There were more deer on the way to the ranger’s lodge. A whole herd of them, ten at least, but they were normal. Gutierrez slammed on the brakes as the herd bounded into the road and Wil’s blood froze. The deer and the couple of bucks with them merely skittered to the side as the jeep pulled to a stop. Their eyes were brown, not black. Their sides were heaving with their breaths and not the squirming of thick, unnatural veins. Their mouths were suited for plant chewing and nothing else.

A few of the deer paused in the road to regard the jeep with flicked ears and placid eyes. Gutierrez let out a sigh of relief and honked the horn. The deer balked and then darted off into the woods beyond.

“So it’s not all of them,” Gutierrez said.

“What?” Wil asked.

“It’s not every single deer. I was worried maybe everything had gone crazy at the same time or something. Like all deer are like the monster one. Glad to see they’re not.”

“Those are the first animals beside the monster deer I’ve seen or heard since I first noticed something was happening.”

“Yea, now that you mention it. Usually can’t go five seconds without seeing a squirrel or hearing a woodpecker or something,” Gutierrez said as she continued to drive. “What do you think it is?”

“The buck?”

“Everything.”

“I have no idea. It sounds like everything that could go wrong has, all at the same time. I might be able to chalk it all up to bad luck or something but…whatever was going on with that buck wasn’t natural. That was some Hammer Film shit,” Wil said and ran a hand through his hair.

“Hammer film?”

“Just gory old horror films. And that thing my co-worker sent me,” Wil said and told Gutierrez about the photo, video, and following phonecall with Ralph. Gutierrez shuddered.

“To hell with all of that,” she said. They drove in silence for a while, until the jeep rounded a corner of dense pines and a large, two story building came into view. It was at least three times as big as the ranger’s station they had just come from, and was beside an even larger building that served as Oak Rest’s visitor center. There were four vehicles in a paved, asphalt parking lot situated between the two buildings: two jeeps like the one Wil and Gutierrez were in, a third jeep but with flaking white paint, and a blue minivan.

“Thank god. People,” Gutierrez said. “And there’s O’Donnell’s jeep. If he’s just been ignoring me on the radio I’m going to kick his balls out his ass.”

Wil winced a little. Gutierrez didn’t have a lot of leverage with her short legs, but each of them was sturdy looking enough to kick down a tree. She screeched to a stop outside the ranger station HQ and immediately ran up to the double doors. Wil took his axe out of the back of the jeep and hurried after her.

The park’s primary ranger station and lodge was also two stories tall, like the smaller one had been. The previous station had been more like a glorified studio apartment with a loft. This was essentially a house. The visitor’s center across the parking lot was more of the same: two stories, but spread out over more land.

“Hey! O’Donnell! Birkin! Sandoval! Jacobs! You assholes in there?” Gutierrez said as she banged on the door and peered in through a window, then cursed. All the windows on the station were covered by curtains.

“Hey, maybe uh, keep your voice down?” Wil asked. “It’s still really quiet out here and if there’s more of those monster bucks out there…”

“Then I’d rather be inside than out here. Stow it,” Gutierrez snapped and hammered on the door again. A curtain on the upper story twitched to one side and Wil’s eyes widened.

“Somebody’s in there, at least. The curtain upstairs moved,” he said.

“Let us in! I’d rather not break a window!” Gutierrez said.

No answer or other movement from inside.

“All right, window it is,” she said. “Gimme your axe. I’m gonna break the glass just over the knob here.”

“Don’t!” a man’s voice came from inside. “Don’t break the door!”

“Who is that? Sandoval?” Gutierrez asked. “It’s Rosa! Let me in.”

“I’m not…I mean, Ranger Sandoval left us here. He and the other two took a couple of jeeps and drove somewhere to check on something. I don’t know.”

“Well I’m Ranger Rosa Gutierrez and if you don’t let me in I’m gonna be pretty pissed off at you when I force my way in.”

“Okay! Okay!” the man said from the other side. The curtain in front of the door’s window slid to the side and a pale oval of a face leaned out of the darkness behind to peer at them. He was a bald man, forties, with a head like an egg: wide and smooth with fat around the neck and chin, but coming to a narrower peak at the bald top. He was about the right shade of shell-white too, though whether this was natural or fear or the contrast of the dark cabin interior behind him was uncertain.

Gutierrez spread her arms to indicate herself and lack of patience, and there was a series of clicks from the other side of the door. Gutierrez shoved the door open and the pale man grunted in surprise as he was shoved back. Wil hurried in after the ranger, then closed and locked the door.

The interior of the lodge was significantly different than the tiny station had been. It resembled a cross between an expansive house and a police station. The first floor was a vast open space filled with sixteen desks, each placed back-to-back and arranged in neat rows. A couple side hallways lead back to a kitchen, and a much smaller office space with a metal plate beside the door that read, “Nathan Sandoval, Chief Ranger.” There were bathroom doors for men and women each, and a closed door with a medical cross on it and “FIRST AID” written below it.

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A wide chandelier made of antlers hung dark over the main room, from the roof of the cabin itself. The second floor was open to the floor below, a balcony following the perimeter of the main room and lined with unmarked doors that led elsewhere.

A flight of wooden steps was situated on the side of the main room, taking a single sharp right angle onto a narrow landing before continuing up to the second floor. An older woman with a doughy face stood on the landing, clutching the railing and peering down at the main entrance as Gutierrez burst in.

“Which two rangers did Sandoval take?” Gutierrez demanded.

“I didn’t catch their names,” the egg-headed man said and backed away from her.

“They said we shouldn’t let anybody in!” the woman on the stairs said. Wil spotted movement from the kitchen as an elderly Asian man leaned out from behind the door frame. Wil had a glimpse of thick glasses, white hair, a goatee, and long jowls. He held a mug of something steaming and then the old man disappeared into the kitchen again.

“Describe them,” Gutierrez said to egg-head.

“Uh, there was Sandoval, big guy, black hair, mustache. Then there was a ranger with reddish hair, and a lady ranger with blond hair,” egg-head said. Gutierrez sighed.

“O’Donnel and Birkin,” she said.

“The red-haired man mentioned something about his partner. Is that you?” he asked. Gutierrez nodded. “He wanted to go check in on you, but Sandoval said their priority was the road and some power lines. He said he’d already sent another ranger to go check on a radio tower.”

“Probably Jacobs,” Gutierrez said.

“How many people are in here now?” Wil asked as he continued to look around, but kept looking back at the kitchen.

“Just me, my wife, our daughter who’s asleep in the nurse’s station back there, and Mr. Matsuda,” egg-head said and pointed at the kitchen.

“How long have the other rangers been gone?” Gutierrez asked.

“Less than an hour. That Jacobs fella took off first and the others not long after.”

“Maybe we should go to the main road, check on O’Donnell before we go to Portland,” Wil said. He was eager to be off, to get to Portland and figure out how best to reach Naomi, if that were even still possible. He knew it was manipulative, but he added, “and then you can check on your family.”

“Yeah, I should,” Gutierrez said. “If Sandoval was fine leaving you all here, I am too. I’m——”

The sound of a car speeding toward the station broke the silence from outside. Gutierrez threw the curtain on the door aside and revealed another one of the jeeps skidding to the very front of the station. A man with reddish hair and a woman with blond jumped out of the jeep and threw open the passenger door. They pulled out a flat plastic stretcher, upon which was another man in a ranger’s uniform. His face and shirt were streaked with mud and blood and something darker. Both of the other rangers had blood and blood as well, but only a few flecks of the darker substance.

“Oh, Jesus. Sandoval,” Gutierrez said and threw the door open. “Sandoval!”

“Rosa!” O’Donnell said.

“Where the hell have you been?” The blond woman, Birkin, asked. Gutierrez ignored her as she ran forward.

“We got him, get the first aid ready. Bandages, alcohol, stitches,” O’Donnell said. Gutierrez did a quick about-face and charged back through the front door. Wil stood aside and hel the doors open for the incoming rangers, who didn’t even look up at him as they hurried past.

“Our daughter’s in there!” the woman on the stairs said as Gutierrez burst into the medical room. There was a high pitched shriek of terror as she did, then clattering and rummaging.

“Get out! Move!” O’Donnell shouted as he and Birkin carried Sandoval into the medical room. There a scream, a thud, and then childish crying. A girl no older than ten came stumbling out of the room, eyes wide and frightened and bright with tears.

“Muuuuhhhh,” she wailed and the older woman hurried down from the landing in quick steps that made Wil think of a quail. She scooped the girl up and cooed to her silently, furthering the birdlike impression.

“It’s okay! We just need to stay out of the nice ranger’s way. It’s okay, Mama’s here,” the woman said. Wil closed and locked the front doors again after a quick peek outside to make sure nothing had been following the rangers. The parking lot was empty, save for the other cars.

With the door secured, Wil walked to the edge of the medical room and peered in. Gutierrez, Birkin, and O’Donnell loomed over Sandoval, who was mostly hidden behind the other three. Wil only had a glimpse of a blood-covered hand in the darkness, twitching and flexing as the man gurgled and choked.

“What the hell is wrong with him? Is he having a seizure?” Gutierrez said.

“I don’t know! But his belt in his mouth! He’s going to chew off his own tongue at this rate!” Birkin said.

“Oh hell, oh hell,” O’Donnell said.

Wil backed away from the door and stopped as he glanced to the side.

Among the many wildlife and nature posters, stark governmental notices, and maps along the outer walls of the office, was a glass case in a wooden frame. There was a single set of keys inside, presumably for one of the jeeps in the parking lot.

All of the rangers were distracted with Sandoval. The older couple was fussing over their daughter.

Wil edged toward the case.

“Very strange things happening out there,” a quiet voice said behind Wil and he almost screamed. The elderly Asian man, Matsuda had been what egg-head called him, stood a few feet behind Wil with his steaming mug. Coffee by the look and smell of it.

He was shorter than Wil by almost a foot, just coming up to his chest. His glasses were almost as thick as Wil’s little finger, and his gray hair was thin on top. He sipped his coffee and looked from the medical room with the rangers to the covered windows.

“Uh, yeah,” Wil said. Mr. Matsuda stepped around from behind Wil and on his left side, facing him. He’d placed himself between Wil and the case on the waill containing the jeep key.

Did he know what I was thinking? Wil thought.

“Sandoval! Nathan! Nate god dammit! Hold him down!” Birkin shouted. The little girl was crying into her mother’s chest while her father stood uselessly nearby.

“Not much good going on in here, either,” Matsuda said and wandered away.

Weird old guy, Wil thought and then jumped as something banged inside the medical room.

“He’s gone,” O’Donnell said and Wil peered around the edge of the door to see the red-haired ranger putting his arm around Birkin’s shaking shoulders.

“What happened? He’s not even…I mean his cuts aren’t even that bad,” Gutierrez said.

“It was that shit he fell in,” O’Donnell said. Birkin slid out from under his arm and then hurried out of the room. She almost knocked Wil over as she passed and ran into the women’s restroom.

“What shit?” Gutierrez asked. “Nevermind. You can tell me on the way. I gotta get to Portland.”

“You won’t,” O’Donnell said. “Road’s gone.”

“What do you mean the road is gone?” Wil asked.

“I mean there’s a thirty-to-fifty foot wide gorge stretched across the main road and a good chunk of the forest on either side,” O’Donnell said. “It’s not that deep, maybe just a couple stories down, but there’s no way any cars are making it across that.”

“What about other roads out of the park?” Wil asked as his stomach knotted.

“If you wanna get to Portland, there’s a couple roads on the opposite side of the lake that go around the mountains,” O’Donnell replied. “But that’ll take you an hour out of the way, at least. Assuming traffic’s clear, and from what we were hearing on the radio before it went down, traffic into and out of the city is a mess. Nothing’s getting in or out of Portland anytime soon.”