A Breath Held in a Rotting Season

Tom’s boot sank a little into the soft, decaying loam, the thick mud sucking at the worn leather. He pulled it free with a soft *schlorp*, the sound too loud in the oppressive quiet. His eyes, perpetually narrowed against the weak sunlight, scanned the skeletal birches and the hunched, dark evergreens that crowded the path ahead. Every rustle of dry leaves felt less like the wind and more like a warning.

Beside him, Ben’s breath plumed out in ragged puffs, white against the muted greens and browns. Ben was a silhouette of caution, his head angled, listening. He carried the battered Geiger counter, its grey casing streaked with dirt and some unknown, crusty residue. The device, usually a constant, low thrum, was silent now, its needle resting at a deceptively calm zero. They both knew better than to trust a zero.

“Still nothing?” Tom asked, his voice raspy, barely above a whisper. He cleared his throat, the dryness persistent. The wind, when it gusted, carried more than just cold; it carried a memory of metallic dust, a shudder in the stomach whenever a water droplet hit skin.

Ben grunted, adjusting the strap of his pack. His fingers, calloused and thick, tapped against the counter’s screen. “Means nothing. Could be the battery’s done. Or it’s just lying to us. Like everything else.” A humourless chuckle hitched in his throat, dissolving into a dry cough.

Tom kicked at a loose stone, sending it skittering into a puddle of stagnant, rust-coloured water. The glint on the surface was a lie, a thin, oily sheen over currents that hummed with a different kind of life, one that ate at the bone. He thought of his sister, her constant cough, the doctor’s blank face. He thought of the taste of un-recycled water, a long-ago, almost forgotten taste. Guilt, a cold knot, tightened in his gut.

“What’s ‘clear enough’ even mean anymore, right?” Ben murmured, more to himself than Tom. He squinted at the grey sky, then back at the trees, his gaze lingering on the thicker patches of spruce, where shadows pooled like spilled ink. “The readings near the old river bend… they’re getting worse. Even the official ones. If you believe ‘em.”

The Unseen Hum

They continued deeper, the path narrowing, overgrown with tough, spindly brush. Here, the contamination markers – faded orange ribbons tied to branches – were more frequent, fluttering like forlorn prayer flags. Tom watched his feet, picking his way over roots that coiled like petrified snakes. He could feel the cold seeping into his joints, a persistent ache that had settled in his bones over the past year.

Ben stopped abruptly. Tom almost bumped into him. “Hear that?” Ben’s voice was low, strained. Tom listened. The wind sighed through the pines. A crow cawed, its call unnaturally sharp. Nothing else. Just the thump of his own heart, a dull, anxious drum.

“What?” Tom breathed, reaching for the worn handle of the hatchet tucked into his belt. It was mostly for splitting firewood, now, but the weight was a familiar comfort.

“The counter.” Ben held it out. The needle, which had been stubbornly at zero, now juddered, twitching like a trapped insect. A faint, irregular *tick-tick-tick* began, barely audible over the wind, then vanished. Then it started again, faster, a frantic rhythm that sent a jolt through Tom’s chest.

“Battery’s dying,” Tom said, trying to sound calm, but his voice cracked at the end. His palm felt clammy. He should be scared. He *was* scared. But it was also kind of… stupidly exciting? God, why did he even climb here?

“Maybe.” Ben didn’t look convinced. He fiddled with the casing, gave it a sharp rap with his knuckles. The ticking stopped. “Or maybe it’s just doing its job. After a year, you’d think they’d build something that actually *worked*.” He ran a hand over his face, leaving a smudge of dirt on his cheek. He was tired. They both were.

They walked for another hour, the air growing heavier, colder. The path gave way to a wider, almost forgotten track, barely discernible beneath a mat of fallen leaves. Here, the trees were different. Not just the bare birches, but the maples and oaks, usually vibrant in autumn, were a sickly, uniform ochre, their leaves curling at the edges, brittle and grey. And then there were the growths. Thick, almost fungal patches, not unlike grey lichen, but with a disturbing, almost metallic sheen, clung to the tree trunks. They pulsed faintly, like something not quite dead, not quite alive.

“Never seen those before,” Tom mumbled, reaching out a hesitant finger towards one such patch on a thick oak. It looked like rusted steel wool, clinging with an impossible tenacity.

“New batch,” Ben said, his voice flat. He didn’t stop, just kept his gaze moving, searching. “The old ones, the white crust, that was bad enough. This… this is something else. Means it’s getting deeper. Or changing.”

Tom pulled his hand back, a shiver running down his spine. He imagined the particles, invisible, insidious, burrowing into the wood, into the soil, into *them*. He thought of the way the river ran, slow and muddy, the water almost still in places, and how it had carried all that newness, all that poison, downstream, right past his family’s old farm. He remembered the smell of the air, that first week after the alarms went off. Like burnt pennies and something else, something sharp and hot that made your teeth ache.

They rounded a bend, and a shadow detached itself from the gloom of the undergrowth. Not an animal. A vehicle. Or what was left of one. A small, rust-eaten sedan, its paint flaked away to show the bare, pitted metal underneath. The windshield was gone, the interior gutted, but it was unmistakably a car. Its tires were gone too, the rims sunk into the damp earth, making it look like a broken toy.

“That’s… that’s one of them,” Tom whispered. “From the first wave.” He remembered the frantic rush, the highway choked with abandoned cars, families trying to outrun something they couldn’t see, couldn’t touch. Most of them didn’t make it far from the repository before the real spread started.

Ben nodded. He didn’t speak, but his jaw was tight. Tom knew he was remembering too. Everyone had a story from that week. Everyone had lost something, or someone, in that initial, desperate chaos. The air inside the car would be thick with old radiation, a static hum waiting to leach into any exposed skin. They kept a wide berth, their steps careful, almost reverent in their avoidance.

The Glint of What Remains

They pushed on, the landscape offering up more morbid curiosities: a faded child’s boot, a plastic lunchbox with a cartoon character long since peeled away by the elements, a single, waterlogged photograph face-down in the mud. Each item was a ghost, a reminder of the lives that had vanished in the wake of the accident. Tom felt the weight of it, the collective sorrow pressing down on him, making his shoulders ache.

“We should turn back,” Tom said eventually, his voice hoarse. “There’s nothing here. Not anymore.” The air had grown heavy, the metallic tang stronger, almost a taste on his tongue. He started to feel a prickling sensation on his skin, a ghost of the burn that followed actual exposure. Or maybe it was just nerves. Probably nerves.

Ben didn’t answer right away. He was staring at something ahead, something barely visible through the thinning screen of birches. A flicker of movement. No, not movement. A flicker of *light*. Not sunlight, which was muted and flat, but something sharper, more focused.

“Hold up,” Ben finally said, his hand raised, stopping Tom. His Geiger counter, which had been silent for some time, now started its rhythmic *tick-tick-tick*, low and steady at first, then gaining speed, a frantic, insistent beat. The needle danced, pushing past the lower limits, climbing towards a number Tom hadn’t seen outside of the evacuation maps.

Tom’s breath hitched. “What… what is that?” His eyes strained, trying to pierce the gloom. The light was faint, a blue-green luminescence, pulsing from behind a cluster of gnarled elder trees. It wasn’t natural. Nothing in this forest was, not anymore. He could feel the cold radiating from it, a deeper, more profound chill than the autumn air. The hair on his arms stood on end.

Ben, his face pale, gripped the Geiger counter tighter. Its incessant chatter filled the silence, a frantic warning. “I don’t know,” he breathed, his voice barely a whisper. “But it’s… it’s active. Right there. And it wasn’t on any of the maps.” The ground beneath them seemed to hum, a low, barely perceptible vibration that settled deep in Tom’s teeth. The air grew thicker, tasting of ozone and something rotten, something profoundly unnatural.

Tom could feel a strange heat on his cheeks, the sudden rush of blood, a faint tremor in his hands. This wasn't just another hotspot; this was new. And it felt like it was watching them, pulling them in, a quiet, luminous hunger behind the elder trees. He knew, with a dreadful certainty, that this was what they had been dreading, what they had been walking towards all along.

Ben took a step forward, then hesitated, his eyes wide, fixed on the pulsing light. The Geiger counter in his hand screamed, a frantic, unbroken wail that echoed through the otherwise silent forest, confirming what Tom's gut already knew: they had found something terrible, and it was far too close.