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  She listened for sounds of pursuit, but she could only hear the whine of her labored breaths and the snaps of branches beneath her feet. Still, Jeanette would not stop. She didn’t know where she was heading, and it didn’t matter so long as it was far away from that clearing.

  She ran for what seemed like an eternity. Nearly blind, she managed to dodge the trees in her path, hurdle those that had fallen, and press forward unimpeded. For a moment, she again felt young, as if she’d returned to the athletic prowess of her high school days, but the illusion crashed into the loss of Sebastian. She might never feel young again.

  The trees began to thin. Jeanette caught a glimpse of the horizon, its pink glow spreading like oil across water from the world’s end. She prayed she was nearing a road, another campsite, anything resembling human occupation. The hope of salvation drove her forward. She barreled out into the moonlight.

  Into the clearing.

  No. She skidded to a halt. Had the darkness disoriented her so thoroughly that she had been running in circles? There’s no way.

  But the familiar red tent stood just where Sebastian had assembled it. The light inside it had been turned off. Sebastian’s body was gone. Something else shifted in the tent. A wet sound, like a dog lapping water, came from inside. Jeanette found herself praying for coyotes. At least they were real, an enemy she could comprehend. Coyotes did not cleave heads from their rightful places.

  The lapping stopped. The sound of fabric ripping followed. A shadow rose from the ground in front of the tent. A head, then shoulders, possibly human, emerged from an indeterminable base.

  Jeanette back-pedaled as silently as she could. Her legs were trembling, but this time, neither the cold nor sex was responsible. As she crept backward, she threw her arms out to her sides for balance. The back of her right hand collided with a tree. Her fingers fumbled along the grooves in its trunk. She edged closer and spun against it, keeping the tree between her and the tent. She slid down the bark, scratching her back against it as she crumbled into a fetal position. She clasped her hands over her mouth to quiet her heavy breathing. Her teeth bit down into the soft flesh between her thumb and forefinger. Sweat and tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Jeanette heard the metal teeth of the tent’s zipper separating. Her lover’s murderer stepped out. She dared not turn and look, for fear of revealing her position.

  A low, guttural growl emanated from the direction of the tent. It broke in places, rhythmic but unsteady like the purr of an old lawn mower. A series of dull thuds, like rocks falling to the earth, bowled toward her, ever closer. Surely, he—it, whatever it was—had spotted Jeanette and was coming to kill her. She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw, burying her teeth deeper into her hand. She could not steel herself for what she knew would come, nor could she run. Her survival instinct had abandoned her. Only terror remained.

  Quick movements rustled through shrubs and plants. Sebastian’s killer had left the clearing. It was close now.

  Jeanette waited, her eyes closed tightly. Silence. After a moment, she opened her eyes. She saw nothing but the forest. Her arms huddled close to her sides. She planted her palms into the grass-covered ground, ready to make a stand if need be.

  But when an object slid over her right hand—something slimy and loathsome—her bout of strength proved fleeting. The contents of her stomach rose to her throat. Slowly, Jeanette willed her head to turn. Her eyes met Sebastian’s, his stare empty and lifeless, his severed head carried along the ground by some unseen scourge.

  A gurgling sound, like that sucker thing her dentist put in her mouth to drain saliva, came from the clearing, then from the brush at her sides. It was everywhere around her, even resonating from underneath Sebastian’s head as it moved past her. When the sound came from a small mound in front of her, her mind screamed at her to stand and run, but her legs gave up.

  The mound had appeared out of nowhere. Jeanette hadn’t noticed it before she’d closed her eyes. When Sebastian’s head propelled toward it, seemingly of its own accord, she saw that the mound was alive and moving. Black, shapeless masses, vibrating with energy, revolved around a growing heap. The last of her lover disappeared inside it.

  More of the black creatures slinked across the undergrowth. Others fell from the trees. They were thick, gelatinous globs resembling human livers, if human livers could extract themselves from their host bodies and exist and move as autonomous entities. Some were bigger. The creature that had crossed Jeanette’s hand had left behind a sticky residue, congealed like the adhesive gunk that stuck new credit cards to paper. It reminded her of hot cum left in a shower drain.

  They came from all directions. There must have been a hundred of them. Jeanette was surrounded. When another brushed against her foot, she tucked her body into a ball and prayed they’d go away. For the moment, they showed no interest in her but continued steadily moving toward the mound, amassing into a single being. Their bodies emitted a low hum as they vibrated.

  The liver-blobs piled atop one another, and the mound grew quickly. It towered over her.

  On hands and knees, Jeanette crawled away. She had barely reached the tree that had hidden her when her progress was halted. Something had her leg.

  She looked back to see a black circle pulsating around her ankle. She cried out in pain as her captor constricted like a boa. Beneath the creature, her foot twisted at an unnatural angle. She screamed louder as her bone snapped.

  The black blob stretched flat, one end reaching for the ground, the other ever tightening around Jeanette’s ankle. She wrapped her hands around it, trying to wring it like a wet towel and pull it free. As her grip tightened, it secreted a mucus-like substance and slipped through her hands. She kept at it, but every time she managed to get a firm grasp, her tugging only strengthened its hold on her ankle. Like an elastic band pulled tight and twisted, it sank into her skin.

  Before long, the creature was tearing at her ankle, either gnashing through it with teeth or claws she could not see or breaking through by virtue of its never-ending constriction. The pain was unbearable, like thousands of tiny razor blades shaving off layer after layer of tissue until they reached bone. It clouded her mind. She rolled onto her back, howling in her torment.

  The other end of the blob arched and straightened like an inchworm along the forest floor. As it did, it dragged Jeanette in tow.

  She struggled against the creature’s will, knowing her life depended upon it. She turned onto her stomach, grasping at stems and clawing at the dirt, searching for a hold. Her left hand found a patch of grass, and she held on fiercely, but the grass uprooted. She threw it aside and dug her nails deep into the mud. Ten trenches marked her efforts, and they were growing longer.

  At last, they stopped.

  Jeanette flipped onto her bottom. Her mouth dropped open, and her chin quivered. She tried to scream, but her voice had abandoned her. The dark figure of a man, large and foreboding, his features hidden in shadow yet somehow familiar, stood over her. It looked like Sebastian, but it was not Sebastian.

  You ready for round three? Sebastian’s voice ran through her brain. At least, it sounded like her lover, but any playfulness that had been in Sebastian’s voice when he had asked her that question earlier was lost in translation. Was the Sebastian thing speaking to her? Had this sinister doppelgänger stolen her lover’s voice? Surely it wasn’t Sebastian. It couldn’t be.

  “Sebastian?”

  What’s the matter, babe? Am I killing the mood?

  The Sebastian thing began to shake then fell apart. The many black masses that had formed it fell upon Jeanette, engulfing her body as if submerging her in quicksand. She gasped for breath as they wormed their way over her.

  When they began to feed, Jeanette found her lungs again. The last remnants of night filled with her screams.

  Chapter 4

  Abigail stank like smoked ham gone bad. Sweat ran down her spine and pooled in her ass crack, darkening her gray sweat pants in the shape of a t
hong. She pulled up the bottom of her T-shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from her face. Raising her arm let loose a fiercer stench. She scrunched her nose, repulsed.

  She had barely pulled the shirt away before salt was burning her eyes again. All she tasted was salt. She could have sworn she was sweating out a new ocean. Why were her lips so dry when everything else was so wet? Wet and sticky, a combination she despised.

  An upside-down thong formed beneath her breasts and up through her cleavage. The blue vest that hung loosely from her shoulders, unzipped, had nearly been discarded along the trail more times than Abigail cared to count.

  But that would be admitting her discomfort, revealing weakness. Her stubborn pride would not allow it.

  I fucking hate hiking.

  Her husband wasn’t faring much better. She could see him struggling, though just like her, he wasn’t going to admit it. The same sweaty thong formed on his ass, only his was much bigger. Fucking fat ass.

  And what made everything infinitely worse was that the whole damn getaway had been his dumbass idea. “Let’s hike the trails at Galveston,” he’d said. “It’ll be fun.”

  Yeah, about as fun as using a pinecone for a tampon.

  KY—Karl Young—looked down at her from a few feet higher up the trail. His big brown eyes looked as dim as always. He flashed her a smile as phony as their marriage. She glared back at him. It had been a long time since she had stopped hiding her contempt.

  Fuck you, KY.

  For all the time she’d known him—from their days of fooling around in back seats and childhood bedrooms, back when his titties were still smaller than hers, to the rocky shoals of their present-day wedded bliss—Karl had always been called by the nickname. His dumbass friends were bad enough, but even his inbred, redneck family called him “KY.” Never mind that “Karl” actually took less time to say. Not a day passed without Abigail wondering what had ever possessed her to marry him.

  Wispy strands of brown hair colored red flittered in a welcome breeze where they weren’t tied back into her ponytail or matted to her forehead. The morning was cool. The sun was just beginning to rise. Yet too many clothes and too many burdens, not only the material kind that fit in their overstuffed backpacks, made their climb difficult.

  “You coming?” KY taunted. His smirk flattened, with lips pressed thin, his humor no doubt dampened by Abigail’s lack of amusement. Their little excursion was meant to bring them closer, to rekindle what they once had, far away from the distractions—and the conveniences—of ordinary life.

  At least that was what Dr. Richardson had intended. The reality was far different.

  Up until then, Abigail had kept her mouth shut. Every near slip, every quip from KY, and every mosquito bite added to her frustration. She was a time bomb ticking ever closer to explosion.

  It had started early. She had remained silent as KY had awakened her before any sound-minded person would start the day and drove them out to Galveston State Park.

  Tick…

  She uttered no protests as her beloved husband picked the hardest hiking trail to climb. It didn’t seem to matter to him that neither of them knew a damn thing about hiking and had spent most of their weekends eating pizza in front of the boob tube.

  Tock…

  She stifled her criticism and locked away her voice as KY wheezed and lugged his gelatinous ass up a path filled with steep inclines and loose rocks, his wife like a loyal dog at his heels.

  Tick…

  A gymnast in her youth, Abigail’s athleticism had given way to the wear and tear of aging. On the brink of her thirtieth year, her legs had softened a bit as she spent her days in a cubicle, seated behind a computer, but they were still strong, and her will was stronger—stronger than that tub of KY, anyway. She let him lead, watching and waiting patiently as he acted out some macho fantasy, pushing himself to exhaustion.

  Waiting for his inevitable failure grew tiresome. KY turned around, offering her that stupid, smug grin plastered over his stupid, fat face, and Abigail had to summon her restraint. She kept her cool, smiled a smug grin of her own, and nodded, all the while picturing herself hoisting one of those loose rocks high and smashing it into her husband’s enormous melon head.

  Tock…

  “Right behind you.” Although the words were hard to form, she said them convincingly, pretending to be a lot less tired than she actually was.

  The bomb within her ticked on. Still, she did not blow.

  An earsplitting shriek blasted through the trees, shocking Abigail out of her marital anxieties. The sound filled her with fear. She hadn’t heard a human make such a sound since her days as a waitress when a coworker had dumped a gallon of deep-fryer oil on himself while cleaning the machine. It was the sound of intolerable agony, pure and simple. And it terrified her.

  The hair on her neck stood on end. She chewed her nails. The sound seemed to pass straight through her, rattling her bones.

  The scream stopped abruptly, as if a hand had been cupped over its maker’s mouth. Or maybe it stopped because the screamer was—

  No. Abigail didn’t want to think it. Her mind searched for rational explanations.

  “What the hell was that?” The concern on KY’s face heightened her own. With a simple question, he had killed rational thought.

  How the fuck should I know? Abigail took deep breaths and reined in her hostility.

  “It sounded like a woman’s scream,” she said shakily, hoping KY would offer another, equally plausible explanation. Even as the words passed her lips, Abigail hated the sound of them. She knew, without a doubt, that what they’d heard was a woman in anguish. Her mind reached for causes. Things lived in the woods. Things with sharp teeth. She wanted no part of them.

  She turned around. Circumstances had changed. Abigail had no more time for foolish pride. Sanity demanded she return home.

  “It came from that direction.” With one seemingly innocuous sentence, KY exposed her cowardice.

  She stopped, but she could not yet turn and face him. Her shame was too great. When it passed, Abigail turned and saw KY pointing into the trees. The trail they stood on was hardly easy hiking, but where KY pointed, she saw nothing but thick forest, darker and denser the farther in she peered.

  “Somebody might need our help.”

  Though she wanted to, Abigail couldn’t argue with that. Her mind searched for a counter but came up with nothing.

  KY raised his knee and placed one tannish-orange hiking boot, freshly purchased for their hike, off the man-made path and onto a bed of nature in all its wildness. Dying grass curved beneath his foot.

  “Wait.” Abigail yanked her husband back onto the trail by the strap of his green backpack. Her argument had formed.

  “Slow down there, cowboy. You’re always so bullheaded. Think it through. The park ranger told us not to leave the trail, not for any reason. People get lost in these woods all the time. Some of them never come out. You know that. If we go out there, whoever that was will not be the only person in need of help.”

  KY dropped his chin. He stared down the bridge of his nose at Abigail. “So we’re supposed to just leave her? That’s pretty heartless, Abby, but not all that surprising coming from—”

  “Do you even know what direction that is, you stupid, stupid twat?” Abigail blurted out the question as fast as she could, not wanting KY to finish his remark. As mad as she was, she would have taken it to a new level had he gotten to the end of that sentence. The time bomb had ticked down to its final seconds. She already wanted to strangle him and might have tried if she thought she could get her hands around his double chin. Yes, she was afraid, and that was definitely part of the reason she didn’t want to leave the hiking trail. The heroic thing to do was not the right thing to do, or at least not the smart thing to do.

  KY stared at the sky. Abigail shook her head. She knew he was looking for the sun. The tall oaks and flowering dogwoods to the east and the hills beyond hid all but a pinkish glow.


  “North?” His lack of confidence gave him away, even if he had guessed right. He shrugged. “Well, I don’t feel right doing nothing.”

  “It’s probably just some teenagers screwing,” she said, though she didn’t really believe that.

  “That didn’t sound like—”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll just call the ranger station and… damn!” Abigail hit her cellphone against her leg. “No bars. That figures.” She slid her phone into her pocket. “We can head back down and put an end to this awful idea of yours—”

  “That’s, like, an hour away. Help will never get here in time.” He pouted. His voice went quiet. “You’re giving up already?”

  For a second, she almost pitied him. KY still loved her. She knew that. She just wasn’t sure she loved him back. That twinge of pity compelled her to propose a second option, one she instantly regretted. “Or, we can keep going to higher ground. It looks like there’s a place up ahead where we might have a better chance of getting a signal.”

  KY smiled, big and dopey. Abigail rolled her eyes.

  “Fine,” she said, huffing. “Let’s keep moving, then.”

  Chapter 5

  Life outside prison was hardly a life at all. Charlie had set Tyler up with a room that was a half step up from his cell and made his mother’s trailer look like the Ritz Carlton. The job at which Charlie had placed him, shoveling shit onto shingles at a greasy motel diner just outside Baxter Springs, was not worth the minimum wage he earned. Still, it was honest money, and he worked hard for it.

  His twenty-third birthday was only two weeks away. Hard time had pulverized the boyish charm Tyler once possessed. Every now and then, his dusty hair, prominent chin, and bad-boy stare would still earn him a flirtatious glance from a waitress or customer, but more often, people seemed to back off from him as if he sent out a warning signal to leave him alone.

  Though Tyler never truly understood why, Charlie had taken a shine to him. He expressed real interest in seeing Tyler “rehabilitated,” whatever the hell that meant. Tyler viewed him as a sort of father figure, and why not? Charlie had shown more interest in him over the last two months than Tyler’s parents ever had.