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  “I’m just going to pull up to the lake. It’s up ahead, not far. The path opens up a bit. It’ll be easier to turn around. Trying to do it here is next to impossible without doing a seven million-point turn.”

  Abigail’s breath caught in her throat. She didn’t know how to delicately word the question that was running through her mind, so she just came out with it. “Did you ever find the person who we heard screaming?”

  KY scooted to the middle of the back seat. He leaned closer.

  “I drove up here earlier, when you called,” Merwin said. “But I didn’t find anyone. I walked into the woods pretty deep, too. Didn’t find anything. You probably just heard some kids fornicating. I bet they took off when I came looking. We get a lot of that out here. Weirdos who like to go au natural, get freaky with nature and all that jazz—”

  “It sounded like someone was in pain.”

  Merwin tugged his beard. “Funny thing, though—I didn’t see anyone in the campgrounds neither. I mean, I saw a few tents and campers, but I haven’t really seen many people around today ’sides you two and one or two others. I guess they probably found a nice, secluded spot to do their thing and are getting to it. There was this young couple in one of the deeper, more private lots. I thought it might have been them who you heard. That girl had a set of bazookas that could get a dead man hard, and I ain’t talking about no rigor morosis, if you catch my drift.”

  “Rigor mortis,” Abigail corrected under her breath.

  “Huh? Anyway, I couldn’t find them when I checked. But their stuff’s still there, and their car’s still sitting in the parking lot.” Merwin shook his head. “Probably some fool Yankees who don’t know a thing about camping. They have a bumper sticker says, ‘I brake for moose.’ Ain’t no moose out here.”

  “You don’t think something could have happened to them, do you?” KY sounded like a child scared by a campfire ghost tale. Abigail wondered how she could be legally tied to such a pussy.

  “I doubt it. This shit happens all the time, believe it or not. People go into the woods and leave the trail for whatever reason. Sometimes they come back on their own. Sometimes we have to go find them.”

  “What if someone needs our help?”

  Merwin squinted at Abigail. Is this guy not listening to a word I’m saying? his expression said. Abigail shook her head, embarrassed.

  Merwin twisted in his seat, looking back at KY even as the car progressed forward. “Let me spell it out for you, son. There’s not much we can do for them. I won’t be able to find my own dick out here in the dark, let alone a lost tourist. I’ll check again in the morning. It was dumb luck you two found me when you did.”

  The Jeep lumbered deeper into the forest. Abigail’s body odor mixed with the wet-dog smell of the vehicle’s interior. She cracked her window just enough to let in some fresh air and, she hoped, not too many bugs. After pulling a bottle of water from her backpack, she opened it and gulped it down. One positive thing she could say about her husband: he had come prepared for the worst. He had stocked her backpack just as completely as he had his own. As the lukewarm water cascaded down her parched throat, the extra weight she had lugged all day seemed worth it.

  Merwin pulled to a stop and leaned over the steering wheel, straining to see what was in front of them. “Motherfuckers.”

  He huffed as he stormed out of the Jeep, arms swinging like an enraged gorilla’s. Abigail watched him through the windshield as he crossed in front of the headlights. On each side of the road were two stone pylons. A rope dangled from the right pillar. Someone had snapped it off the other.

  Merwin dragged the rope out of the way. The sign attached to it slid across the ground. Abigail couldn’t make out what it said.

  When he had removed both rope and sign from the Jeep’s path, Merwin strode back to the car, still angry. “I bet it was them damn college brats who broke it. No one respects nothing in this world.”

  Abigail guessed he was mad because someone had vandalized the sign. Hardly the end of the world. She couldn’t be certain, so she remained silent. KY, fortunately, kept his big mouth shut, too. Merwin grumbled and thrust the Jeep into gear. It crawled forward into denser woods.

  After about a quarter mile, Merwin threw a thumb out to his left. “The lake’s over there. No one’s supposed to be out this way anymore. A long time ago, when I was a boy, it was a great place to fish and swim—crystal-clear waters, nature at its most beautiful.” Merwin seemed lost in a memory. He sighed. “Can’t swim in the damn thing now, though. There’s something rotten about it. Nothing but swamp. It gets worse every year, like whatever’s polluting it keeps spreading.”

  “Did someone dump, like, toxic waste or something into it?” KY asked.

  “Hell if I know. I’ve never seen anybody dumping waste, but the lake stretches out for four or five miles. I can’t understand it. The water used to be the highlight of this park, full of life. Now, nothing lives there. It’s like death itself bubbled up from under it and anal raped all that was clean and pure in it.”

  Merwin’s eyes glazed over yet again. He was no doubt recalling some fine day from his youth. Abigail huffed. Time has a funny way of destroying good memories.

  The Jeep rocked as it crept forward, the terrain beneath it uneven and overgrown. Abigail stared out Merwin’s window, hoping to catch a glimpse of starlit water. Nothing could be seen but eternal blackness.

  “Well,” Merwin said after a few minutes of silence. “Let’s get you two home. There’s a small field just ahead. I can turn around—”

  A loud thud came from overhead, on the roof. It sounded as if the sky had rained a pumpkin on the car. Abigail jumped, her breath catching in her throat.

  Merwin nearly leapt from his seat. “What in the hell was that?” His foot slammed down the brake.

  Abigail wondered if a branch might have fallen on them. On the inside, the roof maintained its normal shape, so the damage probably sounded worse than it was.

  Merwin turned in his seat, looking out every window. Abigail clicked on the dome light. She saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the Jeep’s hood, the trees, and darkness.

  “It sounded like a coconut.”

  Merwin twisted in his seat, offering KY a look that wasn’t short on disgust. Abigail ran her fingers down her face.

  “A coconut? Do you see any palm trees out there, son? There ain’t no coconuts in these parts. And this ain’t no Monty Python neither. There are no sparrows of any geological origin dropping coconuts like stealth bombers from above. We only have the miniature kind, ’cept we call them acorns.”

  Before the conversation could deteriorate further, another loud thud seized their attention. This one came from the direction of the hood. Caught up in Merwin’s bickering, Abigail hadn’t seen its source. Her heart pounded as she searched for the cause.

  All eyes were forward. All mouths were silent. Abigail saw nothing.

  Something moved on the hood. “There!” She pointed. At first she thought a puddle had formed, a buildup of water released onto the hood when the branch or whatever it was fell. The Jeep’s metallic green paint seemed to spill over itself, flowing like a fresh coat applied too heavily. It spread across the hood like syrup poured onto a table, its edges creeping closer, up an incline, just beyond the range of the dome light.

  Just beyond clear sight.

  “Guys?” The others hadn’t noticed it and weren’t paying attention to her. Something about that liquid mass caused Abigail’s knees to shake. She wanted to leave. She wanted to leave now.

  “I didn’t say it was a coconut. I said it sounded like a coconut,” KY said.

  “It sounded like any damn hard object falling from above and denting my goddamn roof. That’s what it sounded like. Coconuts—”

  “Guys!” Abigail shouted. That got their attention. They quieted again. If they hadn’t seen it before, she would make them see it now.

  “What is that?” KY asked, sounding both fascinated and disturbed. �
��It looks like a bear took a shit from a perch above us, and its loaf splatted right onto your hood.”

  “That ain’t no turd, son. That thing’s moving.”

  Abigail tapped on the glass. The shit pancake was moving in slow, rocking motions like the rolling and receding of the ocean. It never entered the light, as if some invisible barrier stood in its way.

  With a loud pop, the Jeep tilted onto its left axle.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Merwin said, reaching for his door latch.

  Abigail grabbed his forearm. “Don’t go out there.”

  “Why not?” Merwin asked the question, but his hand retreated from the door. “I admit, I haven’t a clue what that is, but there ain’t nothing in these woods that has ever hurt me, except for a thorn or two. Maybe a few bee stings. And there was that possum that was playing possum, the little devil… my point is, I’m sure it’s safe. Anyway, we just blew a tire, and it sure as shit ain’t gonna change itself.”

  Scraping, like someone etching his name in concrete, came from above. “Sounds like there’s another one on the roof,” KY said, his eyes rolling upward. Abigail heard it, too. Whatever was up there was moving. Was it trying to get in?

  The dome light shattered within its casing. The cab went dark.

  Another shit pancake sprang from the darkness and hit the windshield in front of Abigail. She released Merwin’s arm and huddled in her seat. Her eyes widened. She bit her thumbnail. The pancake thing liquefied before her and slid down the windshield into the crease below, disappearing beneath the hood.

  “Let’s just get out of here.” The shit pancakes unnerved Abigail. If not for their movement, she would have dismissed them as little more than mud pies—the kind of wet, stinking filth one would find a few layers beneath the lake bed—thrown by some punks having a good laugh at their expense. That would have been a perfectly well-reasoned explanation. Merwin had mentioned something about college kids who had caused some sort of trouble. Maybe they were pulling a prank. That made more sense than the alternative.

  But mud pies didn’t move. At best, they might slide down a slope. The thing on the hood certainly seemed to be edging closer.

  Merwin’s forehead furrowed. She could tell he didn’t like the look of those things any more than she did. That made Abigail’s spirits sink a little deeper.

  “Please…” she said.

  “I can’t drive with that tire like that. It’ll damage the wheel, screw up the alignment—”

  “We need to leave this place.”

  Merwin gave her a long, hard look, the fear in his eyes reflecting her own panic. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me twice. Hang on, now.” He stepped on the gas. The Jeep jolted forward. The headlights flickered. The engine sputtered.

  “No.” Merwin’s mouth hung open in disbelief. The Jeep rolled to a stop. “It can’t be. This baby has never given me a lick of trouble.”

  Abigail didn’t have to say it, but she did. “I think one of those things went under the hood.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. The implication was clear. She and Merwin rolled up their windows. Abigail’s got just within a crack when the battery died completely.

  “There’s a flashlight under your seat,” Merwin said, his voice low.

  Abigail listened. That scraping noise came not only from the ceiling but from under her feet as well. Slowly, Abigail reached beneath her seat.

  “Ouch!”

  “What is it?” KY asked. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Abigail sucked on her middle finger. “I just cut myself on something.” A small dab of blood bubbled from her fingertip. Again, she sucked it clean.

  “Probably my box cutters,” Merwin said. “I have an awful tendency to leave the blade out.”

  Abigail sighed and reached beneath the seat, this time with more caution. She hated taking her eyes off that detestable thing that lay inches from the windshield. When she found the flashlight, she handed it to Merwin then reached into her bag for her own.

  A series of thuds came from the left side of the Jeep. KY slid behind Abigail. Merwin shined his flashlight on the windows. A black bulbous mass clung to the window behind him, but it disappeared as soon as Merwin’s light found it. A trail of mucus-like liquid remained where the creature had been. There was no mistaking it now. Those things weren’t mud pies or shit pancakes. They were alive.

  As Merwin circled the cabin with his flashlight, more thuds hit the vehicle’s left side. Abigail’s eyes followed Merwin’s beam. She hadn’t noticed the black oval, slimy and pulsating in front of her, until it had expanded itself across the windshield. Another two of those things were inches from Merwin’s face. Only the thin pane of the driver’s side window separated two beings at opposite ends of the evolutionary chart. A moment earlier, that glass had not been there.

  “Son,” Merwin began, sounding a million times calmer than Abigail felt. “My rifle is behind you. If you’d be so kind…”

  Without a word, KY reached behind himself. He grabbed the sleek steel barrel of Merwin’s rifle and swung it delicately through the air so that Merwin could grab it by the stock.

  Merwin took it and rested it across his lap. He put the Jeep in park and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened.

  Abigail stared at him, wanting answers he probably couldn’t give. Her whole body trembled. What was happening to them? What was going to happen?

  “Just sit tight,” Merwin whispered. “Maybe we should be as quiet as possible. I ain’t never seen anything like this before, but as long as those things stay out there and we stay in here, we should be just fine.”

  “What are they?” KY was huddled so close to them he was practically in the front seat.

  Merwin rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. I have a bachelor’s in biology, but that’s about as far as I went in school. And that was a long time ago. They look like some sort of big, fat slug. Maybe they’ve been allowed to grow out here unbothered for so long that they’ve evolved to stave off predators. Ain’t no bird gonna carry off that worm, that’s for damn sure. Not even those that can carry coconuts.”

  “What do they want with us?” Abigail asked.

  “Nothing, I bet. They’re probably like bugs and were attracted to the light.”

  “But the lights are out.”

  “Listen. I think we are all getting a bit worked up over nothing. Those things are freaky- looking fuckers. I’ll give you that. But they’re probably harmless. I mean, who’s ever heard of a person being killed by a slug? And let’s not ignore the bright side: we may end up on that there Discovery Channel for finding a new species. We can name it after KY, here, on account of all the sliminess.”

  Merwin smiled and gave her a wink. Even KY laughed a little. Abigail began to feel better. Not good, but better. Merwin’s words made more sense than anything she could come up with, and that had to count for something. She almost found them comforting.

  Then she looked forward. Even without eyes, that thing on the windshield seemed to be staring at her.

  Abigail slowly extended her hand toward it. A sort of morbid curiosity had caught her in its throes. The blood bubble had reformed on her fingertip. Inch by inch, her hand moved closer. Neither Merwin nor KY stirred. Neither did the thing outside. It froze as if it were watching her, waiting to strike.

  When Abigail’s hand was only two inches from the windshield, she felt warmth emitting from the creature. It seemed to sense her warmth, too. Its head, or maybe its tail—both ends of the creature seemed identical—peeled back from the windshield. It thickened, forming what looked like a muddy footprint on the glass. The middle of the blob thinned, the creature taking on the shape of a peanut. The tapered section slid up and down the length of the blob.

  Her curiosity reverted to sheer revulsion as the creature unveiled a circular cavity where Abigail supposed its mouth might be. The mouth, if that’s what it was, wasn’t all that dreadful—a black hole, nothing more—but what lined it was grotesque. Thin gra
y appendages like squid tentacles curled and twisted in a perfect circle, rising from the depths of a black-licorice gelatin mold.

  An equally revolting slurping sound came from the tentacles. It reminded Abigail of how she used to irritate her mother by sucking on a straw long after her drink was empty.

  The creature revealed another of its secrets. Two rows of spines, small but talon-sharp, protruded from its body, running its full length. Its head whipped back, taking half the creature’s body with it. When the thing returned a split second later, it drove its spines into the windshield. The fiberglass spiderwebbed beneath the impact.

  “Time to go,” Merwin said.

  The little bastard recoiled for another swing, then another. Scraping came from above, below, and to Abigail’s left. More creatures flung themselves against the driver side door. Glass began to crack. Spines broke through steel and aluminum. The fuckers were trying to get in.

  “Looks like the proverbial shit is about to hit the fan. I think we best be moving.”

  Merwin slid toward her, but Abigail wouldn’t budge. She looked at him and shook her head.

  More thumping. More scraping. Fiberglass crinkled like popping bubble wrap.

  “Now!”

  Before she could react, her door was thrown open.

  KY grabbed her hand. “This way,” he urged. For yet another time that day, Abigail let him lead. She reached for her backpack, but Merwin shouted for her to leave it.

  “It’ll only slow you down,” he said, pushing her out.

  Her legs ached as she found herself running. KY plowed through thick brush, blazing a trail away from the lake, away from the walking path, away from the Jeep, and away from Merwin.

  We can’t leave him. Where had KY’s sense of chivalry gone? Then she realized it had never been more prominent. He was only concerned with saving her.

  Abigail struggled to keep her feet. She tripped over roots and shrubs with nearly every step, barely able to see where she way going and paying little attention to it. She put her trust in KY to lead her out of hell.

  Glancing back, she saw Merwin madly waving his flashlight, searching for a clear path. Everywhere its beam hit, Abigail saw those ugly slug things, screeching and moving against all the laws of gravity and inertia. They had no feet to propel themselves, no wings to fly, yet there they were, bouncing, rolling, and slinking through the brush with alarming speed—and not just one or two here and there. Abigail saw dozens of them, slurping and hissing, screaming like children on fire.