The heavy-set man stood and immediately started moving, slowly but determinedly, toward Ryan. Now there was one in front of Ryan in the trees, and one on his right in the road. He glanced over his shoulder into the woods behind him, a dim, overgrown, canopied mystery. Were there more in there?

If he chose to flee, how many more of these creatures would he find? In both directions, the road turned and became obscured by trees. In the direction from which they’d come, he knew there were dozens of these things. Down the valley, meanwhile, was a complete unknown. Perhaps it was safe. Or perhaps civilization had fallen as well.

He decided that for the moment it was better to stay where he was. Here, now, there were two. He could deal with two.

A heavy stick was laying along the side of the road. Ryan picked it up and took several steps toward the man, who was now just a few feet away, his arms outstretched, his fingers grasping. Ryan was almost ready to strike, almost ready to commit — for the first time — an act of violence against another human being. Or what appeared to be another human being.

But first, he would give diplomacy a try.

“Hi,” Ryan said, his own voice sounding odd to him, out of place.

He held the stick in both hands, in a batter’s stance.

“Do you speak English?” Ryan asked.

The heavy-set man stopped. Ryan scanned his dull grey eyes and saw something like a flicker of comprehension. The man looked like the walking dead, yet some part of him seemed to have recognized that he had been addressed, that he’d been asked a question. And so he had stopped, and now he was waiting.

The man’s hands were still out in front of him, his fingers splayed, in mid-grasp. Ryan spotted dirt under his nails, then took in his workman’s clothes: a plaid flannel shirt buttoned across the front of a pair of blue overalls, boots caked with mud. What had he been doing when whatever now afflicted him had struck? Had he been working his fields, milking his cows? Ryan could only guess.

From somewhere, Ryan thought he heard a low, rumbling hum. But the moment he noticed it, it disappeared.

“Do you speak English?” Ryan asked again.

Now, whatever animal instinct had been driving him before again took over, and the heavy-set man lunged at Ryan, his fingers closing into fists as if he already felt he had the boy in his hands.

Ryan stepped aside and around the man, and only then could he see the damage the man’s body had endured. The back of his flannel shirt hung torn open, and a chunk of meat from his back was missing. Like the woman still making her way down out of the forest, there was no way that this man was still alive.

Ryan raised the stick and swung it as hard as he could at the back of the man’s head. There was a thick, deadly crack, and the man flopped down to the road, once again landing on his face. Ryan stood over the man, expecting him to stay still, hoping he wouldn’t have to hit him again, but as quickly as the man had fallen, he rolled over and stood.

He didn’t seem more ferocious, the way a normal man would have after being struck. There was nothing more in his eyes than there had been before, nothing new. Just the same determination, the same hunger.

Now Ryan saw that the woman had arrived at the road. She was behind the heavy-set man, moving toward them awkwardly, her body twisted by her wound. Both creatures had their eyes fixed on Ryan.

A hole appeared in the man’s forehead, just in front of his temple, and at the same time Ryan heard a crack coming from somewhere behind him. He ducked instinctively but didn’t take his eyes off the heavy-set man. The man stopped, but only for a moment. His new wound seemed to have done little more than confuse him. His focus was still on Ryan. He lurched forward again, the woman bringing up the rear.

Then there were three more cracks, in quick succession. The bridge of the woman’s nose disappeared, and she abruptly collapsed, like a marionette whose strings have been cut. The heavy-set man’s throat opened up, a bloodless wound revealing dry, rotting muscle. Then a flap of skin and bone pulled away from his face, spinning through the air, leaving a hole where his nose and part of his cheek had been. And now what little life there had been in the heavy-set man’s eyes vanished, and he dropped to the ground a few feet in front of the woman.

Ryan spun around. Fear and confusion mixed into nausea and set him to trembling. He was looking down toward the bottom of the valley, where they’d been able to see buildings, buildings now obscured by the foothills. The hundred yards of the road that he could see, before it dipped away to the right, were empty. Then the noise he’d heard before resumed, the heavy hum of an engine mixed with the rumble of rubber on dry earth. The sounds were growing louder, still distant, but approaching.

A figure emerged from the low side of the forest, his steps measured, cautious. He was a soldier, dressed in camouflage, a blend of black, brown and two shades of green, a pack on his back. His head was protected by a helmet, his feet wrapped in sturdy black boots, the cuffs of his pants tucked in. He was holding a rifle out in front of him, the butt pressed against his shoulder, the barrel pointed down at the two creatures on the ground.

A second soldier stepped down into the road from the other side, and like the first soldier he seemed to emerge from the foliage itself, once invisible in camouflage, now fully revealed. This soldier moved faster than the first, his rifle aimed further up the road, toward the top of the valley. Searching for a new threat while the first soldier stayed focused on the old.

As the second slipped swiftly past Ryan on his left, the first soldier stepped up beside him.

“Isch alles in Ornig?” the first soldier asked.

He and Ryan were shoulder to shoulder but facing opposite directions. The soldier’s eyes, along with his rifle, remained focused on the immobile creatures splayed out behind Ryan. The name on the patch on the soldier’s chest was MOHLER.

“I’m sorry…” Ryan said after a moment.

Mohler looked up. A flicker in his eyes as something registered.

“Are you okay?” he asked, in faintly-accented English. “Are you injured?”

“I’m okay,” Ryan nodded.

Mohler jabbed the tip of his rifle at the bodies.

“They didn’t bite you? Did they scratch you?”

“No,” Ryan said.

Mohler glanced over his shoulder down the road, and Ryan watched as a third soldier appeared in the center of road, walking toward them. Only then did Ryan notice that the hum and rumble he’d heard before had once again ceased.

“If you have been bitten or scratched,” Mohler was saying, gazing thoughtfully at the approaching soldier, “we have medicine.”

Ryan took in Mohler’s rifle, the source of the cracks he’d heard. He could feel its heat. So it was a disease of some kind, and there was a cure. Yet they were shooting the infected on sight, and from a distance.

“I haven’t been bitten or scratched,” Ryan said firmly. “I haven’t even been touched.”

Mohler’s tight lips turned up into a odd grin. Then he looked again at the third soldier — Stricker, according to his shirt — now just a few yards away. The new arrival’s rifle was raised, not aimed at Ryan, but certainly at the ready.

“Es isch OK, nimm dini ‘Medizin’ aabe,“ Mohler told Stricker. “Är isch nid bisse und au nid kratzt worde.”

Stricker nodded, and the tip of his rifle dropped. He signaled to the second soldier, who was now moving quickly back down the road toward them. More words were exchanged, and then the second soldier spoke into the microphone of the radio he was carrying. He had barely finished speaking when the hum and rumble resumed.

Mohler patted Ryan on the back, still wearing an odd, impenetrable grin, then he peeled away and ran ahead to the second soldier. They took positions on either side of the road and advanced quickly. As Ryan watched them go, Stricker placed a hand on his arm and led him to the high side of the road.

The rumble was peaking, the hum now a steady engine growl. Ryan looked down the road just as the first vehicle, a jeep, appeared. It was followed by another jeep, and then a heavy green troop transport thundered into view and roared past. It was followed by a second, then a third, kicking up dust and rocks.

“We’re not rescue,” Stricker told Ryan, his diction slow and clear. “There’s an aid team at the end. Wait here.”

Stricker placed both hands on his rifle, gripping it tightly, purposefully, and then he jogged up the road after Mohler and his comrade.

Ryan stood on the side of the road, dwarfed as the troop transports thundered past. The men inside looked down at him as they rolled past. Some waved dispiritedly, some forced reassuring smiles, but most just stared down at him wearing grave expressions, as if they pitied Ryan only slightly more than they pitied themselves. Whatever was happening in these hills, whatever bizarre, horrific thing was transpiring, they had been charged with cleaning it up. Their duty as soldiers in a compulsory army.

There was a gap after the last troop transport passed. Ryan looked down the empty road, impatient for the rescue vehicles to appear. He would tell them that he had been separated from his parents, that they needed help too, that he wouldn’t leave without them. Maybe they had been wounded, but there was medicine, and the rescue team would find them and cure them before whatever sickness was in these hills had turned them into monsters.

Ryan heard other vehicles approaching. Then his father was standing beside him, his eyes wide, urgent. At first startled by Walker’s sudden arrival, Ryan quickly relaxed. Yet he still found himself checking his father for wounds.

“Let’s go,” Walker said sternly, clutching Ryan’s arm.

“There’s a rescue team coming…”

“Let’s go!”