Chapter 4: Lost in the Grid

Chapter 4: Lost in the Grid

Blackwood Reservoir State Park was no longer a park. It was a cage. In the days following Zach’s disappearance, the federal presence had solidified into an occupation. They moved with a chilling, sterile efficiency, erecting temporary fencing and motion-sensor cameras along the perimeter. The Man with the Jaw, who Leo had privately dubbed ‘Agent Thorne’ based on a nameplate he’d glimpsed, ran the operation with the emotional warmth of a block of granite.

The remaining park employees—Leo, a terrified Alex, and a few others pulled from different sections—were treated less like staff and more like inmates. They were debriefed, cataloged, and issued new directives. Their deep, intrinsic knowledge of the park’s veins and arteries was ignored in favor of satellite maps and color-coded operational grids. They were forbidden from speaking to the outside world, their cell phones confiscated and stored in a locked Pelican case. The official story, they were told, was a tragic but explainable series of animal attacks, complicated by a missing person case. It was a lie so thin it was transparent.

“This is a containment and data-gathering operation,” Thorne had announced in a morning briefing that felt more like a military command. His audience consisted of a dozen grim-faced agents and the handful of remaining park workers, who huddled together like sheep in a wolf den. “Your movements will be restricted to designated work zones. No one approaches the reservoir. No one works alone. All communications go through us. Your job is to maintain essential park infrastructure so our teams can operate without impedance. Any deviation from these protocols will be met with immediate removal from the site. Are we clear?”

Leo’s jaw was tight. They were being used as bait, or at best, as groundskeepers for a quarantined lab. He looked at Alex, who was staring at his boots, his face pale and drawn. He looked for Jedediah, but the old man was nowhere to be seen. He’d simply vanished after the feds arrived, having either been dismissed or having had the good sense to disappear on his own. Leo envied him.

Their assignment for the day was to clear a fallen hemlock from Trail C, deep in the park’s western sector. It was a dense, claustrophobic stretch of woods, a place where the canopy was so thick that the forest floor lived in a perpetual twilight. The air there was always still and heavy, muffling sound and playing tricks on the eye.

“At least it’s nowhere near the water,” muttered Marcus, a quiet, sturdy maintenance worker in his forties who had been consolidated into Leo’s decimated crew. He had a wife and two kids, and his fear was a practical, weighty thing. He just wanted to clock out and go home.

The ride out to the grid coordinates was silent and tense. An agent in a black SUV escorted their utility truck, a constant, unnerving reminder of their gilded cage. Once there, the agent parked at the trailhead, a silent sentinel.

The woods felt different. Hostile. Leo had spent his entire life in these forests, knew the call of every bird, the shape of every shadow. But now, that familiarity had curdled. Every rustle of leaves was a calculated movement. Every shadow held a potential shape. The oppressive silence between the birdsong felt like something holding its breath. He found himself constantly looking over his shoulder, his hand straying to the empty space on his belt where a man doing this kind of work might once have carried a sidearm.

They found the hemlock, a giant that had fallen across the narrow trail, its roots torn violently from the earth.

“Alright,” Leo said, forcing a note of normalcy into his voice. “Alex, you’re on spotter duty. Watch for shifting. Marcus, you and I will work the saws.”

The roar of the two chainsaws was a brief, welcome violence against the suffocating quiet. Sawdust filled the air, the scent of fresh-cut pine a small, comforting piece of the world that used to be. They worked in tandem, carving the massive trunk into manageable sections. It was hard, physical labor, and for a few minutes, Leo lost himself in the rhythm of it, the satisfying bite of the chain into wood.

They were halfway through the trunk when Marcus’s saw sputtered and died.

In the sudden, ringing silence, a single, wet, plopping sound echoed from the dense thicket just off the trail.

“Out of gas,” Marcus grunted, setting the saw down. “Be right back, gotta grab the can from the cart.” He gestured vaguely behind them, towards a small clearing where they’d left their hand tools and supplies, maybe thirty yards away.

“Wait,” Leo said, a prickle of unease crawling up his spine. “We’ll all go.”

Marcus gave him a weary look. “Leo, it’s right there. I’m not going for a swim. I’ll be thirty seconds.” Before Leo could argue, he turned and pushed his way through a curtain of ferns, disappearing from view.

Leo stood, his own chainsaw idling in his hands, straining his ears. He could hear the faint crunch of Marcus’s boots on the forest floor, then nothing. The silence that rushed in to fill the void was absolute. No birds. No insects. Just the low thrum of his own saw.

“Marcus?” Alex called out, his voice thin.

Silence.

“Marcus!” Leo shouted, his voice sharp with dawning panic. He cut the engine on his saw. The woods became utterly, profoundly still.

He and Alex looked at each other, the same terror mirrored in their eyes. They broke into a run, crashing through the ferns where Marcus had disappeared. The clearing was empty. A red gas can sat beside a canvas tool bag. There was no sign of Marcus. But there was something else.

On the ground, next to where the tool bag lay, was a large, glistening patch of something that wasn't water. It was a clear, gelatinous slime, thick as engine oil, shimmering with a faint, foul iridescence. It clung to the leaf litter in thick, viscous ropes, and rising from it was the same stomach-turning stench Leo had smelled on the beach before Zach was taken. The smell of swamp rot and river mud, of things that lived and died in darkness.

As Leo stared, horrified, a single large bubble formed in the center of the slime, swelled, and popped with a soft, wet sigh.

They never found Marcus. The federal agents swarmed the site, but their response was cold and procedural. They didn't deploy search teams or dogs. They took samples of the slime, their faces impassive behind protective masks. They photographed the scene from every angle. Agent Thorne pulled Leo and Alex aside, and his questions weren’t about where Marcus might have gone, but whether they had maintained visual contact at all times, if they had violated the two-man rule. He was building a report, not looking for a man.

The next morning, the park was a ghost town. The high-tech S&R vans were gone. The satellite uplink truck had vanished. The teams of serious men in tactical gear had been pulled out. Only a skeleton crew, led by Thorne, remained to enforce the lockdown.

Leo, numb with guilt and simmering with a rage he couldn't voice, overheard two of the remaining agents talking by the fuel depot.

“…pulled the entire bio-hazard unit out overnight,” one said, his voice low and jittery. “Orders from the top. Said the preliminary analysis came back. The sample was… aggressive. Unclassifiable cellular regeneration. They said the risk profile was unviable. Whatever that means.”

“It means we’re screwed,” the other replied. “They’re not trying to stop this thing. They’re just putting a lid on the box.”

Leo backed away, the words confirming his deepest fears. They weren’t here to fight it. They were here to watch it, to study it, and to make sure the story never got out. They had looked at the monster, and they had decided to run.

The entity was growing bolder, striking in the deep woods, far from its lakeside throne, in the middle of the day. The authorities were gone, leaving behind a conspiracy of silence. He was trapped. Alex was trapped. And the failure of his father's promise—get your crew home safe—was a roaring inferno in his soul. They were utterly and completely alone, left behind in the monster’s hunting grounds.