I used to think if you stared out a car window long enough, the world would start repeating itself.

  Trees. Poles. Fences. Stones. Trees. Poles. Fences. Old men carrying aluminum buckets of strawberry pudding for sale. Waffle cone shops on the side of the highway like that's a completely normal career choice.

  More trees. More poles. Plenty of fences. And... oh. Tour buses clogging the shoulder.

  Hargrove Hills gets more crowded each year. I don't know why people keep coming. It's cold, sure, and the air's thinner, and half the time it smells like damp wood. But apparently that counts as 'fresh.'

  They call it the 'Winter Capital' of Evergreene, which sounds impressive until you realize 'winter' here just means you can see your breath in the morning and act dramatic about it. To be fair, the breath does come out thick.

  But it used to actually snow. I remember that. Way back, when I was five. Maybe six. I remember waking up and everything looking wrong; quiet, white, like the town had been erased and redrawn. I tried to eat it. It tasted like nothing. By noon it was already turning into gray slush. It never happened again. Now it just rains harder and the cold feels wet instead of magical.

  They say it's the buildings. Or the roads. Or global warming. I don't really know which one to blame. All I know is we have more condos and fewer reasons to call it winter.

  Pines everywhere, though. That part stuck. The kind that drop needles and make the ground look permanently unfinished. There are birds too. I don't know what kind. The small loud ones that sound like broken whistles. The bigger ones that just sit there and judge you from branches.

  Tourists take photos of the mists like it personally showed up for them. When the clouds roll in, everything looks dramatic. When they roll out, it's just hills stacked behind hills. Very postcard. Very wow. I stopped wowing a long time ago.

  I'm local. I've seen it all before. It's just trees with better marketing.

  Camp Harmony sits higher than the city, about four hours up if traffic behaves. It's part of Harmony Hill — a separate province, technically, though everyone from the lowlands just calls the whole region Hargrove Hills anyway. The road to it winds like someone rode a rollercoaster once and thought, yeah, let's just do that but with actual vehicles.

  If you're driving, you stay alert. If you're not, your brain slowly melts. Reception cuts in and out every few minutes, so your phone's just a bright rectangle pretending to work. Sometimes the fog swallows the view completely. Sometimes it clears and you can see how far up you actually are, which doesn't help.

  We were in Jacob's RV, packed tight with equipment that probably cost more than the vehicle itself. Senior high filmmaking majors, which sounds cooler than it is. Jacob—director, editor, self-appointed visionary—was up front with Michael, our main slashing villain, arguing about something lens-related like it was a matter of national security. Jacob makes everything feel urgent. Michael just nods until he doesn't.

  Madison sat by the window pretending not to listen. She's the lead. The final girl. She runs well and cries convincingly, though she'd probably hate that someone noticed. Or maybe she's the lead because she's Jacob's girlfriend. I'm not actually sure which one she'd prefer to be true. I'm not really sure if they're official. They don't do the holding-hands thing. But he looks at her like he owns the lighting around her or something, so I just assumed.

  Emily wrote the script. Or rewrote it, depending who you ask. Hannah does props and fake blood and anything that needs glue. They were at the back, knees pressed against light stands and tripods, whispering about something I wasn't meant to hear. They've known each other since forever. They talk like they share a brain.

  I was in the middle, which is where you sit when you don't technically belong anywhere.

  I wasn't originally part of the group. I just needed an easy Theories credit, and they needed extra hands. I suggested I handle sound because it seemed important and no one else volunteered. Jacob didn't hesitate. More hands meant more errands. I think he liked having someone who didn't argue.

  So I became the sound guy. Not because I'm good at sound. Just because someone had to hold the stick.

  Mostly, I watched the trees repeat themselves and waited for something interesting to happen.

  ***

  Jacob was mid-sentence about depth of field when Michael, clearly done listening, reached forward and twisted the radio knob.

  Static burst through the RV speakers.

  "Can you not—" Jacob started.

  Then the signal caught. A woman's voice. Calm in the way radio voices get when something is probably not calm at all.

  "—and we're continuing coverage on what officials are describing as an electromagnetic disturbance—what some agencies are now calling a 'dissonance.'"

  The RV quieted. I don't really watch the news. Stuff like this shows up every other week. Some crack. Some shutdown. Some 'unprecedented' event.

  I figured this was just another one.

  Even Jacob closed his mouth.

  "Over the past week, emergency lockdown protocols were activated in Metropolitan Marina and Stardune Province following widespread disruptions to radio towers, microwave relays, and consumer electronic receivers. Authorities confirm that the anomaly appears to propagate through active signal pathways."

  Emily straightened immediately.

  "I saw this," she said. "On Facebook. People were sharing videos."

  Facebook? I didn't know people still used that for real news.

  "Same. I thought it was fake. Like someone edited the red lights in." Hannah leaned forward from the back. "And the comments were wild. People saying their relatives were seeing things before they dropped. You know, details people add to make it scarier."

  The reporter continued, unhurried.

  "Hospitals across affected districts remain on red alert after a sudden influx of acute neurological cases. Patients who have encountered compromised devices have been reported to exhibit acute neurological distress shortly after exposure."

  Oh.

  "Witnesses describe sudden confusion, visual and auditory disturbances, and erratic behavior preceding involuntary convulsions. In many documented cases, the convulsive episode is then followed by rapid loss of responsiveness consistent with coma. Authorities note that the interval between initial symptoms and collapse varies."

  No one joked after that. I thought it was just another hack. Some government agency breach, someone leaking things to cause panic. That kind of thing.

  I guess this is different, huh.

  The RV engine hummed under us. Jacob leaned with the curve.

  "Officials stress that this is not a viral or airborne contagion. Current assessments indicate signal-mediated neurological interference. Infected devices have been observed to display sustained or repeatedly flashing red signal indicators prior to incident."

  Michael glanced at the dashboard.

  The radio's indicator light glowed a normal yellow.

  Still.

  That felt like it should mean something.

  Emily was already on her phone. As usual.

  "I swear I saw a clip of someone's microwave flashing red," she said. "And the guy filming kept turning around like someone was calling his name. He said he could hear his mom downstairs. He lives alone."

  She stopped.

  Her screen was stuck on loading.

  "No signal," she muttered.

  I checked my own phone. One bar flickered, vanished.

  Hannah lifted hers higher like elevation might help. Nothing. Of course.

  The reporter's voice filled the gap.

  "Utility operators have initiated controlled shutdowns of transmission grids in multiple regions as a precautionary measure. Residents are advised to power down non-essential electronics, avoid close contact with devices exhibiting abnormal red signal activity, and seek medical attention if neurological symptoms occur."

  The RV climbed another incline. Fog swallowed the windshield. I was glad Jacob was the one holding the wheel.

  "Residents in higher altitudes, like Hargrove Hills and Ridgecrest City, are reporting minimal disruption at this time. Analysts cite terrain elevation and reduced signal density as possible mitigating factors. However, agencies caution that spread patterns remain unpredictable."

  "That's us," Jacob said immediately. "Minimal disruption."

  Emily frowned at her dead screen. "It was trending all week. People were posting ICU photos. It didn't look fake."

  "I thought it was one of those urban myth threads," Hannah said. "Like, 'Don't answer unknown calls at 3 a.m.' tier."

  Michael turned the volume slightly higher.

  "Repeat advisory: If a device's signal light flashes red without active transmission, increase physical distance immediately. Further updates to follow pending federal coordination."

  Static returned.

  At first it was ordinary, the soft hiss of signal loss. Then it thickened. Warped.

  The anchor's voice flickered back in, distorted, stretched thin.

  "—if you're hearing this, do not remain in proximity to—"

  The sentence fractured.

  "—don't move—"

  A sharp burst of static.

  "—move—"

  The word clipped, reversed by the distortion.

  "—move—move—move—"

  It repeated, each time flatter, thinner, less human.

  Like the syllable had been peeled away from a sentence and left on loop.

  Something crawled up my arms.

  Madison flinched.

  "What was that?" Hannah whispered.

  Michael reached for the knob.

  The repetition sharpened into pure static.

  Michael shut the radio off.

  The engine filled the silence.

  No one spoke for a moment.

  Madison finally broke it. "Should we... maybe not do tonight?"

  It wasn't dramatic. Just practical.

  Emily nodded slowly. "If it spreads through signal... we're bringing cameras. Audio gear. Generator."

  I lifted my boom case slightly. "This doesn't transmit anything. It just listens."

  "Listening is still a receiver," Emily said.

  Jacob exhaled through his nose.

  "We're in the woods," he said. "No towers. No dense grid. Limited reception. That's the point. You heard her — altitude helps."

  "That's not what she said," Emily replied.

  "She said minimal disruption."

  Michael leaned back in his seat, jaw tight. "Minimal doesn't mean none."

  The fog thinned for a second, revealing stacked hills fading into each other like cheap watercolor. Then it swallowed them again.

  Emily kept tapping refresh like she could force the internet to cooperate. "It was everywhere last week. Threads, livestreams, people tagging relatives in hospitals. Someone said their uncle just dropped next to the TV. Like— mid-sentence."

  Hannah shrugged. It wasn't a confident shrug. "People drop all the time. It's 2020. Everyone's stressed. It could be panic. Mass hysteria."

  "Mass hysteria doesn't make ICU wards overflow overnight," Emily shot back.

  I cleared my throat. "They said red lights first, right? So we'll see it coming. Just... don't go near anything blinking."

  No one responded to that.

  Madison hugged her arms tighter around herself. "If it's signal-based... what if it doesn't need towers? What if it just— I don't know— bounces?"

  "Bounces?" Jacob repeated, almost amused.

  "I don't know how this works," she said softly. "I just don't like that it sounds like one of Em's horror plots."

  Jacob turned slightly in his seat to face the back. "It is. Which is exactly why it sounds dramatic. That's how news works. They need it to sound bigger than it is."

  Michael didn't look convinced. "They mentioned controlled shutdowns."

  "Precautionary," Jacob said quickly. "You shut systems down to prevent overload. That doesn't mean the sky is falling."

  Emily finally dropped her phone into her lap. "It won't load. Nothing will load."

  "That's because we're already losing reception," Jacob replied. "Which proves my point."

  "What point?" Hannah asked.

  "That we're heading somewhere quieter. Less connected."

  "Or they've disconnected us here too," Emily countered.

  The RV crested another turn. Pine silhouettes thickened on either side of the road. Fewer roadside stalls. Fewer houses. Fewer blinking lights from civilization.

  I stared at the dark trees sliding past. "So the woods are like... airplane mode."

  Michael snorted. A short, reluctant sound, like he hadn't meant to.

  Jacob nodded. "Exactly. We're fine. We're not in Metro Marina. We're not sitting under cell towers. We're going somewhere that barely gets a bar of signal on a good day."

  Emily didn't look reassured. "But we're bringing electronics."

  "Offline gear," Jacob said. "Local batteries. No active transmission. We're not streaming. We're not broadcasting. It's just camera, lights, generator. Closed system."

  Michael stared out the windshield. "Radio was active."

  "We won't turn it on again," Jacob said flatly.

  "Phones?" Emily added.

  "Turn them off as well," Jacob said. "Or airplane mode."

  "That's not how it works, Jake."

  Silence returned.

  Outside, the fog rolled over the road in slow waves. The higher we climbed, the quieter it felt. No billboards. No traffic. Just pine after pine after pine.

  Madison spoke again, softer this time. "We can still turn back."

  No one answered immediately.

  The RV engine hummed steadily. The road curved again, familiar and repetitive.

  Jacob tightened his grip on the wheel.

  "We're already halfway up," he said. "We finish tonight. We stay off the radio. We shut down phones once we're at camp. We keep distance from anything acting weird."

  He glanced at the rearview mirror.

  "We just... be smart."

  Michael hesitated.

  Emily looked at Hannah.

  I shifted in the middle seat, bored and slightly uncomfortable with the weight of everyone thinking too hard.

  "It's fine," I said, because someone had to say something. "Worst case, we get good B-roll of the apocalypse."

  No one laughed.

  The fog swallowed the windshield again.

  And we kept driving.

  ***

  We arrived at Camp Harmony just before closing.

  The ranger station was already dark by the time we pulled into the gravel lot. Jacob killed the engine. The rest of us sat there for a moment, watching the light drain from the sky, turning the pines from green to black.

  "Four o'clock," Michael said, checking his phone. "Right on schedule."

  "Told you," Jacob said. He twisted around to look at the back. "Rangers do a final sweep at four-thirty. We wait till they're gone, hike in through the service road. They won't even know we're here."

  Madison pulled her jacket tighter. "And if they do?"

  "They won't."

  "But if they do."

  "Then we're locals who lost track of time. We're not getting arrested for making a movie."

  She didn't look convinced, but she didn't argue. She'd stopped arguing with Jacob about two weeks into production. Or maybe she just stopped making herself the loudest thing in the room. Hard to tell the difference from where I was sitting.

  Hannah slid the door open and stepped out, stretching her back with a wince. "We really doing this?"

  "We're really doing this," Jacob said.

  I stayed in my seat a second longer than everyone else. The pines were just silhouettes now. Very atmospheric. Very whatever.

  We'd been shooting Red since November.

  Low-budget slasher knockoff. Practical effects. Grainy 16mm aesthetic. Jacob had rewritten Em's initial draft in three weeks, convinced he'd cracked the formula. Jacob had also borrowed his uncle's camera and lied about what they were using it for. Some people commit. Some people just hold the stick.

  We'd wrapped principal photography in December. Got everything we needed.

  But Jacob had other ideas. More ideas.

  We need connective tissue, he'd said. More B-roll. Atmospheric shots. Transitions that feel earned.

  What he really meant was: I need more footage of Madison.

  She was good, too. Better than she needed to be for a student film no one would ever see. The kind of good that makes you wonder why she's here at all.

  Jacob had cast her before anyone else.

  Because he couldn't stop looking at her through a lens.

  We waited until the ranger's truck pulled out, headlights cutting through the dusk. Then we moved.

  The service road was narrow and overgrown, barely visible in the fading light. We'd scouted it a week earlier — found a maintenance shed about half a kilometer in, tucked away from the main trails. Unlocked, full of rusted tools and rotting tarps, but it had four walls and a roof and enough floor space to keep the equipment dry overnight.

  "How much further?" Hannah asked, her voice strained.

  "Ten minutes," Jacob said.

  "You said that ten minutes ago."

  She muttered something under her breath. Emily smirked beside her.

  I was behind both of them, carrying the boom case and trying not to catch it on branches.

  At some point the tree line thinned enough that you could see the ridge clearly. Sitting up on it, farther than it looked through the fog, was a watchtower. Old wood, metal platform, something forest services put up and forget about. It caught the last of the light for a second before the trees swallowed it again.

  Nobody said anything about it.

  But further out, four mountains over, past the ridge, past everything — I could see the troposcatters.

  You could always see the troposcatters from anywhere in Hargrove Hills if the fog cooperated. Two dishes, facing each other across the valley, white and enormous, though from this distance they looked like coins someone had left on the hilltop. Small and flat and slightly unreal. I'd been up close to them once, on a school trip when I was eleven or twelve. They were massive in a way that made you feel like the scale of things had been lying to you your whole life. Concrete platforms, steel frames, dishes wider than most buildings I'd been inside. Built during some previous era for some previous emergency, they said. Bouncing signals across mountains when mountains made signals difficult.

  They didn't work anymore. Hadn't for years. So they'd opened the site up, put a small entrance fee on it, let tourists walk around underneath them and take photos of the fog.

  Very Hargrove Hills.

  I looked at them for a second longer than I meant to.

  Then the trees closed again and they were gone.

  ***

  We reached the shed just as the last light bled out of the sky.

  The shed sat crooked at the edge of a clearing that felt too round to be natural, like someone had scooped trees away with a spoon. Pines boxed us in on three sides. The service path sloped back the way we'd come, barely visible once the light died.

  Behind the shed, the forest thickened immediately. No trail, just trunks and shadow.

  Hannah started the fire in the middle. Jacob and Michael dropped the tent bags on either side of the shed. They fanned out around the kindling like we were pretending this was planned.

  Jacob pulled out a flashlight. "This is it. We'll set up camp here, shoot the chase scene, then break for a few hours. Final shots at dawn."

  "Final shots?" Michael said, setting down the generator with a thud. "I thought we were done."

  "We're done with principal. We need coverage."

  "We have enough."

  Jacob turned, his flashlight catching Michael's face. "You want this to look like a student film? Or something people might actually watch?"

  "I want to finish and move on."

  "We're almost finished. One more night."

  Michael's jaw worked. He looked past Jacob, toward Madison, who was unloading her bag near one of the trees. She didn't look up.

  "Fine," Michael said. "One last night."

  ***

  The tents went up slowly. Fingers went numb faster.

  Jacob had already pulled Madison aside to run lines. Michael did most of the work on the other two tents. Very efficient of him. I helped where I could and stayed out of his way when his mood turned dark, which wasn't hard to read.

  Hannah and Emily worked on the first one together, their movements synchronized like they'd done this a hundred times before. Both muttering about the cold, about being here at all.

  "We had everything," Hannah said, jamming a stake into frozen ground. "The edit looked fine."

  "It looked great," Emily agreed. "But you know Jake."

  "Perfect for who, though?"

  Emily glanced toward Madison, sitting on a fallen log, script pages in her lap, staring at nothing in particular. She didn't look upset, more like she was trying to take up less space than a person normally does. "For him. It's always for him."

  Hannah followed her gaze and didn't say anything.

  I claimed the spot near the shed. I dropped my sleeping bag between the tents and the equipment. Middle ground. That felt about right.

  By the time everything was up, frost was already forming on exposed surfaces. Someone got the generator running and the lights hummed on. Hannah started a fire and we gathered around it, passing a thermos of coffee, faces orange in the flickering light.

  "So," I said. "What are we shooting tonight?"

  Jacob pulled out his phone. "Chase scene through the clearing. Movement only. No dialogue."

  I glanced at my boom case. Right. Because chasing scenes through dark clearings in the woods was exactly when you needed crystal clear audio of everyone's footsteps and the wind doing nothing.

  "Phones. Power down," Emily pointed at Jacob as she was about to sip. "We can't risk it."

  Jacob didn't move. "We still need light."

  Emily's stare didn't blink. "Airplane mode. And if anything shows red, you drop it."

  One by one, we went clicking.

  The clearing felt quieter for it. Or maybe we just wanted it to.

  "So—" Hannah warmed herself with her cup, "No screaming?"

  "No screaming. We don't want rangers coming back."

  Michael poked at the fire with a stick. "How long?"

  "Two hours. Maybe three. Break, sleep, final sequence at first light."

  "The one we already shot," Michael said. "In November."

  "The angle was wrong."

  "The angle was fine."

  "It was adequate. I want better."

  Michael's grip tightened on the stick. "Like Em's first draft, no?"

  "What about it?" Jacob paused. "It was great. Just wasn't built for this cast."

  The wood creaked.

  "You're really dragging this out, huh."

  "I'm getting it right."

  "You're getting her in as many shots as possible."

  The clearing went quiet.

  Madison looked up.

  "Two weeks of reshoots," Michael continued. "We had everything. But suddenly we need more coverage. More angles. More Madison."

  Jacob stood, hands curling. "We need quality."

  "No. You can't stop looking at your girlfriend through a camera."

  "Say that again."

  "You cast her because she's yours. You keep shooting her because you can't let go. The rest of us are just here to make you look good."

  Madison's voice cut in, sharp. "That's not fair."

  Michael looked at her. "Isn't it?"

  "I auditioned for the director. And I got the part because I was good."

  She said it flatly. Not like she was proud of it. More like she was tired of it being the thing everyone kept returning to.

  "I wanted you," Michael said, and the words came out raw. "I wanted to do this with you. Not him. Me. But you chose him. You always choose him."

  The silence was suffocating.

  Madison stood. "You don't get to do this."

  "Do what?"

  "Make me feel guilty for choosing someone who isn't you. I didn't lead you on. I didn't promise you anything. We were friends. That's it. And if you've been carrying this around for months — that's on you. Not me."

  Michael opened his mouth. Closed it.

  Then he turned and walked into the trees.

  Jacob watched him go, jaw tight.

  Madison sat back down, her face buried in her hands.

  Emily moved closer, hand on her shoulder. Hannah fed another branch into the fire.

  "We should probably eat something," Hannah said. "Before we shoot."

  We ate in silence. Granola bars. Trail mix. Cold sandwiches. Nobody talked.

  Jacob kept glancing toward the trees.

  Michael came back twenty minutes later, face blank.

  "We good?" Jacob asked.

  "We're good," Michael said.

  "Let's shoot."

  ***

  We moved into position. Madison stood at the far end of the clearing. Michael near the treeline, hood pulled low.

  Jacob behind the camera. Hannah with the reflector. Emily beside me, hand on my shoulder, steering me out of frame when I drifted too close.

  "You think she's okay?" I whispered.

  "No," Emily said. "But she'll do the scene anyway."

  Jacob called action.

  Madison ran.

  Her footfalls were soft against dead leaves, breath coming in controlled bursts. She moved like someone who'd gotten very good at looking scared — and then immediately made you forget you'd seen it. Like she knew exactly when to disappear back into the scene.

  Michael followed, slow and heavy.

  "Cut. Again. Madison, faster. You're running for your life."

  She nodded, jogged back.

  We ran it again. And again. And again.

  By the fifth take, Madison was shaking from cold and exhaustion. Emily draped a blanket over her shoulders and pressed coffee into her hands without being asked.

  By the eighth take, Jacob was still adjusting. Moving the camera three inches. One more.

  I should've brought another layer of clothing.

  Hannah set down her reflector and looked at Emily. "He's going to kill her."

  "He's going to try," Emily said.

  "Cut," Jacob called. "That's the one."

  Madison collapsed onto the log, blanket pulled tight. Her face was flushed despite the cold.

  Jacob crouched beside her. "You were perfect. That last take — that's the one."

  She was perfect. Not the take.

  She nodded once, already pulling the blanket tighter. Not basking. Just waiting for him to finish.

  He reached for her hand. She let him take it, but there was nothing in it. Like she'd figured out that the fastest way out of being looked at was to stop pushing back.

  "We'll break here. Sleep. Final sequence at dawn."

  "What time?" I asked.

  "Five-thirty."

  Hannah groaned. "That's three hours."

  "Then sleep fast."

  ***

  We put the fire out, packed the equipment, retreated to the tents. Hannah and Emily disappeared into theirs, still murmuring. Michael took his alone. Jacob and Madison crawled into theirs without a word.

  I grabbed my sleeping bag and settled near the shed. The wind came in waves up here. A few seconds of it, then nothing, then it found you again. The shed wall helped.

  I lay there staring up through the pines, listening to the forest settle. Wind. A distant creek. Something moving through underbrush, slow and unbothered.

  And somewhere out past the tree line — I wasn't sure if I was imagining it — a red light blinked on the ridge. Steady. Like a pulse. Like something still running up there in the dark.

  I told myself it was just the bugs. Fireflies maybe. I don't really know if we have those here.

  I closed my eyes.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  ***

  I woke to shouting.

  Not loud, but urgent.

  I sat up, disoriented. My watch said 3:47 AM.

  Outside, the voices overlapped with each other. Jacob. Emily. Madison.

  I unzipped my sleeping bag and stepped into the clearing.

  The fire was dead. The moon hung low and pale. The others were gathered near the edge of camp, faces lit by a flashlight beam.

  "What's going on?" I asked.

  Emily turned, her face pale. "Hannah's gone."

  The words didn't land right at first.

  "What?"

  "She's not in our tent. We checked everywhere."

  I looked around. Three tents. Equipment. Empty space where Hannah should have been.

  "Maybe she went to pee," I said.

  "We called for her," Madison said, arms wrapped around herself. "She's not answering."

  Jacob stood a few feet away, phone pressed to his ear. He lowered it, shaking his head. "No signal."

  "There wasn't signal before either," I countered.

  "Jake," Emily snapped, raising her open palms. "Why the hell is your phone still up?"

  "Alright, alright," Jacob clicked on his phone and pocketed it. "Sorry."

  I was drifting toward the treeline without really deciding to, flashlight in hand.

  Something caught the beam.

  I stopped.

  Blood.

  Not a lot. But enough. Dark streaks smeared across dirt and leaves, leading into the woods. Drag marks.

  "Jesus," I whispered.

  The others came over.

  Nobody said anything for a moment.

  Then Emily said, quietly, "The dissonance."

  Jacob looked at her. "What?"

  "The broadcast. Earlier. Signal-mediated neurological interference." She was already talking faster, the way she did when she was scared and trying to think through it. "We turned the generator on. The lights. The camera. We've had — you've had active electronics running for hours—"

  She looked at him and stopped talking.

  "The broadcast said coma," Jacob said. "It said collapse. It said red lights. It did not say drag marks."

  "We don't know everything it does."

  "We know enough. It doesn't make people disappear into the woods."

  "We don't know that."

  "Emily." Jacob's voice was flat. "She's not lying in a ditch seizing. She's gone. Someone took her or she walked out or something else happened. That's not the dissonance."

  "You don't know what the dissonance is," Emily snapped. "You've been saying that since yesterday. You keep deciding what it is and isn't because it's more convenient for the shoot."

  "This isn't about the shoot—"

  "It's always about the shoot. We heard that broadcast. We all heard it. And you decided we were fine. You decided the elevation was enough. You decided one more night." Her voice dropped. "Hannah was here because of you."

  Jacob opened his mouth.

  "The report said devices," Madison cut across whatever Jacob was about to say. "Red lights. Before the convulsions. Emily — what if Hannah saw something? Maybe she went after it before it got bad enough to drop her?"

  Jacob closed his mouth.

  Emily looked at her. Something passed between them — not quite gratitude, not quite reproach. Then she turned back to the drag marks. "I don't know. Maybe. She would've woken us, right?"

  "We've got a maybe," Michael said from behind. He'd been standing back, arms crossed, watching. "And it still doesn't explain the blood."

  "I'm not saying it explains everything. I'm saying we have active electronics in a zone they said was vulnerable and one of us is missing and maybe we should take that seriously."

  "We are taking it seriously," Jacob said. "That's why we're going after her."

  Michael pushed past both of them and stared at the drag marks. "This doesn't make sense. She was fine. How does someone just—" He didn't finish.

  Jacob turned to the group. "Em, Maddie. Stay here. Keep the fire going."

  "With the electronics here?" Emily's voice cracked slightly.

  "It's offline gear. Local battery. We've been over this."

  "We've been over a lot of things."

  Madison grabbed his arm. Jacob paused. For a moment I thought she might pull him back.

  "Jake, no," Emily said. "If something's out there—"

  "Then we need to know," Madison continued. "You can't leave us behind. We're going too."

  He looked at Madison for a second. Then let it go.

  Emily looked at me, then at the trees, then back at Jacob. "Leave your phones here. If anything starts showing red — anything at all — we stop. We drop it and we move away from it. Agreed?"

  Jacob didn't answer immediately.

  "Agreed?" she said again.

  "Agreed," he said.

  It didn't sound like he meant it.

  He looked at me and Michael. "Grab flashlights. We're all going in."

  I hesitated.

  Then I followed.

  ***

  The forest went dead silent.

  Our flashlights barely helped. Somehow, they made it worse. The shadows moved when we did.

  The blood kept going. Smeared in patches, like something got pulled a few feet, stopped, pulled again.

  "Hannah!" Jacob called.

  No answer.

  Nobody talked after that. Just boots on frozen dirt. Loud as hell in the quiet.

  Then Michael stopped. "Do you hear that?"

  We froze.

  At first, nothing. Just wind. Just branches.

  Then I heard it. Humming. Low and steady. Like a machine running somewhere.

  "What is that?" I whispered.

  Jacob aimed his flashlight toward the sound.

  The beam caught something up ahead. A dark shape, half-buried in dead leaves.

  We moved closer.

  It was a radio.

  Old. Battered. The kind you'd find in a garage sale. Sitting tilted against a fallen log, antenna bent like someone stepped on it.

  And the little light on its face was glowing yellow.

  Bright and steady.

  "Where did that come from?" Michael asked.

  No one answered.

  The humming kept going. Static underneath, trying to sound like words but not quite getting there.

  I took a step back.

  Madison moved closer to Jacob.

  Michael stayed where he was, staring at it.

  "Don't," Jacob said sharply.

  But Emily's flashlight swept past the radio. Caught something pale in the dirt a few feet away.

  Fabric.

  "Look," she said, voice quiet. Uncertain.

  She moved toward it slowly. Like she didn't want to but couldn't help it.

  Jacob's beam followed hers.

  A jacket. Torn up bad. Sleeve shredded like something ripped through it. Dark stains across the back, rust-brown, dried.

  Blood.

  Emily crouched beside it. Her hands hovered over the fabric but didn't touch.

  "Is this... is this Hannah's?" Her voice cracked slightly.

  Madison stepped closer. Looked down.

  "No," she said quietly. "She was wearing her blue windbreaker. And... and a white shirt underneath. I think."

  Emily's flashlight moved again. Shaking now.

  "There's more."

  More fabric. A shirt, crumpled near the base of a tree. Jeans, one leg inside-out, dirt-caked. A boot with the laces still tied.

  Someone had undressed here.

  Or been undressed.

  I didn't want to think about which.

  "Where is she?" Emily asked. To no one. To everyone. "Where..."

  Jacob's flashlight swept wider now, cutting through the trees in broad strokes.

  And then it stopped.

  Held.

  "There," he said.

  A tent.

  Small. Two-person. Tucked between two thick pines, the front partially obscured by low-hanging branches. The fabric was dark green, meant to blend in. You wouldn't see it unless you knew where to look.

  Hidden on purpose.

  "Shit," Michael breathed.

  "Someone was camping out here," Emily said softly. Then, quieter: "Do you think someone..."

  "No, Em. Don't." Jacob countered.

  He looked back at us. At me specifically.

  "Mike and I will check it out," he said. "Joshua, stay back. Watch behind us."

  "What?" Madison asked. Her voice was tight. Controlled but strained.

  "I'll do it," Emily said. Her voice didn't sound confident. Just... determined. Like she was trying to convince herself.

  "Em—" Jacob started.

  "If something comes from behind, you need Joshua watching," Emily said, still not looking back. Her flashlight wavered slightly. "We need Michael somewhere in between. I'm faster than him anyway."

  "Fine," Jacob said after a pause. "But I go first."

  Emily was already at the tent by the time he caught up.

  Michael stayed with us. Madison close to his side now, watching Jacob and Emily move ahead.

  The tent flap was half-open, swaying slightly in the wind.

  Jacob reached it first. Started to pull the flap back.

  Emily stepped past him and pulled it fully open.

  Her flashlight swept the interior.

  "It's... it's empty," she called back.

  But her voice didn't sound relieved.

  "But there's—" She stopped. Swallowed. Leaned in further. "Jake, I think you should look at this."

  Jacob moved beside her, both of them crouched at the entrance.

  "Sleeping bag. Backpack. Camping stove," Emily said. Her voice was shaking now. Just slightly. "Food. Cooked. Maybe a week old."

  "Where are they?" I asked.

  Emily's light moved inside the tent.

  "There's blood," she said quietly. Almost a whisper. "Too much."

  "Hannah," Emily said. "What if... what if Hannah came here? What if she saw this and..."

  She didn't finish.

  Madison's flashlight wavered.

  "We need to go," she said. Quiet but firm. "Right now."

  "Agreed," Jacob said, backing out of the tent.

  The humming from the radio pulsed again. Louder now.

  Michael turned toward it.

  "We should destroy it," he said.

  "Don't touch it," I said.

  "It's just a radio," Michael said. "If this is what happened to Hannah, we need to know."

  "Mike, don't—" Madison started.

  But he was already moving toward it.

  "Mike!" Jacob shouted from the tent. "Stay back!"

  Michael crouched beside it. Reached out slowly.

  His hand hovered over the dial.

  The radio blinked red.

  Once.

  Then it caught static. Then a voice, the same calm and unhurried one from the RV.

  "—encountered compromised devices have been reported to—"

  Michael flinched. Hard. Jerked his hand back. He grabbed the back of his neck with both hands.

  "—exhibit acute neurological distress shortly after exposure—"

  "What the fuck was that?" Michael said, voice rising. He looked at Jacob. Then at me. Then back at Jacob. "Jake, did you just—"

  He stopped. Still holding his neck. His eyes went wide.

  "I'm bleeding?"

  "You're not. What?" Jacob asked, already moving toward him.

  Michael stumbled to the side. Away from the radio. Away from us.

  "—describe sudden confusion, visual and auditory disturbances—"

  "Stop—" Michael's voice cracked. "Don't... Get away from me—"

  "—and erratic behavior preceding involuntary convulsions—"

  "Mike, what's wrong?" Madison asked.

  "I said get back!" Michael shouted.

  He swung at nothing. Fist cutting through empty air.

  "Mike!" Jacob yelled.

  But Michael wasn't listening. His eyes were fixed on something in front of him. Something that wasn't there.

  "Stay away from her!"

  "Who?" Madison asked, voice breaking. "Mike, there's no one there—"

  "Don't touch her!"

  Michael lunged forward. At nothing. His hands reaching, grabbing at empty space.

  "—authorities note that the interval—"

  "Hannah—Hannah, I'm here—"

  "—between initial symptoms and collapse varies—"

  Oh god.

  Emily made a sound.

  "Dissonance," she whispered.

  Shit.

  "We need to stop him," Jacob said.

  "How?" I asked.

  Jacob slowly moved toward Michael with his hands up.

  "Mike. Listen to me. There's nothing there. You're seeing things. The radio—it's doing something to you—"

  "You're not real," Michael said. Not to Jacob. To whatever he was seeing. "You're not—she's right there—"

  He lunged again.

  Jacob tried to grab him.

  Michael shoved him back to the ground.

  Holy.

  Emily started forward. I followed.

  "Emily, no!" I grabbed her arm, pulled her back behind me. "Don't— what are you doing?"

  "But Jake—"

  "You can't," I said. "Stay back."

  Madison was frozen. Just watching. Her flashlight shaking so bad the beam looked like it was vibrating.

  Michael charged.

  Not at Jacob.

  At Emily.

  Or... no. Where he thought Emily was. He was looking past her. Through her. At something else.

  I shoved Emily to the side.

  Michael stumbled past us. Crashed into the underbrush.

  Jacob tackled him from behind.

  They went down together.

  Michael thrashed. Still screaming. Still fighting something we couldn't see.

  "Let go—I have to—she needs—"

  Then he stopped.

  Just... stopped.

  His whole body went rigid.

  Jacob scrambled back.

  Michael made a sound. Like he was gurgling. Shit, he's choking.

  "—residents in higher altitudes, like Hargrove Hills and Ridgecrest City—"

  Then he collapsed.

  "—are reporting minimal disruption at this time."

  He hit the ground hard, flashlight rolling away into the leaves. His body convulsed, back arching, hands clawing at dirt and dead branches. His eyes rolled back, white and empty. His mouth was forming foam.

  "Mike!" Madison screamed. "Mike, what's—oh my god, what's happening to him?"

  I dropped beside him. Grabbed his shoulders. His whole body jerked under my hands. Hard. I couldn't hold him still. Muscles going haywire like he was being electrocuted.

  What the fuck was I supposed to do?

  Emily was beside me now. Her hands shaking. Hovering over Michael like she wanted to help but didn't know how.

  "What do we do?" her voice tightened and heavy.

  "I don't—" I blanked out.

  Madison kicked the radio.

  "—red without active transmission—"

  It flew through the air, smashed against a tree trunk.

  "—increase physical distance immediately—"

  The casing cracked. The red light flickered once—twice—

  But didn't go out.

  The radio stayed on, though. Just static now. Dimmer, but steady.

  The antenna, bent and half-broken, still stood upright from the wreckage.

  The humming continued.

  Michael went still.

  His breathing slowed. His body sagged against the forest floor.

  For a moment I thought he was dead.

  Then his chest rose. Fell. Rose again.

  "Mike?" Madison dropped to her knees beside me, voice breaking. "Mike, please, can you hear me?"

  His eyes opened.

  But they didn't focus. They stared past us, through us, at nothing.

  Fixed on something we couldn't see.

  "Oh god," Madison whispered, reaching for his face. "Jake, what's wrong with him?"

  "I don't know," Jacob said. His voice was steady but his hands weren't. "But we need to move. Now."

  "It's real," Emily quivered. "He's encountered—"

  "He's not responding," I said.

  "Then we carry him." Jacob moved to Michael's other side. "Josh, help me. Em, Maddie—stay in front of us. Don't fall behind."

  "I won't," Madison said, voice small.

  Emily just nodded, her face pale. She kept looking at Michael. At the radio. Back at Michael.

  "What if Hannah..." Emily started. Stopped. Started again. "What if this happened to Hannah too?"

  No one answered.

  Jacob and I grabbed Michael under his arms and hauled him up. He stood, but didn't walk. His legs moved on their own. Wrong. Too stiff. Like they weren't his anymore. Like someone else was moving them.

  "What the hell," I breathed.

  We started back, half-dragging Michael between us.

  Madison stayed close behind us, her flashlight shaking. Emily moved ahead slightly, clearing the path, checking the shadows. But her hands were trembling. Her breathing too fast.

  The humming didn't stop when we moved. It followed us.

  Faint at first. Then louder.

  Not from the broken radio.

  From deeper in the forest.

  Then I thought I heard something else. Some footsteps.

  Not ours.

  Something heavier and uneven breaking through the low branches. It did not try to be quiet.

  "Jake," Emily said, barely above a whisper. Scared.

  He'd already heard it.

  Emily aimed her flashlight toward the sound.

  Something flinched.

  And I saw them.

  Figures.

  At least, they looked... human-shaped.

  "Lights off," Jacob hissed.

  Madison and Emily followed.

  They moved like broken toys. All jerky. Stumbling but never actually falling. Heads at wrong angles—too high, too low, necks bent ways necks shouldn't bend.

  Their arms hung limp at their sides.

  They didn't sound right. No talking. No calling out. Just branches shifting when they hit them.

  Toward us.

  Closer.

  And they were quiet. That was the worst part.

  "Are those..." Emily's voice cracked.

  She didn't finish.

  But we all looked.

  Trying to see if one of the shapes was Hannah.

  I couldn't tell. The darkness was too thick. The shapes too wrong.

  "Run," Jacob whispered.

  We ran.

  Emily rushed ahead, sweeping her flashlight through the trees, clearing a path. Madison stayed close at her heels. Jacob and I dragged Michael between us, his weight sagging, his feet barely touching the ground.

  I kept glancing back.

  The shapes followed.

  They were stumbling, trying to run with broken limbs.

  And they were getting closer.

  Fuck.

  ***

  "Shed!" Emily said. Not a scream. Just a word. The most important word.

  She and Madison moved first. That's how I remember it. No hesitation, no checking if we were coming. Just go.

  Michael was not helping.

  I had his left arm over my shoulders. Jacob had his right. Every few steps his knees just decided not to, and we carried the decision with us.

  We were moving. That was the thing. We were moving and the shapes at the tree line were moving and I was trying really hard not to think about the second part.

  Emily went straight to the shed and swung the door wide. She started throwing equipment out, clearing space.

  Then Madison veered off.

  She'd seen the equipment pile. The boom pole. My boom pole, technically, insofar as I was the one who'd been lugging it around all weekend.

  She grabbed it mid-stride like she'd planned this. One clean pull.

  I almost said something. I didn't.

  Because that's when the one came from the other direction.

  Not from behind us. From the front. From the other side of the clearing entirely. It had just been standing there, I think. Waiting for something to point it somewhere. Madison gave it plenty to work with.

  It changed direction and rushed Madison.

  She had maybe a second to decide. She dove sideways into the nearest tent.

  The thing hit the tent about half a second later. The whole structure just gave up. Poles shrieked as the nylon collapsed. Madison was somewhere underneath all of it.

  Jacob let go of Michael.

  Which meant I had Michael.

  Which meant I had all of Michael, both arms, total dead weight, knees currently doing their thing again, and I just — locked my grip and did not fall and watched Jacob throw his whole body sideways into the shape as it clawed at the collapsed tent.

  They went down hard together.

  Up close it moved wrong. I couldn't look away from that. Just wrong. Like someone doing a very bad impression of a person. It snapped at his arm and Jacob got it up too late and —

  I heard it.

  The sound it made.

  Jacob made a shorter sound. Involuntary.

  Madison was out of the tent by then. Face scraped, nylon still caught on her shoulder. She saw Jacob on the ground with it and didn't stop moving — crossed the distance and swung the boom pole hard into the side of its head.

  Not enough to stop it. But enough to make it flinch. Enough to give Jacob the half-second he needed.

  Then he had both hands on its head and twisted until something stopped arguing.

  The body twitched for a few seconds after.

  Then stopped.

  Jacob got up. Looked at his arm. Looked at me — specifically at Michael's full weight draped across my shoulders — and just took Michael's other side again without saying anything.

  We moved through the scattered equipment.

  Emily was at the shed, arm sweeping us forward. Madison was somehow still holding the boom pole. I did not ask.

  Another one stepped into our path.

  Jacob hit it with his shoulder, grabbed whatever he could reach, let the momentum do the rest. It spun past us, lurched forward, kept going in the direction it'd been pointed. Away from the shed door.

  It tripped over a camera case but immediately stood.

  Facing the wrong way entirely.

  We went through the door.

  Emily pulled it shut.

  Something hit the outside once. Then nothing.

  We shoved the workbench against it and stood there breathing.

  Michael went down against the back wall. I set him there as carefully as I could, which was not very carefully. He stayed where I put him. Chest moving. Eyes open. Somewhere that wasn't here.

  Madison sat beside him immediately. Didn't say anything. Just close.

  It was dark enough in the shed that I could barely see my own hands. Which meant whatever was outside couldn't see much either.

  I found a gap in the wood. Nail hole, maybe. Put my eye up to it.

  The one Jacob had spun was still in the clearing. Standing. Head still slightly off from the spin. Not trying the door. Not doing much of anything. Just standing there like it was waiting for a reason.

  "It's not moving," I said.

  Emily crossed immediately and looked. Long pause.

  "It can't see us," she said. "We went still. It lost us."

  She stepped back. I could almost hear her thinking.

  "It tracks movement," she said. "That's what it's doing. That's all it's doing. We stopped moving, so it stopped."

  "Great," I said. "We live here now."

  Nobody laughed. Fair.

  Jacob was sitting against the far wall. His sleeve was dark from the shoulder to the elbow. He was looking at it the way you look at something you're not sure how to feel about yet.

  "We're not safe in here," he said. "With me."

  "Jacob—"

  "It bit me, Em."

  "I know." Emily's voice was controlled. Her hands weren't. "But listen. Listen. The broadcast. Signal-mediated neurological interference. That's what they said. It targets the nervous system. That's what happened to Michael — perception first, then motor function. That's the mechanism. It's not rabies. It's not in the blood. It's not in the saliva."

  She paused.

  "That's not how it moves."

  "You're guessing."

  "I'm working from what they actually said. Which is more than anyone else is doing."

  Jacob looked at Michael.

  "He wasn't bitten," he said.

  "No," she said. "He wasn't."

  The shed sat with that for a second.

  Madison had Michael's hand in both of hers. Her thumb moving back and forth across his knuckles. Slow. She wasn't looking at us. She was looking at his face like she was trying to memorize it or apologize to it or both.

  "We should've done your first draft," she murmured.

  Emily turned. "What?"

  "Your original one. Before Jake reworked it." Madison's voice was quiet. Even. Like she'd run out of register for anything louder. "Male protagonist. Female killer. Michael as the lead."

  She exhaled.

  "It would've been him out there tonight. Running. Not—" She stopped. "He would've been so good."

  Emily was quiet for a moment.

  "He would've been great," she said. And meant it.

  Madison nodded. Didn't say anything else. Just kept her thumb moving across Michael's knuckles.

  I went back to the peephole.

  The one outside had drifted slightly. Still no clear destination. Two more shapes at the tree line, barely visible, also just standing there waiting to be told what to do.

  Then something crossed the sky.

  A streak. High and fast, out past the ridge. It burst open up there — flare light, violent and red — and every gap in the shed walls went the same color. The seams. The knotholes. All of it.

  Outside, every shape snapped toward it at once.

  They ran. Not at us. At the light, at the shadows the light made, at each other when they got close enough to register as movement.

  Two of them collided hard. Went down. A third ran into them. Another tripped over that one and came up swinging at whatever was nearest. More shapes came out of the trees, drawn by the flare, drawn by each other, and the whole clearing just... accumulated.

  Bodies. Colliding. Clawing. Triggering each other over and over.

  "What is happening," Madison said from behind me.

  "They're setting each other off," I said. "Every time one moves, the next one reacts. It just keeps going."

  Emily was at the peephole now. Pressed up close.

  "They're not after us," she said. "They're not even thinking about us. They're just — responding. To movement. Whatever moves, they follow."

  She pulled back.

  "It's all reflex. There's nothing behind it."

  The shed wall shuddered.

  Not a deliberate hit. Just the mass of them, stumbling closer, not meaning to but doing it anyway.

  "They don't have to mean to," Jacob said.

  Another impact. Dust from the rafters.

  "We go," Jacob said. He was standing. Arm held against his chest, sleeve soaked through, but standing straight.

  "Go where?" Emily said.

  The wall cracked. Actual crack. Something separating at the corner.

  I thought about the hike in. Tree line thinning. The ridge catching the last of the light for about half a second before the pines ate it.

  "The watchtower," I said.

  Everyone looked at me.

  "Fire watch tower. On the ridge. I saw it when we hiked in." I thought about the shapes outside. The way they moved. All ground-level. All reaction. "It's a ladder, right? Look outside, do they look like they could climb? We get above them. We get above all of them."

  Emily stared at me for slightly too long.

  "Yeah," she said. "That's right."

  I didn't say anything about how surprised she sounded.

  The shed groaned. Real structural complaint now. Wood pulling away from wood at the corner seam.

  "I go first," Jacob said. "Clear the path. Em, Maddie — stay at my back. Josh, you take rear."

  Emily nodded.

  Jacob crouched beside Michael.

  He put a hand on Michael's shoulder. Michael's eyes didn't move.

  "I'm coming back," Jacob said. Quiet. "I'm going to come back for you."

  Madison dropped down beside Michael, pressed her forehead to his once. Just a second. Then she stood up and didn't look back at him. I don't know if that was brave or not. I just know she didn't.

  Madison held the boom pole up.

  Jacob grabbed the door handle.

  "On my go," he said.

  The wall split at the corner. Hands came through the gap. Just hands, reaching, not coordinated, just reaching.

  "Go," Jacob said.

  We shoved the bench aside. The door burst outward. Jacob went through it first.

  Emily and Madison right behind.

  I took one look back at Michael on the floor of the shed. Chest rising. Eyes fixed on nothing.

  Then I ran.

  ***

  We ran toward the blinking.

  That's the thing about red lights now. They mean something different. A week ago a red light was just a red light — low battery, recording, standby. Now my eyes go straight to them. Like the meaning got rewired somewhere between the RV and here.

  The antenna was at the top of the watchtower. Small. Communication dish, maybe. Hard to tell from the ground, hard to tell while running, hard to tell while also trying not to think about what was behind us. But it blinked red and steady up there above the tree line and that was enough. Something to run toward. I'll take it.

  The tower came into view through the last of the pines.

  It was taller than I'd clocked from the trail. Old. The wood had gone grey and the metal had gone rust-orange and the whole thing looked like it'd been standing there long enough to resent you for showing up.

  Two sections to it. The base was a room, small, enclosed, sitting in the middle of the support structure but not touching it — separate, like it had been dropped there and the legs of the tower just grew up around it. Above that, open metal frame all the way up. Platform at the top. Enclosed bay up there, glass on three sides, the antenna above that blinking its steady red into the dark.

  The ladder to get up was inside the base room.

  The base room was locked.

  Jacob tried the door once. Then stepped back and put his elbow through the nearest window.

  Glass came down. He knocked the remaining shards out with his good arm, methodical, not rushing. Like he'd broken windows before and had opinions about the right way to do it.

  "Go," he said.

  Emily went through first. Then Madison. Then Jacob.

  I handed the boom case through before I climbed in. Old habits.

  Inside smelled like dust and old plastic and something chemical underneath. Shelving on one wall. Equipment I didn't recognize. A mounted panel at the back with a missing radio unit. The ladder was beside it at the corner of the room, bolted to the floor, going straight up through a hatch in the ceiling.

  Emily was already scanning the shelving.

  "What are you looking for?" Madison asked.

  "Trauma bag." Emily was pulling things forward, looking behind them. "If this is a firefighting post there'll be one somewhere. Standard kit."

  "Em—"

  "The antenna up there means there's communication equipment. Which means the top room has electronics. Which means if the dissonance is electromagnetic, and maybe radio frequency given the towers—" She stopped, moved to the next shelf. "Thermal blankets. Trauma bags carry them. Rescue standard. They're aluminized. If we can cover the equipment, reduce the signal surface—"

  "That's a big if," Madison said.

  "Everything right now is a big if."

  Jacob and I were already looking. He was using his good arm, pulling things one-handed, not complaining about it. I checked under the shelving, behind a stack of equipment cases, inside a plastic bin that turned out to be full of old rope.

  Madison found it.

  Resting on a shelf beside the locked door we would've come through. Bright orange. Clearly labeled. She pulled it out and it crashed on the floor.

  "Here."

  Emily tried to take it but she almost fell forward. She looked at Jacob. Looked at his arm.

  "I've got it," I said.

  I took the bag from Emily and slung it over my shoulder. Jacob didn't argue. Which told me something about how his arm felt.

  Emily went up the ladder first. Then Madison. Then Jacob, one-handed, slower than usual, not saying anything about it. Then me.

  The hatch at the top opened into the platform bay. Open air. The wind hit immediately.

  Three sides of sliding windows, one door to get inside. From outside, I could see a mounted radio unit on the central console, dark but not dead — a small indicator light on its face glowing a dim, persistent red. Maps on the walls. A pair of binoculars hanging from a hook.

  I dropped the bag on the metal platform. Emily unzipped it and found the blanket almost immediately. Folded flat, aluminized on one side, crinkly the way those things always are.

  She looked at the radio unit. Tried the door. It opened.

  "Em," Madison said.

  "I know."

  "Are you sure—"

  "If I don't touch it directly. If I cover it first and move it out—" She was already unfolding the blanket. "The contact's the issue. Not proximity. I'm not touching it."

  "Okay," Madison said. Not convinced. Just done arguing.

  "Let me do it," I offered.

  "No, Josh," Emily said. "I'm not risking you for my theory."

  Emily opened the platform door, propped it with her foot, and went at the radio unit sideways, blanket held out in front of her like a shield. She draped it over the unit without looking at it directly. Then she worked blind. She lay her hands under the blanket, feeling for the base, disconnecting what she could. The unit came free. She walked it to an open window and dropped it off the platform.

  We heard it hit the support structure somewhere below. Then nothing.

  She stood in the doorway and scanned the room. Checked the corners. Checked the panel.

  "Clear," she said.

  I grabbed the bag.

  We went in.

  The whole thing smelled like old coffee and elevation.

  ____________________________________

  Jacob sat against the wall under the windows and did not stand up again.

  I crouched beside him and unrolled his sleeve.

  The bite was on his bicep. Two separate arcs, upper and lower, the skin broken clean through in the deepest points. The whole area around it had gone dark. Not bruise-dark. Something worse. Swollen and tight, the edges of it pulling in a way that meant the tissue underneath was doing something it shouldn't. When I pressed the gauze against it he didn't make a sound. That was the part I kept coming back to.

  "Hold this," I said.

  He held it.

  I worked through the bag. Gauze. Antiseptic wipes, which were going to be inadequate but were what we had. A compression bandage, which I wrapped over the gauze and tied off at the shoulder. It wasn't good. It was just better than the soaked sleeve he'd been using.

  Madison was at the window. Not watching anything specific. Just standing the way she'd been standing all night. Like she was trying to take up the least possible amount of space in a room.

  "Come here," I said.

  She turned.

  "Your eyebrow."

  She touched it. Her fingers came away with dried blood on them. She crossed the room and sat down across from me without arguing.

  The scrape above her eyebrow was shallow — debris from the fall, mostly. I cleaned it and put a butterfly closure on it and she sat very still the whole time the way people sit still when they're trying not to think about something else.

  "You okay?" I asked.

  She looked at me. First time she'd really looked at me directly all night, maybe all trip.

  "No," she said. Just that.

  "Yeah," I said. "Me neither."

  She turned back to the window. Then, after a moment: "You didn't have to come. You know that, right? Tonight. Any of this. You're not even really — you didn't have to be here."

  "I needed the credit," I said.

  She almost smiled. Not quite.

  Emily had a few scrapes on her palms she got from sprinting through the trees. She held them out hesitantly while I was still putting things back into the bag. I cleaned them quickly. She barely looked at them but was wincing as I went through each one.

  "I keep thinking about that," Madison said from the window. "Who had to be here and who didn't. Who chose it."

  I didn't say anything.

  "Jacob chose it. Emily chose it. Michael chose it." She paused. "Hannah chose it."

  The fire crackled distantly below.

  "I chose it too," Madison said. "I keep trying to make it mean something else but I did. I showed up. I got in the RV."

  "We all got in the RV," I said.

  "Yeah." She looked at Jacob against the wall, eyes closed now, breathing still doing its careful thing. "He's not going to admit it's bad."

  "No."

  "Is it bad?"

  I thought about the compression bandage. The way the skin around it had looked.

  "I don't know," I said, which was true.

  Emily was sitting cross-legged near the console now, the open trauma bag in front of her, going through what was left of it methodically. Cataloguing. Like having a list of what remained was the same as having a plan.

  "Em," Madison said.

  Emily looked up.

  "You were right. About the dissonance. About all of it."

  Emily was quiet for a moment.

  "I... I didn't want to be," she said.

  "I know." Madison turned back to the window."Jake would've turned around if you'd pushed harder."

  "I pushed."

  "I know you did."

  Emily folded a piece of gauze back into the bag. "He doesn't turn around. That's not — that's not a Jake thing. You know that."

  "I know," Madison said again. Softer this time.

  Jacob opened his eyes. He'd been listening. Of course he'd been listening.

  "Say it," he said.

  "Jake—"

  "Say it. You've been not saying it for an hour."

  Madison didn't turn around. "You didn't turn around."

  "No."

  "Hannah's gone because we didn't turn around."

  Jacob closed his eyes again. "Yes."

  The room held that.

  I didn't say anything. That felt right. Some things you don't stick a joke into. I was getting better at knowing which ones.

  Emily was the one who broke it, eventually.

  "She encountered it first," she said quietly. Not to anyone. Just putting it in order. "She would've hated this, you know. All of us being tragic about it."

  Emily wasn't smiling when she said it. But it wasn't not a smile either. She was shaking.

  "She would've made a fire," Madison said. "Somehow. She would've found a way to make a fire and forced us to eat something."

  "She had granola bars in her jacket pocket," Emily said. "She always had granola bars."

  "She always had everything," Madison said quietly. "She was the only one of us who actually knew what she was doing."

  I thought about Hannah on the tent, jamming the stake into the frozen ground. The way she'd fed branches into the fire without anyone looking. The way she'd said we should probably eat something after Michael walked into the trees. Not because she was fine, just because someone had to say it.

  Yeah. She knew what she was doing.

  I looked out the window properly for the first time since we'd climbed up.

  Hargrove Hills was visible from here. Of course it was. That was the whole point of a watchtower — you could see everything from it. The city spread across the valley the way it always spread, familiar and dense, the kind of place that looked like itself from every angle.

  Except it was red.

  Not sunrise red. Not the clean kind. The whole lower district was glowing wrong. It was orange underneath, red on top, the color of something that used to be a building. The fog was doing what fog does, softening the edges, making it look almost pretty if you didn't think about what was burning. Smoke columns rising and bending with the wind.

  "B-roll of the apocalypse, huh," I said.

  The broadcast was hours old. Downtown looked like it had spent those hours catching.

  Madison turned from the window she'd been watching. Found the right direction. Went still.

  Emily looked up from the trauma bag.

  Nobody said anything for a moment.

  "Plaza Garden," Emily said quietly. "That's where that's coming from. The density of it."

  "You don't know that," Madison said.

  "No," Emily said. "I don't."

  Jacob didn't open his eyes. "How bad?"

  I looked at the columns. Counted them without meaning to.

  "Bad," I said.

  He didn't respond to that.

  The fog shifted. The glow pulsed once — something catching somewhere new — and then settled back into its steady, quiet burn.

  "My parents are down there," Madison said. To no one specifically.

  No one answered. Because there was no answer. Because we were up here and they were down there and the road between the two things was the road we'd just come up and none of us were ready to think about that yet.

  I turned back to the room and dropped down to rest.

  I almost fell asleep.

  ***

  Then red streaked the sky again.

  Not the slow kind. A crack, fast and high, and for a second I thought something was falling and then I thought something was rising. It tore across the clouds and the whole mountain lit up like a photograph.

  I didn't know what I was looking at and then I did and that was worse.

  Another flare.

  My eyes scanned past the clearing, past the ridge, past the four mountains between here and there. The fog had thinned enough. The troposcatters were still visible. Two pale coins on a distant hill, dishes tilted at the sky, catching the flare light for just a second.

  Still facing each other. Still pointing at nothing.

  Emily was already at the window when it happened. Her face went the same color the sky did.

  Red scarred the clouds behind her and threw her shadow across the room like a projector clicking on. Long and sudden, crossing the floor, hitting the opposite wall.

  Then dropping down through the gaps in the platform grating.

  Into the ground below.

  We all moved to the windows at once.

  They were already there. Not the same ones from before — more. They'd come from the tree line, from the service road, from wherever the flare's light had pulled them and then the shadow had redirected them. And they were doing what they did, which was pile into each other and escalate and accumulate until the mass of them hit something.

  The something, this time, was the base of the tower.

  The first impact shook the platform. Just slightly. The binoculars swung on their hook.

  The second one was worse.

  I looked down through the grating and saw the support leg — the one on our side, closest to the tree line — and something about the angle it was sitting at was wrong in a way it hadn't been wrong before.

  "It's cracking," I said.

  Emily was already at the door, moving out into the platform bay. "We go down. Now. Opposite side from the impact — when it falls we need to be on the side that goes up, not down. We hit the ground running."

  "When it—" Madison started.

  "When it falls," Emily said. Already through the hatch. "Go. Go."

  We dropped everything. The boom case. The trauma bag. Everything. We just went.

  Emily first. Madison. Jacob, one arm held against his chest, jaw set. Me last.

  The ladder shook on the second descent. The whole frame shook. Below us through the base room's broken window the pile of shapes was thick and dumb and relentless, pressing without meaning to press, and the leg was making a sound now. Low and structural. A sound buildings make when they're telling you something.

  We were halfway down the outer frame, in the open support structure, when the leg gave.

  It didn't fall dramatically. It just leaned. Committed to a direction. And then everything committed with it.

  I grabbed the nearest support bar and held on, and the world went sideways and there was a long moment of just angle — everything at the wrong angle, the tree line where the sky should be, the sky where the ground should be — and then impact.

  We hit.

  I hit.

  The ground came up faster than I expected and slower than I feared and I bounced once off something that wasn't quite dirt and wasn't quite the frame and ended up on my back staring at the sky with all the air knocked out of me and a sound in my ears like a television on a dead channel.

  I lay there for a second.

  Everything hurt in a general, non-specific way that meant probably nothing was broken but tomorrow was going to be a problem.

  I sat up.

  Jacob was on his hands and knees a few feet away, good arm shaking. Madison was already standing, the cut above her eyebrow had opened again. Emily—

  Emily was standing in the middle of the clearing.

  Not with us. Not moving toward us.

  Just standing there, facing the direction the shapes were coming from, the collapsed tower behind her and the fire from the debris catching orange on her face.

  The shapes were regrouping. The fall had scattered them, confused them, too much sudden movement in too many directions at once. But they were recalibrating. The way they always did.

  "Em, what—" Madison said.

  Emily didn't move.

  The fire from the debris spread slightly. Caught a dry patch of leaves. Orange and climbing.

  "Emily!" Jacob, louder.

  She turned slightly. Not toward us. Just — turned. Like she heard something else.

  And then I saw her face.

  Her eyes weren't right.

  Not the full vacancy of Michael. Not gone completely. Something in between. Like a frequency with interference. Like she was still there but the signal was breaking up.

  She was crying.

  Just one tear, actually. Tracking down one side of her face. She didn't seem to know it was happening.

  She said, very quietly:

  "Hannah?"

  Not a question. Not really. More like something her mouth did while the rest of her was somewhere else entirely.

  The shapes grew behind her.

  Madison grabbed my shoulder.

  Jacob grabbed my arm.

  And they pulled.

  I looked back once. Just once.

  Emily standing in the firelight with her head tilted like she was listening. The shapes moving toward the movement she made without knowing she was making it. The tower debris still burning orange behind her and the whole clearing lit up like a set.

  Like a scene.

  Like something Jacob would've filmed.

  Then the trees closed behind us, and I stopped looking back and we ran.

  ***

  We ran until running became something else. A lesser version of itself. More of a fast falling-forward, each step catching the last one before it could become a collapse.

  Jacob was breathing in a way that wasn't about running anymore.

  Madison was talking. I realized she'd been talking for a while.

  "She's still back there," she said.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "We left her."

  "Yeah."

  "We left her and we left Michael and Hannah is—" She stopped. Started again. "The capable ones. That's what keeps happening. The ones who actually know what they're doing."

  "Emily knew what she was doing," I said.

  "That's what I mean." Her voice cracked but held. "Why us? What do we — what am I doing here? I'm an actress in a student film. I cry. That's it. That's the whole thing."

  "You kicked the radio," I panted.

  She didn't say anything.

  "Back there with Michael. Before any of us knew what it was. And in the tent — you came out still holding the boom pole. And when Jacob went down you hit it. The thing that bit him. You hit it."

  "Joshua—"

  "You found the trauma bag," I said.

  She still didn't answer.

  She'd also pulled me out of that clearing. But I left it there.

  Jacob made a sound that wasn't words. He was running on something other than energy at this point. Stubbornness, maybe. Or just the body's refusal to negotiate.

  "Jake," Madison said.

  "I know," he said.

  "You need to—"

  "I know," he said again.

  We kept moving.

  The trees thinned.

  And then the sky did something.

  It went from black to the color that isn't quite either thing yet — not night, not day, just the universe clearing its throat before committing. The horizon line went deep blue and then lighter blue and then at the very edge, just at the edge, a thin line of something orange that had nothing to do with fire.

  Dawn.

  And below it, on the service road where the gravel caught the first of the light:

  The RV.

  Sitting exactly where we'd left it. Ordinary and enormous and absolutely the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life, which is saying something given that I'd spent the last several hours in actual mountains with actual pines and all that other stuff tourists photograph.

  Nobody said anything about it.

  We just walked toward it.

  That felt like enough.

  Until the woods behind started moving again.

  ***

  Jacob pressed the keys into my hand without asking if I could drive.

  I could drive. Barely. My head was doing something wrong — a low hum behind my eyes that I kept waiting to fade and wasn't fading — but I could drive. Probably.

  "Go," he said.

  The RV was thirty meters away across open gravel and the morning was coming in grey and flat and honest and I could see them clearly now in the light. That was the thing about dawn. It showed you exactly what you were dealing with.

  They were people.

  That's what kept hitting me. Even now, running toward the RV with my legs making their own decisions about whether to cooperate, that's the thing that wouldn't settle.

  They were people. Some of them were missing things — an arm, context, whatever used to live behind their eyes — but the shapes were wrong in the specific way that human shapes go wrong. Not monster-wrong. Just broken-wrong. People who'd had the signal crossed somewhere and couldn't find their way back.

  I didn't look at their faces.

  I got to the RV, got the door open, got behind the wheel.

  My hands on the steering wheel felt like someone else's hands on the steering wheel.

  "Come on come on come on—" I wasn't saying that out loud. Or maybe I was.

  The engine caught.

  I pulled out.

  In the side mirror I could see Madison running. Jacob behind her, slower, his good arm pumping. Behind him, the clearing. Movement accumulating at the tree line the way it always did, drawn by the sounds we were making, by the engine, by the morning light throwing shadows everything could chase.

  Madison hit the passenger door and yanked it open and was in before I'd registered she'd arrived. She didn't pull it shut.

  Jacob reached the door.

  The RV was already rolling. Slow, but moving. He grabbed the handle with his good hand and his legs were still running underneath him, matching the speed, and Madison had him by the jacket and was hauling and he got a foot up onto the step and then —

  Too many hands. I couldn't count them in the mirror. Just the jacket pulling the wrong direction and Jacob's grip on the door frame going white and then breaking and Madison still holding on and screaming his name and the door swinging shut with her still holding the handle and Jacob not on the other side of it anymore.

  "Jake—" Her voice cracked open. "Jake! Jake, no—"

  I pulled her side of the door and pressed the pedal further.

  I don't know what else I was supposed to do.

  "Jake!" She was hitting the dashboard. Once. Twice. Not at me. Just at something. "Jake, no — no — he was right there, he was right—"

  She stopped.

  Not because she was done. Just because the sound ran out.

  She pressed her forehead against the passenger window. Her breath fogged the glass and cleared and fogged again.

  I kept driving.

  The gravel under us sounded like static. The service road came fast and the main road faster and the RV handled like a building with opinions about direction but I kept it between the trees and then we were on actual asphalt and the trees were thinning and Hargrove Hills was spread out below us in the morning grey, all its condos and tour bus stops and waffle cone shops and the fog sitting in the valleys exactly the way it always sat.

  Familiar. Repeating. Like nothing had happened here at all.

  Madison was in the passenger seat. The seat that used to be Michael's. Her forehead still against the glass. Her breath still fogging it.

  Neither of us said anything for a while.

  The road wound down the mountain the way it always wound. Like someone had ridden a rollercoaster once and thought yeah, let's do that but with actual vehicles.

  I used to find that funny.

  Madison was looking at the door handle. Just looking at it.

  "Em," Madison said. "She said Hannah's name."

  Her voice was different now. Not the screaming. Something quieter and worse.

  "Yeah."

  "She heard her. Em heard her."

  "I think so."

  "That means Hannah was — that means she was still—" Her breath hitched. "Was she still Hannah? When Emily heard her?"

  "Or Emily has encountered it too," I said. "I don't know which."

  Which was true. I didn't know. I'd been thinking about it since the clearing and I still didn't know and I was fairly sure I was never going to know and that was going to have to be something I carried around for a while.

  She pulled her forehead off the glass. Looked at her own reflection in it for a second. Then looked away.

  "I keep thinking about what you said." Her voice was shaking now, not controlled, just moving fast like if she stopped she'd fall into something. "The radio. Jake. The bag. Michael already had the signal before I kicked it. Jake was already bitten before I hit that thing. And the trauma bag—" She laughed. It wasn't a good laugh. "That's what got Emily to the radio upstairs. That's what—"

  She stopped.

  Put her hand over her mouth.

  Took it away.

  "Why am I still here," she said. Not a question. Just a thing that kept being true.

  I didn't say anything.

  The road curved.

  The static started low.

  I reached for the knob.

  The light blinked red.

  The voice came through before I got there.

  Not the anchor from before. Not calm. Just the word, clipped and wrong, the way it had been on the way up.

  "—move—"

  Static.

  "—move—move—"

  Flatter each time. Less human each time.

  "—move—move—move—"

  Madison found the button and killed it.

  The static got louder.

  The hum that had been sitting behind my eyes since the fall moved forward. Into my ears. Into the space between thinking and doing.

  The road curved again.

  I saw the curve.

  I understood the curve.

  "—move—"

  My hands didn't move.

  The last thing I remember clearly is the guardrail. Yellow. Coming up fast. And Madison saying something I couldn't hear anymore because the hum had taken the sound, all the sound, everything.

  And the tree line on the other side of it.

  Then — angle.

  And then the airbag.

  Just white. Just pressure.

  And then nothing.

  ***

  Dark.

  Then not dark.

  Then something else entirely.

  I don't know what time does now. It stopped working the way it used to. There's movement and there's stillness. The difference between them pulls. That's more or less all there is.

  I remember the road. The guardrail. The angle of things going wrong.

  After that, fragments.

  Waking on cold asphalt. Alone. My body doing what bodies do now apparently, which is get up and move whether you have a reason or not.

  I can't see. Not the way I used to. The mechanism for it had vanished — not dark exactly, just absent. I have a sense of things. Motion. Shape. Proximity. But faces are gone. Color is gone. The specific texture of the world that let you know where you are.

  Gone.

  I can't hear either. Not voices or wind or the small loud birds I never learned the name of. Just a low constant hum that might be the dissonance or might be what's left of me trying to stay on.

  I move through what feels like familiar ground. The service road, maybe. The clearing. I can't confirm it. I just know the terrain in the way you know something you've walked without thinking.

  My hands reach for things sometimes. Not because I tell them to.

  I don't tell them anything anymore. They have their own ideas.

  I keep trying to remember something. A specific thing. It's there, under the hum, partial and dissolving at the edges like something left in water too long.

  I just listened.

  That's the part that comes back most. Not a scene. Not a face. Just that. Standing outside the frame, boom case over my shoulder, holding the stick just outside the shot while everyone else moved through the light. Recording what other people felt and calling that enough.

  I just watched.

  Trees. Poles. Fences. Stones.

  I used to think if you stared out a car window long enough, the world would start repeating itself.

  I move toward motion. I can't help it. Something shifts nearby and the pull starts and my legs go and I follow and I don't choose any of it.

  The movement pulls again.

  My legs go.

  I follow.

  I just listened.

  I just watched.

  Trees. Poles. Fences.

  I used to think—

  My legs go.

  I walk.