Bankrupt in the Moss

The heat was a physical weight pushing down on my shoulders. June first in the Appalachians felt like breathing through a wet wool blanket. I shifted the eighty-pound pack higher on my back, the nylon straps cutting into my collarbones. Inside the main compartment were six Anker power banks wrapped in a trash bag, a dozen emergency protein bars, and a carton of cigarettes. None of it was supposed to be here.

"Keep the lens up," Jared said. He was walking backward up the incline. His face was flushed, slick with sweat. "You're dropping the frame, Mateo. Get my boots in the shot."

"The ground is slipping," I said. My calves burned. The mud under my boots was thick and smelled of rotting wood. "I can't watch the viewfinder and my feet at the same time."

"Figure it out," he snapped. He turned to the lens, immediately plastering on a wide, manic grin. His voice dropped an octave, hitting that fake gravelly tone he used for his streams. "Day one, guys. Total isolation. No tech. No backup. Just me, the wild, and seven days to prove who I am. If things go bad out here, nobody is coming to save me."

He cut the gesture short and dropped his hand. His smile vanished instantly. "Did you get that?"

"I got it," I said. I lowered the heavy camera rig. My arms were trembling. "Can we stop? Cassie is falling behind."

I looked back down the trail. The path was barely a deer trail, overgrown with thick briars and massive ferns. Cassie was leaning against a damp oak trunk, her chest heaving. She had a smaller pack, but it was loaded with the heavy lithium drone batteries. Her face was pale beneath a layer of dirt and sweat.

"Cassie, move up," Jared yelled down the hill. "We need to hit the clearing before the sun drops. The algorithm is punishing me right now. If we don't get this uploaded by tomorrow night, the channel is dead. Dead, you hear me?"

"I need water," Cassie said. Her voice was thin. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing a streak of black dirt across her pale skin. "My water bottle is empty."

"Drink from the stream when we find one," Jared said. "That's the whole point of the raw survival tag. Authentic struggle."

"We brought three gallons of filtered water," I said. "It's in my pack."

"That's for later," Jared said. He turned away and started hiking again. "Come on. The engagement metrics are in the toilet. We need suffering. We need real pain on camera."

I gritted my teeth. My jaw ached from clenching it. I wanted to drop the camera right there in the mud and walk back to the truck. But Jared was paying me double my usual rate, and the rent was due in four days. I needed the cash. I adjusted the straps again, feeling a fresh blister forming on my left heel.

We pushed through a dense thicket of rhododendrons. The broad, waxy leaves slapped against my face. The branches were thick and stubborn, catching on my clothes. It felt like the bushes were actively pulling back, trying to keep us out. Every step was a fight against the vegetation.

The air grew stagnant. The bugs were relentless. Gnats swarmed my eyes and nose. I kept my mouth shut to avoid swallowing them. My shirt was plastered to my back, soaked through with sweat. My knees popped loudly in the heavy silence of the woods.

"Here," Jared said. He stopped abruptly.

I nearly crashed into him. We had broken through the thicket into a small, circular clearing. The trees surrounding it were massive, their trunks thick with pale green lichen. The canopy overhead was so dense it blocked out the sky, plunging the clearing into a dim, green twilight.

"Set up camp here," Jared said. He dropped his prop pack—the one that only had a lightweight sleeping bag and some empty canteens to look good on camera. He pulled a cheap machete from his belt. He had bought it at a gas station two hours ago.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Creating a backdrop," he said. He walked over to a cluster of young, vibrant saplings at the edge of the clearing. He swung the machete. The dull blade bit into the thin trunk of a sapling with a wet thud. He cursed, yanked the blade free, and hacked again.

"Stop," Cassie said. She had just stumbled into the clearing. She dropped her pack with a heavy thud. "You don't need to cut those down. There's plenty of dead wood on the ground."

"Dead wood looks like crap on camera," Jared said. He swung again. The sapling cracked and folded over. Thick, milky sap oozed from the wound. It dripped onto the dead leaves below. "I need a structure. A lean-to. It has to look like I built it with my bare hands to survive."

He moved to the next sapling and started hacking. The sound was loud and jarring in the quiet woods. It echoed off the massive trunks. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

I wiped my forehead. My stomach turned over. There was something wrong with this place. The air was too still. No birds were singing. The only sound was Jared's heavy breathing and the brutal impact of cheap steel on living wood.

I set the camera rig down on a flat rock. My hands were shaking. I unzipped the top pocket of my pack and pulled out a water bottle. I tossed it to Cassie. She caught it clumsily, her fingers clumsy from fatigue. She unscrewed the cap and drank greedily, water spilling down her chin.

"Don't let him see you drinking that," I said quietly.

"I don't care," Cassie said. She wiped her mouth. Her eyes were bloodshot. "I hate him right now. I really do."

"Just get through the night," I said. "We shoot the drone footage, get the B-roll, and we hike out in the morning. He can pretend he was out here for a week."

Jared dragged three hacked saplings to the center of the clearing. The milky sap was smeared all over his hands and forearms. He looked at us, his eyes wide and frantic.

"Get the camera," he demanded. "I want a time-lapse of me building this. Mateo, set up the wide angle."

I sighed heavily. I picked up the camera. The metal casing was warm. The battery indicator blinked red.

"Battery is low," I said. "I need to swap it."

"Do it fast," Jared snapped. "We are losing the light."

I unzipped the main compartment of my pack. I reached past the heavy Anker power banks. My hand brushed against the satellite phone. It was our only real lifeline. We were twenty miles from the nearest cell tower. The woods here were restricted. No rangers patrolled this deep. If someone broke a leg, that thick plastic brick was the only way out.

I grabbed a fresh camera battery and slotted it into the rig. The screen flickered to life. I pointed it at Jared.

"Rolling," I said.

Jared immediately dropped to his knees. He began snapping branches with exaggerated effort, grunting loudly for the microphone. He wiped mud across his face. He looked ridiculous. A grown man playing pretend in the dirt for strangers on a screen.

I watched the timecode tick up on the monitor. The green light in the clearing was getting darker. The shadows stretched out, long and distorted. I looked at the sap oozing from the cut stumps. It looked thick. Too thick. It pooled on the dirt, slow and deliberate.

My chest felt tight. I rolled my shoulders, trying to shake the feeling of being watched. I checked the audio levels. They were peaking strangely. A low, rhythmic static was bleeding into the microphone feed.

"Are you getting interference?" I asked Cassie.

She looked up from her bag. She had the drone remote in her hands. "No. Why?"

"Audio is buzzing," I said. I tapped the side of the receiver. The buzzing didn't stop. It sounded like a hive of bees buried under the dirt.

"Just ignore it," Jared yelled over his shoulder. "Fix it in post. Keep the focus tight on my hands."

I zoomed in on his hands. They were covered in dirt and green sap. The sap was drying fast, turning into a hard, crusty shell over his skin. He didn't seem to notice. He just kept working, desperate to build a fake shelter before the sun completely vanished.

The heat did not break. The sun dipped below the tree line, but the air remained thick and suffocating. The darkness fell fast. It didn't creep in. It slammed down on us like a lid on a box.

Rotors and Blood

We sat around a small, smokeless fire. Jared had demanded a fire, but the wood was too green. It just smoldered, throwing off a harsh, bitter smoke that stung my throat. I chewed on a protein bar. It tasted like sawdust and ash.

Cassie was messing with the drone. It was a massive, eight-rotor rig we used for cinematic overheads. It cost more than my car. She was plugging in one of the smuggled lithium batteries.

"I want the drone up now," Jared said. He was pacing around the fire. His boots crunched on the dry leaves. "I want a shot looking straight down through the trees. Make it look claustrophobic."

"It's pitch black," Cassie said. "The camera won't pick up anything but darkness."

"Use the thermal filter," Jared argued. "It will look sick. Like I'm being hunted. The viewers eat that up."

"I can't fly this thing blind in thick trees," Cassie said. She set the remote down on a log. "I'll crash it into a branch. We'll lose the rig."

"I don't care," Jared yelled. He stepped forward, his face flushed red in the dim firelight. "I'm paying for it. Put it in the air."

Cassie glared at him. Her jaw tightened. She picked up the remote. "Fine. If it breaks, it's on you."

She flipped the power switch on the remote. The screen lit up, casting a harsh blue glow across her face. The drone, sitting five feet away in the dirt, beeped loudly. The rotors twitched.

Then, the humming started.

It wasn't the normal high-pitched whine of the drone powering up. It was a deep, resonant vibration. It felt like it was coming from the ground beneath us. My boots vibrated. I looked down at the dirt.

"Did you start the motors?" I asked.

"No," Cassie said. Her voice was confused. She tapped the screen. "The app is frozen. I don't have control."

The drone's lights flashed red. All eight rotors spun to life simultaneously. The wash of air kicked up dirt and dead leaves, blowing them into the fire. The embers flared up.

"Shut it down," Jared said, shielding his eyes from the flying debris.

"I can't," Cassie yelled over the noise. "The remote is dead. The screen is black."

The drone lifted off the ground. It didn't hover smoothly. It jerked upward, snapping violently to the left. It hovered ten feet in the air, the red lights blinking rapidly. The sound of the blades cutting the air was deafening.

"Grab it," Jared shouted at me.

"Are you crazy?" I stepped back. "Those carbon blades will take my fingers off."

The drone tilted forward. It didn't aim for the sky. It aimed for Cassie.

It shot forward like a bullet. Cassie screamed and threw her arms up. The drone slammed into her face. The impact sounded like a baseball bat hitting a pumpkin. The heavy plastic chassis cracked against her skull. The spinning blades tore into her arms and face.

She went down hard, tumbling backward over the log. The drone hit the dirt beside her, the motors screaming as the blades dug into the mud and snapped.

I rushed forward. My heart hammered in my chest. I fell to my knees beside her.

"Cassie," I yelled.

She was thrashing on the ground. Her hands were clamped over her right eye. Dark blood was pouring through her fingers, running down her neck and soaking into her collar. She was making a horrible, wet gasping sound.

"Get it off me," she shrieked.

The drone was dead in the dirt, but the motors were still smoking. The smell of burning plastic filled the air.

Jared ran over. He didn't look at Cassie. He looked at the shattered drone.

"Are you kidding me?" Jared screamed. He kicked the broken plastic frame. "That was ten grand. Ten grand."

I grabbed his shirt and shoved him back. "Shut up. She's bleeding."

I pulled Cassie's hands away from her face. My stomach dropped. The drone blade had sliced deep across her cheek and right across her eyelid. The cut was jagged and deep. Blood was everywhere. It was in her hair, on her clothes.

"I need the medical kit," I yelled. "Jared, get the kit from my bag."

Jared just stood there, staring at the drone. His chest was heaving. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his personal phone. The one he swore to his audience he left at home. He turned on the flashlight and pointed it at Cassie's face.

"Holy crap," Jared whispered. He raised the phone higher. He tapped the screen. He was recording.

"What are you doing?" I yelled. "Put that away and get the kit."

"This is it," Jared said. His voice was breathless. Frantic. "This is the viral moment. Real blood. Real injury. The drone went rogue. This will literally break the internet."

I stood up. My fists clenched. I hit him.

I didn't think about it. I just threw a right cross straight into his jaw. The impact sent a shockwave up my arm. Jared stumbled backward, dropping his phone in the dirt. He fell hard onto his back.

"Get the sat phone," I said. My breathing was ragged. "We need an airlift. Now."

Jared scrambled back, rubbing his jaw. He looked at me with pure hatred. "No. We aren't calling anyone. If we call a chopper, the stream is over. I lose everything."

"She's losing her eye," I screamed.

I turned and ran to my heavy pack. I ripped the zipper open. I tore through the clothes, the heavy Anker batteries, the protein bars. I found the thick yellow plastic of the satellite phone. I pulled it out.

Jared slammed into me from behind.

We fell into the mud. The heavy pack tipped over, spilling gear everywhere. Jared was on top of me, his hands grabbing for the phone. I twisted my body, driving my elbow into his ribs. He grunted but didn't let go.

"Give it to me," Jared snarled. He punched me in the side of the head. My ear rang violently.

I kicked out, catching him in the knee. He fell off me. The yellow sat phone slipped from my sweaty fingers. It hit the dirt three feet away.

I scrambled toward it. Jared grabbed my ankle and pulled. I fell flat on my face. The mud coated my tongue. I spit it out, kicking backward until Jared let go.

I reached for the phone.

My hand stopped inches from the plastic casing.

The ground was moving.

The pale green moss that covered the dirt around the phone was no longer flat. It was growing. Visibly. Rapidly. Thick, fuzzy green tendrils were sprouting upward, wrapping around the yellow plastic.

"What is that?" I whispered.

I watched in horror as the moss surged over the keypad. It didn't just cover the phone. It was eating it. The thick plastic casing bubbled and melted where the green tendrils touched it. A hiss of escaping gas sounded as the moss breached the battery compartment.

I reached out, desperate. I grabbed the edge of the phone.

Pain lanced up my arm. The moss touched my skin. It felt like grabbing a hot stove. I yanked my hand back. The skin on my index finger was blistered and red.

In less than ten seconds, the satellite phone was gone. The moss flattened out, perfectly smooth, leaving no trace that a piece of technology had ever been there.

Jared crawled up beside me. He stared at the empty patch of moss. His mouth was open.

"Where did it go?" he asked.

I looked at my blistered finger. I looked at the heavy Anker batteries scattered on the ground from my spilled pack. The moss was reaching for them, too. The green tendrils stretched out, wrapping around the black plastic bricks.

"We need to run," I said.

The Canopy Closes

The first drop of rain hit the back of my neck. It felt like ice.

I looked up. There was no sky. Only the oppressive canopy of leaves. A second drop hit. Then a dozen. Then the sky ripped open.

The rain didn't fall; it crashed down. Heavy, solid sheets of water hammered the forest floor. The noise was absolute. The fire died instantly with a sharp hiss. Complete darkness slammed into the clearing.

"Grab Cassie," I screamed over the roar of the rain.

I couldn't see Jared. I blindly reached out in the dark, my hands slipping on the wet mud. I found Cassie's shoulder. She was still on the ground, shivering violently. Her clothes were instantly soaked.

"Stand up," I yelled, hauling her to her feet. She leaned heavily against me. She was whimpering, a high, thin sound that cut right through my chest.

Lightning flashed.

For a fraction of a second, the clearing was illuminated in stark, blinding white. I saw our gear. The Anker batteries were gone, consumed by the swelling green moss. The camera rig was sinking into the dirt, the lens shattering under the pressure of thick vines wrapping around the casing.

And I saw Jared.

He was standing at the edge of the clearing, facing the deep woods. His head was tilted back. He wasn't looking at us. He was staring into the trees.

"Jared," I screamed.

The darkness snapped back. Thunder detonated directly overhead. The ground shook violently.

"My eye burns," Cassie sobbed against my chest. "It burns so bad, Mateo."

"Keep it covered," I said. I pulled my wet shirt up and pressed it against her face. "We have to move. The ground is eating the gear."

I put my arm around her waist and dragged her forward. I didn't know which direction the trail was. The rain was too thick. The mud was instantly ankle-deep, sucking at my boots with every step.

We pushed blindly into the trees. The vegetation tore at my clothes. Thorns slashed across my forearms, leaving stinging lines of fire.

That was when the noise started.

It wasn't thunder. It wasn't the wind. It was coming from the deep woods, echoing off the massive trunks.

"Oh no," a voice sang. "Oh no."

I stopped dead. My blood ran cold. It was the distorted, slowed-down audio from a viral TikTok trend. The pitch was warped, mechanical, and horrifyingly loud. It boomed through the rain, bouncing off the trees so I couldn't tell where it was coming from.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no no no no no."

The sound was massive. It vibrated in my teeth.

"Who is out there?" Cassie cried. She gripped my arm, her nails digging into my skin. "Mateo, who is singing that?"

"Nobody," I said. My voice shook. "It's just an echo. Jared must have a speaker. He's messing with us."

But I knew it was a lie. Jared didn't have a speaker. And no speaker could produce a sound that massive. It sounded like the forest itself was mocking us.

"Jared," I roared into the dark. "Stop it."

The audio shifted. It seamlessly blended into a different sound. The aggressive, synthetic bass drop of a popular gaming stream. The bass hit so hard the leaves on the trees vibrated against my skin.

We kept moving. We had to. The mud was rising. I could feel the moss creeping up the sides of my boots, hungry for the synthetic rubber. I kicked my feet hard with every step, tearing the tendrils away.

"Look up," Cassie gasped.

The rain had slowed to a heavy drizzle. The clouds above seemed to part slightly, revealing a few pale stars. But as I watched, the stars began to vanish.

Not from clouds. From the trees.

The massive branches overhead were moving. They weren't swaying in the wind. They were reaching out, stretching across the gaps in the canopy. Thick limbs twisted and interlocked with one another. I heard the sharp, agonizing crack of wood bending unnaturally. The branches wove together like giant, wooden fingers, sealing off the sky entirely.

The green tunnel was complete. We were trapped inside a cage of living wood.

"They closed us in," Cassie whispered. Her one good eye was wide, reflecting the faint, unnatural bioluminescence that began to seep from the moss on the trunks. A sickly green glow illuminated the woods.

"Keep walking," I said. My pulse pounded in my ears. I felt dizzy. The air was turning toxic, smelling of ozone and crushed batteries.

We stumbled down a steep embankment. My boots slid out from under me. We tumbled down the slick mud, crashing through a thick patch of ferns. I hit the bottom hard, jarring my shoulder. Cassie landed beside me with a groan.

I sat up, wiping mud from my eyes. The sickly green glow was brighter here.

In the center of the depression stood a figure.

It was Jared.

He was facing away from us. His clothes were torn to shreds. His posture was wrong. He was hunched over, his shoulders twitching violently in a jerky, rhythmic motion.

"Jared," I called out. My voice was raspy.

He didn't turn around. But he spoke.

"Metrics are dropping," Jared said. His voice was entirely wrong. It sounded like it was being played through a blown-out speaker. Static crackled beneath his words. "Zero viewers. Total collapse. The algorithm hates me. Must optimize. Must integrate."

"Jared, what are you talking about?" I stood up, pulling Cassie with me. "We need to leave."

Jared turned around.

Cassie screamed. It was a raw, jagged sound that tore her throat.

I stepped back, my mind refusing to process what I was seeing.

Jared's face was gone.

The broken pieces of the drone—the jagged plastic, the shattered carbon blades, the exposed wires—were embedded into his flesh. A cracked camera lens was shoved deep into his left eye socket. Thick, pulsing green vines wrapped around his neck, weaving in and out of his skin like stitches. The vines connected to the drone battery, which was fused directly to his chest.

His jaw hung open. Milky green sap dripped from his teeth.

"Must upload," Jared broadcasted. The sound came from his mouth, but his lips didn't move. "Content is king."

He raised his arm. A jagged piece of a drone rotor was fused to his forearm, extending past his hand like a blade.

He lunged at us.

Synthetic Blood

I shoved Cassie hard to the right.

Jared missed us by inches. The rotor blade fused to his arm slashed through the air, burying deep into the trunk of a massive oak. The wood splintered. Jared pulled back, tearing a massive chunk of bark away with effortless, mechanical strength.

He turned his head toward me. The cracked camera lens in his eye socket whirred, attempting to focus. A red recording light blinked sluggishly on his cheek.

"Zero point zero one percent engagement," Jared's voice buzzed. It sounded like a corrupted audio file. "Terminate underperforming assets."

"Run," I yelled at Cassie.

I didn't wait to see if she obeyed. I grabbed a heavy, dead branch from the mud and swung it with everything I had. The thick wood cracked against the side of Jared's head. The impact jarred my wrists.

Jared barely flinched. The branch shattered into pieces. He backhanded me with his free arm. The blow caught me in the chest. I flew backward, hitting the mud hard. The wind was entirely knocked out of me. I gasped, tasting copper in the back of my throat.

Jared stepped toward me. The green vines pulsing in his neck glowed brighter. He raised the rotor blade.

"Hey," Cassie screamed.

Jared stopped. The lens in his head violently clicked as he locked onto her.

Cassie was standing near the edge of a deep ravine. I could hear the roar of water far below. She raised her left arm. Strapped to her wrist was a wildly expensive, top-tier smartwatch. The screen was glowing brightly in the dark.

"You want tech?" Cassie yelled. Her voice was ragged, desperate. Blood still coated the right side of her face. "You want batteries? Go fetch."

She ripped the watch off her wrist. She threw it as hard as she could over the edge of the ravine.

The watch arched through the air, a tiny, glowing speck of lithium and glass falling into the dark abyss.

Jared's head tracked the movement. The red light on his face blinked frantically. A horrifying sound erupted from his throat—a string of harsh, screeching binary static. It sounded like an old dial-up modem being fed through a wood chipper.

He ignored me completely. He sprinted toward the ravine, his movements completely unnatural, his limbs jerking like a stop-motion puppet. He didn't even slow down at the edge. He threw himself off the cliff, diving into the darkness after the glowing screen.

I heard him crash through the branches below. Then, silence.

I lay in the mud for three seconds, trying to force air back into my lungs. My chest burned. I rolled onto my hands and knees and forced myself to stand.

"Cassie," I coughed.

She ran to me. We didn't say a word. I grabbed her hand, and we ran.

We pushed blindly through the forest. The bioluminescence faded behind us, plunging us back into the suffocating dark. We hit a wall of thorn bushes. The briars were thick as rope, lined with thorns the size of nails.

We didn't stop. We hit the thicket at a dead sprint.

The thorns tore through our clothes. They slashed my arms, my face, my chest. I felt my synthetic nylon shirt snag on a branch. The fabric didn't just rip; it melted. The forest was reacting to the artificial material. The thorns secreted a clear acid that dissolved the nylon, burning my skin underneath.

I ripped the shirt off entirely, leaving it hanging on the branches. I ran bare-chested through the razor wire of the woods, blood pouring down my ribs. Cassie was right beside me, sobbing with every step, her hands slick with her own blood.

My boots felt incredibly heavy. The rubber soles were dissolving. The moss was eating them right off my feet. I kicked my right boot off, then my left. I ran in my socks. Then my socks melted away.

Bare feet on sharp rocks. Mud. Broken branches. The pain was absolute. It filled my entire world.

I heard a sound behind us.

The dial-up screech. It was distant, but it was moving fast. Jared—or whatever the forest had turned him into—was climbing back up the ravine.

"Faster," I gasped.

My lungs felt like they were bleeding. My vision tunneled. I couldn't see anything but the dark shapes of the trees ahead. We were going to die in here. The ground was going to swallow us, digest our phones, our zippers, our shoes, and leave our bones in the dirt.

Then, the ground leveled out.

The trees suddenly stopped. We burst through a final row of ferns and stumbled forward.

My bare feet hit something hard. Smooth. Hot.

Asphalt.

I collapsed onto my knees. The rough texture of the paved highway scraped against my bloody skin. It smelled of tar and old rain. It was the most beautiful smell in the world.

Cassie fell beside me, rolling onto her back. She stared up at the sky. There were no branches blocking the stars here. The moon hung low and bright over the empty two-lane road.

We had made it out of the restricted zone.

I lay on the hot asphalt, my chest heaving, blood pooling beneath my knees. I looked back at the tree line. The trees stood like a solid black wall. They didn't move. They didn't reach for us.

Deep in the dark woods, a single red light blinked. It hovered for a moment among the leaves, staring out at the road. Then, a low, distorted voice drifted out from the trees, echoing softly over the blacktop.

"Don't forget to like and subscribe."