I lay still as a stone behind the moss-covered fallen log, skin clammy from the early morning dew.
This is crazy.
A nervous gulp echoed like cannon fire in my ears, but I tightened my white-knuckled fingers around the submachine gun and waited.
They weren’t very far off. I could hear their grunts, clicks, and chitters as the creatures tramped through the undergrowth. Shielded by the canopy of trees, the odd beings emerged from the various burrows they fashioned among the bushes, intent on finding something edible to shove down their fetid throats. I knew they hadn’t noticed me yet; these ones never made noise while stalking something, and only screamed like fiends after spotting their prey.
Which wouldn’t be long now.
Turning my head ever so slightly, I peered through the gap between the bottom of the crooked log and the wet leaves of mid-autumn.
Five greasy-haired heads craned back and forth, each down on their hands and feet like an ape, milky white eyes peering at the shadowy trees with almost innocent curiosity. Cuts and scrapes covered their grayish mottled skin, oozing black blood that made my stomach churn. Dirt clogged under their chipped fingernails, and their feet were either bare, or covered in ragged scraps of shoes that hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. Mold grew in patches on their tangled rotten hair, on their clothes, even on their skin, and between curled lips I could just glimpse the square stubby teeth that clacked with wooden dullness between their alien communication.
At the head of the group, a big male with sinewy forearms and a tattered shirt hanging across his shoulders stopped, and sniffed the air in a low, warning gurgle.
Every muscle I had tensed, and the rest of the pack froze in eerie synchronization.
It’s now or never.
Both palms pressed against the crumbles of red Appalachian clay, and I threw myself to my feet.
Shrieks exploded through the trees behind me, eager fingers and toes slapping the ground as the creatures darted in pursuit. Even on all fours, they were fast, and my heart raced as the sounds of their approach drew nearer.
The big male easily closed the distance, his brown peg-shaped teeth bared in primitive fury.
I vaulted over a branch, and the dry limb caught him in the chest, buying me a few more seconds’ lead.
One of the females leapt at my head, and I ducked under her flying body, pushing myself onward with breakneck speed, and my muddy combat boots barely touched the ground.
At my side, the hefty Type 9 submachine gun smacked against my hip in time with each step in annoying cadence. Branches tore at my face, thorns stuck through my cargo pants, and vines tangled around my ankles. Rays of weak sunlight filtered through the canopy on places, but with October almost half over, the leaves were turning various shades of orange, red, or gold. Soon there wouldn’t be any, and the winter sun would be weaker still, the nights longer, the days shorter. When that happened, if they somehow survived the snow, these things would own the countryside.
Something snagged my boot tip, and I stumbled, almost falling on my face in a slippery patch of leaves.
Low growls echoed not four feet behind me, and I lunged forward, just as fingernails brushed the back of my calf.
Too close, they’re too close.
A flash of color caught my eye just yards ahead, and I threw myself over the ragged scrap of old T-shirt.
Whump.
Debris erupted from the muddy ground, and I dove out of the way with a final yell of desperation.
Screams of unearthly rage filled the air, and thrashing limbs clawed at their brown nylon prison, but to no avail. Instead, the troop of humanoid monsters swung in a gnarled ball of fury inside the oversized cargo net, suspended from wooden beams concealed high in the trees.
Bits of sticks and mud rained down around me, and I forgot to break my fall with a roll, hands slamming into the thick clay so hard that pain shot up both arms. Momentum flung me head-over-heels, and I landed flat on my back after a rather violent somersault, palms aching, lungs burning, with the taste of dirt gritted between my teeth.
Man, that was close.
Like a tom-tom on steroids, the pulse roared in my ears, both legs curled up to my chest in an involuntary ball, and I gasped for air, almost too afraid to open my eyes. I’d had close run ins with Puppets more than once, but it never got any easier. They looked so much like us, yet I’d seen what happened to those they caught, and just thinking about it made my intestines wriggle in unease.
“You alright?” Boots thudded up to the side of my head, and I peeked out from between my fingers to see a familiar bleach-blonde head hovering over me.
It had been close to a month since my erstwhile friends, Matt and Carla, left me for dead in the shadowy backroads of southeastern Ohio. We’d foolishly driven all the way from Kentucky to shoot an entry for our blog on the paranormal, and thought trespassing into a restricted area, at night, was a good idea. I barely survived an attack by the very same kind of mutants I’d just helped to trap, and wouldn’t have made it far if not for a snarky blonde ranger from the New Wilderness Wildlife Reserve.
Confident, sarcastic, and fearless, Jamie Lansen was my polar opposite, but despite my shortcomings, she adopted me as the sister she never had. With her at my side I’d learned to shoot, identify various monsters, and track wild game, all vital skills a ranger needed to survive beyond the protective walls of the reserve. Together, we’d fought our way through the murky southlands after my first patrol as a member of the Ranger faction went horribly wrong, and I’d come to trust her implicitly.
With a relieved exhale, I accepted her hand up, and went to brush some of the musty leaves from my clothes. “Yeah, I’m good. Just catching my—ow!”
Pain shot through my skin, and I glanced down at my left arm to find a bloody, dirt-clogged cut ripped through the flesh of just above my wrist, likely from my less than athletic tumble. It wasn’t deep, but it throbbed enough to convince me that I’d be nursing this annoying little wound for a while.
Jamie eyed my cut with the practiced ease of her role as a medic. “Gnarly. That’s gonna leave a mark. At least you didn’t land in racoon droppings, or we’d be talking worming meds and rabies shots.”
“Hurray.” Suppressing a shudder at the thought, I wiped it as clean as I could on my pants.
I’m definitely gonna scrub it out when we get back.
Above, the big male Puppet gnashed at a section of the net, making me jump. Their milk-white eyes peered down at my hand, as if the freaks could smell the blood, their eerie faces stretched wide in unholy grins. They loved smiling like that, and I’d only ever seen them frown when cornered, or in pain. Usually, they were even worse when you forced them to frown.
“Sorry bud.” Jamie tossed her braid over one shoulder and called up to the male with a taunting smirk. “Hannah’s off the menu. But maybe if you shower up real nice, she’ll consider a wave.”
From the surrounding trees, camouflaged militia men and black polo-shirt clad rangers emerged, all with various weapons in their hands. Somehow forgotten by the rest of the world, Barron County Ohio had been plagued with unnatural beasts ever since a mysterious phenomenon known as ‘the Breach’ appeared in February. Phone lines had failed, internet access was unreliable at best, and the regular power grid had slowly collapsed. Nightmarish mutants crawled from every orifice of the natural world, fashioned by some sadistic unseen force in wood, rot, and the scraps of human civilization. Some resembled machines, others animals, but the ones we had set out to hunt today were the closest the Breach had come to humanity.
“Bravo team, pull security.” A commanding voice cut through the wireless headsets we all wore, specially designed by our Researcher department to withstand the Breach’s effects. “Alpha team get the loop-poles, and move in.”
From behind a knot-filled hickory, a silhouette stepped into the dim rays of afternoon sunlight. The black collar of his uniform polo stuck out from under a well-worn brown jacket, an army-surplus bandolier strapped over his chest full of rifle magazines. Even in the shaded forest, the maple-syrup colored hair hung in short mousy waves on his head, and the broad shoulders eased as he looked me over.
“You okay, Hannah?” Chris shifted his M4 carbine into one hand and spotted the scarlet trails dripping from my torn skin.
“She’s fine.” Jamie’s petite face tinged red in self-awareness mere seconds after her curt words. She and Chris had a . . . complicated history, and though she did her best, every once in a while some of the old emotions slipped through Jamie’s tough facade. “Sorry, um . . . I’ve got disinfectant in the truck. Keep her from getting more dirt in it, will ya?”
With that, she spun on her heel and darted off into the brush as the rest of the teams dispersed to process our ‘catch’.
His dark eyebrows arched, and Chris flicked his gaze to mine, the two of us sharing a patient, knowing look. “She almost shot them all the moment they started chasing you. I thought about letting her.”
My face heated up at the way he grinned at me, the teasing affection in his voice, and butterflies fluttered in my chest. “Yeah, well, I won’t be sorry when we come up with a better system. Those things creep me out.”
He stepped closer to take my hand, and turned my arm over to examine the slash, running one thumb along it to sweep some of the filth away. “You sure that you’re okay?”
If you keep that up, I will be.
“I’m fine.” Chris’s touch made me shiver with warm tingles in my spine, and despite myself, I smiled. “Looking forward to dinner.”
His sky-blue eyes lit up, and the handsome face took on an adorable coat of scarlet. The only other survivor from our ill-fated patrol, Christopher Dekker was the one who pulled me out of the clutches of death when I’d first stumbled onto New Wilderness. Like Jamie, Chris was the kind of person I would never have dared to approach in the normal world, rugged and dashing, stoic in the face of danger, but with a soft side that made me melt whenever it shone through. I shouldn’t have had a chance with him, but in spite of my atrocious flirting skills, Chris somehow noticed me, and turned my life upside down in all the right ways.
Calloused fingers slid into mine, and Chris squeezed my palm. “Me too. I’ve got it all arranged. The old guy who tends to the beehives owed me a favor, so we traded some beeswax candles at half-price. I scored a red velvet tablecloth from the loom girls, and one of the mechanics let me marinate the sirloins in his minifridge for a few cartridges.”
That’s the first time any guy who wasn’t my dad made dinner for me.
Basking in that thought, I cocked my head to one side, and threw him a playful smirk. “Steaks and candlelight huh? You keep that up, and people will say you’re spoiling me. They already don’t believe it when I say that we’re just dancing to records and painting toy soldiers late into the night.”
“It never hurts to spoil a lady.” Chris made a modest shrug, though his eyes remained on mine with a fire in them that I couldn’t look away from. “Besides, they’re just jealous I got to you first. Fair warning though, it might take a while for me to finish the reports to Sean, so fingers crossed everything turns out okay.”
Some of the usual confidence slipped, and Chris’s forehead creased with a combination of exhaustion and stress that hurt to see. Our relationship was only a few weeks old, but Chris had suggested celebrating with a nice private dinner, or as private as we could get in the crowded fort. We didn’t get much time to spend alone, and he’d planned the evening with the same care as if it had been a military attack. Something of a workaholic in his own right, Chris often labored through far too many hours with far too little sleep, and I felt like the worst girlfriend in the world for letting him shoulder the task of making our first meal. But no matter how much I tried to shoulder some of the load, Chris insisted he could handle it, so excited was he about giving me ‘a proper date.’
Maybe I’ll convince him to lie down for a while after dinner. Some cuddling would be nice, and if he falls asleep, so much the better. Then I can do the dishes before I leave, as a surprise for him when he wakes up.
“I’m sure it will be delicious.” I gripped his hand back, and enjoyed the rush it gave me, as if we were the only two people in the whole world. “Maybe you could teach me how to make them? That way next time you could relax for a change.”
Leaves crinkled, and one of our rangers poked his head out from a nearby bush. “Hey boss, we’re getting ready to load up.”
With a sigh, Chris reluctantly let our hands slide apart. “I’ll be right there.”
Turning to me, he nodded toward the rear of our positions, where our armored trucks lay hidden by camouflage netting and woven mats of underbrush. “Go find Jamie so she can clean your arm. While you’re back there, do me a favor, and get on the horn to let the base know we’re coming in with a catch. Adam will want to get his people read in advance.”
Okay, you’re definitely napping when we get back. No ifs, ands, or buts. I can be stubborn too.
Emboldened by my secret plan to get him to rest, I gave in to the fluttering impulses inside my head and planted a quick peck on Chris’s scruffy cheek.
His expression flushed with sheepish delight, and I threw him a coy look over my shoulder, relishing how good it felt to be able to make him stare like that. I dared to put an extra swing in my step, knowing he was watching, and tossed my hair over one shoulder with a deft flick. For most of my adult life, I’d never felt anything close to sexy, but when he watched me, it gave me a strange confidence that I never had before. I felt as though I could take on the world.
A hand grabbed my arm before I got five feet away, not rough, but firm enough to draw me back in, and in an instant his lips were on mine.
Wow.
Our first kiss had been a few weeks prior, and while it had taken some getting used to, I’d found that primal instinct made me a quick learner. Rose petal lips, the satin-steel of his muscled arms holding me tight, and Chris’s fingers woven into my hair coalesced into a storm of sensations that blasted any rational thought from my skull.
When at last we parted, I had to blink at the dizziness behind my eyes, and drew a slow, deep breath.
“See you later, pragtige.” Wearing his own ornery grin, Chris let me go, and sauntered off into the trees.
“See you.” I gasped, wearing a breathless smile. He had a way of saying those little sweet nothings in the language of his heritage, exotic words in Afrikaans that made me feel like some far-away fantasy queen. Chris’s voice always dropped to a softer, lower octave when he spoke to me, and it set my limbs trembling with a biological high that grew stronger each moment we spent alone.
I’d happily skip the steak for more of that.
Shaking my head to clear the mental fog away, I shrugged the strap of my submachine gun higher on my shoulder and trudged to the pickup trucks. Unlike most regular civilian vehicles, these were fitted out with welded armor plates, machine guns, and spikes to keep freaks from crawling on to them, all necessary defenses in a new dark age. We covered each with camouflage nets and special mats woven from underbrush, both to keep mutants from spotting them, and to avoid any possible detection from the air. Thankfully, the latter hadn’t been much of a problem these days, due to the electromagnetic radiation from the Breach, but still, no one wanted to risk getting a missile dropped on their head.
Unable to spot Jamie anywhere in the immediate vicinity, I figured she’d gone to help with the nets, and went to get my first aid kit instead. I circled around the corner of the armored truck I’d been assigned to and shimmed under the thick camo netting to reach for the door handle.
My eyes landed on the door, and all the blood froze in my veins.
Whoa.
A thick black substance somewhere between paint, mud, and tar had been traced over the dusty pickup door to form a symbol. Outlines stood in clumsy swipes, small stick people on all fours in a circle, as if bowing in reverence. Child-like depictions of trees and bushes surrounded them, along with a long set of parallel lines that were almost straight, like a road. Waving beams like heat, or light, or maybe some kind of energy, radiated down toward each bowing stick person, and in the center of the ring stood a single dark figure.
Pulse racing, I leaned closer, and a sound like static hissed in my ears. My head spun as if I’d just ran a marathon with no water, and I was dimly aware that all the birds and bugs in the background had fallen silent.
The figure in the middle towered over the others in the circle, nearly five times as big, with both arms stretched outwards at its sides in the model of some ancient deity. It had been painted with twisty, interwoven squiggles, and the head rose in a faceless oval that was jagged at the top. Both of its four-fingers hands rested at the apex of the wavy lines that led to the surrounding worshipers, as if the central being had them all on long strings.
Camera. I need my camera.
Broken from my trance, I dashed to the next truck over, and snatched at the gray digital camera mounted on a little tripod under the cameo netting. Chris had gifted me the camcorder as a surprise for my birthday, in a thoughtful nod to my former ‘career’ as the camera girl for Matt and Carla’s blog. Now free of their influence, with plenty of real paranormal things to document, I’d been doing my best to film everything around the New Wilderness Wildlife Reserve in the hopes that maybe someday it could be useful. In between shots I had to keep the device in a special box to protect it from the electromagnetic radiation, but so far it seemed okay, and this wouldn’t take more than a few extra minutes.
A blinking red dot in the corner of the side-folding screen told me it was still recording, the lens angled toward where we’d caught the Puppets, and I yanked the camera from its tripod.
As soon as I spun around to focus on the eerie painting, the tiny screen of the camera began to fizz with snowy white spots. My heart sank.
Don’t tell me I broke it already.
In the next second, a flicker of motion caught my eye, and I watched, unable to tear my gaze away, as the speaker began to emit high-pitched whines and harsh gurgles.
Under a blizzard of colorful lines that glitched across the spasming display, the tall figure twitched in its bed of muck . . . and its head turned to face the camera.
“The way lies open.”
A low raspy voice trickled through the dark recesses of my mind, and seemed to paralyze me with an icy sensation I couldn’t shake.
“The shadow draws near.”
On the heels of the words, a chorus of distant whispers clogged my ears, rising higher and higher so that I knew they weren’t part of my imagination. I couldn’t make out any words, couldn’t avert my eyes, and watched as the tall figure raised its painted hands toward the sky like some kind of demented preacher.
The whispers became screams, booms of phantasmic thunder in the background, and somehow, I felt cold rain on my skin, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Anxiety rose in my chest, a feeling of being chased in the back of my psyche, and both lungs tightened in fear.
“You cannot hide.”
A hand closed over my shoulder, and a bolt of cold white lightning flashed through my brain.
I whirled, fist balled, and lashed out with a frantic swing.
“Whoa!” Jamie dodged my clumsy blow and held up both hands in alarm, her green eyes narrowed in concern. “Easy there, killer. What’s your problem?”
Dryness burned in my eyes, and I realized the whispers had stopped. My camera no longer hummed with static in my hand, the screen crystal clear. On the door, the painted figure stood motionless, exactly how I’d found it, but clammy sweat lay on my skin to accompany a pounding heart.
“I-I’m fine.” I tried to stop my hands from shaking and stepped to one side so she could see. “Look.”
Jamie’s face went white, and she slid a subconscious hand down to the Kalashnikov rifle at her side. “What the . . .”
“I know.” I shuddered, still as cold as if I’d stepped into the icy rain from my hallucination. “Someone must have painted this while we were waiting on the ambush. I wanted to get it on camera, you know, for evidence. Have you ever seen anything like this?”
Her lower jaw worked, and Jamie flicked her eyes to the nearby trees. “Once or twice. We found an old sawmill some months ago where a bunch of Puppets were holed up. There were too many for us to take on at once, so we decided to send more patrols out later. My group never went back, but I remember seeing all kinds of weird drawings spattered over the walls through my spotter scope.”
Anxiousness rose in my throat, and I fumbled at the canteen that hung from my belt. “They can draw?”
Jamie picked up a stick, and jabbed at the symbol with the same distaste she would have reserved for a cockroach in our room. “It’s how they mark their territory. Instead of peeing on everything like a dog, they mix mud, blood, or chewed up viscera, and paint with it. That right there is the closest you’ll get to reading a Puppet’s mind.”
And they were right behind us the entire time.
Scanning the bushes with her, I swallowed some water from my canteen and fought the urge to run back to the safety of our fellow rangers. “But why paint on our trucks? They had to have spotted our ambush of the others. Getting that close, it seems kind of bold, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe the freaks are getting smarter.” Jamie tugged on her rifle strap and jerked her head back toward the clearing. “We should let the team know. Chris needs to see this.”
I opened my mouth to agree, but a sudden thought hit me like a ton of bricks.
This could be an opportunity.
Deprived of any government support thanks to the effects of the Breach, the survivors at New Wilderness had been forced to create a make-shift political system divided between the militant Rangers, the economic-minded Workers, and the academic Researchers. Each had a unique role to play that kept our rag-tag colony alive, but the three factions struggled to agree on policy. This was made even more difficult by the arrival of a sinister mercenary organization known only as ELSAR, who had surrounded Barron County in a ring of steel and seemed hell-bent on wiping out everyone at New Wilderness. When Jamie, Chris, and I returned from the southlands with a mysterious ELSAR device called a ‘beacon’, it had caused a political firestorm within the walls, and almost launched a coup d’etat. Chris was nominated to head of the Ranger faction as a replacement for the old leader, Rodney Carter, who died during the chaos. All this was well known by everyone in our fortress-town and accepted as undeniable truth.
But it wasn’t.
What they didn’t know was that it we had a spy in our ranks, feeding information back to ELSAR, and Carter had been hot on their trail. He’d suspected Chris, and was prepared to launch the coup to expose him, but Carter died before he could put his plan into action. In order to avoid more bloodshed, the faction leaders agreed to a comfortable lie to keep people insulated from the harsh truth . . . but even they didn’t know the full story.
For, with his last breath, the grizzled Carter had entrusted to me a dangerous secret, one I hadn’t been able to get out of my head ever since that blood-soaked night. Trust no one he’d said, and so far, I hadn’t. Not Jamie, not Chris, not anyone.
I have to try and find answers.
“I don’t think we should say anything to Chris.” I crossed my arms, mainly to keep my hands from shaking, and swiveled my head to check for anyone else within earshot.
Cocking her blonde head to one side, Jamie raised an incredulous eyebrow at me. “What? Why not?”
With a tight chest, I bit my lip in uncertainty, the cold metal of Rodney Carter’s secret hanging by a fiber cord beneath my shirt. I hadn’t let the strange little key out of my sight since the moment Carter pressed it into my hands, but I still didn’t know what it was for. It had something to do with the spy, but the only way I could know for sure was to uncover the traitor myself. If he turned out to be innocent, Chris would never have to know that I suspected him, and could even help me decipher the key’s meaning. If not . . .
Jamie stepped closer and searched my face with a worried expression. “What’s wrong? Why can’t we tell him?”
Licking my chapped lips, I glanced to where the others busied themselves loading a nearby flatbed truck with the cage full of captured Puppets. “I just . . . it’s complicated, alright?”
“Why? Did he do something?” She rested both hands on her slender hips, a mixture of confusion and alarm on Jamie’s face. “Hannah, seriously, you’re starting to worry me.”
“I’ll explain later.” I winced at a knot forming in my guts and dug a thumbnail into my palm to distract myself. “Just . . . trust me on this, okay? We have to go to someone else first. Chris can’t know until I say so.”
We both watched each other for a long half-minute, but at last Jamie let her shoulders slacken, and dug a bandage out of her medic’s bag. “Fine. When we get back, I’ll make up some medical excuse, and we’ll go to see Dr. O’Brian. If anyone would know more about this kind of thing, it’s her.”
Not a bad idea.
“Can we rely on her?” I held out my hand so she could pour hydrogen peroxide over my wound, and watched the stinging white fizz bubble up around the blood as Jamie scrubbed it clean.
“Depends on what this is all about.” Jamie kept her voice low and threw a concerned glance to where Chris stood. “Either way, it’s a risk we’ll have to take. Chris will be busy with the after-action reports, so he won’t even notice that we’re gone.”
Still nervous, but feeling better with Jamie at my side, I helped her chip the ebony filth off the truck with a small folding shovel and tried to put a plan together in my mind. I hadn’t woken up this morning with a plot to catch a spy, but Chris meant the world to me, and I wanted to believe Carter had been wrong. At this point, I didn’t know who I could trust, not if my secret meant Chris going to the firing squad for treason. If I wanted to keep him safe, I would have to lie to the first boy who kissed me, and that thought sent stabs of guilt through my chest.
From the large angle-iron cage atop the flatbed truck, one of the trapped females beamed with that eerie, wide grin. Her fish-white eyes pierced mine as if to say I know what you saw just before another ranger pulled a tarp over the metal bars.
I suppressed a shiver and yanked my jacket sleeve down over the white cotton bandage.
I can do this. I have to. If I’m right, this will keep everyone safe.
Plastering on a faux sense of calm, I walked with Jamie back to the others, and tried not to think about the camera swinging by its strap at my side, like the guilty tap-tap of a judge’s gavel. Yet I could still hear the words my subconscious hissed, a hateful muttering that made my stomach churn.
Liar, liar, liar.