It started with their son Kaspar.

He’d been out in the fields late in the evening, tending to the cows and goats. When he returned to the farmhouse, he was wide-eyed and white as a ghost and bleeding from a large wound on his shoulder. He claimed a man had emerged from the darkness and attacked him. He’d fought back and was afraid he’d killed the man, but he couldn’t be sure. Early the next morning, they were still trying to figure out what they should do when Kaspar died.

Sandra and her husband Bruno wrapped him in a blanket and loaded him into the back of their Subaru Outback. Then they put their two younger children, Luca and Paula, in the back seat and started driving down the hill. They’d been underway for just a few minutes when Paula let out a piercing scream. When Sandra turned around, she discovered Kaspar inexplicably sitting up and twisting Luca’s head as if he wanted to rip it off. The twelve-year-old boy was clawing in vain at his brother’s wrists and making an awful gurgling sound. Just as Sandra called out for her husband to do something, the boy’s neck snapped.

When Bruno turned and saw what was happening, he immediately drove the car off the road and into a ditch. Unfazed by the crash, he grabbed a hammer from the glove compartment and leapt out of the car. When he flung open the back door, Paula spilled out onto the ground, and he struck Kaspar several times in the head, killing their older son for the second time. After a moment of frozen perplexity, Bruno picked up Luca’s limp body and started walking back to the farmhouse. Sandra helped Paula to her feet and together they walked after them.

Their farmhouse had just appeared in the distance when Bruno suddenly dropped to his knees and tumbled off the road, still clutching Luca’s body. Sandra and Paula broke into a run, and when they reached them they saw that Luca had somehow revived and his teeth were sunk deep into his father’s forearm. Below his broken neck, the boy’s body was still limp. Only his head was moving, and Bruno was struggling to release the grip of the boy’s jaw, howling as Luca’s teeth burrowed into the meat of his arm.

Sandra could not explain why Luca, so clearly dead just moments ago, was now attacking her husband. Yet she was certain that the thing in Luca’s body was no longer her son, just as she was certain that the thing that had attacked Luca had no longer been her Kaspar. Determined to save her husband, she snatched up a heavy stone from the roadside and dropped it on Luca’s head. The boy’s mouth snapped open and Bruno quickly stood, cradling his injured arm. Leaving Luca behind — just as they’d left Kaspar behind — the three of them returned to the farmhouse.

Paula had been silent since they’d left the car, and once inside the house she moved away to the dining room they used for guests — the tourists, foreign and domestic, who hiked through the alps enjoying rustic accommodations. Paula sat in the furthest corner of the room, facing the door, her hands in her lap, waiting. She seemed to sense that this was not yet over.

Sandra helped Bruno through the kitchen and up the ladder to the loft above the barn. There were beds there, also for tourists, who loved sleeping above livestock, at least for one night. Sandra had decided that Bruno should not enter their apartment, which was at the other end of the house. Her husband, rapidly weakening, had not objected. She left him face down on a thin mattress, staring through a gap in the thick floorboards at the animals gathered below, the light music of their bells filling the air.

In the dining room with Paula, Sandra tried her mobile phone. No signal, although normally they had good coverage up there. So something had happened. Not just there at 1,200 meters, but elsewhere too. Maybe everywhere.

Night fell. A lightning storm rolled in. Eschewing their apartment, Sandra locked the dining room door and joined Paula in her corner. A metal kerosene lamp stood on the nearest of three tables. Sandra extinguished it and wrapped her arms around her daughter. Together they slept.

***

The light of early morning woke them. Noises drew Sandra to the window.

Outside two men were lurching about aimlessly. One she recognized, the son of a farmer whose livestock spent the summer near theirs. The other, a man of perhaps sixty, she didn’t know. Their skin was a lifeless green and their eyes were clouded over. Both had blood on their faces and hands. Maybe one of them was the one who’d bitten Kaspar, or maybe the man who’d bitten Kaspar had bitten these men as well.

Sandra turned to Paula. There was no sign of the shock of the day before or the anxiety that had driven her into the dining room. But Sandra knew it wouldn’t last: eventually it would all come back to her. But for this brief, waking moment, everything was normal.

Paula was big, like her mother. Not fat, but heavy and powerful, like women who worked the mountains often were. She also had her mother’s short hair that clung close to her scalp and blemishes that reminded Sandra of the ones she’d had as a teen, blemishes that had left her round face scarred. So, Paula had her mother’s face and her body. Surely she had her strength. They would get through this.

The handle on the dining room door shook. Paula’s eyes went wide and she sat up; the peaceful waking moment was over. Sandra raised a finger to her lips, shushing her. They watched the door. Again the handle shook.

There were only tables, benches, and chairs in the dining room. No weapons. They could flee through one of the windows, but Sandra didn’t want to do that. Not yet anyway. Better for now to deal with whomever was outside the dining room door.

For a long moment, the handle was still. Sandra wrapped an arm around Paula’s shoulders. In silence, they waited and watched the door.

There was a growl from the other side, guttural and primal. Then something heavy crashed against the door. If that was Bruno out there, he’d forgotten that the door opened the other way. Which meant that while it might’ve been Bruno’s body out there, it wasn’t Bruno’s mind.

Sandra stood and placed a chair on its side on the floor just inside the door. Then she picked up the unlit kerosene lamp and motioned for Paula to stand to one side. The girl obeyed.

Sandra waited, listening. Then she unlatched the door and pushed it open. A figure rushed in and promptly stumbled over the chair, landing flat on its face. Sandra grabbed Paula and quickly led her out. As she closed the door behind them, she caught a glimpse of the figure inside. It wasn’t Bruno. It was a woman, her cloudy eyes searching wildly for the people she’d rushed in looking for.

So one of them had gotten in. Which meant that the front door was open. Where was Bruno?

Sandra slid a wooden chair under the door handle, effectively locking it. She was now in the small room off the kitchen where the family ate their meals. Paula wasn’t there. Moving quickly to the kitchen, Sandra found her daughter standing in the open doorway, bathed in daylight and staring outside.

“Es si so viu,” Paula said.

Sandra joined her and saw four lurchers in the yard, four that she’d been unable to see from the dining room. That made seven. They were lucky that only one of them had wandered in. She recognized one but not the others. None of them was Bruno.

Sandra closed and locked the front door. She hadn’t locked it last night — they rarely did — so anyone could’ve opened it. The lurchers seemed mostly mindless but certainly they could open an unlocked door. The dog had opened the front door before. So had one of the goats. A cow could probably do it if it could make it up the front steps. So maybe it hadn’t been Bruno. Maybe he was still upstairs, still alive and staring through the floorboards. Maybe he was still Bruno.

Or maybe not. Sandra set down the lamp and grabbed a cast iron skillet off the stove. She told Paula to stay in the kitchen and then climbed the ladder to the loft.

There were thirty beds up there, fifteen on each side, placed directly on the floor. The mattresses were thin and so was the bedding, and the air was thick with the stink of the animals below. But after an eight-hour hike, no tourist ever complained.

She moved slowly between the heavy beams that held up the triangular roof, the thick floor planks creaking under her weight. She’d left Bruno halfway down on the left, under the skylight, but he wasn’t there anymore. She checked her grip on the skillet and moved further into the loft.

She found him at the far end, scratching at the locked door that led to their apartment. She said his name. He turned and looked at her, nothing but fixed hunger in his eyes. A thick green fluid was oozing from the bite wound on his arm; the blood on the edges had hardened and turned black. She said his name again. He still didn’t respond, so she brought the skillet down on the front of his skull with a sickening crack. He slumped to the floor and didn’t move again, but she hit him twice more, just to be sure.

She took out her key ring and opened the door Bruno had been trying to get through. Across a narrow landing was the door to their small apartment; to her right down a short staircase was a door that led outside. Both doors were closed, so she assumed they hadn’t been breached. They sat crooked in their frames and could only be closed with intent. If a lurcher had come through here, it would’ve left at least one of the doors open.

Sandra moved to the door at the bottom of the stairs and locked it. Through a small curtained window, she saw that the lurchers she’d seen before had been joined by three more. A few were focused on the front door, but so far none were trying to get through it.

In the distance, two more were lurching through the tall grass in their direction. Something was drawing them to the farmhouse. How many more were in the hills? How many more would be standing in their yard before the day was through?

It was then that Sandra realized what they had to do.

***

From the loft, Sandra could see Paula standing in the doorway that led back to the dining room. The woman they’d locked inside was making a lot of noise, growling and hissing and scratching at the wood.

“Chumm hie ufe,” Sandra said. “Schnäu.”

Paula climbed the ladder to the loft. After a firm embrace, Sandra told her daughter what she needed her to do. If Paula had any reservations, she didn’t express them. She just nodded in silent obedience and then moved away across the loft.

Sandra watched her go. When she arrived at the far end, Paula gave her father’s corpse just the slightest of glances. Then she stepped through the door that led to their apartment.

The sounds of anger and agitation from the dining room grew louder. Sandra left the skillet behind and descended to the kitchen. If they wanted in, then let them in — as many as possible — then lock the door. That was the plan. She’d be doing their neighbors a favor as well as giving themselves an opportunity to flee to the summer barn, a thousand meters further up the alps. It wasn’t well stocked, but they’d get by for a bit. And there were virtually no neighbors up there. No one nearby to catch this sickness, whatever it was.

Sandra found the small bottle of kerosene they used to fill the lamps. She started at the dining room door and moved into the kitchen, covering as much surface area as she could. Then she unlocked and opened the front door — just a few centimeters — picked up the kerosene lamp, and returned to the loft.

After pulling the heavy wooden ladder up behind her, she grabbed the skillet and — lying on her back, still mostly concealed — began violently striking one of the support beams. The sound wasn’t as loud as she’d hoped, but it was loud enough. A minute passed, then she heard the front door open wide and the shuffling of feet and the unholy groaning.

And with that, it was done. They’d given up the house.

She lowered the skillet, waiting, listening. She didn’t chance a look: if they saw her, it would ruin everything. She relied on her ears to let her know when they’d stopped lurching in. And when she felt sure, she set down the skillet, grabbed the lamp, and crawled across the loft.

She found Paula at the top of the stairs, a heavy backpack loaded with supplies in one hand, Bruno’s SG 550 in the other. Sandra handed the lamp to Paula, then pulled on the backpack and slung the rifle over her shoulder. She led her daughter down the stairs and at the bottom looked out through the small, curtained window. The yard was empty, and there were no lurchers in the hills. Hopefully they were all inside, ready and waiting.

Sandra opened the door, and she and Paula stepped out.

A lurcher was standing in their blind spot, just around the corner where the roof hung down at hip level. He’d snagged his shirt — old, worn, flannel, untucked — on the gutter and had been staring at it, stupefied as to how to overcome this mild obstruction. When he saw Sandra and Paula, bewilderment turned to rage, and he reached forward and grabbed Paula by the front of her throat.

When he pulled his hand away, he had a lump of meat in his fist. Paula’s eyes rolled back as a blood erupted from the opening in her throat, and she slumped to the ground. Sandra felt everything at once — the horror, the sadness, the sense of failure — but her survival instinct prevented her from making a sentimental error.

The rifle on her back still had its stock folded. She swung it around and hit the lurcher in the head with the hinge. When he didn’t fall, she struck him again, then again, the third blow being enough to damage whatever part of his brain was vital. His body went slack. As he dropped to the ground, his shirt, still snagged on the gutter, tore away.

Sandra returned the rifle to her back and picked up the lamp. With a trembling hand, she lit the wick and quickly approached the house. A lurcher was standing in the open doorway with his back to her. She raised a foot and pushed him inside. Then she threw the lamp in as hard as she could, listened as its glass chimney cracked, and immediately pulled the kitchen door closed. As she fished for the key in her pocket, a lurcher found the handle and pulled the door open. Sandra quickly pulled it closed again and held the handle in place until she found the key. Then she locked the door and stepped back into the yard.

She could already see fire in every window, and smoke was beginning to slip through the woodwork and roof tiles and into the sky. She had no idea how many were inside, how many of her transformed neighbors were now succumbing to a fiery second death. And she would never wonder. Every step of the way, confronted by this bizarre and unprecedented threat, she had shoved sentiment aside for the sake of survival. And now, with her daughter infected just a few meters away, she would do it again.

A helicopter leapt over a nearby ridge and sloped down in her direction. It was an army helicopter, and for a moment Sandra thought that perhaps it had been dispatched to save her, alerted by the smoke. But no, that couldn’t have been the case. The fire had only just started, and the military base in the valley was in the opposite direction. More likely was that this helicopter had been on its way to the base and, seeing the smoke, had come to investigate.

When she saw the soldier in the open cabin door, his rifle trained on her house, she understood immediately what was happening. Standing there, dumbstruck, arms at her sides, she would appear to be one of them — a lurcher — and he would kill her. Just like she would’ve done in his position. Just like she had done, killing her youngest son and then her husband. Just like she’d been about to do, about to kill Paula.

The helicopter approached, and the soldier’s face was now visible. He was just a boy, younger than Kaspar had been. The soldier had seen her and his rifle was now aimed at her, his eye pressed against the scope. He’d been trained, she wouldn’t even know. He’d squeeze the trigger and she would be dead.

She watched him, the din of the vehicle’s rotors now battering her eardrums. She watched and wondered who would prevent Paula from becoming one of them. Not him, he’d be long gone before Paula revived. And so, long after he’d killed Sandra and left, Paula would stand up, and she’d be one of them.

No. That wasn’t how it was going to be.

Sandra swung the rifle around, flipping it open and placing a finger on the trigger. She pointed the weapon at the helicopter, the safety still on, hoping the soldier would get the message. But before she could gauge his reaction, he was being pulled roughly away from the doorway. A struggle was going on inside. Someone inside had saved her life, someone she’d been unable to see but who’d definitely seen her. It was someone she’d never meet.

Not knowing how long the struggle inside the copter would last — or who would be triumphant — Sandra turned and fled across the field toward the forest, leaving Paula behind. Her daughter’s eyes were wide but lifeless, and the flow of blood from her throat was now a trickle.

It was only after the helicopter turned and arced over the nearest ridge that the faintest spark of consciousness appeared in the girl’s eyes. Then her jaw clamped shut, with her lips open and teeth bared. She turned her head just in time to see her mother disappear into the trees.