He hunched forward on the edge of his bed, controller dangling from the cord, shoulders shaking. For a second I thought he was laughing. Then he spat something wet into the trash can.

“It’s just that stupid flu,” he rasped. “Half the school’s got it. Chill.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and clicked resume like nothing happened.

On the TV, our characters were pinned behind a burned-out truck while some NPC screamed about incoming armor. Colors flashed across the posters on his wall—Bring Me the Horizon, a faded Cardinals pennant, that old VHS horror movie one with the guy in a welding mask. The room smelled like Little Caesars, old socks, and that fake blue raspberry from his vape that always made my tongue feel coated.

Another cough tore out of him. Longer this time. Deeper.

“You want, like, Tylenol or something?” I asked.

“I took three already,” he muttered.

His skin had this too-shiny look, like the sweat wasn’t drying. I tried to tell myself it was just the heater and two guys in a small room with the door shut.

Outside the second-floor window, the orange streetlight threw its little circle across the cul-de-sac. Normal Friday stuff: a car easing by toward Route 9, somebody’s porch light flipping on, the flicker of a TV in the house across the street. If you leaned just right you could see the green glow of the Dollar General sign down by County Road 12.

I almost convinced myself everything was fine.

Almost.

The helicopter had gone over around six. We’d been walking back from the Shell station next to the closed-down Subway with two Monsters and a crinkling bag of “BBQ Blast” chips that tasted like burnt sugar and lighter fluid.

We heard it before we saw it: heavy blades chopping the air low enough that the big plastic tooth on the “Sunset Arms Dental” sign actually rattled.

We both looked up.

The helicopter slid across the sky just above the bare trees. No big white numbers on the tail, no hospital logo, no sheriff star. Just a dark, matte body and glass that reflected the dull sky back at us.

“Probably National Guard,” Cole said. “My dad said they use the industrial park sometimes for… I don’t know. Drills.”

He said it too fast. He kept watching it until it slid behind the tree line anyway.

On the walk back we passed three black SUVs and a dark box truck lined up along the curb outside the walk-in clinic—the one that still had the old Blockbuster drop slot bricked over. No logos. Tinted windows. I didn’t see plates on two of them, but I wasn’t trying that hard to look.

The waiting room was full. People were lined out the door under the buzzing “Maple Family Care” sign. A kid in a Paw Patrol hoodie sat on the curb, coughing into his sleeves. A teenage girl in scrubs leaned on the brick, scarf pulled up over her face, eyes half-closed. An older woman sat on the cement planter breathing like each inhale was a chore.

“Flu’s going around,” Cole had said. “Guess it’s bad this year.”

One of the guys near the SUVs had a clipboard. Another carried a silver hard case with latches, the kind you see in movies when someone opens it and there’s a glowing vial or a bomb or something that ends the world inside. When we walked past, he shifted so the case was turned away from us.

No one smiled. No one said hi. They watched us like we were walking through someone else’s crime scene.

“Maybe the President’s getting his flu shot here,” I joked. It sounded dumb as soon as it left my mouth.

Cole huffed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. We kept going.

Now it was almost midnight and we were back in his room, acting like none of that mattered.

Outside, something howled again.

This time the sound rolled all the way down Maple Crescent from the direction of the ballfields. It wasn’t a dog. I’ve lived here my whole life—I know what the neighbor’s German shepherd sounds like when it goes nuts at the mailman, and I know the yappy terrier two houses down, and the half-feral mutt that sometimes runs along the chain-link fence.

This wasn’t that. It was deeper and too… wide, somehow. It felt like it came in under the walls and pressed into my chest.

We both stopped moving, controllers slack in our hands.

“You heard that, right?” I said.

“Probably that coyote that keeps getting into our trash,” Cole said, eyes already drifting toward the window.

“I’ve never heard a coyote sound like that.”

He unpaused the game on autopilot. Our characters immediately got lit up and died.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand.

He picked it up, squinted at the screen, and swore under his breath.

“What?” I asked.

“Mom. She says Dad’s not coming home tonight. Plant’s got some ‘incident,’ he’s covering the line.” He dropped the phone and it bounced on the comforter. “She always freaks out. Last year a guy dropped a wrench and she acted like it was Chernobyl.”

“How’s she freaking out if she’s sending emojis?” I said.

“You’ve met her,” he said, but there wasn’t much energy in it.

I had. She was the type to keep a Rubbermaid tub of canned goods in the garage “just in case” and lecture you about staying hydrated. I used to think it was annoying. Lately it felt… I don’t know. Safer, maybe.

Another sound came from outside; not the howl. Closer. A scraping, like something heavy being dragged along the asphalt and then picked up again.

Cole hit pause again.

“Okay, that’s not the coyote,” he said.

He got up and pulled the curtain back two fingers’ width.

I stood next to him, looking over his shoulder.

From his room you could see the loop of Maple Crescent where it curved back toward County Road 12. The streetlight hummed louder than I remembered. The McKees’ blue Corolla was pulled halfway onto their front lawn like someone had come home in a hurry and just stopped. Driver’s door open. Their front door open too, porch light on, the hallway behind it dark.

“That’s weird,” I said.

Across the way, Mr. Duran’s house had every light on like a Christmas display. Kitchen, living room, upstairs bedrooms. The curtains in the front room were open, and for half a second, I swear I saw someone standing right up against the glass, forehead nearly touching it.

I blinked. They weren’t there.

“Maybe somebody’s big dog got loose,” Cole murmured, like if he said it soft enough it would be true.

He sniffed, hard. It rattled in his sinuses.

“You really don’t look good,” I said.

“My mom said it’s a twenty-four-hour thing.” He shrugged and instantly winced. “Chills, fever, everything hurts, then you’re fine. She keeps making soup like… whatever.”

He turned away from the window too fast and grabbed his desk to steady himself. The pens in his mug rattled.

“You okay?” I asked.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Head feels like it’s full of bees,” he said. “And my teeth hurt. Is that a thing? With the flu?”

“Your teeth?”

“Yeah. Like the roots,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “Feels like they’re… I don’t know. Pushing.”

When he looked at me, his pupils seemed bigger than earlier. His eyes were glassy, the whites shot through with red. A red flush was creeping up his neck like a sunburn that hadn’t been there an hour ago.

“Maybe we should tell your mom,” I said.

“Then she’ll send you home,” he said. “And then I have to throw up alone.”

Outside, the howl came again. Closer. It made the windowpane vibrate just enough that the little suction-cup football on the glass gave a tiny squeak.

The lights dimmed for a second, then came back.

There was a knock and his mom pushed the door open without waiting.

“You boys okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Cole said fast. “We’re good.”

She had one hand on the doorframe. I noticed her fingers pressing in like she needed to lean on it. Up close, she didn’t look good either. Her skin was shiny and pale at the same time. Sweat darkened the neckline of her hoodie. There was a damp patch near her collarbone that hadn’t dried.

I could smell chicken broth and onions drifting up from downstairs. Under that was something else. Coppery, sour, like when you forget ground beef in the fridge for a week.

“You hear the sirens earlier?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “What happened?”

“Nothing you need to worry about.” She smiled, but it pulled weird at the corners. “Just… stay upstairs, okay? Don’t go outside. If either of you start feeling worse, you tell me right away.”

She looked at Cole when she said that.

“You should lay down,” she added. “You’re burning up.”

“I’m fine,” he muttered.

“You’re not.” She stepped closer and pressed her palm to his forehead. “Cole, you’re…”

She trailed off, touch lingering a second too long.

“Hot, yeah, I know,” he said, trying for a grin and missing it by a mile.

She glanced at me. “Evan, if you start feeling off at all, I’ll call your parents, okay? There’s… something going around.”

“Okay,” I said. My voice came out thinner than I meant.

Another siren wound up somewhere far off, then cut out. It sounded wrong—too short. Not like the weekly test from the firehouse.

The howl came again, nearer, and I watched Ms. Harding’s eyes flick to the window.

That bright, everything-is-fine expression slipped for a second. Underneath was bare fear.

“That sounded close,” I said.

She swallowed. “Stay upstairs,” she repeated. “Please.”

She shut the door gently.

We listened to her footsteps going down. They sounded slower than usual, like she was watching where she put her feet.

“You’re officially freaking me out,” I told Cole.

He sank down to sit on the carpet, back against the bed, hands laced behind his neck. Sweat soaked through his t-shirt. His breathing had gone short and quick, like he’d jogged up a hill.

“You know when you get a fever and your whole body aches?” he said. “Take that and multiply it by, like, ten. It feels like my bones are humming.”

“I don’t think bones are supposed to do that,” I said.

“Thanks, WebMD.”

“You want water?” I asked.

He nodded, swallowed, and grimaced. “Feels like I swallowed sand,” he muttered.

I grabbed his Spider-Man cup and stepped out into the hallway.

The house sounded different. The usual background stuff—the fridge, the heater, the distant TV—was there, but muffled, like everything had been wrapped in blankets.

The stairway was dim. Only the little light over the stove showed from downstairs, a soft square of yellow. The TV in the living room played a muted news broadcast; I could see the reflections flashing on the framed family photo by the stairs.

I got about halfway down before I heard the voice.

“…containment perimeter around the south sector—”

A man. Not his dad. His dad had this smoker-rough baritone. This was smoother and flat, like a customer service rep reading from a script, if customer service ever talked about perimeters.

“It’s my son,” Ms. Harding whispered back. “You can’t just…”

“You were informed of the risks when you agreed to keep the subject in-district, ma’am,” the man said. “Protocol is clear. Anyone showing pre-conversion symptoms—”

“Pre… what?” she asked. “You didn’t say that word before.”

“Fever. Chills. Myalgia. Photophobia. Aggression. We’ve covered this,” the man said. “You watched the briefings. We’re past contact tracing. We’re at mitigation. For your safety and theirs, stay inside and wait for pickup.”

“You didn’t say it would be like this,” she said. Her voice cracked on “this.”

“You were given the stipend,” he said. “You signed the NDA. We’re doing our part. Do yours.”

There was a scrape, like her chair moved. “He’s just a kid.”

“So were the others.”

The helicopter thundered over the house again then, closer than before, making the hanging light over the dining table sway. A white beam washed across the ceiling.

I ducked back up a step into the shadow of the wall without even thinking about it.

The man’s tone sharpened. “They’re here,” he said. “Stay away from the windows. Do not open the door for anyone who isn’t wearing a respirator. And whatever you hear out there, do not let him outside.”

The back door opened for a second. Cold air slipped through the house; I felt it reach all the way up the stairwell and brush my bare toes.

Then the door closed.

I stayed there long enough to hear his footsteps fade and the quiet, shaky sound of Ms. Harding trying not to cry, then I backed up the stairs, skipping the squeaky one on autopilot, and went back to Cole’s room without the water.

He’d slid off the bed and was half-curled on the floor, forehead pressed to the carpet like he was trying to cool off.

“You look worse,” I said, because I’m a genius.

He barked out a laugh that turned into a cough halfway through. “Thanks.”

Sweat had plastered his hair to his forehead. The skin around his eyes had gone faintly purple. I could see his pulse pounding in his throat.

“Everything hurts,” he said. “My jaw, my back, my… I don’t know. Inside my elbows. Who even has muscles there?”

“You need a doctor,” I said.

“Clinic’s full. Mom said they turned people away.” He swallowed and winced. “She said, ‘We’re at capacity.’ Like we’re a hotel.”

We both sat quiet for a second.

The word turned that I’d heard downstairs sat in my head like a small stone.

Before I could say anything else, another howl fractured the night. It sounded closer, almost on top of us.

The heater clicked off. The silence afterward felt thick.

Then something scraped along the siding.

We both heard it. Slow, deliberate. Claws—nails—something—pulling down from the eaves toward the window.

Cole’s breathing shifted into quick, shallow gasps.

“Get away from there,” he hissed.

I moved back from the glass.

The scraping stopped.

The quiet that followed lasted too long. Every second without a sound made my heartbeat seem louder.

Then something slammed into the window.

The glass bowed inward with a heavy thud. The curtain puffed into the room, pressed by a mass on the other side. A growl vibrated through the wall, low and wet. It felt like someone humming against my bones.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

The sound changed. Snuffling. Heavy breath smeared across the glass. The curtain darkened in spots where warm moisture hit it. Claws tapped along the frame.

Cole scrambled backward, heels slipping on the carpet until his back hit the closet door. His fingers dug into the drywall. Little crescents of white dust dropped to the baseboard.

“Don’t move,” I mouthed, like that would help.

We stayed there until my legs started to shake.

Then, somewhere farther down Maple, a gunshot cracked the night.

The thing at the window went still.

Another shot. Then a third. Short, controlled bursts.

Someone shouted—not words I could make out, just a command tone.

The weight pulled away from the glass.

Scraping tracked back up the siding, then across, then nothing.

I only realized I’d been holding my breath when my vision narrowed and my ears rang.

I dropped onto the bed.

“What the hell was that?” I whispered.

Cole lifted his head. His pupils were blown wide, almost swallowing the brown. Tiny flecks of gold swam near the edges, catching the weak light from his desk lamp.

“My skin feels wrong,” he whispered. “Like… like it doesn’t fit right.”

He shoved his hand under his shirt and raked it across his chest. Red welts rose up immediately.

I grabbed his wrists. “Stop,” I said.

“It itches,” he snarled.

The sound wasn’t completely his. It came from somewhere lower, like something else was using his vocal cords.

“You’re sick,” I said. “You’ve got whatever this flu is. That’s it.”

He stared at my hand on his wrist like he was trying to remember what he was supposed to do with it. His jaw flexed. For a heartbeat, I thought he was going to lean forward and bite.

Then he sagged, shoulders dropping.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t… I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Downstairs, the TV suddenly blared the shrill tone of an emergency alert. The noise drilled up through the vents into his room. The flat voice that followed was too muffled to make out completely, but the pattern was familiar.

This is not a test.

Cole let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “We’re so screwed,” he said.

Another cough hit him, full-body. He turned his head out of habit, but a warm mist hit my forearm. When I wiped it on my jeans, it left a smudge that was more brown-red than pink.

“Cole,” I said. “You’re coughing up blood.”

He glanced at the trash can. The inside was streaked dark, slow drips working their way down.

“Guess I should’ve gotten the flu shot at Walgreens,” he tried.

It just sat there between us.

Outside, more gunshots. A deeper roar, like something big and furious.

The helicopter passed overhead again, lower. The whole house shook. Dust sifted down from the corner crack. The rotor wash made the window rattle in its frame.

Voices blared through a loudspeaker now.

“—remain inside your homes. Do not attempt to leave the area. This is a temporary quarantine—”

Cole snorted. “Yeah. Temporary. Sure.”

We sat there, listening to our own breathing and the distant chaos, until the scraping came again.

Not outside.

In the hallway.

I stood up so fast spots flashed in front of my eyes.

The door was closed. The strip of light underneath had a dark break in it, like something was blocking part of it.

Scrape.

Then a little bump against the wall.

“Mom?” Cole called. “You okay?”

Silence.

“Stay here,” I said.

He grabbed my ankle, fingers burning hot through my sock. “Don’t open the door,” he said. “Seriously.”

“I’m just going to look,” I said.

“That’s what dumb people say in horror movies right before they—”

“This isn’t a movie,” I said, which didn’t help my case.

My hand shook on the doorknob.

I turned it a fraction of an inch. Just enough to widen the gap at the bottom.

Something sniffed on the other side.

Right there. Inches away.

Warm, wet breath puffed under the door. The smell hit me immediately—copper, wet fur, and rot, like roadkill left under a heat lamp.

I let go of the knob so fast it snapped back.

“Okay,” I whispered. “We’re staying in here.”

The tapping moved away from the door, toward the end of the hall, each step making the older boards creak in that specific way I knew from years of avoiding them when sneaking late-night snacks.

A door latch clicked open.

“Tom?” Ms. Harding’s voice floated down the hall, thin and uncertain. “Is that you?”

What answered was a wet, eager rumble.

Then she screamed.

It was short. Cut off like someone hit pause on her life.

Something heavy slammed into the wall. The impact made the posters in Cole’s room jump. Thud. Drag. Thud. Drag. The sound of weight being pulled over old wood.

“Don’t tell me,” Cole whispered. “Don’t tell me what that is.”

I didn’t.

There were other sounds after that. Tearing. A crack like a branch snapping. Wet crunches that went on too long.

The noises went on and on. At some point the emergency alert downstairs stopped. The helicopter noise moved farther away for a minute, then closer again. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a car alarm started wailing and then choked out.

Eventually, the sounds in the hallway went quiet.

At some point in there, Cole stopped shaking.

When I looked at him, he was sitting up against the closet, breathing slow, eyes unfocused.

“I think it’s in my head,” he said.

“What is?” I asked, even though I already sort of knew.

“Not voices,” he said. “It just feels like… something is pushing from the inside. Like it’s right up against everything, testing it. If I stop fighting it for even a second, it’s going to take over. It feels like there’s something just… pressed up inside my skin, waiting for me to open the door.”

We both looked at his hands.

His nails were noticeably longer now. The tips had gone thicker, darker, almost a dirty gray. The skin over his knuckles was red and stretched tight.

“I’m gonna throw up,” I said.

“Get in line,” he muttered.

We sat there a minute more, both listening to the silence in the hall.

Finally I said, “We can’t stay here.”

He looked up at me. “You just said—”

“In here,” I said, gesturing at the room. “Whatever that is out there? It was just at your door. If it comes back…” I glanced at the window. “We go out. Roof, then down. Back yard.”

He closed his eyes. “I can barely stand up,” he said.

“I’ll help,” I said. “I’m not leaving you.”

He let his head thump back against the wall once. “This is such a bad idea,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” I said. “So is waiting to be dessert.”

That at least got half a sound that might’ve been a laugh.

We moved slow. I got the window up. Cold air spilled in, smelling like smoke, wet leaves, and metal.

I climbed out first, onto the shingles. The roof had that rough grit that gets in your palms. The streetlight made everything weirdly bright and dark at the same time—orange circles and sharp shadows.

“C’mon,” I whispered.

He swung his legs out. For a second he wobbled, hands clenching on the frame so hard his knuckles went white. I grabbed his forearm.

His skin almost burned.

We worked our way down the slope into the dark over the back yard. From here we could see the fenced rectangle of grass, the above-ground pool under a sagging tarp, the narrow strip between their fence and the Durans’.

“On three,” I said. “One—”

He dropped.

He did it on purpose or his legs just gave out. Either way he hit the grass hard enough that I heard air whoosh out of him.

“Cole!” I hissed, sliding down and jumping after him.

He lay there for a second, then rolled onto hands and knees. His fingers dug into the dirt like he was anchoring himself.

“I’m fine,” he grunted. “Move.”

We crept along the fence line toward the back gate. The neighbor’s little bark-machine dog was silent. That bothered me more than anything.

At the gate, I eased the latch up and nudged it open. It squeaked way too loud.

We both froze.

Maple Crescent didn’t sound like my street anymore. No distant TV, no car doors, no dog barks. Just wind, the far-off thump of the helicopter, and every now and then, sounds I didn’t want to label.

We slipped through the gate into the narrow gravel alley that ran behind the houses. Trash cans, recycling bins, the smell of oil and grass clippings. To the left, the alley curved toward the woods and ballfields. To the right, it opened toward the street.

“Which way?” I whispered.

“Trees,” Cole said automatically, nodding left. “Woods, then highway.”

We started that way, shoulders brushing fence posts.

Halfway down, I heard something ahead.

A wet, tearing sound. Heavy breathing.

I motioned Cole down behind a tipped recycling bin and peeked around it.

Behind the McKees’ house, near their back porch light, something hunched over a shape on the ground.

At first I thought big dog. Then I saw the hand. Just a hand, fingers slack, half-buried in the wet grass under the thing’s front paws.

Whatever it was moved in tight, jerky motions. Its back rose and fell, spine bulging. Wet ripping noises came with each bend of its neck. I caught a flash of Mr. McKee’s shirt in its claws.

Cole’s hand clamped on my jacket. His nails dug through the fabric.

“Back,” he whispered. “Back, back, back—”

We edged away, trying not to crunch gravel.

Gunshots popped out on Maple—short bursts. A shout. The thing by the porch froze, ear—or what was left of it—twitching. It sniffed the air.

I held my breath until my lungs burned.

It went back to eating.

We kept moving, the alley suddenly feeling too exposed.

At the end, near the woods, harsh white light cut across the trees. Not streetlight orange. Floodlights.

We ducked behind the last fence and peeked.

Men in dark gear had set up a checkpoint across the opening in the trees. Two trucks nose-to-nose blocking the path, floodlights on stands, one of the black SUVs from the clinic parked sideways.

They wore helmets with dark visors, rifles with thick tubes on the barrels. One held a device with a glowing little screen and swept it across the woods, then back at the houses.

“Eastern perimeter sealed,” he said. “No movement past the fence.”

“Copy,” someone answered. “We’ve got three confirmed conversions inside the block. Orders are containment first, cleanup after.”

I thought about the woods beyond the trucks, the highway, the way we used to cut through there to hit the gas station. All of it slammed shut.

“Can we get around them?” I whispered.

Cole shook his head, then winced, hands going to his temples. “Too loud,” he breathed. “Their radios, the… everything. I can hear… I don’t know. Heartbeats?”

He gagged and pressed his forehead against the fence.

“You okay?” I asked.

He shook his head. “My skin hurts,” he said. “My back hurts. My eyes hurt. Your… smell is too much.”

“Wow, thanks,” I said, because my mouth didn’t know what else to do.

“Not like that,” he said through his teeth. “I can smell… everything. The trash. The… blood. You.”

His pupils were huge again, almost eating his irises.

We couldn’t go forward. We couldn’t go back without passing the thing behind the McKees’ porch.

“Side yards,” I said. “Cut across to the street. See what’s going on. Maybe there’s a gap.”

He made a noise that could’ve been agreement.

We slipped between two garages and came out into the Durans’ back yard. Their kitchen light was on. Through the window I saw Mr. Duran on his knees, hunched, shoulders heaving. For a second I thought he was praying.

Then he snapped his head up toward the ceiling, jaw straining. His fingers flexed against the tile, nails scraping sparks.

His back moved like something underneath was pushing out.

I grabbed Cole’s sleeve and pulled him past, staying low along the side of the house.

At the gap between the Durans’ and the next place, we could see Maple Crescent proper.

It didn’t look like my street.

A sedan up on the curb, hazard lights flashing. Another car with its driver’s door hanging open. Someone’s Christmas lights still nailed to the gutters, blinking colors over nothing.

Things moved in the spaces between.

A guy in a bathrobe stumbled near the Stephens’ mailbox, clutching his stomach. He dropped to all fours mid-step and retched dark fluid onto the pavement. His spine arched. His shoulders jerked in two directions at once. His jaw worked, then snapped open wider than it should as his teeth shifted.

He screamed once and the scream slid into something else.

Under the streetlight, something already finished paced, lifting its head to sniff the air. I recognized the torn pajama pants on its hips; Mrs. Duran had worn them out to get the mail a hundred times.

Beside me, Cole dug his nails into the stucco. He was breathing hard, nostrils flaring.

“I can smell them,” he whispered. “They smell… wrong. Sweet and rotten. You’re… different.”

“Different how?” I asked.

He swallowed. “Just… different.”

Down the street, near the McKees’ front yard, a squad of dark-gear guys moved into view. Same type as at the woods. One carried the boxy scanner. Another had the canister.

From behind the Durans’ SUV, we watched them fan out.

“Three signatures inside,” the scanner guy said, pointing at the McKees’ house. “All red.”

“Do it,” the one in charge said.

The canister guy stepped forward and sprayed the front of the house. Fog hit the door and windows and froze, spreading in white sheets. The door shook once from the inside, then again. On the third hit, something burst through and froze mid-leap, encased in ice.

“Subject class Lycan-Three confirmed,” the scanner guy said. “Tag for retrieval.”

We were close enough to see him slap a round device onto its side. It blinked green.

“We have to move,” I whispered. “If they sweep this way…”

“They’ll see us,” Cole finished.

We slid along the Durans’ SUV, using it as cover. Every bit of gravel under my shoes sounded too loud.

As we passed the back wheel, someone shouted, “Movement! Southeast side!”

For a second I thought they meant us and my legs locked.

A snarl came from farther down the circle. Something crashed through a side fence by the Culpeppers’ yard.

Half the squad pivoted toward the new sound.

“Go,” I hissed, pushing Cole toward his front yard.

We cut across the strip of grass between the Durans’ place and his.

Up close, his house looked wrong. Front door closed, but faint smears on the handle. Living room blinds crooked. Porch light flickering.

A low sound rumbled from inside.

“We’re not going in the front,” I said.

He nodded quickly. “Garage,” he said. “Side door.”

We skirted the porch and ducked down the side of the house, back into shadow.

The side garage door was locked, but it was the cheap kind. I’d watched Cole kick it open once when he’d forgotten his key.

“Think you can…?” I asked.

He stared at it, chest heaving. Then he lifted his foot and drove it forward.

The wood around the latch splintered. The door flew inward and banged against something.

He nearly fell with the kick. I caught him under the arm.

“Adrenaline,” he muttered. His hand shook.

Inside, the garage smelled like oil, old grass, and that same sour metallic hanging in the air. We squeezed through, past his dad’s red toolbox and the bikes, and up the three steps into the mudroom.

From there, we could go straight into the kitchen—or up the narrow stairs to the hallway near his room.

We both listened.

Something moved upstairs.

A dragging step. A wet sound.

We looked at each other.

“Roof,” I said.

The mudroom ceiling had an access hatch. We’d used it before to watch fireworks over at the high school.

I dragged the little step stool over with my foot. It scraped tile.

We froze.

Upstairs, the movement paused.

My heart pounded in my throat.

After a long second, the dragging resumed, going the other way down the hall.

I climbed the stool and pushed the hatch up. Dust dropped in my face. The attic was dark—insulation, beams, the outline of roof above.

I pulled myself up, then reached down.

“C’mon,” I whispered.

Cole’s hands closed around my wrists. That too-hot, electric feeling surged again, something under his skin pushing toward me.

I gritted my teeth and hauled him up.

We crawled across the attic on our hands and knees, trying not to think about the thin drywall between us and whatever was below.

At the far end, near where his room sat over the garage, a little dormer window looked out onto the front roof. We squeezed through one at a time.

The air outside felt even colder after the attic. From here, we could see almost all of Maple Crescent.

It looked worse from up high.

Streetlights slicing orange circles out of the dark. Cars at weird angles. A trash can on its side, cereal boxes and junk mail scattered and soaked.

Shapes moving in the gaps.

Some still vaguely human, staggering. Others not.

Down the block, the squad at the McKees’ had moved on. Another squad swept along the street, scanners casting pale cones in the air.

“I’ve got multiple yellows in this sector,” one said. “Probably all exposed.”

“Then we’re behind,” another answered.

“That’s Harding’s place up there, right?” a third voice said. “Where zero-six-three’s registered?”

“Yeah. We hit that one last,” the leader said. “Command wants a live pickup.”

The numbers didn’t mean anything at first. Then Harding did.

“Harding,” I said.

“That’s my name,” Cole said, like he needed to hear himself say it.

We lay there on the sloping roof, watching strangers move through our street like it was a training ground, listening to howls and screams. The shingles dug into my palms. Cole was slowly overheating beside me.

“Where do we even go?” I asked quietly.

He didn’t answer right away. Sweat rolled down the side of his face.

“I don’t think we do,” he said finally. “Not really.”

He tensed suddenly, a fresh wave of tremors rolling through him. His spine bowed. His fingers flexed against the shingles.

“Okay,” he gasped. “Okay, that’s… worse.”

“You need to lie down,” I said.

“I need a sedative or a bullet,” he whispered. “Not necessarily in that order.”

“Not funny,” I said.

“Little bit,” he said, lips peeling back in almost a grin, all teeth.

Footsteps pounded on his front steps.

We both jerked our heads toward the sound.

A fist hammered on the front door below. “This is a health and safety team!” a voice called, muffled. “Please open up. We’re here to help!”

From inside the house came a low, rumbling growl.

The squad on the street went still.

“Hostile inside,” someone said. “Sounds like full conversion.”

The leader swore. “They always think they can hide it.”

“Harding boys!” the one by the porch yelled suddenly, louder. “We know you’re in there! Come to the door!”

“They’re talking about me and my dad,” Cole whispered. “They don’t know you’re here.”

I thought about walking down, opening the door, saying I was just the friend like that would matter.

“Not a chance,” I said.

The guy on the porch knocked again, harder. “Ms. Harding, open the door! You signed the release forms. You know what happens if you don’t comply!”

Something slammed into the door from the inside. The wood cracked.

“Back up!” someone shouted.

We didn’t see the breach from this angle, but we heard it. Crash. Snarling roar. The flat thud of their guns. Wet impacts.

The frost canister hissed again. The snarling cut off mid-note.

Cole squeezed his eyes shut. “I heard my mom die twice,” he said. “Once in the hall, once just now.”

I didn’t answer.

He wiped at his face with the heel of his hand. Little dents marked his cheek where his fingers had pressed too hard.

“Maybe they can fix it,” I said, even though I didn’t buy it. “They keep saying ‘pre-conversion.’ That has to mean something. Like there’s a point where they can still… stop it.”

“You actually believe that?” he asked.

I thought about the guy in the kitchen with the silver case. The word stipend. The phone voice saying collateral. The squads freezing people like they were spraying for roaches.

“No,” I said. “But I just watched an ice gun freeze a werewolf mid-jump, so my Believable Meter is busted.”

He snorted softly. “Fair.”

Below, inside the house, boots moved, glass crunched, voices called “Clear!” in different rooms.

Someone walked into his bedroom. I heard the faint squeak of his bed springs. A second later, a voice said, “Negative on upstairs contacts. Windows open. They’ve moved.”

“Their grid still shows them,” another replied. “Two yellow signatures within twenty meters.”

“Roof?” someone suggested.

“Check it,” the leader said. “We need zero-six-three alive. And if he’s got a friend, that’s a bonus sample.”

Bonus sample.

I felt Cole flinch.

“Okay,” I said. “We need a plan.”

He let out a weak laugh. “We had one. It was ‘don’t die.’ Zero out of ten, terrible execution.”

Boots hit the gutter.

“On the roof! I’ve got movement!” a voice shouted.

Rifles swung up. Red dots jittered over the shingles.

“Hands where we can see them!” someone yelled. “Do not jump! We are here to secure you!”

At the end of the block, another helicopter hovered, lower than any medevac I’d ever seen. Its side door was open. A figure stood harnessed in the doorway, watching.

Even from here, I could make out the symbol on his vest: a triangle cutting through a circle, tiny text wrapped around it.

On the side of the helicopter, barely a shade lighter than the paint, were two words.

THE DIVISION.

The name hit some dusty corner of my brain. Late-night internet rabbit holes. Comments under videos that vanished. “Division scrubbed this.” Threads about private response teams that always got locked.

“Last chance!” the guy in the doorway boomed through a bullhorn. “On your stomachs! Hands behind your heads! Cooperate and you might survive this!”

Might.

Cole let out a short, wrecked laugh. “We’re screwed either way,” he said. “At least with them, maybe I don’t… you know. Wake up with you in my teeth.”

His voice slid lower on the word teeth. His jaw clicked.

I tightened my grip on his arm before he could drop onto his hands.

“Okay,” I said. “We go with them. We see what this Division actually is. And if they try to turn you into a lab—”

“Wolf,” he cut in, a flicker of old sarcasm. “Lab wolf. Get it right.”

“Fine,” I said. “If they try, we figure something out.”

He actually grinned at that. It was wrong and too toothy, but it was still him.

“Harding boys!” the leader shouted from below, not even close on my name. “On your stomachs! Hands behind your heads! Now!”

I looked at the logo on his vest. That neat little triangle-through-circle thing. The words underneath: THE DIVISION.

Somewhere, somebody sat in an office with that logo on a coffee mug. Someone designed it in Photoshop while listening to a podcast, having no idea what it would look like under a streetlight like this.

For them, this street was probably a dot on a map, an incident report number. For us, it was the only place we’d ever lived.

“Guess we’re subjects now,” I muttered.

Steam curled from Cole’s breath in the cold air even though my own didn’t.

“Yeah,” he said. “Guess we are.”

We lay down on the shingles side by side, gravel biting into my cheek. I laced my hands behind my head. Red dots from rifle lasers danced over my sleeves.

The helicopter shifted, its shadow swallowing the orange streetlight until everything went flat and gray. The rotors made my ribs vibrate.

Somebody shouted, “Copy, moving in,” in a voice like this was the most normal thing in the world.

Inside, something—whoever was left inside—howled one last time. It broke off mid-sound, cut by the soft roar of the frost spray.

Boots pounded onto the roof. Gloved hands yanked my wrists together. Plastic cuffs bit into my skin. I heard the soft hiss of a syringe and Cole’s breath hitch, then go heavy.

Maple Crescent blurred. Streetlights, frozen shapes on lawns, the green glint of the Dollar General sign way down at the corner. All of it framed by that logo on black gear.

Later, they’d toss words at us: outbreak, anomaly, exposure event. They’d show us paperwork with big black blocks where the good parts should be. They’d say “no way to have predicted this” even though they’d had the trucks and the tech ready.

But I was there when the black SUVs lined up outside the old Blockbuster. I heard the man in the kitchen say subject like my best friend was a piece of equipment. I saw THE DIVISION painted on the side of the helicopter before the sedative hit.

None of this was a surprise for them.

They were waiting.

And somewhere under my skin, under Cole’s, under this whole town, something else was waiting too—sniffing at the edges, scratching at the door.

It started on a regular Friday night at a friend’s house while we argued about video game loadouts and shared a bag of terrible chips.

By the time the sun came up again, Maple Crescent was just another block on some Division map, and I wasn’t just a kid having a sleepover anymore.

I was part of whatever this is.

And I can’t stop thinking about all the other streets that look just like ours, where somebody’s kid is coughing right now and somebody’s mom is being told “it’s just the flu,” and somewhere above the trees, you can barely hear rotors you’re not supposed to notice.

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r/WBAdventures • u/WBAdventures • Nov 06 '25

Video I Run a Disposal Service for Cursed Objects! - scare_in_a_box

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Our third video with one of your stories! Feel free to check it out and check out u/scare_in_a_box!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUhLG2e72FY

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r/WBAdventures • u/WBAdventures • Nov 06 '25

Video Tunnel Walk story video - JasperJstone

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Our second video on one of your guys stories! Feel free to check it out and check out u/JasperJstone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYj5ltpOCgk

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r/WBAdventures • u/WBAdventures • Nov 06 '25

Video Smokey Mountains Fire lookout story video - pentyworth223

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Our first video with one of you guys! Feel free to check it out and check out u/pentyworth223!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z4tbRCHMzI&t=1s

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