two of them were responding to a call regarding a twelve-year old leopard cub that went missing after he ran away from home. The place he was last spotted, according to the mammal that happened to spot him then, was near the entrance to the cave that they were approaching. However, when the information was being given, the one who told it to them said it in a voice that almost sounded dreadful. The mammal that called said that the cave wasn't somewhere that anybody should go near, as it gave off a vibe that something terrible lied within it. In response to that statement, though, Wolford said that they would search the cave and that there was no need for concern. Officers like him, after all, had to answer the call regardless of where it led to.

The wolves stopped walking upon reaching the natural void that was within the ground a short distance from them. The seemingly weathered space was more than large enough for the type of mammal that they were to enter.

"Well, this is the spot," Wolford breathed. Looking over at the white-furred wolf to his left, he asked, "You got your radio synced with mine?"

Grizzoli nodded his head, letting out a nervous gulp. The pitch blackness of the inside of the cave, even darker than their outdoor surroundings, made him shiver.

"Alright," Wolford said, "I'm goin' in first. Just follow my lead and you'll have nothin' to worry about."

"But what if there's something in there waiting for us?" the white-furred canid to his side questioned, not realizing how silly his inquiry seemed until he muttered it out loud.

"Don't be ridiculous. This isn't some fairy tale."

After those words spilled out of him, Wolford was taken back for just a short moment. He realized that the statement he had just sprouted was basically something his father would have told him. His dad wasn't the nicest mammal on the planet, and he always had the no-time-for-nonsense type of personality that Wolford ended up adapting because of the way he was brought up.

Wolford disregarded what he had said for now and went back to focusing on getting ready to venture further into the cave. He clicked on the little light that he had brought with him and checked his walkie-talkie one more time before walking forward.

Grizzoli followed him step for step, the sound of their paws against the ground causing an undeniably eery echo to resonate around them. The white wolf felt something begin to creep up to his arm, and he turned his light over to his side to see a small black spider. He flailed his paws around like a frightened pup to get the tiny, harmless arachnid off of him, letting out a piercing yelp that also echoed around them.

"S-Sorry," he whispered as the canid in front of him turned his head towards him to see what the problem was. He had a somewhat-irrational fear of spiders that started back when he was really young. While they didn't exactly scare him as much as they used to back then, they still, regardless if they small ones or much larger ones, sometimes caught him by surprise.

Wolford rolled his eyes, huffed under his breath and turned around. "I'm gonna venture further into the cave," he informed. "What you're gonna do is wait right here until I tell to come down and assist me. Got it?"

Grizzoli answered with a simple nod of his head.

"Alright..." Turning his attention back to venturing further into the cave, Wolford started to slowly take baby steps forward.

Grizzoli watched as he carefully took his time, gradually fading from his vision as he stepped further away from him. No doubts about that it was going to be much, much darker as he walked further inside, but the night vision wolves like them were blessed with would make his surroundings more visible compared to what a different mammal's might have seen.

A drip of water, coming from the roof of the cave above him, landed upon Grizzoli's head, causing him to jump a little bit. He gripped tighter onto the two-way radio in his paws, anxiously awaiting instructions from Wolford. As much as he was telling himself not to be, he was feeling a bit frightened about this. He was a far cry from those mammals that possessed a sixth sense, but the cave in general seemed to ooze danger in the back of his mind.

About a minute of silence went by, and the sound of static coming from his radio captured his attention. "Grizzoli, do you copy?" came Wolford's voice from the speaker of it.

Grizzoli clicked the button on the side of the radio, held it up to his mouth and answered, "I hear you loud and clear, Wolford. Do you need to come down now?"

"Just continue to stand by. There's no sign of that missing kid to be found in here, and there's no way he could've went too much further down here. I'm going to look a little bit more and make my back up. The stones are pretty slippery, so I need to take my time a little bit ascending back up."

Grizzoli replied, "Perhaps we better search a little bit deeper down the walking trail. It cuts off deeper into the forest, so it's likely he could've gotten himself lost in those parts of the area."

"That's quite likely. Mammals have gotten themselves lost in similar situations before. We'll search that-"

Wolford's words were suddenly overpowered by a loud crashing and crumbling sound, which latest for a good ten seconds. As the sound came through the speaker of the radio still clutched in his paw, a strong sense of worry entered Grizzoli's mind once again. The noise he had just heard from the speaker meant that something terrible happened inside the cave.

"Wolford!" Grizzoli exclaimed into the radio. "Wolford, are you okay? What was that big crash?"

There was an awfully long pause, which didn't help at easing his concern whatsoever. What if he's trapped deep inside the cave and can't make his way back up? he thought.

"Wolford, do you copy?"

Absolute silence...

"Wolford, do you copy? That was a loud crashing sound and I just want to make sure that-"

Just then, Grizzoli's ears were greeted by the jumbled sounds of static and a shrill scream. No, it sounded, in fact, like the screams of multiple mammals mixing with one another.

"Grizzoli!" came Wolford's voice through the speaker, barely audible against the other noise. "What I'm seeing... no mammal should ever see..."

"Wolford, w-what is that shouting?" Grizzoli asked with fright. "A-Are there others d-down there?"

Once he had let go of the radio's button, the shouting could be heard once again. The kind that came through the speaker was the kind that the darkest of nightmares were composed of, and Grizzoli didn't wish to know what was the cause behind them.

"There they are!" was the response he had received. "There they are!"

"Who are you talking about?"

"Get out of here while you still can! They got me! They're rising from out of here!" That command was then followed by the sound of Wolford uttering a frightened shout, followed by static once again.

His heart beating so fast that he thought it would leap out of his chest, Grizzoli suddenly turned around and darted out of the cave, heading for the path he had just came from. However, he didn't get too far away before something caused him to freeze.

"You mortal fools..." Those words unexpectedly came from the radio he still held onto. The voice that said them sounded rough and quite raspy. "You made a grave mistake."

"A grave mistake?" Grizzoli said to himself quietly. "What does that mean?"

Slowly turning around to look back, his inquiries were answered. He became frozen with shock once again upon seeing just what Wolford was pertaining to when he said about mammals rising from out of the cave.

Standing just outside the very entrance of it was a small group of mammals, all of them disheveled in appearance. The clothes on their backs were quite tattered, and their eyes almost seemed to be glowing. It was as if they were the undead and had all emerged upon Wolford entering the deeper portion of the cave.

The thing, however, that caught Grizzoli's was one of the mammals within this group that was now staring eerily towards him. One of them, he realized, matched the description of the missing leopard cub they had set out to find.

And slowly appearing from the entry to the cave was Wolford, only he didn't look the way he did when he first stepped inside of it. Just like the others, his eyes casted that strange white glow. His fangs were now bared as the group of mammals started to stumble forward towards Grizzoli.

"The end," Wolford said, bringing his scary story to its official close. "So what did you think of that, Wilde?"

The fox, seated on the opposite side of the room, nodded his head. "Pretty good, if I do say so myself," he responded. "Was preparing to be a little more creeped out, though."

"You mortal fool," a voice whispered from right behind him, two paws reaching for his shoulders right afterwards.

This caused the vulpine to let out an audible gasp and jump from out of his seat. Upon seeing him do this, his friends seated around him started to laugh. Nick turned around to see that it was just Grizzoli, now laughing alongside the others, who had given him the small scare.

"Actually," Wolford remarked, "I'd say my story's fright factor was good enough to get you to jump like that."

Nick shook his head. "I sensed him coming from behind me. Besides, I wasn't frightened; I was just caught by surprise. There's a difference between the two."

"Oh, sure," the timber wolf replied.

"I'm back!" said Clawhauser bubbly as he entered the room once again. The cheetah came walking into the room wearing his vampire costume that he had worn the previous year, holding a tray of homemade treats in his paws. With every Halloween party that he threw, he carried on the tradition of making a different recipe for his friends to enjoy. This time around, it was his grandmother's recipe for peanut butter cookie squares. "I overheard Wolford's story and it was pretty spooky. But I hope you're all ready for something even scarier, 'cause I've got one for you guys."

"I'm ready," Nick said, curious to hear what kinf of tale the spotted feline had planned to tell them.

"Get ready, guys," Clawhauser began, "because this is sure to send a shiver down your spine..."

Author's Note: Happy Halloween, everybody! Last year around this time I did a spooky kind of story to celebrate the holiday, so I thought I'd do something similar.

Hope you all enjoyed this little tale I came up with for the holiday. As always, your thoughts, good or bad, are always appreciated. I've got some other autumn-themed stories planned that I hope to share with you real soon.

'Til next time, everybody! :)