Chapter 5: The Sound of Twisted Steel

The phone call came on a bitter January morning, Tracy's voice carrying the weight of three decades in county government.

"Jack, we need to talk."

He knew before he walked into her office what the conversation would be about. Budget cuts had been rumored for months—whispered conversations in the break room, nervous glances when supervisors passed by, the kind of institutional anxiety that preceded layoffs like storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

Tracy didn't waste time with pleasantries. "County's tightening the belt. Road maintenance is taking a hit."

Jack sat across from her desk, studying the coffee ring stains on the fake wood veneer. "How big a hit?"

"Thirty percent reduction in personnel. Last hired, first fired—you know the drill. But..." She paused, shuffling through a stack of papers. "Your incident reports have been thin lately. Real thin. County commissioners are looking at productivity numbers, and yours don't tell a compelling story."

The irony wasn't lost on him. For months, he'd been dealing with impossible disappearances, creatures in the fog, mysteries that had no place in official reports. Now the absence of those incidents—the strange quiet that had settled over his route after his encounter with the starving mountain lion—was being used as evidence of his dispensability.

"I can find more work," Jack said, though they both knew it was a weak protest. Winter was the slow season. Spring would bring storm damage and pothole repairs, but spring was three months away.

Tracy leaned back in her chair. "I'm trying to keep you on, Jack. You've got seniority, good safety record. But I need something to show them. Real incidents, real maintenance needs. Otherwise..." She shrugged, the gesture carrying the weight of bureaucratic inevitability.

Jack drove his route that afternoon with new eyes, looking for problems that might have escaped his notice. A loose guardrail here, some minor erosion there. Busy work that would look good on paper but wouldn't fool anyone who mattered. The commissioners wanted numbers—accidents responded to, debris cleared, emergency repairs completed. The kind of dramatic incidents that justified a paycheck.

The kind of incidents that had been vanishing without explanation for months.

By evening, Jack felt the walls closing in. Thirty years of steady employment, of modest benefits and predictable routine, threatened by forces beyond his control. At sixty-one, starting over wasn't just daunting—it was potentially catastrophic.

He needed a drink.

The Crossroads Tavern sat at the intersection of Route 340 and County Road 15, a squat brick building that had been serving locals since before Jack started his county job. It wasn't much to look at—neon beer signs in dirty windows, gravel parking lot full of pickup trucks and economy cars—but the beer was cold and the bartender minded his own business.

Jack claimed a corner stool and ordered a whiskey, letting the familiar burn chase away the chill of unemployment anxiety. Around him, the usual crowd of locals talked politics and weather, their voices blending into the comfortable white noise of small-town conversation.

He was halfway through his second drink when he noticed the kid at the other end of the bar.

Early twenties, maybe, with the soft features and expensive clothes that marked him as someone from outside the county. College boy, probably, lost on his way to somewhere more important than a rural Virginia crossroads. He'd been drinking steadily since Jack arrived, and his coordination was starting to suffer.

The kid fumbled for his wallet, dropped a twenty on the bar, and slid off his stool with the careful deliberation of someone who knew he was drunk. He weaved toward the door, car keys jingling in his hand.

Every instinct Jack had developed over three decades screamed at him to intervene. Drunk driving on rural highways was a death sentence waiting to happen, especially on the narrow, winding sections where his route cut through dense forest. But the kid was a stranger, and Jack had spent his life avoiding other people's problems.

He watched through the tavern's front window as the young man climbed into a late-model sedan and pulled out of the gravel lot with the exaggerated care of the seriously impaired. The car's taillights disappeared down Route 340, heading south toward the section of road that Jack knew better than his own backyard.

Jack finished his whiskey and sat staring at the empty glass. Not his problem. Not his responsibility. The kid was old enough to make his own mistakes, and Jack had enough troubles without borrowing more.

But the whiskey had loosened something in his chest, some knot of professional obligation that thirty years of county service had tied too tight to ignore. He'd spent his career cleaning up after other people's bad decisions. Maybe it was time to prevent one instead.

He left money on the bar and walked out into the January night.

The kid's sedan was easy to follow—taillights weaving between the centerline and shoulder, speed varying unpredictably as impaired reflexes struggled with changing road conditions. Jack stayed back, headlights off, using the moon and his intimate knowledge of the highway to maintain a safe following distance.

They were approaching mile marker 110 when it happened.

The sedan drifted left across the centerline just as a massive logging truck crested the hill ahead, its headlights cutting through the darkness like twin suns. Jack had a perfect view of the collision—the drunk driver's panicked overcorrection, the trucker's desperate attempt to brake on the narrow highway, the physics of two vehicles meeting at a combined speed of nearly ninety miles per hour.

The sound was indescribable. Metal screaming against metal, glass exploding in crystalline cascades, the deep crunch of engines telescoping into passenger compartments. The sedan spun sideways and rolled, roof crumpling like paper, while the truck jackknifed and went over on its side in a shower of sparks and scattered logs.

Then came the fire.

Jack was running before he realized he'd left his truck, boots slipping on frost-slick asphalt as he sprinted toward the wreckage. The sedan lay upside down in the ditch, its roof compressed to half its original height, steam rising from the crumpled hood. The cab of the logging truck had separated from its trailer and come to rest against a massive oak tree, diesel fuel spreading in a dark pool beneath the twisted metal.

He reached the sedan first, dropping to his knees beside the driver's side window. The kid was trapped inside, conscious but barely, blood running from a gash in his scalp. His legs were pinned beneath the collapsed dashboard, and every breath came with a wet, rattling sound that spoke of internal injuries.

"Help's coming," Jack lied, pulling out his cell phone with shaking hands. No signal. They were in one of the dead zones that plagued rural Virginia, miles from the nearest cell tower.

The smell of gasoline was getting stronger.

Jack ran to the truck cab, where the driver hung upside down in his harness, unconscious but breathing. Alive, at least for now. But the diesel fuel was spreading, and somewhere in the wreckage, metal was cooling with small ticking sounds that spoke of stressed components and failing systems.

He was torn between the two vehicles when he saw it.

A tall figure stood at the edge of his vision, just beyond the reach of the scattered headlight beams. Perfectly still, perfectly silent, watching the carnage with what felt like clinical interest.

Jack's blood turned to ice. Even in the chaos of the accident scene, even with adrenaline flooding his system and two lives hanging in the balance, he recognized the unnatural posture, the wrong proportions that made his brain ache to process.

It wasn't alone.

More figures materialized from the darkness, tall and thin and moving with that same twitchy, predatory gait he'd seen in the fog months earlier. They emerged from the tree line like shadows gaining substance, drawn by the violence and chaos of twisted metal and spilled blood.

They were coming for the bodies.

Jack found his voice and shouted, the sound echoing off the surrounding trees. "Get away from here!"

The nearest figure turned toward him, and Jack saw its face for the first time. Too many angles, features that shifted and blurred when he tried to focus on them, eyes that reflected light like a nocturnal animal's but held intelligence that no animal should possess.

When it spoke, its voice was wet and hollow, like words spoken from the bottom of a well.

"Go back to your car."

The command hit him like a physical blow, carrying weight and authority that made his knees weak. But Jack had spent thirty years dealing with emergencies, and training overrode terror. These people—these things—needed help, not whatever these creatures intended.

"There are survivors," he said, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice. "They need medical attention."

More figures stepped into the light, at least six now, maybe more. They moved with coordinated purpose, forming a loose circle around the wreckage. Around him.

Jack took a step backward, then another. The rational part of his mind catalogued details: their height, their synchronized movements, the way they seemed to communicate without speaking. But a deeper, more primitive part of his brain was screaming at him to run.

He turned toward his truck, parked a hundred yards back on the highway.

The blow came from his blind side, something hard and unyielding striking him behind the left ear. Jack's vision exploded into stars, then darkness, and he felt himself falling toward the asphalt with the distant, detached awareness of someone watching their own body betray them.

The last thing he saw before consciousness fled was the figures moving toward the wreckage with businesslike efficiency, their too-long arms reaching for the trapped victims with the casual confidence of workers beginning a familiar task.

The last thing he heard was the wet sound of metal being peeled away like skin from fruit, and underneath it, a voice that might have been human but probably wasn't, saying something that sounded like gratitude.

Then the darkness took him, and Jack Riley learned what it felt like to be a victim instead of a witness, helpless instead of helpful, prey instead of predator.

When he woke up, everything would be different.

Everything would be worse.