The Hunters devoured the coastal highway like starving predators finally let off the leash.
Two hundred. Two-fifty. Three hundred miles per hour—the speedometer gave up pretending to matter somewhere around two-eighty, dissolving into abstract poetry while the world smeared into long, liquid streaks of green, gray, and salt-blue.
Cities vanished in minutes. Suburbs surrendered without a fight. Farmland rolled over and played dead.
Then forest closed in—ancient, brooding pines so dense the afternoon sun became a rumor filtered through needles. The road narrowed to a single hesitant lane, swallowed by canopy until it felt less like driving and more like threading a needle in the dark.
Yellow signs began appearing like nervous sentinels:
DEAD END – 2 MILESROAD ENDS AHEAD
PRIVATE PROPERTY – TURN BACK NOW
We ignored them with the polite contempt usually reserved for expired parking tickets.
The warnings grew more theatrical:
DANGER – CLIFF AHEAD
