It was several minutes before Mathias managed to get through the bushes. Gangly limbs had tangled on, it seemed, every single twig. When he emerged it was into an empty clearing. "Huh? Where?" He looked all around. "Uh.." There were tire tracks and there was a sort of road. It was a newly worn path through the trees. It twisted and turned all down the mountain side, or he imagined it did - since he could only see about three feet in front of him.

The flashlight Jo had lent him lay abandoned in the tractor yard. Lost in the scuffle. He was dragging along an empty backpack and he still had Joleen's phone and pockets full of cookie crumbs. "Great. Just. Great."

He shook crumbs from the phone and thought about calling for backup but Joleen would be beyond ticked if she didn't need help and he put out the APB with the rest of the gang. Was it worth the wrath? Mathias was still going back and forth on that when the bushes rustled behind him. NOPE. No questions there. He was not in the mood to deal with the ghouls again, especially on his own.

Mathias took off at a brisk jog, into the dark and down the road.

...

One minute Oobis was watching Joleen pop out from the shrubbery. The next he was clinging to the back of the truck and it barreled through the forest. The driver had abandoned the ghouls and left without a tractor. Not a good night for them, then. If he'd been feeling more optimistic Oobis would chalk that up as a win.

The cat concentrated on not falling off the back of the truck but wondered where they were going and if the driver was a ghoul too. He couldn't risk climbing up to the rear window to check it out. Not while the truck was in motion, but as soon as he could he'd get a good look at the driver and try to orient himself with where they'd ended up.

The road had straightened out which would have been nice, except, it was getting really, really foggy. Oobis somewhat remembered Mrs. Windsor had said about something about a weird fog cancelling her plans for... yogurt? That didn't sound right. Actually it sounded really, really good and Oobis flicked his tail in irritation, not knowing when he would eat again. He liked yogurt, even though it stuck to his whiskers in a rather undignified way. It got a lot of laughs from his humans when he tried to lick it off his little kitty face.