Chapter 5: Chapter 5

, I ran like a madman, forgetting to catch my breath and refusing to turn around. I hopped over fallen trees and ducked under the bushy branches, calling out for my family. Every few yards, I’d call again, until I finally heard a response. It was Wes.

“Dad?” he called back. I followed his voice until I reached the clearing where our camp was. He was standing by the fire pit, a look of concern on his face when he saw me rush in.

“Dad?” he said again and I skidded to a stop in the dirt beside him. I was hunched over, trying to catch my breath, when I heard the door to the camper open. And then the front door to the cabin. Macie and Kevin joined my side as I continued to huff and puff.

“Ben, what’s wrong?” Macie asked.

“Duke,” I managed to get out first. “Duke’s dead.”

“What?” Macie exclaimed, her eyes wide in disbelief. Wes and Kevin remained silent.

“Something crashed in the woods. It fell from the sky. We were checking out the crater it made and then something Duke. He changed. Then crawled out from the dirt and ate him.”

Macie was speechless.

“What crawled out of the dirt?” Kevin asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say, or how to even describe it. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

“An animal?” Wes shyly asked.

I slowly shook my head. I knew I had laid out a lot on my family, but I couldn’t even comprehend it myself.

“We need to get out of here,” I said. “Pack up your stuff. I’ll go tell Natalie and Hadley, and we’ll make sure they get help. But I’m not staying here another minute with that crawling around out there.”

“What was it, Dad?” Kevin fearfully insisted.

I just looked into his eyes. “I don’t know. But it’s dangerous.”

“It fell from the sky?” Macie asked, just as confused as I was.

“Just pack your stuff! We’re leaving here in ten minutes.”

Kevin and Wes rushed off to grab things they had laying around. Macie hesitated leaving my side.

“Macie, please,” I begged, my voice cracking. She finally agreed and rushed back into the cabin. The fog had lifted enough to where I could see the Saunders’ camp through the trees.

I rushed to their cabin and pounded on the front door. Hadley was the one to open it. Seeing me in a panicked state, she immediately called for her mom.

“Something happened,” I said to Hadley. Natalie appeared behind her, keeping her morning robe pulled together in front of her.

“Ben? What’s wrong?” Natalie asked.

I swallowed and let the news spill. There was no easy way to say it. “Something happened to Duke. He didn’t make it.”

Natalie’s face contorted. “What are you talking about?”

While Natalie displayed confusion, Hadley went straight to fear. She gasped and put her hands over her mouth.

“He didn’t make it,” I repeated. My subconscious was working overtime to avoid telling them exactly what happened. The truth was ridiculous, unusual—surreal. But it the truth. “He got an infection that spread across his entire body within seconds.”

Natalie shook her head, refusing to accept my words. “What kind of infection? Where is he?”

I felt a pain in the pit of my stomach. The infection was only how it started. It wasn’t even the worst part; the part I had yet to tell them.

“Something fell from the sky. It infected Duke, and then something came out of the ground and …”

“And what?!” Hadley screamed, her wide eyes peering over the hands that were still glued to her face.

“Ate him,” I concluded.

Hadley was speechless. Natalie went pale.

“Duke said there were houses on the road you guys took to get up here, right?” I asked, trying to encourage the next phase. Neither of them answered.

“We’re going to get help and send them back here,” I tried to assure them.

Still, neither of them spoke. Natalie began to sway, brushing up against her daughter. Hadley finally removed her hands from her face and held onto her mom.

“I’ll send them immediately,” I said, turning around and hopping back down the porch steps.

“Wait,” Natalie said with a quiver in her voice.

I stopped and faced her.

“Did you do something to my husband?” she asked, firm and accusingly.

I shook my head.

“If you did something to him, if you him,” she continued with a sinister growl, “I swear to God you’ll pay for it.”

“I swear to you, I didn’t do anything. There’s something out there in those woods that I can’t explain. We need to get out of here.”

I turned around and started to run back to camp. I could hear Natalie and Hadley start breaking down as I pushed through the trees. Macie was pulling her suitcase out the front door of our cabin and the boys were securing the luggage compartment doors on the camper.

“Is that everything?” I called out to Macie.

She yanked the suitcase up and grabbed it with both hands. “Your bag is still in there,” she said. “Honey, what is going on?”

“I don’t know,” I said, blowing past her and into the cabin. In the bedroom, I grabbed my Nike duffle bag sitting on the floor next to the bed. I threw it over my shoulders and heard the familiar wail from the thing in the woods. I stopped and my blood ran cold. I waited to hear it again. When it moaned a second time, sounding louder, I knew it had tracked me back here.

I pounced to the window that looked out into the clearing where the fire pit and camper were. The boys were helping Macie load the suitcase when the wailing had begun. Now, all three of them had stopped, looking around like they couldn’t tell where it was coming from, or what it even was. But knew what it was. I knew what it could do. And we needed to leave before it entered our camp.

I raced back outside and hurried everyone into the camper. The boys went into the back, and I helped Macie up the passenger side steps. I climbed in the driver’s side and stuffed my bag between the seats. I pulled the keys from my pocket and stabbed them into the ignition.

“What was that noise?” Macie asked.

“The that killed Duke. It’s coming.”

I bit my lip and turned the key.

Nothing.

My heart sank and I released my bottom lip from the grip of my teeth. I turned the key again.

Nothing. There was . It wouldn’t even turn over. No struggle, no rattling, no clicking—

!

“Ben?” Macie stuttered.

I tried a third time, and then a fourth. After the fifth attempt, I ripped the keys out of the ignition and angrily slammed them onto the dashboard. Macie didn’t say anything. I knew I was scaring her, but I was scared too. I was the only one who saw what was out there.

, I thought. It was dead; completely inanimate. Not a single light on the dash lit up. The phones were out, the lights, the generator. All of the strange pieces of the puzzle came together when I thought that maybe whatever soared through the sky and crashed could have affected all of the electronics in some way. Technology, in our small, terrifying neck of the woods, was dead.