Chapter 5: The Returned

Chapter 5: The Returned

Sarah Rourke’s words had planted a seed of ice in Jebediah’s gut, and it had been growing ever since. “Sometimes… they bring them back.” The phrase had become a malevolent mantra in his mind, echoing in the quiet moments between the hammering of fence posts and the nervous lowing of his cattle. He found himself scanning his own herd not with a rancher’s pride, but with a soldier’s paranoia. He wasn't looking for sickness or injury anymore; he was looking for the enemy hiding in plain sight.

For two days, he saw nothing but his own fear reflected in the wide, brown eyes of his animals. He moved with a constant, grinding tension, the Winchester never more than an arm’s length away. His thumb had rubbed the worn spot on the stock so raw it felt tender to the touch. The vast, open sky that had once been his comfort now felt like the lid of a cage, and he was trapped inside with a monster that could wear the face of his own flock.

It was on the third morning, under a sky the color of a fresh bruise, that he found it.

He was on the high ridge overlooking the south pasture, his old binoculars pressed to his eyes. He was searching for the steer that had been taken by the black triangle, a grim accounting he felt compelled to make. He scanned the herd, counting heads, and then his gaze swept over a lone figure standing motionless near a grove of withered mesquite trees, far from the others.

It was him. The young Hereford steer, the one he’d watched ascend into the silent, star-eating craft.

Jeb’s breath caught in his throat. He lowered the binoculars, his heart a cold, heavy stone in his chest. Sarah’s warning screamed in his head. Perfectly still. Not grazing. Not even blinking.

He got in his truck, the engine’s roar sounding like a desecration in the tense morning air, and drove down the bumpy track toward the mesquite grove. The rest of the herd shied away from his truck, their movements skittish and unnatural. They were giving the lone steer a wide berth, their animal instincts screaming a warning that Jeb’s human mind was only just beginning to accept.

He stopped the Ford a hundred yards away and got out, pulling the Winchester from its rack. He approached on foot, his boots moving silently on the dry grass. The steer didn’t move. It just stood, a statue of flesh and bone, its head held at a slight, unnatural angle.

As he drew closer, the details came into sharp, horrifying focus, each one a nail in the coffin of the world he once knew.

The eyes. They were exactly as Sarah had described. Not the deep, gentle brown of a healthy animal, but a pair of milky, opaque white orbs, like polished bone. They were utterly devoid of life or recognition, blind and yet somehow all-seeing. They weren't looking at him; they were looking through him.

And then he saw the brand.

On its flank, where the hide was stretched tight over its ribs, was a mark. It wasn't the familiar, seared-flesh brand of a rancher. This was a symbol etched under the skin, a faint, sickly green luminescence that pulsed with a slow, rhythmic light, like a dying firefly. The geometry was unmistakable. It was a piece of the massive, intricate pattern they had carved into his north pasture. It was their signature, their claim of ownership.

Jeb stopped twenty feet away, his rifle held at the ready, the cold stock pressed against his cheek. This thing was not his steer. It was a vessel. A package delivered back to his doorstep. He remembered Sarah’s words about the sheep dissolving into dust, and a part of him, the pragmatic rancher, wondered if he should just put the creature down. End it now.

But a deeper, more desperate need to understand held him frozen. He had to see. He had to know the face of this new horror.

As if sensing his thoughts, the steer’s head swiveled toward him with a slow, fluid motion that was entirely wrong. The milky eyes fixed on him. A low hum began to fill the air, a sound that vibrated not in his ears but in the bones of his skull, like the ghost of the voice on the telephone.

Then, its jaw unhinged.

It didn't open. It detached, the lower mandible dropping with a sickening, wet pop, stretching the skin of its throat in a way that defied anatomy. From the gaping, dark maw, no sound of animal terror emerged.

Instead, it released a shriek.

It was a blast of pure, electronic noise, a physical wave of sound that ripped through the morning air. It was the synthesized, distorted voice from his phone, amplified a thousand times, stripped of all language and honed into a weapon. The air shimmered with the force of it. The fillings in Jeb's teeth ached with a piercing, resonant agony, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis.

He staggered back, his hands flying to his ears, but it was useless. The sound was inside him. Across the pasture, the effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. His entire herd collapsed as one. They didn't fall; they dropped, their legs buckling as if their strings had been cut. Their bodies hit the ground and began to convulse violently, foam spewing from their mouths.

The shriek cut off, leaving a ringing, deafening silence in its wake. The returned steer stood motionless once more, its jaw still hanging open in a grotesque, impossible scream.

And in that ringing silence, Jeb heard a new sound. The high-pitched whine of an engine pushed to its absolute limit.

He tore his eyes from the monstrous steer and looked toward his house. A plume of dust was rocketing down his driveway. It was the black sedan. But it wasn't crawling this time; it was flying, its suspension groaning as it bounced over the ruts.

The car screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust and gravel not fifty feet from him. The doors flew open before it had even stopped moving. Agent Thorne and his partner burst out, no longer calm, dispassionate observers. They were tactical, their movements sharp and urgent.

They were holding weapons unlike anything Jeb had ever seen. They weren't rifles. They were sleek, black instruments, devoid of conventional stocks or barrels, with glowing blue components that hummed with contained energy.

Thorne, his sunglasses still impossibly fixed on his pale face, didn't even glance at Jeb. His entire focus was on the motionless, jaw-gaped steer. He raised his futuristic weapon, its blue light intensifying.

Over the ringing in his ears, Jeb heard Thorne shout, his voice for the first time laced with something other than cold detachment. It was a razor’s edge of raw, controlled urgency.

“Get down! It’s going critical!”