Pine Tar in the Deep Woods

The Subaru hit a pothole. My teeth clicked together. The impact rattled up my spine and settled in the base of my skull. It was ninety-two degrees outside. The car's air conditioning had died somewhere past the county line. The air blowing from the vents felt like someone exhaling on my neck.

Stefan kept his hands at ten and two. His knuckles were white. He hated driving on dirt roads. The dust kicked up behind us in a thick, choking cloud that coated the rear window.

"Turn the music up," Barbie said. She was in the back seat. Her legs were draped over Cassie's lap.

"It's distorted," Stefan said.

"I don't care," Barbie said. "I want it loud."

I reached over and cranked the volume dial. The bass rattled the cheap plastic speakers in the doors. It was some aggressive rap track Barbie had queued up. The beat was frantic. It matched the thudding in my temples. We were two days out of high school graduation. The whole trip was supposed to be a reset. A weekend at Blackwood Creek to burn off the anxiety of college applications, student loans, and the heavy, sinking feeling that none of us would be friends in five years.

Cassie kicked Barbie's shins. "Get off me. You're sweating."

"We're all sweating," Barbie said. She didn't move her legs.

"Seriously," Cassie said. "You're sticking to me."

"Both of you shut up," Stefan said. He didn't yell. His voice was flat. Strained. "I can't see the markers."

I looked out the passenger window. The pine trees were dense. The trunks were thick and crusted with gray bark. The needles were a bright, almost artificial green in the summer sun. The shadows underneath them looked thick. Heavy.

"There," I said. I pointed at a wooden post with a faded yellow reflector. "Take the left."

Stefan jerked the wheel. The tires slid on the loose gravel before catching. We bumped down a narrower path. The branches scraped against the side of the car. It sounded like fingernails.

We reached the clearing ten minutes later. The engine idled for a second before Stefan killed it. The sudden quiet was heavy. The music was gone. All that was left was the sound of the engine ticking as it cooled and the relentless drone of cicadas.

We got out. The heat hit me like a physical wall. My t-shirt stuck to my back.

"This is it?" Cassie asked. She dropped her backpack in the dirt. A cloud of brown dust puffed up around her white sneakers.

"This is it," I said.

We unpacked in silence. The routine was familiar, but the energy was wrong. We were all carrying the weight of the last four years. The unspoken dread of September. Stefan pulled the tent poles out. I helped him feed them through the nylon sleeves. The fabric was hot. It smelled like old plastic and dirt.

"We need water," Stefan said. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist.

"I'll go," Barbie said. She grabbed two plastic jugs from the trunk. "Henry, come with."

I didn't want to. My legs felt heavy. But I nodded. We walked away from the car, following the sound of running water. The ground sloped downward. Pine cones crunched under my boots. The air down by the creek was slightly cooler. It smelled damp.

We filled the jugs. The water was clear and freezing. I splashed some on my face. The shock of the cold made my breath hitch.

"Look," Barbie said.

She was pointing downstream. Through the trees, I could see the bright blue nylon of another tent. It was set up in a small depression near the bank.

"Other campers," I said.

"They're messy," Barbie said.

We walked closer. The camp was a disaster. A green Coleman stove sat on a rock. It was still hissing. The small propane tank was attached. The burner was unlit, just leaking gas into the air. The smell was sharp and chemical.

"Hello?" I called out.

Nothing. Just the water over the rocks.

I stepped into the campsite. There were two sleeping bags on the ground. They were unzipped and tangled. One of them was torn. The white stuffing was spilling out into the dirt.

And there were stains. Dark red, almost brown, smeared across the nylon.

My stomach turned over. It wasn't a small spill. It looked like someone had dragged a wet paintbrush across the fabric.

"Henry," Barbie said. Her voice was tight.

She was looking at the ground near the ashes of a dead fire. A phone was lying in the dirt. An iPhone. The screen was completely shattered. Not just cracked. Pulverized. The metal casing was bent.

I stepped toward it. The dirt around the phone was disturbed. Deep gouges in the mud. Like boot prints, but erratic. Scraping.

Something dropped from the pine tree above us.

It hit the ground with a wet thud. I jumped back.

It was a squirrel. But it was wrong. It didn't scurry away. It lay on its side, twitching violently. Its fur was matted with a black, sticky substance. It looked like motor oil.

"Ew," Barbie said. She took a step forward.

"Don't," I said.

She didn't listen. She crouched down. "Is it hurt?"

The squirrel stopped twitching. It rolled onto its feet. Its eyes were milky white. Blind. The jaw snapped open and shut rapidly. A clicking sound.

It lunged.

It was incredibly fast. A blur of matted fur. It launched off the dirt and hit Barbie's hand.

She shrieked. She jerked her arm back. The squirrel held on for a split second, its teeth sinking into the fleshy part of her thumb. Then it fell away, hitting a rock and lying still.

Barbie grabbed her wrist. Blood welled up from the bite. Two deep punctures.

"Jesus," I said. I grabbed her arm.

She pulled away. "It bit me."

"I saw."

"It had rancid vibes," she said. Her face was pale. She was trying to joke, but her breathing was shallow.

"We need to wash that," I said. I looked back at the torn sleeping bags. The red stains. The hissing stove. My chest felt tight. The air suddenly felt too thick to breathe. "We need to go back to our camp. Right now."

Latrine Door

We walked back fast. I kept looking over my shoulder. The woods felt different now. The gaps between the trees looked like hiding spots. Every snap of a twig sounded like a footstep.

When we got back, Stefan had the fire going. Cassie was sitting on a log, scrolling through her phone even though there was zero service.

"Do we have the first aid kit?" I asked.

Stefan looked up. He saw the blood on Barbie's hand. He stood up immediately. "What happened?"

"Squirrel," Barbie said. She was squeezing her thumb. The blood was dripping onto the dirt. "The little freak just jumped at me."

Stefan dug into the plastic bin. He pulled out the white box. He poured peroxide over the bite. Barbie hissed and tried to pull her hand away.

"Hold still," Stefan said. He wiped it with gauze. "That's deep."

"It hurts," she said.

"We should go to an urgent care," Cassie said. She didn't look up from her blank screen. "Rabies is real."

"I'm not driving two hours back down that road for a squirrel bite," Stefan said. He wrapped a bandage tight around her thumb. "We'll clean it again in the morning. If it looks bad, we leave."

Barbie sat down by the fire. She looked shaken. I didn't mention the other campsite. I didn't mention the blood on the sleeping bags or the shattered phone. I didn't want to start a panic. Not yet. I told myself it was probably just a bear tearing up an empty camp. The phone probably got stepped on. It was a rationalization, but I clung to it.

The sun went down. The temperature dropped, but the humidity didn't. The air felt like a wet wool blanket.

We ate hot dogs burnt black over the fire. Nobody talked much. The silence wasn't peaceful. It was strained.

Then the crickets stopped.

It happened all at once. Like a switch being flipped. One second, the woods were deafening with insect noise. The next second, absolute silence.

The first scream came from the east.

It was guttural. It started low, like a cough, and then tore upward into a ragged, human shriek. It didn't sound like pain. It sounded like pure, unhinged rage.

Cassie dropped her hot dog in the dirt.

"What was that?" she whispered.

"Coyote," Stefan said. But his voice cracked.

"That wasn't a coyote," I said. My stomach tightened.

Another scream. Closer this time. And then the sound of heavy boots running through the brush. Crashing through the dry branches.

"Someone's out there," Barbie said. She stood up. She was holding her bandaged hand against her chest.

We all stood. We stared into the dark tree line just beyond the ring of our firelight.

The brush parted. A man stumbled into the light.

He was wearing the khaki uniform of a state park ranger. But the shirt was torn open down the front. He was missing a shoe. He stood at the edge of the light, swaying.

"Hey," Stefan said. "Are you okay?"

The ranger slowly raised his head.

His face was covered in dirt and scratches. But it was his mouth that made me step back. Thick, black fluid was leaking from his lips. It bubbled as he breathed. His eyes were wide, the whites entirely bloodshot.

He opened his mouth. A stream of nonsense words came out. It sounded like English played backward. Harsh consonants and slurred vowels.

He vomited a stream of that black fluid onto the dirt.

Then he looked at Stefan. And he lunged.

He cleared the distance over the fire in one jump. He crashed into Stefan, tackling him to the ground. Stefan yelled. The ranger's hands were clawing at Stefan's face, trying to bite down on his nose.

I moved without thinking. I grabbed the heavy cast-iron skillet from the rocks near the fire. I swung it down hard against the side of the ranger's head.

The impact traveled up my arm. A hollow thud.

The ranger didn't fall unconscious. He just rolled off Stefan and looked at me. He didn't even seem to register the blow. He scrambled toward me on all fours, his teeth snapping.

"Help me!" I yelled.

Stefan kicked out, catching the ranger in the ribs. It knocked him off balance. I dropped the skillet and grabbed the collar of his uniform. The fabric felt greasy.

"The latrine!" Stefan yelled. He scrambled up and grabbed the ranger's legs.

The cinderblock bathroom was twenty yards away. We dragged him. The ranger kicked and thrashed. He bit at the air. The black fluid sprayed across my jeans. It smelled like rotten meat and sulfur.

We reached the concrete pad. Cassie was already there, holding the heavy metal door open. She was shaking violently.

We threw the ranger inside. He hit the concrete floor hard.

I slammed the door shut.

"Lock it!" Stefan screamed.

I threw the exterior deadbolt.

Immediately, a massive impact hit the other side of the door. The metal rattled in its frame. Then another. And another. The ranger was throwing his entire body weight against the steel.

Over the pounding, he started screaming again. That same ragged, tearing sound.

I backed away from the door. I looked at my hands. They were covered in dirt and smears of black liquid.

"What is wrong with him?" Cassie sobbed. She was hugging her knees.

I looked at Stefan. He was bleeding from a scratch on his cheek.

"We have to leave," I said. "Right now."

Black Veins

We ran back to the campsite. The fire had burned down to embers. The shadows were longer now.

"Grab the keys," Stefan said. He was panting. He wiped the blood off his cheek with the back of his hand. "Just the keys and the flashlights. Leave everything else."

I grabbed my heavy flashlight. The metal casing felt reassuring in my hand.

"Barbie, come on," Cassie said.

Barbie was standing perfectly still next to the tent. Her back was to us.

"Barbs?" I said.

She slowly turned around. The ambient light from the embers caught her face. She looked awful. Her skin was a pale, waxy yellow. Sweat was pouring down her forehead, plastering her blonde hair to her cheeks.

She held up her bandaged hand.

"It burns," she said. Her voice was raspy.

The white gauze was stained. But it wasn't red blood. It was black.

Stefan stepped toward her. "Let me see."

He peeled the tape back. The bandage fell away. I felt my stomach drop. The two puncture wounds from the squirrel bite were completely black. Not bruised black. Necrotic black. And from the wounds, dark, jagged lines were traveling up her wrist, following the veins under her skin. They looked like roots spreading under the surface.

"Oh my god," Cassie whispered.

Barbie looked at the veins. Then she looked at Cassie. Her expression shifted. The fear vanished, replaced by a tight, ugly sneer.

"Stop looking at me like that," Barbie snapped.

"I'm just—"

"You're always looking at me like I'm stupid," Barbie said. Her words were coming too fast. They were slurred at the edges. "You think I don't know? You think I didn't know you slept with Mike after prom?"

Cassie froze. "What?"

"I know everything," Barbie said. She took a step toward Cassie. Her movements were jerky. Uncoordinated. "You're pathetic."

"Barbie, stop," I said. I reached out to touch her shoulder.

She slapped my hand away. The hit stung. She was incredibly strong.

"Don't touch me!" she yelled. Spittle flew from her lips. It was tinged with black.

"She's sick," Stefan said. He looked panicked. "The squirrel. Whatever that ranger had, she has it."

"I'm fine!" Barbie screamed. She grabbed her head with both hands. "It's just hot. Why is it so hot?"

"We need to get her to the car," I said.

Stefan grabbed her left arm. I grabbed her right. She fought us for a second, then suddenly went limp. Her head rolled forward.

"Let's go," Stefan said.

We half-carried, half-dragged her away from the camp. We headed back up the dirt path toward the main trail where the car was parked. The flashlights cut narrow beams through the dark. The trees looked identical in the artificial light.

The hike felt endless. The humidity was oppressive. Barbie was heavy between us. She kept muttering under her breath. Angry, fragmented sentences. Old grievances. Childhood slights. The infection was tearing through her brain, stripping away every filter, leaving only raw, paranoid rage.

We walked for twenty minutes. The path started to widen. The smell hit me first.

It smelled like a butcher shop left out in the sun. Raw copper and ruptured bowels.

"Stop," I whispered.

Stefan stopped. We held Barbie upright.

I shined my light down the trail. About fifty yards ahead, the path opened into a wide clearing where the main hiking trail intersected.

There was a massive, dark shape in the middle of the trail.

I moved the beam up. It was a grizzly bear. It was lying on its side.

But it wasn't alone.

There were people clustered around it. Four of them. They were wearing high-end hiking gear. Gore-Tex jackets and expensive boots.

They were tearing the bear apart.

I couldn't process what I was seeing. They weren't using knives. They were using their hands. Their teeth. The sound was horrific. Wet ripping sounds. The snapping of heavy cartilage. One of the hikers, a woman with a gray ponytail, pulled a long strip of muscle from the bear's flank and shoved it into her mouth. Her face was smeared with black bile and dark red blood.

Cassie put a hand over her mouth to stop a scream.

One of the hikers stopped. A man in a blue vest. He turned his head slowly. His eyes caught the beam of my flashlight. They reflected the light like an animal's eyes. Flat and yellow.

He dropped a piece of bone. He stood up.

He let out that same guttural, tearing scream the ranger had made.

The other three stopped eating. They stood up. They all looked at us.

"Run," Stefan said.

We turned around. We didn't care about being quiet anymore. We ran back the way we came, dragging Barbie with us, the sounds of heavy, sprinting footsteps echoing in the dark behind us.

The Asphalt Line

We couldn't outrun them on the main trail. They were too fast.

"The ravine!" I yelled.

I pointed my flashlight to the left. The ground dropped away sharply into a steep, muddy gully that cut through the woods. It was dangerous, but it was the only way off the path.

We scrambled down the bank. The mud was slick. Pine needles acted like ice. I lost my footing and slid on my back, tearing my jeans on a sharp rock. Stefan was trying to hold onto Barbie, but she was fighting him now.

"Let go of me!" she snarled.

We hit the bottom of the ravine. It was completely dark down here. The canopy blocked out the moonlight.

Stefan landed hard. I heard a wet snap.

He cried out and fell into the mud, grabbing his right ankle.

"Get up," I said, grabbing his shirt.

"I can't," he gasped. "It's broken."

I looked up the bank. I could hear them crashing through the brush above us. Searching. The low, guttural breathing.

I looked at Barbie. She was standing over Stefan.

The flashlight beam hit her face. The change was complete. The black veins had crawled up her neck and covered her cheeks like a spiderweb. Her eyes were completely bloodshot. Black fluid leaked from her nose and mouth.

She looked down at Stefan. She didn't see her friend. She saw meat.

She threw herself onto him.

Stefan screamed. He put his arm up to block her face. Barbie's jaw unhinged slightly, and she bit down hard into the meat of his shoulder.

The sound of his flesh tearing broke something inside my head.

It wasn't a movie. It wasn't a story. It was happening right in front of me. The girl I had known since second grade. The girl who taught me how to drive. She was eating the boy I loved.

I reached down to my belt loop. I unclipped the small steel camp hatchet I had carried for firewood.

I didn't think. If I thought about it, I wouldn't do it.

I stepped forward, raised the hatchet high over my head, and brought the blunt hammer-side of the blade down onto the back of Barbie's skull.

The impact was sickening. A hollow crunch of bone.

She instantly went limp. She collapsed off Stefan, falling into the mud.

I stood there. My chest was heaving. The hatchet felt incredibly heavy in my hand. I looked down at her blonde hair in the dirt. I had just killed my best friend. The realization washed over me, cold and paralyzing. My childhood was over. The person I was yesterday was dead.

"Henry," Cassie whispered. She was pressed against a dirt wall, staring at me in absolute horror.

"Help me get him up," I said. My voice didn't sound like my own. It was completely dead.

We hauled Stefan to his feet. He was sobbing, clutching his bleeding shoulder. We pushed forward, wading through the thick mud of the ravine.

We walked for hours. The adrenaline burned out, leaving nothing but a hollow, vibrating exhaustion. The sky began to turn pale gray. The summer morning was breaking. The heat was already returning.

The trees started to thin. The ground leveled out.

Through the leaves, I saw a straight line of gray.

"The highway," Cassie breathed.

We pushed through the final line of brush and stumbled out onto the grassy shoulder of Interstate 90. The asphalt was warm under the morning sun.

I felt a surge of pure relief. We made it.

Then I saw the trucks.

Three massive, olive-green military Humvees were parked sideways across the lanes, blocking the road entirely. Behind them, heavy concrete barricades had been dropped onto the asphalt.

Men in black tactical gear and gas masks stood behind the barricades. They were holding assault rifles.

"Hey!" Cassie yelled. She waved her arms, stepping onto the pavement. "Help us!"

One of the soldiers raised a megaphone.

"RETURN TO THE CONTAINMENT ZONE," the mechanical voice boomed.

Cassie froze. "What? No, we need a hospital!"

She took another step forward.

The crack of the rifle was deafening.

The bullet hit the asphalt inches from Cassie's foot, sending up a spray of rock and dust. She shrieked and fell backward.

"RETURN TO THE CONTAINMENT ZONE," the voice repeated.

I looked at the soldiers. I looked at the barricades. They weren't here to rescue us. They were here to keep whatever was in those woods from getting out. And we were in the woods.

Stefan leaned heavily against me. He groaned, and I saw a black vein slowly crawling out from under his blood-soaked collar.

The soldier racked the bolt of his rifle.

The bullet shredded the bark inches from my face, and I pulled Stefan back into the green rot of the woods, realizing they were never going to let us out.