“Are you sure they should go out into the forest? Didn’t Louie have an injured back?” Abby spoke with a concerned tone, but her mother reassured her.

“They’ll be fine. They aren’t allowed to go very far in, and Louie’s gash is shallow. You know, Louie used to be in boy scouts. Besides…” Mrs. Collins looked around at the various adults that looked at each other with anger, confusion, fear, and a subtle tone of anxiety. “…the forest may be better for them right now while we figure things out.”

Abby looked at her brother, Arden, and her best friend, Leonard. Nobody close to Leonard used his full name; instead, he usually went by Louie. Or if you were Arden, Fatty Lou. Abby wasn’t sure when the nickname started being used, but it stuck like cement and followed Louie when he moved to the big city.

“Isn’t the forest dangerous, though? What if more of them show up?”

Mrs. Collins patted her daughter on the back and reassured her.

“Don’t worry, Abby. They won’t go far. Just far enough to gather some food. Berries, mushrooms, those types of things.”

Abby stared off into the forest and couldn’t help but see the trees shifting around in the wind like something was lurking within them. She had never been a fan of forests, and certainly not when weird creatures popped out of them and attacked her neighbourhood.

“Abby! Come help me carry Mr. Robinson!” A distant voice called out to Abby.

“Coming!”

Abby approached the call, hesitated, and looked back at the forest.

“Please come back safe,” Abby whispered. Then, she dashed off to help with the neighbourhood reorganization efforts.

*****

“Aw, come on! You know I like seeing you alive, Lou!” Arden slapped me on the back, which sent a sting of pain across my body. I could practically feel the vein that pulsated on my forehead.

“That hurt!”

Arden reeled at my shout and threw his free hand in the air. “Sorry! I forgot, I forgot!” Then, his hand pressed back onto the outdated rifle in his hand.

I felt the pain from the demon dog’s scratch fade as the bandages and disinfecting ointment went to work. I massaged the injury the best I could, and my eyes waded back to Arden as we walked along the forest brush. Particularly, my eyes landed on the rifle in his hands.

“I’ve been meaning to ask; why did your mom give you the old hunting rifle? Doesn’t your family have better ones?” I asked Arden.

Arden scratched his head and shrugged a bit with his shoulders.

“They’re gone.”

I nodded my head and mumbled my response. “Like the working cars, then.” I looked at Arden, who nodded his head.

“Yeah, like the cars. And the fridge. And the cell phones. If the world is going to end, at least let me play some video games.”

Arden and I chuckled a bit, but the atmosphere grew serious when we started thinking of it all.

The way that our little suburban neighbourhood had been badly cut and pasted into an unknown forest.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The way that technology was just gone like it had never existed in the first place. There was still scrap metal from damaged ones, but nothing worked, which didn’t help us. Not unless you knew how to fix it all, and we didn’t have time for that. Not yet, at least.

The demon dogs and bats had attacked the neighbourhood and incited panic in everyone. If it weren’t for Mr. Collins taking the lead in organizing everyone, the community would still be in chaos instead of regrouping.

“Hey, Lou. What’s this one?”

Arden disrupted my thinking, which I was thankful for, and held up the leaf of a bizarre-looking plant.

“Arden! Don’t touch the leaves! You don’t know what sort of plant it is. What if it’s poisonous?”

Arden hurriedly dropped the leaf and looked at me with concern, then a dumb smile.

“Really!? Sorry. It doesn’t look poisonous, though. It’s just green and got some wavy shapes to it.”

I took a plastic bag and gloves from my satchel and sealed the leaf inside, alongside a bit of the original plant Arden had found. If I couldn’t find a record of the leaf, the bark or the stem would help identify it.

“Wait, you only bag the plants you don’t know. Do you not know that one, either?” Arden asked.

I remained silent for a bit, trying to search through the mental pages of plant books and nature jogs, but I couldn’t remember anything that looked exactly like this plant.

“It’s got to be a type of fern, but which subspecies has extended stems with no base leaves like this? Maybe it’s a hybrid?” I mumbled to myself.

“That’s not like you at all, Lou. Usually, you look at me all smug and tell me the plant genres.” Arden spoke with a grin.

“It’s called a genus, you idiot.”

“I know.” Arden smiled even wider, and I had to restrain my fist from getting buried in his face.

“Just hurry up; we should gather as much as possible and then head back,” I told Arden, but his short attention span had already tracked down another target.

“Hey, do you think we could get a good view of the area from that cliff face?” Arden pointed towards a spot I could barely see through the trees and started walking towards it.

“Arden. Arden! Your dad said not to go too far! Damnit, why does he always get sidetracked like this?” I hurried to catch up to him, which didn’t happen until the fit idiot had already hiked up to the top of the cliff face.

Huff. Huff.

“Arden!”

What if those demon dogs decided to attack us here? Would we die jumping off the cliff or by their claws? I didn’t even want to think about it.

“Take it easy there, Lou. You know, for a guy who runs daily, you sure get out of breath easily.”

I gave Arden the middle finger and finally reached the ledge where he stood. From there, we both looked at the valley we were in.

The neighbourhood looked like a bad cut-and-paste job from up here. It was surrounded by forest, but there was a river not too far away, and the mountains surrounding the area made it pretty secluded from everything beyond the valley. It would take a lot of manpower to search for anyone here.

“What’s that over there?”

I turned to where Arden pointed, and a chill washed over my body. My eyes dilated. My palms started to sweat.

Gulp.

“Uh, I don’t know. The mountain blocks most of it, so I can’t see it.”

Oh, no. This is not good. This is very not good. This is very, very bad.

“Arden, we need to get back.” I tried not to let the fear creep into my voice, but I had a feeling that Arden could tell I was spooked by what we saw. He stared at me for a bit, unsure what to say, and nodded.

The both of us trudged through the tangle of roots and moss as we returned to the neighbourhood, but it was like the forest was trying to keep us here. I ramped my pace to a jog, but Arden pulled my pace back down.

“We’ll make it back well before nightfall. We have time. So, don’t forget to collect some food, like Dad asked, ok?” Arden spoke to me.

“No!” I burst out, then hurriedly backtracked my speech. “I just—we need to get back. Forget about the food.”

“But dad—”

“Arden, nothing is here!” I shouted at him a little too suddenly, and he stepped back. I took a few breaths, and my shoulder crumpled in a bit.

“There are no little raspberries or wild animals to try and collect. It’s all just weird and foreign. I’ve collected more bags of unknown plants than I’ve ever seen on a hike. You know me. I should be able to list off plants like it’s nothing. But this forest? It isn’t like anything I’ve read about. It isn’t worth it!”

Crack!

Arden and I both turned toward the snapped branch. Silence loomed around us, and I watched Arden slowly raise his rifle to his shoulder and aim at the brush.

Crack!

Bang!

There was a human shout as the bullet assumedly hit somewhere where it hurt, and Arden and I both looked at each other.

We knew there was only us that went out into the forest. The rest of the adults decided to reorganize the camp. So there was only one reason why someone else was out here.

We weren’t alone in this forest.

“Hey!”

Crack!

Arden shot another bullet into the brush, and then we both sprinted through the trees. All the while, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I saw on the cliff face.

If there were others in this forest, then I was right about what I saw. I needed to regroup with the others and tell them.

And I needed to do it fast.