I sat up in my sleeping bag, my back stiff. When you’re hungry, truly hungry, you find yourself sleeping a lot. It’s the most energy efficient way to spend time. The sun coming in through the window was hitting my face, its warmth welcome, but the new day bringing little hope.
I’d been driving up and down the mountain roads, breaking into any houses I could find for food, trying to siphon gas from cars. If a house had broken down doors or smashed windows, I wouldn’t go in. It was too risky that one had been there, that it might be sleeping in a dark closet or basement.
Montana had been one of the last states functioning. The combination of isolation, cold, and per capita gun ownership accounted for that. There were still radio broadcasts, but less of them, and usually just repeating on loops. I knew things were bad because I heard less and less gunshots, and more and more of the terrible, high pitched howls.
Today, I was walking. My prospects were grim, and I promised to leave at least one bullet in my .44, no matter what. The car was running on fumes, and I told myself I would need it if they found the cabin. That way I would have a shot at escape.
Where the bridge crossed the creek, light hit the rushing water. For a brief moment, the yellow morning sun on the pines and birds singing made me forget my stomach. I tried to enjoy each day as much as I could, but it was becoming harder and harder.
The house was large, fairly old. I’d seen it across the valley, but hadn’t found the road to it. Since I was walking, I could just scramble my way up the hillside. I filtered cold water from the creek, which cramped my empty stomach, and began to work my way up a slippery forest slope of pine needles, rocks, and shrubs.
I broke a basement window, and undid the deadbolt. There was no alarm, and no signs of entry. I went straight for the kitchen, for the pantry.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Cans of soup, bags of rice, jerky. I popped the lid off of a beef stew can and began furiously eating, nearly choking myself. After a few bites, I paused to avoid throwing up. Immediately, I started making a pile on the floor of everything I would take, planning multiple trips.
But what if that wasn’t necessary?
After eating, I looked around the house. It had a rustic, lived in feel that suggested an older couple. I found a picture by the couch that seemed to be them. They looked happy.
I went upstairs, checking the bedrooms. This house was untouched, miraculous. Not one in fifty looked like this, and I’d gotten warning shots over my head on most of those.
It wasn’t until I went to the next room that I knew.
There was a closet between the master bedroom and its bathroom. All of the clothes were pulled hastily off of the hangers, and I could see bits of sleeve and blankets poking out under the bathroom door, wedged there. They didn’t like light.
If I wasn’t starving to death, I would have just left.
As it was, I tiptoed down the stairs, praying that each one wouldn’t creak. It wasn’t until I reached the living room that I dared cock the hammer of the revolver. I left it cocked in the holster, something I would never do, as I loaded up my backpack and a pillowcase.
Painstakingly, I found my way between pieces of broken glass, opened the basement door, and went downhill. It was unfathomably lucky it hadn’t awoken. After about a hundred yards, I uncocked the gun and began to rush down the hill, with sloppy, stumbling steps.
I twisted my ankle. Starving is a cruel thing, draining away your strength a bit at a time, and I’d overestimated myself. I cursed under my breath, knowing that if it was bad enough, it might kill me. If I couldn’t get back to the cabin.
Even in my pain, I had made a plan. If I didn’t have plans, I would have died months ago, with everyone else.
I reached the road, and took my shirt off. I tied it around my shoe, and began to walk downstream. This wasn’t for the ankle, of course, but because they tracked by scent. My shirt would leave a hundred times stronger scent than the bottom of my shoes.
I crossed the creek. It was hard, and I was freezing, and I lost the pillowcase, but I did it. Then I went downstream even more, and crossed back. It had to be done. I threw the shirt in the river, and made my way back up the road, back to the bridge.
The road was paved, and would leave no tracks. If they followed the scent I left now, they would go to the river, cross it twice, come back here, and go in a circle.
Or so I hoped.
When the sun went down, I got into the sleeping bag. The ankle was sore, but fine to walk on, thank God. On a full stomach, I lay down and prayed.
My eyes jarred open in the darkness. Gunshots. One, then more, then high, screeching howls. Nearby.
I had no idea other people were close. Had I known, I would have tried to warn them.
I’d slept in my clothes, boots and all. I grabbed the backpack, the lamp, and the sleeping bag, and was in my car in fifteen seconds.
I floored it up the dirt road, drifting around turns as fast as I could without crashing. The headlights in front of me came as a shock, something I hadn’t seen in weeks. A truck was turning onto this road, just in front of me.
They were chasing it. I could see at least three of them, running impossibly fast, one slamming into the side of the cab as the truck navigated the sharp turn, breaking a window and reaching its arm into the back seat, holding on as its legs now dragged on the ground, clawing at the people inside. A bright flash illuminated the horrid face, or what was left of it, the shotgun blast dislodging it from the car to roll on the ground.
By the time I passed it, it was already getting back up.
I had to hit the brakes when the truck cut in front of me, and now the other two were right on my rear bumper, beating at the window, grasping fingers slamming the glass. They were strong, but couldn’t get enough force to break the window while running at a full sprint. I finally pulled ahead, checking the speedometer. They ran twenty five miles per hour, uphill.
Watching the monstrosities fade into the lines of trees in my rear view, listening to the unsatisfied howls, I could only feel one thing: hope.
I’d found other people. I’d been alone for three weeks now, and it had been a desperate three weeks. The truck was going faster than me, but I could just barely make out their tail lights. There was a chance they would slow down once it was safer, talk to me.
That hope was such a brief feeling.
The engine stuttered, then died. I tried to start it, but it only cranked. There was no gas.
I got out, and began to run. I can’t say why. As soon as the door opened, I heard the howls getting closer.
I cannot run twenty-five miles per hour, uphill.
Part 2
My lungs were on fire. I pushed with everything I had, yet somehow each stride was getting a little shorter, every breath a little faster, and the horrible howling behind me louder. Instinct yelled to go faster, to run for my life, to stay away from that high, shrill noise.
Logic told me the hard truth: they were catching up.
The headlights were still on, my car sitting useless with no gas. I didn’t look back, I dared not. And there was no need to, as their shadows danced across the trees to either side of the road, magnified into horrific proportions. Once those shadows were the height of mine, I would be dead.
I had to think. I had to. It was the only way to get out of this. The revolver in my sweaty hand had six shots, and I saw three sprinting shadows. If I could put a bullet into a leg on each of them, it might slow them down enough I could run. It was long odds.
I wasn’t a bad shot. But as any marksman knows, there are things that can make you less accurate. High heart rate is probably the number one. Flipping around, I tried to get into a steady stance. My hands shook, and my breath was ragged. My heart dropped when I saw them.
Dust flew with each footfall, their arms pumping furiously. They were completely naked, having torn off whatever clothes were on them long ago. Even silhouetted by the headlights, I could see their mouths wide open, always open, unmoving even when they let out shrill cries. In a moment, I would have to pull the trigger and seal my fate. They ran closer, and closer, eyes glinting with a red light.
But their eyes didn’t glow. Three weeks ago I’d seen one break through a door into a pitch black room as I cowered not ten feet away, and there was no red then.
Looking over my shoulder, the truck was barreling toward me in reverse, faster than I’d ever seen someone back up a truck. It was swerving around a turn, tail lights bright red. It was time for a new plan.
I took a shot at the first one, aiming for the middle of its chest. Almost nothing would kill them, but they still only weighed the same as a human. The .44 hollow point hit its shoulder. It spun 180 degrees before smashing into the ground, sliding in the dirt and kicking up a dust cloud. Running toward the red lights, I took a glance over my shoulder. The other two emerged from the dust, vortices of it twisting behind them. They were right on top of me, close enough that I wouldn’t even have time to aim.
“Hit the deck!” A woman screamed, head out of the window.
I threw myself straight at the ground and closed my eyes.
The roar of the truck’s exhaust was loud as it passed inches over my head, but was nothing compared to the violent sound of bending metal as the two runners slammed straight into the tailgate at full speed.
“Get in!”
The truck had passed all the way over me, so I scrambled to my feet. I jumped into an open door, the tires kicked up dirt as we sped up the hill, and it felt like I was in shock, unable to comprehend what was happening.
“You okay?” A man asked. He was driving.
“Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.”
A woman in the passenger seat held a shotgun. She was looking me over, seeing if they’d gotten to me.
“You can check me once we’re down the road a bit. I won’t take any offense.” I said.
Then I threw up on the floor.
My heart was still pounding, beating so hard I could feel it through every inch of my aching head. The gun shook in my hands, so I just put it on the seat next to me. It was then that I noticed the boy sitting on the other side of the back seat, holding perfectly still. He looked maybe ten years old.
“Sorry. For barfing.” I said.
“That’s alright, we’re just glad you’re alive.” The woman said.
We made introductions. The man’s name was Luke, the woman Sherry, and the boy Matt. I told them my name.
“You with anyone, Anthony?”
Still breathing hard, I struggled to choke out an answer.
“No.”
I began sobbing.
When I awoke, the truck was stopping. There was a glimmer of dawn in the east, a faint blue where the stars were fading. It looked like I was going to survive the night. I checked the seat for my gun, but it was gone. Sherry saw me, and handed it back.
“Didn’t want it loose back there.” She said, in hardly more than a whisper.
“I can’t thank you enough for your help. I haven’t seen anyone else in uh… three weeks now.”
“Oh, there’s still a few of us around.” Sherry said.
It was night time, so we used hushed voices. Anyone still alive knew that by now. A faint howl echoed down the valley, from somewhere distant. I took a deep breath, and released it. That had to be over a mile away, their calls travelled so far.
“We’re safe enough here, those things don’t smell cars nearly as well as people on foot. This is a forest service road, there’s no houses or anything on it for them to stay in. I’m going to try and get some sleep, you should try to do the same. This is the best I’ve got for a pillow.”
He handed me a rolled up winter jacket, which I gratefully accepted. I took the floor mat out and cleaned it the best I could, before finding a patch of pine needles a little ways from the truck. We slept an hour or so before the sun woke us up.
Sherry gave me a granola bar and some water. Matt had a pair of binoculars, and sat on the roof of the truck looking at birds. He was far enough away not to hear our conversation.
“Well, Anthony, I’m glad you’re alive,” Sherry sighed, running her hand through her hair. “... but this is the last of our food. There’s a place we can go to trade, but we don’t have much. Guns and ammo sell fine, but we need what we’ve got.”
“I’ve got a pack full of food in my car. Good stuff, rice, jerky. How much gas have you got?”
“Maybe a hundred miles. I’ve only got that much ‘cause I’m careful with it, though. Your car’s about six miles back, we can walk that, then drive to the Outpost.”
I drank the bottle of water they gave me, fighting the urge to chug all of it. My stomach was growling, even after the granola bar. These people were being kind to me, but there was an unspoken severity to our situation. It was late September now, and the snows would hit by November at the latest. Out here, snow rendered the roads completely impassable until at least April; there were no ploughs.
Those things didn’t do well in the winter, but neither did humans without a good roof and four months of food.
I didn’t want to be knocked unconscious and dragged away into the night, to a dark room with rags shoved under the doors. But starving to death in the snow for months didn’t sound any better. Desperation could make people change. I’d seen it.
“Yesterday, I walked to a house back by Hudson Creek. The pantry was packed with food, non-perishable stuff. It was an old couple’s place. Type that’s prepared to get snowed in all winter.”
“Let me guess why you didn’t stay. And why those howlers found us last night.” Sherry let out a bitter laugh.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you were there...”
“I don’t need an apology. Nothing to apologize for.” Luke’s voice was firm. “I need you to show me where that house is. We’ve been looking. Everywhere. There’s not a lot of food around, and game got real thin about two months into all of this, when everyone and their cousin started hunting. If we’re gonna survive winter, we have to go back.”
All I could think about was that silent closet, the door to the bathroom with rags packed under it. I now knew that three wide open mouths were breathing slowly behind it, in a deep sleep the last time I’d gone in. If I went back, would I become the fourth?
Part 3
I tried to keep calm, to stay focused. If Luke and I were going back into that house, I would need to be. It was unbelievably lucky I hadn’t woken them up the first time.
Even as my heart raced, my mind wandered.
I’d driven these roads before all of this happened. We were only a few miles out of town, on what used to be a beautiful stretch of mountains that were perfect for hiking and camping. The first time I’d been out here it had looked just like this; early fall, with the aspens high up on the slopes shimmering yellow, the creeks flowing crystal clear.
I’d moved up here with her, so she could get her Ph.D, and it was one of our first hikes. There were so many good memories, all pushed away by one terrible one.
Memories are a strange thing. You never know how accurate they are. When the howls rang out in the night, did I really know they were coming for us? Or did I remember it that way because that’s what happened?
Was it only seconds later that the windows smashed inwards and bare footsteps thudded violently on the floorboards and up the stairs? Or had we lain there paralyzed with fear for longer than we thought?
In the end, I suppose none of those details mattered. I was pushing the screen out of the window when they broke down the door. Natalia grabbed the hunting rifle next to the bed, and managed to get a shot off as they came through the door, the flash illuminating the dark room and painting a wet spot on the white door.
One of them got to her, rushing forward with his gaping mouth, clubbing her temple with the bottom of his closed fist and sending her body to the floor, limp. The other had come through the door right after, and tackled me. I know the howlers were in the room less than five seconds, because I couldn’t get a shot off before I was thrown out of the window, the woman on top of me wide eyed and unflinching as we fell onto the first floor roof. The last I saw of Natalia, that thing had grabbed her by the ankles and was dragging her back toward the door.
The rest was a blur. The deafening blast as I put the revolver’s barrel up to the side of her head and pulled the trigger. Rolling her body off of me as the thin, white, filament-like worms already began to span the gunshot wound, stemming the flow of blood. Getting into the car, turning the key with shaking hands, as she clumsily tried to crawl toward me on hands and knees. They usually wouldn’t die, but if you hit them in the head it took a while for their motor skills to come back.
We got to my car, sitting in the middle of the road with no gas. Luke popped the hood to get the battery as I gathered my pack full of food and anything else useful from inside. All of that was done in a minute or two, and we continued through the forest, past the cabin I’d slept in for the three weeks after Natalia was taken.
For a moment I wondered if this was a life worth living, if it would be better to put a bullet through my head while it would still be effective. Realistically I was just starving in the woods, waiting for winter, knowing the woman I loved more than anything in the world was now full of worms and howled at night. Looking at Luke, I figured I would at least do this for him, for his family. I could still help them.
“Do you really think those things came from space, on some rock? Or do you think they came from a lab in China?” Luke asked.
I laughed.
“I don’t know that it really matters, now,” I said. “But my wife had a bunch of biologist friends at MSU. They were pretty convinced it was from space. They said there’s no way people could make an organism like that.”
He looked at the ring on my finger.
“Feel free to ignore this question, I know it’s not polite. What happened to your wife?”
“No, it’s fine. They grabbed her, about uh, three weeks ago. Twenty four days ago. If you hit the main road and go a half mile towards town, I could show you the house we were staying in.”
“I’m sorry. I have nightmares every night that they take Sherry and Matt.”
We’d discussed it, and Sherry was staying with Matt, in a relatively safe part of the woods. They were close enough to that outpost to walk. I figured I’d give Luke the details, since any information about the howlers might help down the line.
“I heard them outside, howling. They broke through a window and came straight for us. I swear they knew where we were. Whole thing took ten seconds, I think. I saw one dragging her away. Natalia. That’s her name.”
“Jesus. I’m so sorry.”
“Let’s just keep focused on today. I came in through the basement, the door down there should still be unlocked.”
I went over everything about the house; where the food was, how much there was. How if you went upstairs there was a bedroom on the left, and in there was a closet with a door to the master bathroom. I told him about the rags packed into every crack, to keep light out.
“Hopefully those rags keep some sound out, too.” He said.
Luke knew the area better than I did, and found the actual road to the driveway, so that we wouldn’t have to scramble up the hill like I had. Not two hundred yards from the house, there was a car with the windows broken in and blood on the seat. Had I seen that, I never would have gone in.
Passing the driveway, Luke began to back up toward the house. It was downhill, so he killed the engine to make less noise, putting it in neutral and cranking the wheel hard. We didn’t want to wake the howlers up, but we didn’t want the car to be any farther away than it had to if we did.
It was shocking how peaceful the cabin looked, with a quiet forest all around and the creek running beneath. Light blue clapboard siding, with the window and door frames white. No cars on the road, only birds singing. I saw a Stellar’s jay happily squawking on a branch across the lawn.
My hands shook as I opened the basement door, still unlocked. Carefully, we stepped over the broken glass there, going into the basement. Each stair up to the main floor was painful, waiting to see which ones creaked under my foot. One made a louder squeak than the others. Luke and I froze, my pistol ready in my hands, a shotgun in his.
I imagined the door upstairs being thrown open, the bare feet barreling down the hallway toward us. But nothing happened.
There was more light in the kitchen, with windows on two sides showing cloudy mountaintops and dark green forest. Most of the food was still piled in the middle of the floor, where I had left it. We loaded up pillow cases, grabbing the biggest items first, like bags of rice. Then we moved on to cans and jars, things that took time to move quietly. Each tiny clink of metal or glass was painful, but we would need everything we could get. Winters were long up here.
Almost everything was packed up, and we made our first trip out the same way we had come. Luke and I exchanged a determined look as we set the first haul into the bed of the truck carefully. We were halfway done.
Painstakingly, we went back over the glass, then back up the stairs, avoiding the creaky one. I did one last check of the pantry, making sure we hadn’t missed anything.
There was a 20 pound bag of rice tucked onto a high shelf. I didn’t know how I could have missed it, but a smile came across my face, and Luke nodded with appreciation. That was the single best score in the whole pantry, and I began to carefully shift it down.
As it came out, I noticed something on the bag. The text was white, but there was something else. A white string.
From the next cupboard, a loud, rattling noise made me jump. It was the worst sound I’d ever heard, like a jar full of cutlery was being dumped onto glass plates. With the bag of rice now in my hands, I could see the string around it going into the adjacent cupboard. It was a sound trap.
A door slammed open upstairs. A bathroom door. Urgent howls pierced our ears, deafening, from inside the house, high pitched and unearthly.
Luke and I grabbed the food and ran.
We took the flight to the basement three or four stairs at a time, sprinting across the broken glass with hands full, emerging into daylight. We threw the bags into the bed of the truck, leaping into the doors we had left open.
Before Luke could turn the key, I heard the faint ring of broken glass as bare feet darted across it. Then there was a howl, close. It sounded pained, perhaps from the sun.
The moment the engine turned, Luke had it in drive with the tires kicking up dirt. But not soon enough.
A fist punched through his window, then the hand blindly grabbed at his shirt, unconcerned by the glass shredding the skin on the inside of the elbow. An older woman’s face appeared, with wide open eyes and a gaping mouth, tongue limp across the bottom teeth. Her pupils were enormous, I couldn’t even tell what color her eyes would have been. She began to pull at the wheel when I shot her in the face.
I had to pick my shot, to not hit Luke. As he pried her fingers from the wheel and slammed the brakes, we were still going off the road. The truck tilted to the left as we began to go down the hill, but Luke managed to save it somehow. Thank God that man could drive.
When my window broke, I had to switch the pistol to my left hand. An older man’s bleeding fingers clawed at my right shoulder with unbelievable strength. Under his skin, the white worms were already stitching the cuts from the broken glass together, pulling each side of the slashed skin closed. I missed him with my first shot, shattering the glass completely now, but landed a sloppy second shot on his chest, knocking him back from the car.
I pulled away from the window, practically leaning back into Luke’s lap as a third howler ran up to the truck, which Luke was just now getting back on the road. It leapt into my window, with hands outstretched. I lined up my shot, trying to hit her in the head.
The head with light brown hair, down to her shoulders. The head with gentle freckles across her cheeks. The head with a wide open mouth howling at me, through lips I had kissed so many times.
The second I had her in the sights was the second I recognized her, and I hesitated. I think I would have pulled the trigger if I’d had another moment, but I’ll never know. Her whole upper body pushed through the window, one hand pushed the gun down, and the other grabbed my collar. I tried to pry her hand free of the pistol, but couldn’t, even with both of mine.
With her knees on the broken glass at the base of the window, Natalia leaned back and pulled me from the truck, both of us hitting the ground and rolling. The older man was already at the tailgate as Luke hit the brakes once again.
“Go! Just go!” I yelled.
To his credit, he did. Dirt flung up from the tires, and he swerved sharply, the side of the truck hitting the old man and pushing him tumbling down the hill.
I watched Luke’s escape with more interest than my own. When a fist smashed my head into the ground, I lost any ability to care. The second hit was a blur.
My eyes opened to a splitting headache, then a horrible stench of death. Something was sticking up out of the bathtub; a deer hoof.
It was dark in the room, but faint light came in under the door. The rags lay in disarray on the tile floor next to me. I guess whatever they were going to do, they were doing it in a hurry.
I was on my back, the old man over me. His eyes were wide, his mouth open. Trails of thick drool dripped into his coarse beard, and I thought I could make out something squirming among the white hairs.
With one hand, he pressed on my cheeks, thumb on one side, fingers on the other. He was trying to open my mouth.
I resisted, thrashing from side to side, but his grip was iron. The metallic taste of blood began to fill my mouth as my cheeks were pressed into my teeth with excruciating pressure, and it felt as if my teeth themselves might give way.
My mouth opened, against my will, held in place by a middle finger and thumb that would have touched if my lacerated cheeks weren’t between them. The man began to cough, and thick trails of drool stretched down, toward my mouth. I screamed, consumed with fear.
In the dim light, a hand touched his shoulder gently. His head turned, then lifted away from mine.
He straightened up, leaving his hand in place. Where his face had been, another leaned in from the side. Drool still dripped from the gaping mouth, viscous and vaguely undulating.
I didn’t want this, but at least it was her.
They’d set the sound trap for me. The old man stopped to let her infect me. They clearly had some intelligence, some social interaction. Maybe, in some way, I could still be with her. I told myself that as the first trail of saliva hit my lips, and I felt something begin to slither down my throat.