Wil fired, fired again, again, the bear didn’t stop. It didn’t even slow. He had no idea if he was even hitting the damn thing. Matsuda’s AR-15 chattered in short, staccato bursts, Gutierrez’s shotgun roared, and O’Donnell’s hunting rifle cracked. Wil saw some bullets hit, saw patches of fur and flesh spray off the charging behemoth. A few even struck the skull and sheared skin away to reveal a bloody white skull beneath, but nothing more.

Wherever the bear was struck, those lashing black veins converged, writhed, and held together. The lamprey intestines chittered and hissed, and some of the bear’s guts actually fell out of it as it lumbered forward. These pieces of intestines moved on their own, blind serpentine organs with gnashing teeth at both ends.

“Scatter!” Gutierrez shouted and ran to the side. Matsuda and O’Donnell split in the opposite direction, and Wil and his dumb, slow, graphic artist reflexes were left standing alone.

In front of the charging bear.

For the second time that day, Wil found himself flying through the air to dodge an oncoming attack from an abnormal specimen of forest wildlife.

Twice in one day, maybe this means I’ve hit my lifetime cap and won’t have to worry about it anymore, he thought and laughed out loud as he flung himself aside. The bear crashed into the tree that was at his back, but unlike the buck, the tree didn’t act as an anchor for the animal: the pine snapped loud enough to hurt Wil’s ears. It was no match for whatever unearthly, brutish strength the bear possessed. The wood turned to splinters as the bear shouldered the great pine into two pieces as easily as Wil might snap a chopstick.

More gunfire sounded behind Wil. The bear roared and Wil caught it taking a swipe at Matsuda. The crazy old man had approached the hellish animal and was spraying it in the side and back with round after round until his gun clicked dry.

“Go for the head!” Gutierrez shouted and fired a blast of buckshot at the bear’s skull. The bear’s head jerked to the side, its eye and half its face bursting open, but its skull remained intact and unmarked. Black veins slithered forward and covered the wounded area in a throbbing mass of tangled flesh and black sludge.

Wil clambered to his feet just as one of the intestinal lamprey-things approached him, coiled, and sprang forward.

“Shit!” Wil said as it latched onto his leg, its stubby, pointy teeth shredding through his jeans and digging into the thick meat of his calf. He screamed as he gripped the slick, veiny length and yanked it to no avail. Then he grabbed his axe close to the head in one hand, and pulled the intestinal creature taut with the other, and swung.

The bit of guts split and Wil threw the long end off into the woods as he limped away from the furious bear. The mouth was still embedded in his leg, however. He screamed as her got the blade of his axe beneath one of the thing’s teeth, pried up, and then ripped the disembodied mouth out of him with a disgusted shout.

The whole time, Wil had been thinking of what Gutierrez said.

They’re really like zombies, huh, she had said after killing the buck.

And everybody knew what happened when a zombie bit you.

“Oh god,” Wil moaned and looked down at the bloody red ring on the side of his calf.

“Look out!” O’Donnell said and Wil jerked his head up. The bear had turned away from the other three and their substantial firearms and focused on Wil while he had been struggling with the gut lamprey. It was getting ready to charge again.

Wil figured he was dead already. A zombie intestinal eel-thing had bitten him, and he was probably infected, just like the Stewarts had been. Soon he’d be a black-eyed monster and he’d be putting the others in danger.

“Naomi is on 9th Avenue and Washington. Save her!” Wil yelled, then dumped his pack and axe and fled back the way they had all come. He could lead it away from the others, give them time to escape, give them a chance to save Naomi.

The bear followed him. Wil didn’t need to look over his shoulder. Its paws thundered against the ground, and it shouldered into and through any trees in its way with more deafening cracks.

Wil ran for all he was worth (Which isn’t much, ha ha, he thought somewhere in the distant part of his mind that wasn’t screaming and producing more adrenaline), despite the bite wound in his leg. His legs pistoned with mechanical efficiency, arms pumping in time. He felt almost weightless without the pack, and the pines zipped past him.

But he wasn’t losing the bear.

That was Fine.

That was Mighty Fine.

That was so Fine it’s Divine.

The longer the enraged bear thing followed him, the more noise the two of them made, the safer the others would be. Wil laughed madly, almost cackled. He was going to die horrendously, and he was laughing.

It wouldn’t be long now.

It would catch him, rip him apart, snap him in half. Maybe Wil could get it to crush his skull and he wouldn’t reanimate like the Stewarts had.

Just get the thing to crush his head like the pine cone and——

“Holy shit,” Wil panted. He was starting to slow down, starting to flag, and the bear was almost upon him. But not now. Not when he had an idea. He had run far, almost far enough to see it.

And then he did see it, the shape of the trees unmistakable even in the gloom.

The bent area of the distortion, maybe fifty yards ahead. Maybe less.

And the bear closing, closing. Wil thought he might actually feel its breath on his neck, and there was the desire to just spin around, throw his arms wide and let it happen.

But then there was the chance it would just go hunt the others again.

He had to try.

Wil put on a hard burst of speed, emptying out whatever reserves he had.

Do or die.

He came closer, within sight of the distortion, and most of all, that red puddle of blood.

It rippled.

Five seconds.

He had to close a distance of maybe another two dozen yards.

Something thick and sharp and lethal swiped at his back and Wil screamed as it sliced his skin.

Three seconds.

He was almost there. Almost.

One second.

A gnashing, hungry bite of wicked teeth caught a few locks of his shaggy black hair and snipped it off his head.

Ripple.

Wil leaped forward, across the distortion, just a few feet to the left of that central shimmer in the air above the blood puddle. Wil winced, bracing himself for a spinning, crushing death, but he soared through the empty area and landed with a thud on his side. Wil turned, and stared at over twelve feet and at least a literal ton of hair, muscle, fangs, claws, thorns, black veins, and hissing guts descended on him…

And was yanked back into the distortion by unseen hands.

The bear spun, faster, faster, fast enough to snap its back, break its arms and legs, flay its fur and flesh from its bones. It bellowed, reaching and snapping for Wil with single-minded, insane intensity even as the vortex twisted it around itself.

Then there was a sucking sound and Wil screamed as the bear, the entire huge mass of it, was smashed down into a squishy red sphere no bigger than a marble.Its blood burst out of it, circled within the vortex, then fell to the ground with a splash as the fleshy marble vanished amidst another sucking noise.

And then Wil was alone, on his bruised side at the edge of the distortion.

And the woods were silent and still once again.

Ripple.

“Holy balls,” Wil breathed, and giggled.

It took him several moments to catch his breath, realize he was still actually breathing, and then another few moments to realize how close he had come to getting violently mauled to death. Or crushed into a flesh sphere. Or worse.

Wil looked down at his bitten leg.

“Or worse,” was still a distinct possibility. The bite hurt, but it had stopped bleeding. Wil rolled up the leg of his jeans and studied the bloody circle of puncture marks. The skin around it was a little red, but nothing unusual. There was no obvious sign of anything wrong save for the holes themselves. He might as well have been chomped by a house cat.

Still, whatever weird zombie virus could be working its way through him right now, which begged the question: stay here and wait for it to take hold, or run back to the others so they could put him down?

He’d rather not live on as a black-eyed zombie. He might stumble across some other poor sap and chomp them.

That settled it. Gutierrez, Matsuda, and O’Donnell had their shit together and they were armed. Better they take him out than some unwary, unarmed traveler.

Wil got to his feet and cautiously circled around the distortion. The blood puddle had grown, but aside from that and some broken trees, there was nothing to indicate that a terrifying undead monster bear had been there mere moments ago. Wil shuddered and hurried, as best as his leg and exhaustion would allow, back toward where he had left the others.

Finding his way back was easy enough. The bear had broken or outright uprooted almost every single tree in its path, and Wil just followed that backwards.

It must have been going like a damn freight train, Wil thought as he looked at the decimated trees. He found the sight of the attack a few minutes later. Shell casings littered the forest floor, their brass twinkling in the faint light.

His bag was gone, though, and so was everybody else.

For a second, Wil felt real panic start to creep up on him. He had been making a lot of noise with the bear. Anything could have heard them for miles. Even if he hadn’t the gunfire alone would’ve been an auditory signal flare for anything looking for signs of life.

The others had taken his supplies and moved on. He couldn’t blame them. Last they saw he’d been chased by a monstrous hell-bear. He’d been good as dead, and they had taken advantage of his sacrifice.

Good for them.

Still, some kind of note or an arrow carved into a tree wouldn’t have taken too much time.

Just in case he survived.

Wil chuckled.

He seemed to be finding a lot of reasons to laugh now that everything had gone to shit.

That didn’t seem right.

Still, the thought of any of the other three thinking Wil might have survived the encounter was nothing if not amusing. Matsuda seemed far too pragmatic. Gutierrez had already seen his noose. And O’Donnell looked at him like he had found a lost, stupid puppy.

Still, that would make his return even more amusing. Wil glanced around at the chaos of what he had assumed would be their last stand. The pine needles and other arboreal detritus had been thrown around with the dirt as they had panicked and scattered.

But there was a clear trail leading away, almost as if somebody had been purposefully dragging their feet in a pair of lines through the fallen leaves. It wasn’t a note or an arrow, but it would do. Wil hurried along as best he could, a slight limp in his step. He didn’t want to be caught alone if another thing came at him. But worse than that, he didn’t want the others to get too far ahead of him and leave him to get to Portland on his own.

He followed the trail as best he could in the light, but it was getting darker and darker now. Night was coming. Wil didn’t have a flashlight, just his phone. He didn’t relish the thought of making his presence known for everything in the damn woods, but if he didn’t find the others soon, he wouldn’t have a choice.

He was surprised he hadn’t turned into a zombie yet. The Stewarts had gotten back up within moments, but it had been at least twenty or thirty minutes for him.

Just as he was about to stop and check his leg again, he heard rustling up ahead.

Something clicked.

“Son of a bitch,” Gutierrez said and emerged from behind a tree. She had her shotgun up, but lowered it as she stepped into view. O’Donnell also came out from behind the cover of a pine, rifle easing down. Matsuda was nowhere to be seen.

“How in the heck did you not get eaten?” O’Donnell asked.

“That thing. The swirling crusher air thing,” Wil said between breaths. After his mad sprint from the bear and his hurried trek back, he was soaked with sweat and short on air. He pointed behind him. “Lead it into that. Crushed the bastard in half a second.”

“Holy shit,” Gutierrez said.

“Very clever,” Matsuda said. He appeared from behind a tree slightly behind Wil on his right. His rifle was still up. “I thought that’s what you might be doing but wasn’t sure.

“It’s why I’ve been dragging my feet for the last mile.”

“Careful with that rifle there, sir,” O’Donnell said.

“I am being very careful. Your fellow ranger, Birkin, and the Stewart family, they were all bitten or injured by a creature with black eyes. So too was Wil, here,” Matsuda said.

“Oh shit,” Gutierrez said.

“I’m okay,” Wil said and put his hands up. “It’s been like, almost forty minutes. And the bear didn’t actually bite me, just scratched me. The bite was from one of those intestine snake things.”

“We still don’t know what effect it could have,” Matsuda said. “Show us the bite.”

“Yeah, sure,” Wil said and raised his pants leg once more and turned. Matsuda flicked a light on the end of his rifle and aimed it at Wil’s calf.

“Looks like a normal bite,” O’Donnell said. “It should be cleaned, but that’s it.”

“No symptoms?” Matsuda asked.

“I’m kinda tired. Oh, and I crave brains,” Wil said then raised his hands. “Joke. It’s a joke.”

“Not smart,” Gutierrez said.

“Fine. No, no zombie symptoms, as if I’d know. I’m just tired and scared and wanna get out of here,” Wil said.

“Hm,” Matsuda said. “Fine. Clean it and you can get your pack again. If you are going to turn, it might be worth it to watch the process before we shoot you.”

“Just go for the head. Gutierrez can vouch for that,” Wil said.

“C’mere, let’s take care of that,” O’Donnell said as he took out a first aid kit from his own pack. A little bit of rubbing alcohol and a sterile bandage later, Wil was ready to go. He put his backpack back on, reloaded his pistol, and fell into place behind O’Donnell, second in line now.

“So two people can keep an eye on you instead of one,” Matsuda said.

“Fine, let’s just go,” Wil sighed.

“Hey. You killing that bear is pretty badass,” Gutierrez said from the rear.

Wil smirked, and followed behind O’Donnell with a very faint pep in his limping steps.