The first ten minutes were a breeze, literally. Wil had the window down and let the gentle wind blow into his face. The sky was overcast once again (not a huge surprise for autumn in the Pac-Northwest), and the gray of underside of the clouds could have been nothing but the lid of an enormous sarcophagus set to entomb him in this nightmare.

But for a few minutes, Wil could just imagine himself on a roadtrip.

Just a little drive back from a camping trip, with a couple of outdoors nuts and a very strange old man.

Normal things.

Then he would think of the buck, Sandoval, the bear, the distortions, the moon, or what might be happening to Naomi with every passing second, and he would have the urge to piss himself, scream, yank out his hair, or all of of the above.

If I’d just been a little bit more decisive about killing myself, he thought. I wouldn’t have to have seen all this. But then, maybe Naomi…

The train of thought about what might happen to Naomi under any current circumstances was one Wil did not want to board. Better to let that particular train derail and allow a more productive engine through.

“Something up ahead,” Gutierrez said and raised a pair of binoculars to her face. Wil shot up and peered around her seat.

The road had been clear for miles, but now there was a line of cars across both lanes not far ahead of them. O’Donnell began to slow and brought the Ford to a gentle stop a couple hundred feet away from the traffic jam.

Many of the cars had crashed violently, and Wil saw a bloody arm emerging from a broken window. Some of the cars had backed up over the guardrail along the sides of the highway, while others had been completely flipped on their roofs or sides. It looked like both lanes of traffic, coming and going, had tried to get away from something beyond the pile up that Wil couldn’t see.

“What do you think?” Gutierrez asked.

“Not really much driving space outside the highway,” O’Donnell said. The forest practically comes right up alongside the road, so no going around it. Even if we did have room, getting over the guardrails in this piece of junk would be rough.”

“We can’t just bash through,” Gutierrez said.

“Might be able to drive some of those cars out of the way, at least enough to clear a spot,” Matsuda said. “Assuming it isn’t like this all the way to Portland.”

“Yeah that’d be worst-case. Then it’s back to hiking,” O’Donnell said.

Please god no, Wil thought. Not just for the sake of his feet and that they’d have to ditch their new supplies again, but that it would delay their arrival to the city and Naomi by that much more. He hadn’t been able to contact her since the ranger station yesterday and probably wouldn’t talk to her again unless he could make it to her apartment.

“Gotta check it out first. Looks quiet enough, though,” O’Donnell said.

“Now that you said that, something’s gonna happen,” Gutierrez said and tried a weak laugh.

“Don’t even joke,” O’Donnell replied and slowly rolled the Ford closer to the traffic jam. Wil swallowed the lump in his throat and tightened his grip on his axe. O’Donnell stopped the car when they were only a few dozen feet away and put it into park.

“I’m gonna get out and check with Gutierrez. You two keep on eye on the woods and anything behind us,” O’Donnell said.

“Works for me,” Matsuda said. He stepped out of the car and brought his rifle up as he took cover behind the open door. Wil stumbled out the other side, dropped his axe, and had to stare down at his holster to get his gun out and make sure it was ready to fire. Matsuda glanced at him from the side and smirked.

“Hey, we can’t all be…whatever you used to be,” Wil said.

“And still am,” Matsuda replied and then turned his attention to the woods and the road behind them. Wil did the same for his side of the highway as O’Donnell and Gutierrez approached the blocked road ahead. There was some fumbling sounds behind Wil as the two rangers climbed up on one of the cars and Wil turned to glance at them.

“Stay focused on the road,” Matsuda said. “Even under normal wartime conditions, things can go sideways very quickly. We have no clue what’s going on aside from the fact that it’s widespread and…unnatural. A second looking at the rangers is a second something has to run out of the woods at you.”

“Yeah,” Wil agreed and turned back to face the area ahead and to his side. The back of his neck itched every time the rangers made a sound, but it was nothing that sounded like trouble, so he forced himself to stare ahead.

“So what’s your deal? Seriously,” Wil said. “The rangers are, well, rangers so their training makes sense. What were…what are you? Military? And don’t give me this ‘Just an old man,’ crap. My grandpa was ‘Just an old man,’ and all he did was watch day-time TV, complain about modern music, fall asleep at 6:30 at night, and fart a lot.”

Matsuda smirked. “Fair enough. Yes, I have some official training in survival and that sort of thing. But no, not military.”

“Then…?” Wil asked.

“Does it matter? Do you not have enough other mysteries to occupy yourself with? I’m human, so are you. I’m alive, so are you. For now, that’s good enough for me.”

Wil sighed. Wil could see by the set of the old man’s jaw that he was done talking about this. He didn’t want to push one of his few companions to irritation, so he let it drop. There was a heavy thump and some muffled chatting from O’Donnell and Gutierrez behind them and Wil had to resist the urge to take a peek at what they were doing.

“How’s your bite?” Matsuda asked.

“Fine. Checked on it as soon as I woke up. It’s scabbed over, don’t look infected or anything,” Wil said. “Which is…weird. And inconsistent. The Stewarts all got bit and they hopped right up.”

“The Stewarts were also dead, from what you described,” Matsuda said. “Birkin too. That thing pierced her skull, then tore out the girl’s throat, based on the glimpse I had of her when we were driving away and she ran out of the station. Mr. And Mrs. Stewart had similar injuries.”

“You saw that?” Wil asked. O’Donnell and Matsuda had been in the jeep ahead of them, already peeling out, and the victims of Sandoval’s attack had only just emerged from the lodge.

“Mm-hm,” Matusda said. “Also you got bit by that gut snake-thing, not the bear itself. Maybe whatever they transfer that makes victims get up again has to come from the primary orifice or something. Or maybe it’s why Mr. Birkin was so slow and clumsy and the others were so fast.”

“I mentioned that to Gutierrez,” Wil said. “But the bear was like Sandoval: huge, mutated, swelled up, black thorny things. I should’ve been infected, or taken over, whatever word works.”

“But again, you didn’t suffer a fatal attack. The victim might need to be dead first. And the bear didn’t directly attack you, just that snake-thing. I’m not trying to suggest there’s nothing to worry about, but so far as your bite is concerned, no news is good news.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“No kidding. Did you find anything out from looking at the green-eyed guy in the storage room?”

“Nothing very illuminating. He had no injuries apart from what I gave him. I did a quick examination of his chest cavity, but everything looked normal. The only obvious signs that something was wrong were his eyes. They looked like they’d been blinded, somehow.”

“Huh,” Wil said.

“Hey!” O’Donnell called out.

“See what they want and I’ll watch the road,” Matsuda said. Wil nodded and approached the ranger. He stood on top of a wrecked SUV with broken windows. The driver’s door was open, and the seat had a splash of dried blood on it.

“The blockage is about four or five cars deep but then it clears up again. Some cars on the road, but not all bunched up like this. Gutierrez and I are gonna move some of these out of the way since most have their keys and then we’ll keep moving.”

“Any chance of us getting an upgrade?” Wil asked.

“Not likely. It’s mostly all smaller cars and family vans. What isn’t totaled, that is,” O’Donnell replied. “Anyway, if you hear car engines, it’s just us moving stuff. We won’t ditch you.”

“Good to know,” Wil said and returned to the Ford and Matsuda to tell the old man what the plan was. He only grunted and kept his eyes on the road and the woods beyond.

Gutierrez and O’Donnell set to clearing the highway as best they could, with much scraping of metal and rumbling of damaged engines. The big SUV barely worked, and its engine chugged and rattled, but it was enough to push some of the smaller cars out of the way.

It was almost ten minutes later, and they’d only cleared a narrow corridor that got halfway through the jam of wrecked cars. It was like some awful, automotive Tetris, moving one misshapen vehicle a few inches and then moving a second one to fill the tiny gap, and on and on.

Wil’s attention was starting to wander. He kept thinking of Naomi, praying she was all right, that this delay wasn’t going to be fatal for any of them. He wondered what could have caused the pile-up, if the rest of the highway beyond looked relatively clear. Something had attacked the driver of the SUV and yanked them out of the big vehicle by the look of it.

Wil was wondering what it could be when light caught his eye. He tensed and looked past the guardrail of the highway.

Green light.

Two of them, twin emerald pinpricks in the darkness.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“What is——oh,” Matsuda said as he followed Wil’s gaze. The lights were moving toward them, the human figure they belonged to becoming more visible in the wooded gloom as it approached the road. It was slow, its arms limp at its sides, its steps plodding but steady and deliberate. “Go tell the rangers. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

Wil ran over to where Gutierrez was shoving a small Kia with a ruined front end back into a space O’Donnell had cleared. She glanced up at him and frowned.

“If you’re just here to compl——” she started.

“Green-eyed thing! Woods!” Wil said and pointed. Gutierrez paled and looked around the side of the tiny Korean car. The green-eyed creature emerged from the woods. It was a woman, average height and build, dressed like she had been on her way to or from work when whatever happened had happened. She had lost one dress shoe in the woods, and there were pine-needles and twigs in her dark hair. She had a few smudges of dirt on her clothes and some scratches on her hands, but nothing serious. She stared straight at Wil with her luminous toxic gaze and plodded toward him, until Matsuda snapped his fingers and waved his hands in the air.

“What’s he doing?” Wil asked.

“Buying us time. Roger?” Gutierrez asked and looked over her shoulder. O’Donnell was slowly backing a mini-van up into a ruined truck. He leaned out the window and gave her a thumbs up.

“Help me push this thing,” Gutierrez said and Wil holstered his gun, then put his shoulder into pushing the Kia. He didn’t take his eyes off the green-eyed woman though. She’d fully emerged from the woods and was stomping towards Matsuda with obvious intent. Her limp arms rose up and extended, fingers clutched at the air, mouth agape with drool welling up along the sides.

To Wil’s surprise, Matsuda didn’t fire at her. Instead, he lowered his rifle and stood away from the car, after checking behind him. His gaze snapped back to the Kia as it lurched backward with a screech and then Gutierrez hurried to another car nearby.

“Okay, go watch his back. Don’t run into his line of fire either!” she snapped and Wil approached Matsuda from the side. The green-eyed woman had approached the guardrail, but instead of stepping over it, she bumped into it with her shins and pitched face first onto the highway. Wil winced at the sickening, meaty whack her face made as it struck the asphalt. She pushed herself up after one, two, three attempts, her nose and mouth bloody from the impact of the street.

“She’s slow,” Wil said. “The one that got O’Donnell was quick.”

“No, the one that nibbled on the good ranger surprised us. It only moved a few inches to chomp his face,” Matsuda replied, then stepped forward, rifle gripped in both hands but still not aimed at the woman.

“What are you doing?” Wil hissed.

“Experiments,” Matsuda said. “Watch the road and the woods behind me.”

“God dammit,” Wil said and checked the area around him. There was nothing, and he wasn’t about to turn his back on the green-eyed woman for more than a second or two. Gutierrez and O’Donnell had expanded the narrow aisle between the cars and there were only one or two left in the way. The ford would get its paint scratched up, maybe break a side mirror, but it would fit.

Probably.

“Hey,” Matsuda said and made soft clicking noises like he was trying to summon a cat. He moved to the side and woman followed him with an awkward step to the left.

“Meeeeeting,” the woman groaned.

“What?” Matsuda asked.

“Meeeetiiiiinnngg,” the woman said again, almost a growl and took a lunging step toward Matsuda. He dodged her with ease, and then slammed the butt of the rifle against the side of her head. Wil winced again as the woman fell to the asphalt for the second time.

Her face remained unchanged during the assault. She didn’t even flinch. A couple teeth fell out of her mouth and she rose again, face Matsuda, and lunged once more.

“Meeting!” she said and blood sprayed out of her mouth as she spoke.

“Can you understand me?” Matsuda asked.

“Meetiiiiing!” Another growl, another lunge. Matsuda stepped on her foot with one of his, then slammed the butt of his rifle down on her kneecap hard enough to bend it backward.

“Oh shit! Damn!” Wil said and covered his mouth as the woman fell again, her left leg now bent the opposite way that it should be.

“Watch the woods, not me,” Matsuda said. Wil checked behind him. Still nothing.

“I can’t, that thing it could,” Wil said and pointed at the woman. She, or maybe it would be a better term now, limped toward Matsuda on one leg with the other dragging behind.

“It’s slow and stupid,” Matsuda said. “Watch my back.”

Every instinct Wil had told him to not turn his back on that thing, but Matsuda was calm, collected, and keeping his distance. Wil compromised and looked back and forth between the woods behind Matsuda and the man himself.

“We’re almost ready!” Gutierrez said from behind Wil and almost made him scream. She jumped into the driver’s seat of the Ford and waved at him. “Get in!”

“Hey, Mr. Matsuda!” Wil said.

“Mm,” Matsuda replied and then gave the woman a hard shove onto her back and stepped away. He jogged to the car and hopped in. The woman scrambled around on her back like a turtle, her broken leg flopping uselessly.

“Good experiment?” Wil asked. “Seemed kind of…sadistic.”

“Only sadistic if the victim can feel something. There was nothing there,” Matsuda said. “No reaction to pain at all, only basic reaction to other stimulus. Is Ranger O’Donnell ready?”

“Yeah he’s just got one more thing to move and then we’ll be gone,” Gutierrez said and began to roll the Ford towards the traffic jam. Wil glanced out the window at the woman in the road and frowned. He looked up at the opposite side of the highway, into the woods, and sucked in a breath.

More green eyes.

Four pairs.

“Guys, more of them,” Wil said and pointed. Matsuda glanced up and grunted again.

“We’ll be gone before they can trip over the guardrail,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” Wil said and Matsuda and Gutierrez both turned to look at the distant woods.

The four pairs of green eyes were each bobbing up and down quickly, as if their owners were running. As their figures became clearer, Wil saw that’s exactly what they were doing: four human figures in all out sprints, charging toward the edge of the woods. They broke the treeline at the same moment, each keeping pace with the other.

Not just keeping pace, Wil thought, they’re in perfect sync.

All four had the exact same rhythm and were in perfect step. Wil had seen professional marching bands with sloppier precision. When the four green-eyed things reached the guardrail, they didn’t trip, they vaulted over it, again in perfect harmony.

“Oh shit,” Gutierrez said and sped forward, leaned out the window and honked the horn. “O’Donnell!”

“What on Earth,” Matsuda said as he turned to look at the pursuing figures. The woman stood up with sudden grace and efficiency, then twisted her leg so it popped back forward, and joined the other four figures. She had a slight limp to her now, but the more she ran, the more it faded. She synced up with the others, and her slack face tightened into something resembling determination.

“Oh my god,” Wil breathed. The car jolted as Gutierrez rammed it through the narrow aisle she and O’Donnell had made, and O’Donnell just managed to back the last car enough out of the way to allow her through.

“Get your ass in!” she shouted at him. O’Donnell practically threw himself into the passenger seat and Gutierrez was speeding away before he’d even closed the door. She had to weave around stalled cars, wrecked cars, flipped cars, but she had enough room now to do so. As she sped up, faster and faster, the green-eyed pack fell away. Wil saw them slow, then turned as one and sprinted back into the woods.

“Did you see that?” Wil asked.

“Not all of it,” Gutierrez said.

“None of it,” O’Donnell said. “What the heck happened?”

Matsuda sighed and pointed at the pen in Wil’s shirt pocket.

“Add it to the list,” he said.