The front room in the cabin by the lake was aglow with the light of early morning. Sunlight shot through gaps between the curtains, cutting long lines on the hardwood floor. Illuminated dust hung in the still, quiet air.

Jane was asleep on her side on a small sofa, her legs bent, her toes pressed against the armrest. The corner of a worn duvet was pulled up over her hip; the rest draped down the front of the sofa to the floor. Wearing only her panties and a sleeveless undershirt, she slept clutching herself against the chill. An empty wine bottle sat on a nearby end table; beside it, an empty glass.

Down the hallway in the large bedroom, Walker sat fully dressed in an upholstered armchair, his socked feet propped up on the bed he had not slept in. The air was filled with smoke, and between two fingers hung a cigarette, the latest of the dozen or so he’d smoked during the night. The pack, almost empty, was tucked away in his breast pocket.

Across the hall, in the other, smaller bedroom, slept Ryan, their twelve-year-old son. He had gone to bed early, before the wine drinking and cigarette smoking had begun in earnest. He had not heard the hushed, urgent argument that had kept Walker and Jane up until long past midnight, nor had he witnessed the final violent break that had split them into separate rooms. Ryan had slept soundly for hours. It would be some time before he would sleep so soundly again.

A loud thump on the front door propelled Jane into a sitting position. She pushed the duvet to the floor and pressed her fingertips against her aching temples. Then she looked at the door, and when the sound did not immediately repeat, she began to wonder if the thump had been part of some dream she couldn’t remember. Her eyes sought out Walker, until the fight of a few hours before came back to her, and she remembered. He was in the bedroom.

Another thump, and Jane leapt to her feet, staring at the door wide-eyed. She heard something slide against its heavy wood. Then there was a scratch, as if something was clawing at the door. Something trying to get in. It couldn’t be a person. It was still early, and the cabin by the lake was in the middle of a remote Swiss mountain valley, miles from the nearest town.

“There’s something on the porch,” she told Walker as she stepped into the bedroom. “I think it’s an animal.”

“You think?” Walker said as he stood. The ash on his cigarette broke off and tumbled downward, a silent explosion as it hit the floor.

“I heard it,” Jane said, shaking her head. “I didn’t want to open the door.”

“But you’re sure it’s not a person,” Walker said as he extinguished his cigarette. “You’re sure it’s not–”

“No, I’m not sure,” Jane said, cutting him off.

Her head was pounding, and her vision was blurred. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. She just wanted Walker to deal with it, the way he’d been dealing with everything since they’d decided to leave home.

Walker stepped out of the bedroom, through the hallway, and into the front room. Then he stopped, listening. There were three windows, one on each end of the room, and a large one next to the front door. All the windows were curtained, heavy burgundy cloth that burned with the morning light, coloring the entire room. Walker waited for the sound to repeat itself, for any sound. And then he walked briskly to the front door and flung it open.

He knew the man standing there, dressed in overalls and a flannel shirt, his short, graying hair tousled and thick with the grease of hard work. When they’d hiked in two weeks before, they’d seen him atop a tractor in a field, collecting giant plastic-wrapped bundles of grass. At the front of the tractor were a pair of pincers, which the farmer was using to load the bundles onto a flatbed trailer.

They’d had a brief conversation, the farmer struggling with some English, while Jane had replied with the German she knew. It had struck Walker as a gentle interrogation: the farmer was welcoming and friendly on the surface, but his goal was clearly to establish who they were and where they were going. They had gone back and forth, until the farmer seemed to understand that they were Americans, and that he knew the cabin by the lake they were headed to.

Then he’d asked, casually, yet also pointedly, how long they were planning to stay.

“We’ve got the cabin for a month,” Walker had told him.

“Ein Monat,” Jane had interjected, in response to the farmer’s furrowed brow.

“Auso,” the farmer had said, now evidently satisfied. “Ei Monet. I wünsche öich ä schöni zit.”

He gave them a smile and a wave and then resumed his work, turning his tractor away and making a beeline for the next bundle. Walker watched him as they continued on, then he turned to Jane and asked, “What did he say?”

“I have no idea,” Jane replied, her voice still stuck in the gravelly, loathing tone it had acquired the day they’d left home. “I speak some German, but that wasn’t any German I know. We should’ve gone to Germany.”

“We’re better off here,” Walker had said firmly.

But now he wasn’t so sure.

Because while he knew the man standing on the porch was the farmer they’d encountered, there was now something horrifyingly wrong with him. His skin, which had once been weathered and ruddy, no doubt from years of hard outdoor work, was now an icy green. And his eyes were now covered with a grey film which all but completely obscured his once-penetrating pupils. But most unsettling was his left arm. It was now just a third of its original length, having been removed rather roughly just above the elbow.

“Close the door, Walker,” Jane said from behind him.

But Walker was too stunned to move. What was he looking at? What had this man become? Then the thing that had once been the farmer opened its mouth, and from the depths of its throat oozed a thick wad of dark-red gore, followed by an inhuman howl that tore Walker out of his brief stupor. He slammed the door in the creature’s face.

“Get dressed,” Walker told Jane as he locked the door. “Get your stuff. We need to get out of here.”

Jane nodded, but before she could move, there was a crash at the back of the house, followed by the sound of Ryan screaming in terror. Walker moved quickly past Jane, practically shoving her aside as he tore down the short hallway and into the small bedroom.

The bed Ryan had been sleeping in was tucked into a corner opposite a window that was now lying in a thousand pieces on the floor. The curtain was swirling inward, driven not by the wind but by a figure that seemed to be tangled up inside it, unable for the moment to extricate itself and climb into the room. It was making a sound not unlike that of a cat trapped in a bag.

Ryan was on his feet just beside the door, in the T-shirt and briefs he’d worn to bed, his back pressed against the wall, his arms across his chest, still screaming, his eyes wide with fear. Walker grabbed him and pushed him out of the room.

“Go to your mother!” Walker barked.

While the creature outside continued its struggle with the curtain, Walker started collecting the most important of Ryan’s things: his hiking boots, his rain jacket, his small backpack. They were mostly things they’d bought after arriving in Zurich, having only decided on the flight over where they were going to go and what they were going to do.

The heavy curtain thumped forward onto the floor, followed by a woman, probably twenty-five, wearing a yellow T-shirt and training pants, her long hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. Like the farmer, her skin was green and her eyes were cloudy, yet unlike the farmer she still had both arms. A chunk of her neck was missing. It appeared to have been bitten off, by a mouth the size of a man’s.

Also unlike the farmer, she was quick. A moment after she tumbled into the room, she was on her feet, a hiss erupting from her gaping mouth. She was reaching out for Walker, and he could see that her hands had picked up shards of glass from the floor, puncturing her palms. The blood that oozed from the wounds was thick.

Walker tossed Ryan’s belongings through the open door into the hallway, careful not to turn away from the woman. In the window frame behind her, the gray face of a man appeared, his cloudy eyes peering in. As soon as he saw Walker, he clutched the sill of the broken window and hungrily began to pull himself inside.

“Walker!” he heard Jane scream from the front room.

Moving quickly, Walker put his hands on the chest of the slowly advancing woman and shoved her backward through the shattered window. Her body struck the man outside, and together they tumbled to the ground in a heap. Walker reached out and released the metal shutters. As he pulled them closed, his eyes swept the stretch of yard between the house and the forest. A half dozen more of the creatures were lumbering through the grass toward him, weaving trails through a sea of spring wildflowers. He slammed the shutters and fastened them from the inside.

In the front room, he found Jane dressed and helping Ryan put on the clothes Walker had collected. A steady thump filled the air, the front door shaking inward, shedding splinters and dust. Walker imagined the farmer on the other side, abusing the door with his one remaining arm.

“What are we doing?” Jane asked urgently, her features twisted in agony as she struggled to function through the haze of her hangover.

“We’re leaving,” Walker said, then he turned toward the hallway. “I’ll be back in two minutes.”

In the large bedroom, Walker sat on the bed for a moment to pull on his hiking boots, new boots that on the way in had given him blisters. He hastily filled his backpack, then after slipping on his rain jacket, lifted the pack onto his shoulders. Through the curtains he could see silhouettes, arms raised to the window, fingernails scratching the glass. How many of them were there?

When he returned to the front room, Jane and Ryan were ready and awaiting his instructions. Now Walker needed to decide: which was the best way out? The back yard seemed to be full of these creatures, which left the front. But was the farmer the only one there? Or was every exit covered?

Walker knelt on the sofa and peered through the crack in the curtains that covered the front window. He caught a glimpse of the farmer, still beating on the door. Otherwise the front porch was empty, as was the stretch of grass between the house and the lake. On the lake shore, about a hundred feet away, a small rowboat rested upside-down, a pair of oars tucked beneath it. He and Ryan had gone out in it a few days before, gliding across the lake’s surface in a tranquility that now seemed forever shattered.

“Stand over there,” Walker told his wife and son, pointing to the end of the sofa.

“What’re you going to do?” Jane asked, trembling, her hands on her son’s shoulders.

“Stand over there,” Walker said again, this time more sternly. “As soon as he comes inside, run out to the lake, to the boat. I’ll be right behind you.”

Jane led Ryan to the corner of the room at the far end of the couch, and together they waited. Walker reached out for the key and turned it slowly, then he put his hand on the door handle. After taking a deep breath, then exhaling, he pulled the handle down and flung the door open.

This time the farmer didn’t just stand there, docilely, as if waiting to be invited in. This time, as soon as he saw the inside of the cabin, he charged inward, crashing into Walker and knocking him to the floor.

“Go!” Walker screamed, trapped between the farmer and his backpack. Without hesitating, Jane and Ryan fled the house.

The farmer’s mouth hung wide open, almost unnaturally so, as if his jaw had come unhooked, as if he were a boa constrictor trying to swallow a goat. An angry growl emanated from his throat as his yellowed, blood-stained teeth sought the soft flesh of Walker’s face. Walker had the fingers of one hand wrapped around the farmer’s lone wrist, his other hand pressed against the farmer’s shoulder. Eventually he was able to roll the farmer off and onto his back.

Rising to his knees, Walker snatched up Jane’s wine bottle and held it aloft threateningly. When the farmer stood, so did Walker, and for a moment they faced each other.

“Don’t…” Walker started to say, fear and adrenaline stealing his words. “Don’t come any closer.”

Yet the farmer didn’t seem to understand, or even hear. He didn’t even give the bottle a glance. His cloudy eyes were locked on Walker, the focus of a starving animal whose only interest was its next meal. The farmer advanced and Walker swung the bottle. It hit the farmer’s cheekbone just below his eye and exploded. The farmer stopped for the briefest of moments. His face twitched, like a horse bothered by flies. Then he growled and lunged at Walker.

Running out of the house and down the wooden porch steps, Walker saw that Jane and Ryan had already flipped the rowboat over and slipped it into the water. Ryan was already inside, clutching an oar; Jane stood beside it, shin-deep in water, the other oar in her hands, as if she were ready to use it as a weapon.

“Get in,” Walker told Jane when he arrived at the boat.

She quickly handed Walker the oar and took a seat next to their son. Ryan handed his father the other oar, and then Walker sat on the center bench and slipped the oars into the rowlocks. Then he plunged the oars into the water and turned the boat around until he was facing the house.

Emerging slowly through the front door was the farmer, his one good arm extended, as if he could reach across the distance between them. Then Walker saw the others, six on one side, a full dozen on the other, loping around from the back of the house, moving relentlessly toward the water. It was futile: the boat would be far out into the lake before they reached the shore. But they gave no indication that they planned to stop their pursuit, as long as they could still see Walker and his family through their filmy eyes.

It was hunger, pure animal hunger. And it frightened Walker more than the prospect of a life in prison ever had. Foolish fear had driven him from relative safety. Now it seemed he was in the bowels of hell itself.