Now Riddick heard another sound in the woods—then another, and another. He squinted in the moonlight and saw the silhouettes of dozens of dogs rapidly moving toward him—and they didn’t look friendly.

He turned and ran.

He weaved back and forth as he ran, thinking that he might outsmart the stupid dogs even if he couldn’t outdistance them—but each time he glanced back he could see the dogs not far behind. They were bunched together now, traveling in a pack. They seemed to stride along easily, almost effortlessly—all except for one of them. The lead dog, somehow silently elected by its companions, would take off after Riddick at a dead sprint, barking and growling and snapping at his heels. When that dog tired he would quietly drop back into the pack and another dog would seamlessly take its place, forcing Riddick to run full out without rest while the dogs conserved their strength.

Riddick couldn’t believe it—the stupid mongrels were working as a team.

At last he stumbled to a stop, exhausted, and turned to confront the approaching dogs. He bent down and picked up a broken tree limb and waved it back and forth at the pack, shouting and screaming at them in desperate rage.

“Get back! Back! Get away from me—go back where you came from!”

But the dogs simply formed a crude semicircle around him and began to lunge at him one at a time, each one watching for the right opportunity to move in.

Riddick picked the dog closest to him and decided to make an example of him; if he could badly injure one of the dogs, maybe the rest of them would learn the lesson and back off. He took a step forward and raised the limb high overhead—but before he could bring it down again an enormous black dog leaped forward out of the darkness and took him by the throat, sending him crashing backward onto the ground.