Drew wanted to be the exact opposite of his father. He had walked out on them when Drew had been 8, leaving for another woman. He had married his high school sweetheart, had a kid, and had done everything that he could in order to keep the marriage together, but she hadn’t wanted that. She left and took the baby with her to go be with another man three states away. Drew was starting to wonder if it was him that was the issue here. 

He got out of his truck and his boots immediately splashed into a puddle of something dark, mud splashing up onto the hem of his khaki work pants. 

He looked down at the bottom of his pants. The liquid was a deep red, redder than the clay he was walking in. There were no other puddles on the dusty road he was standing on, just the one, sticky puddle. He bent down to see what the liquid was, even though he had a bad feeling about what it was.

His fingers came up red and muddy.

Drew went to look in the ditches beside the road, maybe an animal had been hit. The right side of the ditch was empty. He went to look in the left.

Nothing.
He was hoping that whatever animal it was that had gotten hit wasn’t suffering.

***

Drew had just finished his little walk in the woods, checking out how everything was growing. He ran his hand across his lower jaw and chin, already feeling the stubble starting to spring out of his sun tanned face. He thought once more about growing out his beard like the rest of the foresters he knew, but it always got so itchy and he shaved it before it could really grow. As he was walking up to his truck, his phone began to sound. It was that damned emergency alert sound. Every time it happened, it gave him a heart attack. Drew took his phone out of his pocket and stood at the door, looking at the phone screen. 

EMERGENCY ALERT. STAY INDOORS.

Drew didn’t make it past reading the plea to stay indoors when he felt a hand curl around his booted foot and pull. He flailed, his phone flying out of his hand and into the dirt on the road. His flailing knocked him off balance and he ended up falling backwards into the clay. Underneath his truck was… Oh dear god it was half of a woman… And she was grabbing at him and gnawing on his boot. 

Reflex caused him to kick out, hitting the (half) woman square in the face. His kick was hard enough to push himself out of the grasp of this… Thing. He scrambled backwards in the dirt a bit before making it back to his feet. He made a panicked dash to the door of the truck, nearly tripping over the thing’s outstretched arm. He fumbled with his keys, nearly dropping them in the floorboard, and got them into the ignition. He turned the truck on and floored it down the road,

To his left and right, he saw figures come stumbling out of the trees.