I am not ready for this! Was my only thought as we barreled through the forest at a speed that I would be comfortable with going on a city road, not down some dirt path. We being me, Johnson, and two other people I had met at the cookout, Steve and… Taylor? That had thrown me for a loop when I first got into the back of the van, my head twisting about to try and find Jane, but Steve’s partner was nowhere to be found.

The ride had been done mostly in silence, save for when Johnson caught me up on the plan. “I got a buddy who works in the Oakwood PD, and they got called in to reinforce the quarantine. He’s a real braggart too, saying all kinds of stuff about what they’re doing and how the quarantine works. From what he said, there’s a stretch of forest they don’t really watch too hard, something about it being too dense for anyone to realistically get through.”

“But,” he said with a smile, something I could see because he turned around while driving to look at me, “I happen to know about an old wagon trail that should take us up to the bubble. It leads up to a cabin my grandparents had on the outskirts of Springfield, and barely anyone used it.”

I was suddenly regretting my decision to accompany this man I didn’t know into the woods at half-past midnight. But every time I thought of bailing memories of Jenny, of how her laugh would fill the house or how she would never give up on something, or someone.

Eventually the van slowed down and Johnson got out of the driver’s seat to pull open the van’s doors. “Well, this is as far as I go. Just head northwest and you’ll slip right past the checkpoints.”

“Thank you, Johnson,” Steve said as he rummaged through his pack. “But before you go, could I ask for one last favor?” He produced an envelope and I caught a glimpse of a hastily scrawled Jane written across its front.

Johnson stilled at the small letter Steve passed to him. “Hey Steve,” he whispered, “you, you told her, right?”

Steve turned his head away from Johnson, but I could just barely make out the pained expression he had. With a sigh Johnson delicately took the letter and got back into his van. After a very tight three-point turn, he rolled down the window and gave the three of us a nod. Then he sped back up the dirt road without another word.

Our small group started the trek to the bubble. The forest quickly got too dense for us to move outside of a single file line, each person tracing the path of the one in front of them like a scene out of Good King Wenceslas. The silence was broken only a few minutes into the trip as Taylor spoke up from the back of the line.

“So…” Taylor said with fake relaxation in her voice, “are we just gonna ignore that?”

“Ignore what?” I said, hoping she would get the hint and keep quiet.

“That,” she said while pointing back to where we started, defying my desire for this to be an uneventful trek, “that whole thing with the letter. Did you seriously write a letter to Jane as a goodbye? You know you have to talk to people, right? This isn’t the fucking civil war.”

“She’s strong. She’s so much stronger than me.” Steve seemed to be talking to himself more than me or Taylor. “She’ll be better without someone like me around, someone who can’t move on.”

Taylor stared at Steve for a few seconds before muttering “You’re an idiot.” Steve seemed to wither under Taylor’s tone. “This is stupid, you’re being stupid, I’m stupid!”

She turned around and started walking back to the road. “I’m heading back, and you should too. Jane might seem invincible to you, but I bet she needs you as much as you need her.”

I was unsure what to do while Steve just stared at Taylor’s shrinking silhouette. But thankfully I didn’t have to make a choice because Steve simply continued to walk towards the bubble without saying another word. I followed his lead, eventually overtaking him when the foliage got really bad and he had to spend more and more effort to not get his feet stuck.

A strange feeling washed over me as we walked. It was like I was on another one of the hikes Jenny liked so much. But every time I looked back expecting her face, all I saw was Steve.

Another thing that set this apart from my memories of hiking was the ambiance. It really was quiet. There was barely any wind, and I could hear none of the normal noises animals would make in a forest. All I could hear were the soft grunts of me and Steve working our way through the dense foliage.

Then, after we had been trudging for almost half an hour, another sound slowly creeped into my senses. It was similar to our footsteps, but heavier. I reached a hand back to stop Steve and leaned towards him. “There’s someone walking towards us,” I said in a whisper.

“Someone? How do you know it's not just a deer or something?”

“Because there aren’t going to be any deer around the bubble. Have you heard any birds or anything? They’ve all left, like when an earthquake or hurricane is coming.”

Steve looked around in a panic, more emotions flashing across his face in that split second than I had seen throughout this entire walk. “Should we run? Hide?”

I put a finger to my lips, hoping Steve would get the message as I strained my ears to try and pinpoint the source of the noise. He stilled and I could tell the footsteps were moving towards us. “You need to leave.”

That was definitely not what he expected me to say. “What?”

“If I can hear them, they certainly could hear us. If we both disappear they’ll start a search, and there’s no way we can hide for that long.” Steve was staring at me like I was crazy, and perhaps I was, but there was no time for him to linger.

“My wife got caught in the bubble,” I said while grabbing Steve by the shoulders. “Jane is still here, going to cookouts and shit like that.” I gave him a gentle shove backwards into the forest. “Head back to your wife. I’ll go to mine.”

He lingered for a second, although I couldn’t tell if it was at me or the looming bubble, but he nodded and turned around to scramble back into the dense brush. As I watched his form disappear into the surrounding foliage, I turned to face the approaching noise.

It was close enough now that I could pick out the separate sources. Two sets of footsteps were moving towards me, and unless wolves had learned how to walk on their hind legs, my hunch that these were people was turning out to be true.

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

Suddenly they broke into a run, bursting into the small clearing where I was standing. It was two men, each in a military uniform. I might have done something, maybe tried talking to them, but my attention was caught by what the first man was holding. Pointed not directly at me but still in my general vicinity was a rifle. In what was probably one of my worst judgment calls, I spun on my heels to run.

But as I turned the other man raised a taser and pulled the trigger. I didn’t feel the prongs embed themselves in my skin, but I sure as hell felt the tens of thousands of volts those tiny bits of metal delivered to my body. The last thing I remembered before I passed out was the men walking up and cuffing me as I writhed around in the dirt.

~

When I woke up it was to strangely nice accommodations. I was cuffed, with the restraints being chained to the table in front of me, but I wasn’t in a cell. The room I was in was small, with nothing but the aforementioned table, two chairs on either side, and a light hanging from the ceiling. In fact, judging by the not-so-sturdy walls I seemed to be sitting in a tent.

My suspicions were confirmed when a flap on one side opened up and a man stepped through. He was old for a soldier, with a head of salt and pepper hair that made me think he was pushing forty. A small collection of medals and ribbons were pinned to his breast and an insignia on his left shoulder told me he was an officer of some kind, with the specific rank being beyond me.

He carried with him two cups of what I assumed to be coffee, one of which he set down in front of me before taking his own seat. There was a brief period of silence as he flipped through a small stack of papers he had brought and I tried to drink from the cup while cuffed to the table. It was after I had managed to take a sip, and spill half the cup's contents on the floor, that he spoke.

“Look, son, can I call you son?” The officer waited politely for me to respond, picking up again after I nodded. “I’m in a bit of a pickle. If it were up to me, you’d be let loose with a hot meal in your belly and a bus ticket to the nearest town. But it ain’t up to me.”

There was a pause as he sipped from his own cup of coffee. “Too many idiots have been trying to get past the quarantine. There’s been half a dozen attempts in the past week, and it's just a matter of time until somebody gets shot.” He sighed while keeping his styrofoam cup to his lips, his breath creating wisps of steam from the hot liquid inside. “The governor wants an example to be made, for someone to get the book thrown at them. And since this is technically a restricted military base, that book would be large enough to crush a bear.”

“Now, I don’t want to ruin a young man’s life, and you certainly don’t want your life ruined. It’s late, and the woods are an easy place to get turned around. If you were deliberately trying to break the quarantine and get to the bubble, I will be forced to turn you over to the police. So, and think very carefully about your answer, son,” he leaned forward and gave me a soft stare, “what were you doing when you encountered the patrol yesterday?”

There was a long silence filled with nothing but the officer’s rhythmic breathing. Everytime I went to speak, my words got caught in my throat. I must have looked like a fool, constantly opening and closing my mouth like some kind of fish. Finally I managed to give the officer “I was trying to find my wife.”

“Your wife?” I nodded to which he scribbled something down. “And you thought she was lost in the woods?”

My response was steady. At least, as steady as I could make it while I was handcuffed and being questioned. “I’m sure she’s lost. She hasn’t been answering my calls since two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks, eh?” He gave me a knowing look and shuffled his papers around. “So, just to be clear, you were only trying to find your wife.”

The only response I gave was a slight nod. The officer sighed, rubbed a hand on his forehead, and stood up. He walked out of the tent with the papers under his arm, leaving me with my half empty cup of coffee.

After about fifteen minutes another man walked in and uncuffed me with barely a word. He hauled me up and marched me out to the outskirts of the makeshift army headquarters I was being kept in. We walked past large tents and guardsmen walking about until we reached the side of a road where half a dozen jeeps were parked.

I was brought to one of the jeeps that had a driver and got into the back. I was handed another cup of coffee and a sandwich and told I was being taken to Oakwood.

Standing outside the jeep was the officer I had spoken to. He leaned over the side of the jeep and said “Lets not make this a repeat thing, huh?”

“Don’t worry officer, I guarantee you won’t see me again.” My response got a smirk from the officer as I took a sip of the awful coffee.

My last sight of the officer was him waving to me as the jeep trundled down the country road.

~

I was telling the truth when I said the officer wouldn’t see me again. Once I had arrived at Oakwood I stayed for a night at the only hotel in town, and the next morning started planning for my next trip.

I didn’t bother with calling Johnson. He might have had some idea of what the cops were doing through his buddy, but the National Guard seemed to have taken over the quarantine. Besides, he probably had his hands full managing Steve and Taylor’s impromptu return, and whatever fiasco delivering that letter would have kicked up.

No, this time I would get to the bubble through my own means, not piggybacking on someone else's plan. I bought a bunch of camping supplies, some dried fruits and meat, and a proper compass.

Then I used the hotel computer to find the most remote part of the forest around the bubble, the parts farthest from any road. The route that was slowly forming in my head would be tough, much worse than any hike Jenny had dragged me out on, but it was doable. It had to be.

I set out that night, walking out of the hotel lobby with as much confidence as I could muster. I started walking away in the opposite direction from Springfield before cutting off the road and into the woods once I was out of Oakwood proper.

It took three days to work through the untamed forest. Three days of sweat drenched clothes, branches and bramble snagging at every loose bit of clothing, and mud getting in places I didn’t even know I had. But every inconvenience, every heart pounding noise that might be another patrol or pang of thirst that I had no water to quench, was worth it when I made it to the bubble on that third night.

There I stood, the pitch-black wall of the bubble a mere dozen feet ahead of me. I dropped my pack, letting its weight slip off my tired shoulders as I almost fell to my knees.

It was… strange. I had all these assumptions of what the bubble would look like, built from the images I had seen of it online. Words like majestic or terrifying, and my sleep in the previous days had been dominated by the inky void I had seen on the news. But now that I was standing in front of it, seeing it with my own eyes, all I could think of was how peaceful it looked.

It looked a bit like dyed water, or maybe oil, but it was completely still and immaculate. There were no ripples across the surface, no scratches or chips. Where the bubble met the dirt it just sunk directly into the earth, with no signs of digging or any displacement of the soil.

My steps were shaky as I approached, but I felt none of the aches and pains my body had accumulated. I reached out a hand, my fingers warily touching the black surface. There was barely any resistance as they pierced the bubble and a sudden stillness seeped into my hand. I wrenched my hand back, and the numbness lingered for a few seconds before feeling returned to my fingers.

I was suddenly acutely aware of how tired I was. Of how my fingers were blistered and cut from my trek through the forest. That brief respite had only made the pain even greater.

Slowly, but more confidently this time, I returned my hand into the bubble. It felt calming, like I was pulling a thick blanket over my head on a stormy night and letting the outside world fade into a muffled nothingness.

Each step forward enveloped more and more of my body. First my hand, then my arm, then my chest. This was it. The point of no return. Like a warm bed early in the morning, if I didn’t make a conscious effort to get up there would be no escape. But as the image of that bed shot through my mind, I tried to imagine it empty, without Jenny, and my resistance crumbled.

My last thoughts as my head passed into the bubble were I’ll be with you soon, Jenny.