Chapter Text
2005
Lenora Hills, California
The front door is locked.
Jo curses. She thought she explicitly told Sam to keep the door unlocked for tonight, but whatever. He never listens to her anymore anyway.
Sighing, she shrugs off her backpack, unzips it, and begins rummaging for the house key that should be in here, only to realize in her dismay that it’s not. Shit. The house key must have slipped out at some point. Or it could have been the freshmen who rifled through her bag after she tossed it off to the side in the bathroom. Either way, she’s SOL.
It seems she has been left with no other choice but to open the garage. There goes trying to sneak inside the house at eleven o’clock at night without causing too much noise. Her curfew was nine. Mom is going to murder her.
She heads over to the garage and punches in the code she knows by heart into the keypad. There’s a judder, followed by the door automatically sliding up to reveal a single 1993 Honda Accord damn near on its death bed next to a rack of three bikes and a disorganized workbench.
It turns into a stealth mission as soon as she quietly opens the door and slips inside, stepping over the places that will creak in the hardwood floors if she puts her weight there. She successfully passes the master bedroom where Mom is fast asleep, then the living room. She decides to make a short cut through the kitchen, almost blindly bumping into the island but managing to avoid it. Straight down the hall is her bedroom, she can easily make it—
The light flips on immediately, and her cover is blown.
Standing in the entryway of the kitchen is her mom, looking worried and sleep-deprived.
Busted.
"Jocelyne," he says.
Full name, and in that tone of voice. Like she ran headlong into the mechanical maws of a bear trap. She’s about to be in a world of trouble.
"…Hi," she says feebly, bracing herself for the wrath she’s about to incur.
Mom’s eyes narrow. "Is that a shiner?"
Jo’s stomach grows teeth as she cringes. Yikes. She was kind of hoping he wouldn’t notice that. "You should see the other guys," she says lamely.
Mom is not amused. In fact, he appears more distressed now than before. "Did you get into another fight at school?"
"Those asshole freshmen were gonna shove Sam’s head in the fucking toilet if I didn’t get involved!" Jo snaps, and then immediately regrets it. Her gaze drops shamefully to the floor. "Sorry. But it’s just—he’s constantly getting picked on. I hate seeing it happen when I can do something about it."
Sam hasn’t presented yet, but practically everyone knows how he’ll turn out. Omega. Just like Mom. He’s reserved, aloof, ill-at-ease. The quiet kid who doesn’t want any trouble but is somehow still a magnet for it. He may get under her skin, especially now that he’s a teenager, but he’s still her little brother. She’ll protect him, come hell or high water or douchebag bullies wanting an easy target.
Jo looks back up at her mom and sees the sympathy in his eyes. This isn’t an easy subject for him either. Mom always told her he’d been bullied in school; he was the runt of the litter, the helpless little omega who never fought back. Her dad would have to jump into the fray and beat the shit out of those guys. Which only makes it all the more confusing why Mom isn’t a fan of the whole eye-for-an-eye thing if he had protection from Dad growing up. Obviously he shouldn't encourage it, but he could at least let it slide every now and then.
"Sam told me everything when he got back from school," Mom says. "I spoke with the principal over the phone, and he said those students will be suspended."
Her hands ball into trembling fists at her sides. "That never helps, Mom! Principal O'Hare fucking—" She’s sent a warning look, "—freaking sits on his hands and doesn’t do anything! Suspension is a slap on the wrist for those idiots."
Mom exhales one of his world-weary sighs. "Jo, you’re—"
Jo cuts him off with a scoff. "Yeah, I know, a newly presented alpha, therefore I’m aggressive and reckless and stupid." She glares daggers at the grout lines in the tiles below. "I get it, Mom."
"You’re not aggressive or reckless or stupid," Mom says tiredly. "But you’ve had three detentions and one Saturday school so far this semester, and your grades are suffering."
"Okay, I’ll make sure to work extra hard on my next report card."
Jo would like to end the conversation there and beeline for her bedroom, but she’s barred by Mom's outstretched arm from taking another step forward. Her feet land on the floor with the weight of two heavy pillars.
"Don’t try to flee to your room. We’re not finished here yet." Mom’s arm drops. "That…incident at school happened eight hours ago. Where were you after that?"
Jo tenses, refusing to meet her mom’s eyes as she answers hesitantly, "Anna’s house."
"And you didn’t think to tell me?"
"We weren’t doing anything wrong!"
"I never accused you of doing anything wrong," Mom says, sounding exasperated. He frowns. "Jo, I was worried sick about you. You should have called me. You know our home phone number."
"Mom," Jo says, "I know you think I’m going to fool around because that’s how you and Dad ended up with me when you were my age, but seriously, I’m not. And besides, Anna isn’t—she’s not…" Not like me. The unspoken words taste rotten as city sewage on her tongue. Jo hugs her arms, suddenly self-conscious and wishing she were alone in her bedroom right now to sulk, sleep, stare at the wall in silence. Just not here.
"That’s not what I’m concerned about," Mom tells her, his voice quieter but also firmer to lay down the law, or at the very least reestablish it. "You could have been abducted or had a medical emergency, and I wouldn’t have even known about it. What if something bad happened to you?"
Jo resists rolling her eyes. She knows Mom struggles with paranoia because of something that took place in his past. She can always tell the vagaries as soon as they appear. His face becomes distant when the TV broadcasts an AMBER alert on the chyron for a missing kid and he fidgets around Christmas lights during the holidays as if they are going to personally harm him. Jo doesn’t know what happened to him, but what she does know is that whatever it was has made him overprotective to the point of being a helicopter mom, and Jo hates it. She’s not some fragile porcelain doll; she can protect herself on her own. The black eye is proof of that.
When Jo doesn’t say anything, Mom gathers himself with a small breath. "The point is, you have to keep me in the loop with these kinds of things, Jocelyne."
Jo’s grip tightens on her arms until her nails bite down hard. "Dad was never this overbearing," she mutters.
Low blow. She shouldn’t have said that, or she should have at least said it in the privacy of her mind.
She realizes that now when she glances up at Mom again. He looks cut to the quick, tension locking his jaw, obvious hurt in his eyes. Because Jo’s words stung him. They sting her even now.
Without another word, Jo retreats past him down the hall and seals herself in the tomb of her bedroom.
𓇢𓆸
Cold Saturday morning sunlight shafts through the slats of open blinds, falling directly onto her stirring eyelids. A loud noise startles her fully awake from where her cheek is smashed in her drooled-on pillow—the sound of a fist banging on her door—followed by her youngest brother Jamie’s even louder voice shouting shrilly on the other side that pancakes are ready, like she couldn’t already smell them frying on the griddle.
Breakfast is infamously a trial in the Wheeler household; this morning is no exception. Sam hogs the syrup and creates an ordeal out of it when Jo snatches the bottle from him. Mom tries to play the mediator but ends up having to physically separate them both when Sam cuffs her on the ear and cocks a snook at her with a stuck-out tongue. Jo contemplates chucking a spoon at him out of spite, but Mom interferes and grounds her for the rest of the weekend, which is apparently what he was going to do yesterday night before she went to bed. Justice is fairly dispensed though because Sam also gets grounded as a result of breakfast, except he doesn’t seem to care about the punishment that was meted out to him.
It’s early evening now and Jo finds herself still dwelling in her bedroom, bored out of her mind. She’s flipped through every channel on the TV, reread some comics, drained the battery on her GameBoy and is now laying on her back in bed watching the ceiling fan perform lazy pirouettes above her, spinning round and round and round as she weighs what to do next.
Might as well clean her closet. The storage unit Mom rents out reached full capacity last month, and so the remaining boxes are now stored in her closet. She still hasn’t sorted through anything in there yet, which is a chore she’s been meaning to finish for a while. Not like she has anything better to do right now.
Rolling out of bed, Jo opens her closet and is greeted by a wall of cardboard boxes. Most of them are time capsules filled with useless junk from previous decades. Like Mom’s gaming consoles, or her old binkies from when she was a pup. She even found an envelope of her baby teeth once, which, yuck, Mom. No amount of sentimental value would ever compel her to keep her hypothetical pup’s baby teeth, but she supposes that’s just her.
One box in particular catches her eye. It’s labeled 1998 on the frontside. Scribbled below it in sloppy letters that could only be the work of her dad’s handwriting: Mike Wheeler. This feels like a box that shouldn’t be in her closet. If anything, it should be in Mom’s bedroom where most of Dad’s belongings reside for safekeeping.
She chews her lip, feeling indecisive.
Then she drags the box out and sets it down on the carpet.
For a moment, she sits in front of it. Stares at it. It’s not like it would be sacrilegious to rifle through what is essentially a shrine of Dad’s old stuff. Right?
...She is definitely overthinking this.
She rips the seal of duct tape and folds the flaps out of the way. A fat plume of dust and dander hits her face, and she coughs, wafting it away with her hand. Guess that answers how long this box has been unopened for.
She peers inside. The first things she finds are old D&D boards, D&D figurines, D&D binders—Jesus, her parents were obsessed with this game growing up—and even a purple wizard’s hat that she swears belongs to her mom. Most of this stuff she’s already seen at one point, nothing too exciting. Birthday cards from Aunt Nancy and Uncle Jonathan, an outdated Walkman, a green toy T-Rex, postcards from various states. Yawn.
Then she digs deeper and finds a thick envelope crammed full of what she’s assuming are letters. She flips it around, skimming the name on the front.
Jane H.
Sounds like a name she’s heard before, but she can’t put a face to it. Scribbled below the name—
"Eleven," Jo mumbles aloud, tracing the blue ink with a furrowed brow. Huh. She drops the envelope back inside. She’s not that intrusive that she’ll read someone else’s private letters.
She eventually reaches the bottom of the box, finding a busted-up typewriter that’s seen better days and a Sony MiniDV camcorder. She considers the camcorder, head tilted thoughtfully. Not what she was originally searching for, but it could be interesting to see what videos are on it. If the MiniDV is in here, then there should theoretically be an A/V cable tangled among the other stuff somewhere…
"Ah-ha!" she exclaims, finding the bundle of cable beneath some old Marvel comics and fishing it out.
Turning the TV back on, she hooks the camcorder up to it. She switches the power dial on the camcorder to playback mode, inhales deeply, and then presses the play button on the TV before sitting back on her haunches to watch.
Grainy footage plays on the screen of their old house back in downtown Indianapolis. More specifically, grainy footage of their living room. She recognizes that chesterfield couch, that coffee table that gave her a gash in the temple when she clipped it as a toddler and had to get stitches. The faint mark is still there to this day. A battle scar, Dad always used to tell her. She was a fearless paladin who fought off a hoard of tyrantfog zombies, or something like that. She’s forgotten basically everything about D&D, remembering only the rudimentary rules and classes her parents drilled into her head as a pup. They used to play it a lot, but they haven’t in the last seven or so years. Jo isn’t too beat up over it; she prefers Pokémon anyway.
So far it’s just their boring old living room. The person holding the MiniDV taps on it twice.
"…This thing on?"
Jo’s chest pulls tight. Dad’s voice. It’s been a while since she’s heard it.
"Red light on the viewfinder means it should be on," Dad mutters under his breath.
"You’re home already?"
Emerging from what Jo remembers as the master bedroom is Mom, and based on the year written on the cardboard box, he’s probably a couple weeks out from going into labor with Jamie. Mom waddles over to where Dad is busy fussing with the camcorder like a prehistoric dinosaur, one hand resting atop his heavily pregnant belly.
"The book signing lasted shorter than I expected," Dad says distractedly, still playing around with the camcorder in his hands.
"So you went out and got yourself a shiny new toy," Mom says, inspecting the camcorder up close. He looks a lot younger here, which, duh. Happier, too. His smile actually reaches his eyes, which also have noticeably less wrinkles at the corners. "How much did it run you?"
"Not a lot." That earns him a pointed look from Mom. "I promise! There was a killer deal at Best Buy." Mom merely hums, and then he leans in and pecks what sounds like a swift kiss to Dad’s lips. "How’re you feeling today?"
Mom huffs. "Like I’m Ellen Ripley and a Xenomorph is eager to burst out of my stomach. Can’t believe you’ve done this to me—again."
"You know, I think you look pretty sexy like this.”
"You try carrying a person inside you for nine months and see how sexy it is when you have to pee every five seconds because he’s decided your bladder is prime real estate." Mom lifts one brow archly. "Your only job as an alpha is to stick it in."
Dad chuckles behind the camcorder. "And that’s your favorite part."
Jo grimaces in disgust. Ew, gross.
Suddenly Mom inhales sharply and his hand curls over his stomach while at the same time Dad asks, "What?"
"He’s kicking again," Mom says. He slowly lowers himself down onto the couch, looking up at Dad expectantly. "Wanna feel him?"
Shuffling feet, the camcorder shakes a little, and then Dad is sitting next to Mom on the couch. Jo watches Mom grab Dad’s hand and place it over his stomach. The moment is so intimate Jo feels like she’s accidentally intruding even from the future.
"Feel that?" Mom whispers softly. The camcorder is angled downward, blocking his face from view to instead focus on his swollen belly, but Jo can tell when her mom is smiling from ear to ear. Even when they’re not visible, her parents’ love for each other is palpable through the screen. "He’s strong. Definitely won’t have your lanky Wheeler limbs."
An indignant squawk identical to a pterodactyl screech. "I’m plenty muscular now."
"Mike, don’t kid yourself. You’re all bones."
"Oh yeah? I happen to recall last night when you told me very enthusiastically how much you love it when I—"
"Dad!"
Jo sits up a little taller. That was her voice. Hot tears build in her eyes.
And then the camcorder moves to show her running across the hardwood floors in a pair of red overalls with two braids streaking like twin comets behind her. She stops in front of Dad.
"Hey, peanut head," he greets her, tone softening.
Something sharp brute forces its way in deep between her sternum like a bone saw during open heart surgery, and she sobs out a watery laugh.
"Lemme take that," Mom says, the camcorder transferring users from one hand and into another.
The camcorder stabilizes after a few moments, and then Jo sees her dad in the shot. Their current house is a gallery of family photos, and her dad features in about ninety percent of them, but on video he looks—different. His hair is parted to the side, and he’s got these glasses that are way too big for his narrow face. He looks so ordinary. If Jo tries hard to remember, she can still smell his scent. The comforting musk of lemony detergent and library books.
Dad crouches down to mini Jo’s eye level, a broad grin on his face.
"How’s my little maestro? Hold on. Why the hell—" Mom coughs loudly in the background, "—heck, why the heck are you smeared in paint?"
"Mom let me borrow his paints," she says beamingly before presenting a painting that looks like a rainbow unicorn puked all over it. "Look what I made!"
The painting is horrendous, but Dad is Dad and he whistles as if she were the very Michelangelo who painted the plafond of the Sistine Chapel. "Wow. You’ve got some major competition, Will." He ruffles Jo’s hair. "Good job, peanut head. That’s my girl."
"What are you doing?"
Jo nearly crashes into the box in her scramble to pause the video. She hastily wipes her eyes. "What are you doing?" she snaps at her intruder brother, sniffling. "You seriously need to learn how to knock."
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Sam staring at where the TV screen is frozen on her eleven-year-old face, a gap of missing teeth in her smile, and then he looks back at her.
"Maybe don’t leave your door unlocked," he snarks.
Jo turns to glare balefully at him, but then stops short.
After watching that family video, she sees it now more than ever. Sam really is the spitting image of Dad. Dark head of curls, brown eyes, pale freckles. His nose has not pledged allegiance to either parent yet, but Jo won’t be surprised if it eventually grows into Dad’s shape once he’s older.
"Anyway," Sam says, snapping her out of it, "Mom says we’re leaving in ten minutes."
Jo makes a confused face. "Where are we going?"
"To visit Dad."
𓇢𓆸
The car trundles to a stop on the macadamized road that paves the main lot. Mom shifts it into park, then turns to look at Jo first in the passenger’s seat.
"There should be an umbrella in the side compartment," he tells her. "It looks like it might rain."
Jo finds the umbrella and grabs it, handing it to him.
"We’ll take this just in case," Mom says, trying for a small smile that lands dully in the silent cabin.
"How long are we gonna stay?" Jamie asks from the backseat. Beside him, Sam sighs and continues staring out the window.
Mom swivels around in his seat to face them back there. "Not long. We have to pick Grandma and Grandpa up from the airport later."
Jo blinks while unbuckling. "They’re coming to Lenora?"
"They’ll be staying with us this week. That means I expect everyone to be on their best behavior."
"I hope she makes spaghetti again," Jamie says wishfully.
"Already planned for tomorrow night’s dinner," Mom says, and Jamie nearly crushes the bouquet out of excitement.
The car doors shut out of sync as they troop out, and then they’re walking along the crunchy gravel trails through the Lenora Cemetery. Jo reads the same names she’s always read on the gravestones they pass by. Harris, Elkins, Pehr, Liebgott. Some gravestones have vases and bouquets in front of them. Most are bare. It’s quiet today. Empty, save for the small family observing a funeral rite a hundred feet away. Jo wonders which loved one they’ve lost. An even grimmer part of her wonders how they were taken; whether it was quick and painless, or if they suffered.
Petrichor hangs thick and moist in the air. Mom was right. It looks like a storm is brewing; if the churning clouds weren’t enough of a sign, she can smell it. Even the slight change in barometric pressure is hurting her sinuses.
They make it to the gravestone. Jamie sets the bouquet of eclectic flowers on the concrete slab. Yellow calla lilies and blue hydrangeas. Dad’s favorites.
"Hi, Mike," Mom says. "Sorry it’s been a while since we last visited. Life got busy."
Jamie steps back and clings onto Jo while Mom speaks to Dad. She places a hand on his small shoulder, feeling him shuffle closer to her side. She doesn’t cry anymore during these visits. Jamie never has; he didn’t know Dad like they did. He knows of him, but didn’t know him unlike them. Dad may as well be a stranger to him.
Minutes pass when she feels a tug on her sleeve meant to get her attention and looks down at her brother.
"Hm?"
Jamie points behind her and says, "Sam followed a deer into the woods."
Jo briefly looks around for their brother.
Lo and behold, Sam is gone.
Her teeth clench. That little shit. She didn’t even notice him leaving!
"Stay here with Mom," she tells him, and Jamie grips her sleeve harder with a "Jo—" but he isn’t able to get another word in edgeways because Jo’s inner alpha takes over and she bites out, harsher, "Jamie. Stay here." Her tone brooks no room for argument.
Obediently, his hand drops from her sleeve and he stays put.
Mom is still talking to Dad’s grave. Jo will make this quick.
She takes off down the trail, rushing past the interment she saw earlier, and makes it to the edge of the trees bordering the cemetery when she stops.
Even from here, she can’t see shit except for footprints that disappear into the trees. Those have to be Jamie’s footprints. There’s no trail to walk on, only the abrupt end of the cemetery that feeds into the vast domain of the woods.
It looks like he’s gone off the beaten path and walked right into these woods. That idiot. Following a deer of all things? It could be rabid or sick for all he knows.
"When I find you, Sam," she grumbles, before marching into the woods to get him.
Her sense of smell is usually a guidepost for her. Sam’s scent is easy to find. Trackable, even more so now that she's an alpha, which, according to biology, means she has more olfactory sensors, an evolutionary trait that made alphas better hunters back then, or something like that.
However, with the weather messing with her senses, she’s essentially nose blind. Now only her eyesight can lead her to where she needs to go, and she already needs glasses, so. Not off to a great start.
She cups her hands around her mouth and yells, "Sam!" but her voice echoes without a response. Her hands swing back down to her sides as she trudges onward, stepping over deadfall and other forest detritus in her path.
Overhead, the trees sway and bend in a kind of formation that resembles the ceiling of a crypt. It’s dark, cold, damp. Unsettling. Along the way, everything gets darker and the temperature drops, which isn’t really helping how creeped out she feels the farther she goes.
Something cold and wet suddenly drops onto her forehead. Her head tilts up at the greenish gray sky, holding her palm face up. More drops fall.
It’s raining.
Knowing her luck, it’ll pick up pretty soon.
"Sam, this isn’t funny!" she shouts, a gust of wind making her convulse with a shiver. She hugs her arms to protect herself from the damp chill. "I swear to god, if you already went back and I’m following someone else’s footprints…"
She slows to a stop in front of a new trail of footprints. And these look—
These look unusual.
"What the hell…?" she murmurs in confusion, crouching down to slide a finger across the indent in the dirt. Definitely not the doing of a deer. This rivals the size of a bear paw. Or an absurdly large lizard. Last she checked, Californian woods weren’t teeming with Komodo dragons, and bears are supposed to be in hibernation.
...Unless these footprints don’t belong to any of those, but instead to something different. Something of urban legend; a creature often mistaken for a deer or a bear but far from it.
She shakes her head. "Jesus, you’ve been watching way too many scary movies, Jo," she mutters to herself. "Get a grip. It’s not a Wendigo."
Somewhere close by, a tree branch snaps and she almost jumps out of her skin.
She hesitates. "Sam?"
Nothing.
Stomach sliding into her throat, Jo begins to panic. She quickens her pace, heading deeper into the woods as the squall of rain drives down harder. It was probably a wild hare, or a fox that startled her. Yeah. There’s nothing dangerous in these woods, but still, she’d really like to get out of here soon rather than later.
"Sam, seriously, this isn’t funny. Come out right now or—ah!"
She trips over the fallen corpse of a tree trunk. Her hands fly out in front of her and she’s able to break her fall at the last second, but her knee hits the ground hard enough that it pops out of place. She hisses, clutching her mud-soiled knee, now oozing blood. Fucking fantastic.
An ear-splitting shriek cuts through the trees, and her head snaps up.
That didn’t sound good.
Jo feels the color drain from her face. The unease festering in her stomach brings her to her feet again despite the angry throb of her knee. She hurries away from the noise, a limp slowing her down a little, the pain in her knee all but forgotten.
Her mind races. What the hell was that? What the hell was that?
"Sam!" she shouts, voice cracking with desperation. She hobbles faster, feet squelching through the building mud. She almost slips a couple times but steadies her footing quickly.
"Jo!"
Her head whips around. "Sam!" she calls out, borderline frantic. "Sam! Where are you? I'm right here!"
She turns—
He materializes right in front of her, sopping wet and nearly giving her a heart attack. The relief of knowing he’s okay doesn’t last long at all.
"Jesus Christ, Samuel!" she hisses. "Why’d you leave like that?"
In lieu of an answer, Sam stares at something behind her. The hairs on the back of Jo’s neck stand.
Something growls, low and dangerous.
She doesn’t think when she tackles him onto the ground at the same time the animal lunges at them. They hit the mud hard, rolling to a rough stop at the base of a cleaved tree. Adrenaline forces Jo back onto her feet, one arm shielding Sam behind her, eyes wide and mouth gaping at what's in front of her.
"Holy shit," she breathes.
It’s a faceless, pale creature. The visibility due to the rain is bad, and it's maybe fifty feet away from them, but she can make out the dangerous shape of it, hear the clicky trills coming from it. Jo doesn’t know any animals that are white and stalky and ten feet tall, but that’s not her main concern. Her main concern is that they’re about to be this thing’s lunch if they don’t—
"Run!" she yells, grabbing Sam by the wrist and turning tail to flee.
They run nonstop for about thirty seconds until Jo’s knee threatens to give out. She finds a fallen tree for them to hide behind, shoving Sam’s head down without hesitation. She peers over the tree for a split second before ducking back down, breathing fast and shallow. She can't see it anywhere, but she knows deep in her gut that they're not alone. There’s no telling how long it’ll be until that thing gives up its hunt, or worse: finds them. They’re sitting ducks now. They have to get out of here, and soon.
"What was that thing?" Sam whispers.
"I don’t know," Jo whispers back. "But it’s not friendly."
She can feel him trembling from where he is squashed into her side. She's scared too, but seeing Sam scared—it kickstarts her instincts. She surveys the surrounding area, blinking furiously through the downpour of rain.
Exit. They need an exit.
Jo's eyes widen when she finds one.
There, at the bottom of the decaying tree, is a glowing red aperture. And floating around it looks almost like—spores? It could be a nest or a part of the tree that's rotting. Either way, their options are scarce. Whatever it is, it’ll have to do.
She nudges Sam with an elbow, indicating toward the tree. "See that opening over there, in the tree?" she whispers. "Crawl into it and hide. I’ll be right behind you."
His eyes protest before his mouth can. "But—"
She shoves him toward it with urgency. "Quit being a rebellious twerp before we die because of you."
Reluctantly, Sam lowers himself all the way to the ground. He commando crawls toward the tree, staying low to the soggy forest grit while Jo watches him with bated breath. He eventually reaches the aperture, appearing to hesitate for a split second, before he runs his hand over the mesh covering it. Slowly, he pushes his hand through it, and the string-like substance breaks apart with ease.
Sam looks back at her, probably checking to see if she’ll follow.
She signals that she is with a nod. Coming, she mouths. And then she drops down the same way he did, making a slow crawl on her belly toward her brother.
Somewhere behind her, the creature makes a clicking noise that she can only equate to a velociraptor in Jurassic Park. Sounds like a predator on the prowl.
Her pulse spikes, and she wriggles faster across the mud.
Sam is already inside the tree waiting for her. Jo is halfway there when she hears the creature trill, now closer than ever.
There's no time.
She pushes herself up and runs the rest of the way.
The creature hisses and chases her.
Jo leaps for the tree and makes it, forcing herself through the mesh and reuniting with Sam on the other side. They gasp for breath, staring at each other.
Now what?
"Jo?" he says. He means whatever is behind her.
So she looks behind her.
The aperture is shrinking.
Closing.
"What the hell," she says, and then is suddenly face to face with the creature. Its head opens up like a blooming flower with petals of razor-sharp teeth. And then it shrieks at them.
Sam screams. Jo scrambles back.
It isn't small enough to fully slip inside like they could, not when the aperture is closing up fast, but that doesn't stop it from blindly groping and slashing its claws around in the hole.
One of its hands manages to latch onto Jo's ankle and attempts to haul her out by her foot. Sam holds her back.
Jo kicks it in the face, and it hisses as it lets go of her just in time for the tree to seal fully shut. She tumbles backwards into Sam and they hit the wall hard enough to burst through the bark. They fall from a steep height and crash-land together onto the ground below, the wind knocking out of her lungs. Tinnitus rings in her ears. Her vision goes double.
The first thing she hears while teetering on the brink of unconsciousness is the flummoxed voice of a woman—
"What the hell?"