“What the hell did you see out there? What happened to Nate?” Gutierrez asked when all of them were out in the main room. Wil stood near the wall and stared at the map. O’Donnell hadn’t been lying to him: there were three major roads out of Oak Rest, and they all lead to Portland.

Eventually.

The nearest road, and the park’s primary entrance, was the one O’Donnell had said was a no-go. The other two veered away from Portland and went South or further East, and would require changing to another highway. On a normal day, a minor inconvenience.

On a normal day.

O’Donnell sat on the edge of a desk, while Birkin sat in the chair, her face in her hands. Gutierrez tried her best to loom over them, but her lack of any significant verticality meant she was mostly just leaning forward.

The couple and their young daughter sat in a tiny waiting area that consisted of an old, patchwork sofa, a coffee table covered in creased magazines, and a rocking chair. The girl was still sniffling from being scared earlier, and the mother was still cooing at her. The father tried to frown at the rangers, but his tiny mouth made it look more like a pucker, as if he were angrily awaiting a kiss.

Matsuda stood nearby and off to one side, just out of Wil’s peripheral vision. Wil also noted that the old man’s position also put him behind a pillar from where the mother, father, and daughter were sitting, and behind Wil from where the three rangers stood bunched together. Wil turned so his back was to the wall and he could keep an eye on the rest of the room more easily. He couldn’t look at the mpa, but it wasn’t going to change its lines and routes just because he was desperate.

“He just fell down a little,” Birkin said and sniffled. “He got right back up, but that stuff was all over his face.”

“What stuff?” Gutierrez said and her voice rose with impatience.

“Hey, it’s okay. Birkin, I got it,” O’Donnell said. “If you feel like it, maybe go check up on the Stewart family?”

“Yeah, yeah just gimme a minute,” Birkin said and wiped her eyes, then went to go see the family in the corner. When she was gone, O’Donnell took a deep breath and regarded Gutierrez, Wil, and Matsuda before he started.

“I left our station after we, uh, well, I left to get some fresh air. My radio went off and Sandoval said we needed to get down to the main lodge for some emergency. I said you were just checking your gear and about to head out on patrol to check on some of the locals in the cabins and you’d join us,” O’Donnell said.

Here, he paused, and Gutierrez shot Wil a look with narrowed eyes. He glanced to the side and didn’t say anything. Matsuda sipped his coffee and blinked.

“I got down here with Birkin and Jacobs, and some other folks they had rounded up. We saw the news on the TV, and Sandoval was saying we needed to do a full sweep of the park, make sure everybody was safe, keep folks around the main lodge and visitor’s center. Things weren’t too bad. It’s not a holiday weekend or anything, and overnighters are pretty much non-existent during the week, so it wasn’t too busy.

“Some people took off. Said they didn’t wanna stick around up here because they had family or friends or something in the city. That was when we lost power, and radio right after. So Sandoval says we’re going to check out some of the power lines that’re close to the main road on the edge of the park boundary lines. We get there and…and we see this gorge thing.

“It split the damn road clean in two, and the forest on either side for at least a quarter mile in both directions. Woods are too thick to drive anything but a dirtbike or something through, so we’re about to go back when Sandoval says he wants to investigate. Cause its like…the gorge wasn’t just a crack in the earth. It was like something had carved into it. Something had come through and snapped all the trees off at an angle too, like it came from the sky. It was shallower at one end and deeper on the other. But even at the shallowest spot it was too deep to drive across, and even if it wasn’t, it was

“So we all go into the woods near the deep end and we find it. About a thirty foot slide down. Some kinda smoking rock or something. Bigger than the jeeps.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Hold up,” Gutierrez said. “A rock bigger than a jeep fell from the sky at an angle and made a gorge thirty feet deep? Are you saying this was a meteor or something?”

“It sure looked like it,” O’Donnell shrugged.

“A jeep-sized meteor crashing into the woods would’ve thrown up a huge amount of dirt. We’d have probably felt it too. It would’ve been like a bomb going off,” Wil said.

“Mm,” Matsuda said and sipped his coffee.

“It was split open. The big rock, I mean. And it was like a geode or something inside. All crystalline and sparkly. And there was a lot of water and mud around it. Or we thought that was all. Sandoval said he was gonna go check it out. It wasn’t a steep drop or anything, and he slid down easy enough. Birkin and I stayed up top and threw out some road flares on either side of the gorge in case any drivers came by.

“Then there was some kinda noise from the gorge and Sandoval shouted…” O’Donnell shook his head and for the first time since he started, he looks almost as nerve-wracked as Birkin. Wil glances at the other female ranger, still with the Stewart family in the corner.

“And, uh, me and Birkin we ran over and Sandoval was just lying face first into the cracked rock. We called out to him, but nothing. He started twitching like he was having a seizure, so Birkin gets down there, just, boom. She said it stinks, gagged, then yells at me to get the rope from the jeep because Sandoval wasn’t responding.

“We haul him up, and he kinda started to talk. Well, he made sounds. Birkin climbed up after him and we gave him a quick check. His eyes had rolled up in his head and there was some kind black junk on his nose and mouth, and I guess that’s what Birkin smelled because it was…Christ, I never smelled anything like it.

“Birkin was scared he was having a fit and would hurt himself spasming, so we tied him to the stretcher and hauled him back here. Got him in the medical room and…” O’Donnell spread his hands and shrugged as he frowned. Gutierrez met Wil’s gaze at the mention of foul-smelling black stuff.

“Anything else?” Gutierrez asked.

“Nothing. That was it. The only injury he might have gotten was when he fell forward three feet into that cracked rock. But shoot, that’d maybe give somebody a busted nose or chipped tooth, worst case,” O’Donnell said.

“Did you happen to see any animals while you were out there?” Gutierrez asked.

“Uh, maybe some birds? Wasn’t really paying attention,” O’Donnell said. “Why?”

“Something this guy and I saw on our way here,” Gutierrez said and nodded at Wil. “Hey, can we talk a moment?”

“Sure?” Wil said as Gutierrez took him by the elbow and all but dragged him to a far corner of the station. “Geez, easy there.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.

“That black stuff?”

“Yeah. It was all over that buck. If it got on Sandoval…”

“Wait, you think it’s gonna turn him into a zombie?” Wil asked and almost scoffed. That was the rational thing to do. Zombies weren’t real. The dead didn’t rise and walk around.

Except the buck had been physically dead.

It had walked around.

It had been insanely strong and had a few very unusual extras not common to deer.

“Actually yeah. Holy shit,” Wil said a second later.

“We gotta get Sandoval’s body out of here,” Gutierrez said. “But they’re not gonna believe us if we just say we saw a monster zombie buck and think Sandoval might be infected too.”

“Biological contaminant,” Wil said. “It’s why I took my shirt off when I decapitated the thing. I was afraid that black gunk was poison or something.”

“That’ll do. I’ll tell O’Donnell I saw an infected deer in the woods, obviously sick. He’ll buy that, especially if you back me up.”

“Done,” Wil nodded. Then maybe they could figure a way to get to Portland. There had to be another way out of the park that wouldn’t take them ages to circle back around to Portland. Gutierrez strode over to O’Donnell while Wil walked along the perimeter of the main office area, opposite the medical room. He wanted to keep it in sight at all times just in case something happened.

This is crazy. Zombie deer? Zombie rangers? Meteors from space and black goop? Bullshit is what it is. Please god, let it be bullshit, he thought.

That was when Matsuda appeared at his side out of the shadows and Wil nearly screamed.

“Jesus!” he hissed. “What is it with you? What is your deal, man?”

“You think something unnatural is happening,” Matsuda said and Wil blinked at him. “Ah, allow me to rephrase. You have seen unnatural things happening. I’ve heard some things on the radio and the news before the power went out. But I know many people are still doubtful. The other campers who left didn’t believe it. They knew something was wrong, yes, but they thought it was something wrong in the normal way. We know differently, first-hand, yes?”

“Uh, we do?” Wil asked and looked away from the medical room door to focus on Matsuda. The old man wasn’t much taller than Guiterrez, and wrinkles around his eyes bowed upward just a bit to match the wry smile he wore.

“I did not have to wait for the rangers to come and find me. I came here at once. After I saw it,” Matsuda said. “A pair of long legs in the distance, like trees that moved on their own, but sleek and dark.”

Wil thought at once of the thing Ralph had taken pictures and video of outside on his front lawn. He started to ask the old man what else he had seen when something banged on the floor.

Wil glanced around the open room, but only saw everyone else looking for the source of the noise.

That was when the door to the medical room snapped in half and flew off its hinges into the room.