“It’ll pass us,” Bryan says.

  He sounds sure, but how could he know? The hog shuffling around in the underbrush knows Bryan and Case are there. Animals know these things, especially ones as scent-centered as wild hogs. It’ll only pass them if it doesn’t consider them a threat, but usually anything—big or small—that creeps around in the dark is considered a threat.

  Case desperately wants to be in Bryan’s truck again. She wants a do-over. She lets herself imagine for a second that they’re on the interstate, headed to her aunt’s apartment in Fort Worth, and that she’s so fast asleep she’s snoring grossly in the passenger seat.

  Instead, the hog is getting closer, weaving through the trees, stomping across the fallen limbs, and raking through the dirt. It’s somewhere back behind them, between the house and where they’re standing.

  All this time, Case has been facing Bryan, staring at the threads in his embroidery, and it’s only now that she looks away. She does see . . . something, something shadowed and moving slow. It’s not nearly as big as the hog she came across that summer evening a few years ago, the one that chased her down and caused her to collide with Andrea, but maybe memory and time have made that first hog bigger, badder, more ugly. This one, though, seems less intimidating. The noises it produces are still ugly, but somehow the way it moves is less threatening. It’s not turning its big, monstrous head in their direction. Case can’t see the gleam of a tusk peeking up and out from its lower lip.

  She’s thinking that Bryan was right, that it will pass them by, that everything will be fine. But then out from the trees steps a larger, more brutal version of the same animal. That second animal turns on Bryan and Case, and Case knows, immediately: it’s a mother, protecting her child, and they are fucked.

  Bryan knows it too, understands the massive pile of shit they’ve gotten themselves into, and he pushes Case down the path.

  “Run!” he cries. “Go, go.”

  Case runs, and Bryan follows. Within moments, they pass the chicken house, which is silent and closed up for the night. Beyond that is the crooked cedar that leads to the other path, and Case pulls Bryan toward it. Branches sting her face. Even though she’s tripping on whatever thick and twisted things carpet the forest floor, she makes it to the rougher, narrower path.

  The river is close. Through one last line of trees ahead. Case pushes through but then goes into a slide. Her boots have hit mud. The soles can’t find traction. Bryan barrels into Case from behind, but instead of causing her to fall, he catches her around the waist and manages to haul her upright.

  Together, tangled in a weird embrace, they spin. They scan the trees. Case clamps her hand over her mouth to hush her loud and panicked breaths. She needs to use her ears, but they’re taking a while to tune in. Where is the hog? Where is it? All she can hear is the sound of the river. It’s moving fast, but it’s not loud here, like it was at the trestle bridge. It sounds like a kitchen faucet not turned off all the way, or the hush-hum that comes from a white-noise machine.

  The mother hog hasn’t followed them this far. If it had, they would hear it. There’s something else nearby, though. Case and Bryan turn in unison again, this time away from the trees. Voices are coming from the direction of the river—not from all the way across the water, but from just down the bank, around and out of sight.

  “I told you. She’s not here.”

  “For real. She’s long gone by now.”

  It was Kendall who spoke first, followed by Abby. Case thinks that Abby’s maybe talking louder than she needs to, like she’s hoping Case is lurking around and hearing every word being spoken. This, again, is Abby being helpful-not-helpful.

  “I just want to be sure.”

  That last voice was Troy’s.

  “Whatever, but I’m not crossing that water,” Abby says.

  “It might not be that deep,” Troy says.

  “I’m not crossing that water, Troy. You do it. Or Kendall can do it.”

  Kendall doesn’t reply.

  “Abby,” Troy begins, “since you let her out, you can’t complain about this.”

  “I didn’t let her out,” Abby protests, her voice booming. “Why are you two blaming me for everything? All this shit started when you both lured Charlie down to the river.”

  “Lure,” Kendall says. “Please.”

  “You knew what you were doing,” Abby counters, “and you knew Andrea would be the only one of us to try and go in to help him.”

  Case is still pressed against Bryan’s chest, but now she feels his entire body go tense. He shifts slightly to search Case’s eyes.

  Flashlight beams approach. Bryan notices them and gently tries to pull Case away, deeper into the trees, but then they’re both startled by a buzzing sound at Case’s hip. Case looks down and sees her pocket glowing. Somehow, she’s found a sliver of cell connectivity, and her phone has decided to start working. It’s great, but it’s terrible. The ringer is off, but the sound is still loud, discordant with the other night noises.

  There’s another buzz, and Case fumbles. She steps away from Bryan, then switches the knife she’s holding to her other hand, so she can yank out her phone, see that the time is 12:20, and read the two messages that just came in, one right after the other—from, of all people, her mother.

  Honey, just got your message.

  Followed by, Everything ok?

  Leave it to Case’s mother to send her short words of concern at the worst possible time.

  “So not okay, Mom,” Case whispers.

  Bryan clears his throat. He bumps his shoulder lightly against hers.

  When Case looks up from her glowing screen, she sees Kendall, Abby, and Troy facing her, standing a few feet away. Abby is scrunching up her face like she’s so very disappointed in Case.

  “Who are you?” Kendall asks, pointing her flashlight beam at the center of Bryan’s chest.

  When Abby finally shifts her focus from Case to Bryan, her head tilts slightly to the side. If she’s the only one of the housemates who ever goes to the store, goes to get gas and pick up ice, she must recognize him, the boy behind the counter at Timmy’s.

  Again, Bryan nudges Case, then motions with his chin toward Troy, who is holding a shotgun by his side.

  Case could say Abby told me everything, but she doesn’t. Instead, she pretends like the conversation in the car never happened.

  “What happened?” Case demands. “We heard you talk­ing. Charlie went into the water. Drea went after him.”

  “That’s what happened,” Troy replies. His voice seems slower than normal, sludgy. “Charlie went into the water. Andrea went after him.”

  “And that’s it?” Case asks. “You just let that happen?”

  “We looked for them,” Troy insists. “We ran down the riverbank, tried to get into the water, but it was too high.”

  Case remembers what Troy told her earlier, that he’d die by drowning. At the time, Case thought he was talking shit, just trying to agitate her, but now she wonders if Troy believes it and lives in fear of water. Right now, he sure looks like he’s being plagued by a bad omen.

  Case shines her light near Troy’s face. His pupils are shrunken into pinpricks, and his eyes are red. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing dried mud spackled across both his forearms. He’s wearing rubber boots, also splashed with mud.

  He looks like he’s emerged from the river, crawled out of the muck. A lot like Case. Not so pristine anymore.

  “I came back the next morning,” Troy goes on to say, “when the water levels were down. And the morning after that. I tried. There was nothing.”

  Troy takes another step forward—a weird, wobbly one—and then lets out a slight gurgling laugh. He’s acting like he’s drunk, or . . . wait.

  This is the painkiller thief. Troy is out here in the dark, feeling vulnerable, holding a gun—and high.

  “I don’t like . . . ,” Troy begins, scratching at his hair with his dirty fingers. “If only he’d never come and disrupted everything.”

  So much disruption. The ground exploding, mass evacuations, strangers coming to his supposed sanctuary, rivers sweeping people away, birds flying into rooms, a sympathetic traitor of a girlfriend.

  “This all happened about a week ago,” Bryan says. “That was when they last opened the dam. You could’ve called someone, and they might’ve found them.”

  “You’re a liar,” Troy says, ignoring Bryan and pointing his flashlight at Case. “You lied when you said the troopers were coming. They’d be here by now.”

  “Either that or Abby lied,” Kendall offers. “That seems to be all she’s done all day.”

  Abby snickers.

  “Forget Charlie,” Kendall goes on to say. “Andrea should never have been here. She shouldn’t have been invited into the car that day, and now it doesn’t even really matter that she’s gone, because she didn’t do anything. She wasn’t necessary.”

  “Necessary?” Case echoes.

  “Ugh, Kendall,” Abby scoffs. “You are such an asshole.”

  “Yes, necessary,” Kendall replies. “Troy is necessary because this is his property. Abby has the car.”

  “Had,” Abby interjects. “Had the car.”

  Kendall goes on: “I keep the house in order. Steph helps me and tends to the chickens. Andrea just went into the woods every day and came back out with a bunch of shitty stories.”

  Next to Case, Bryan makes a choking sound.

  “Oh, come on, Kendall!” shouts Abby. “We’re all fucking unnecessary. We live in the middle of fucking nowhere, talk to no one and contribute to nothing.”

  “What are we supposed to contribute to, Abby?” Kendall demands. “Huh? The world out there is fucked.”

  “We can’t stay here forever, Kendall!” Abby says. “And you can’t just plan on attacking everyone who shows up.”

  Abby and Kendall continue sniping at each other, and Case slumps against Bryan. Her headache is roaring back. She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment.

  When she reopens them, she sees something she hadn’t seen before, or maybe something that just materialized from the water. It’s on the ground, right behind Troy, at the edge of the river. It looks like a tree branch, or a piece of a tree branch swept up by the water and then caught up in the muck by the bank. It bobs and shimmies a bit as the current tries to pull it away, but then it does something a tree branch doesn’t do: it fights against the current, lifts its little head, looks around, and starts to wind the entire length of its body up and out of the water.

  Case freezes. She can feel Bryan looking at her, trying to figure out what’s going wrong, what’s happening. Case scans the rest of the muddy ground by the river’s edge. There are more. There have to be. Water moccasins aren’t solitary. They swarm. They make nests.

  “What?” Bryan whispers.

  “Snake,” Case says.

  It’s moving more quickly now, more deliberately snakelike, slinking its way through the mud toward an unsuspecting Troy, until it’s close enough to nuzzle its head against the rubber of his boot. As quietly as he can, Bryan reaches into his pocket, pulls out his keys, and hands them to Case. Why Bryan does this, Case has no idea, but she takes them anyway, then slides them into her pocket along with the rest of the things she’s collected over the course of the day.

  “What?” Abby asks, catching on that something isn’t right. She swings her flashlight in a wide, wild arc. “What is it?”

  “Hey,” Bryan says to Troy, gesturing to the ground. “I don’t want to freak you out, but . . .”

  Troy is slow on the uptake. He blinks lazily, makes a confused face, and then, finally, looks to his feet. It takes a moment for him to register the snake, but when he does he jumps and lets out a loud cry.

  While Troy is distracted, Bryan lunges forward and tries to grab the shotgun. Both boys have their hands around it. The barrel is pointed down when the first shot goes off. There’s an explosion of mud.

  “Go!” Bryan shouts to Case. “Take the truck. Get out of here.”

  At first, Case can’t move. She watches Troy elbow Bryan in the gut and Bryan fall back. She sees Kendall rip the gun away from Troy and turn toward him and Bryan. Then Kendall spins toward Case and tries to get her footing on the slick earth.

  “Case, go!” Bryan coughs out.

  But Case can’t go. All the running she’s done in her life, and Case has suddenly lost her legs. They’re stuck—stuck in this ground, stuck in the mud.

  It’s Abby who comes to the rescue. She rushes up and shoves Kendall sideways. A shot goes off with a boom, wide to left, and the bright flash from the barrel of the gun is what shakes Case from her stupor. She finds her feet and runs, just as Kendall digs into her pockets for more shells.

  As Case bursts through the trees in the direction of the path, she hears another shout—from a boy—then a splash. That’s the moment when Case feels something pummel into her, nearly knocking her down—she knows from the blond hair whipping past that it’s Steph.

  Case continues on. Within seconds, she’s at the crooked cedar. She ducks, then pivots around the tree. Her feet find the wider, smoother path. It isn’t muddy here, but she’s slow; the soles of her boots are still slick from the river mud. She knows the chicken house is ahead, but she stops, gasping for air. She can’t do this. She can’t leave Bryan. She can’t lose another friend, even one gained so recently, to the water.

  Case spins around, but there, in the path, is Kendall.

  “What happened back there?” Case asks. “At the water? Who fell in?”

  Kendall doesn’t reply, just lifts the shotgun and aims it, again, at Case.

  There’s a sound from the trees, loud and monstrous enough to catch Kendall’s attention.

  The two hogs emerge, the mother and child. The mother charges. Kendall doesn’t have time to scream before she falls.

  Almost immediately, there’s a shotgun blast, a ball of bright white followed by the stink of gunpowder. Case jolts as a heavy and coarse thing barrels past her leg. As she tilts sideways, she sees Abby and Steph coming up the path.

  “Go, go!” Case calls out to Abby. “Get to the house. Steph, go!”

  Abby follows the command. She vanishes quickly down the dark path, and Case spins around—in one complete clockwise circle, then in another. She’s searching the ground, looking for the brightness of denim against dirt, or blond hair in a braid.

  What she sees first is Kendall’s palm-up hand, the one that’s been covered all day in crusted flour and coyote fur.

  After the hand comes the arm, then the shoulder, then the head, neck, chest. Everything is there. Everything is fine. Because the light of the moon makes the whole scene look eerie, Case can’t tell if Kendall has paled, but her eyes look normal, and she’s not sucking in strange, uneven breaths.

  Then Case sees the blood. She sees it on Steph’s hands first—Steph, who didn’t run to the house with Abby, but who is kneeling next to her sister.

  “What happened?” Case lunges toward the girl. She lands hard on her knees on the rocky earth. “Where?”

  Steph shakes her head. The blood isn’t hers. Again, Case scans Kendall’s body. Before, her eyes stopped at Kendall’s chest, at the sight of it rising and falling, but now it goes lower. There’s her stomach, and then: so much blood. It’s coating the top part of Kendall’s leg. It’s actually seeping out, gently bubbling, like a black fountain.

  Case gags not at the sight, but at the smell: fresh like new rain, but also tinged with decay.

  Stretched out on its side next to Kendall is one of the hogs, dead. It’s the young one. Its darkness blends in with the dark ground. Case can’t imagine an animal that small doing that amount of damage to Kendall’s leg. The mother must’ve gored her, then somehow, Kendall got off a shot that struck the smaller hog.

  Case still has the rope strung on her belt loop. She unravels it and does her best to wind it around Kendall’s upper thigh. With all the blood coating her fingers, she doesn’t think she’s able to tie it very tight.

  “What’s happening?” Steph asks.

  Case looks to the girl. She doesn’t know the right thing to say. With a wound like this, even with the help of a makeshift tourniquet, Kendall will probably bleed out within minutes. “I . . .”

  “I wish you would leave,” the girl mumbles.

  “You need to go back to the house,” Case says, her voice breaking. “There’s another hog.”

  The mother was angry to begin with but is now probably whipped up into a fury.

  “You go,” Steph says, defiantly. “I’m not leaving.”

  Case stands on wobbly legs. “There’s another hog,” she repeats.

  “No,” Steph replies. “There’s not.”

  The girl says it with such certainty that, for a split second, Case questions herself. She saw two animals—or at least she knows she heard two—their grunts layered on top of one another. She felt one rush past her. Didn’t she?

  She did. Yes. She’s sure she did. Case looks at her own legs, pats around. Mercifully, she’s somehow intact.

  Case searches the ground for the shotgun and finds it a couple of feet from Kendall’s head, as if the force of the blast had thrown it up and out of her hands. She doesn’t risk another glance at Kendall’s eyes—or at her chest—as she fumbles through the dying girl’s front pockets, which themselves are soaking through with blood. Finding what she was hoping to find—a small cache of shotgun shells—she stands. The chambers of the gun, as she thought, are empty. Case rattles in a couple of shells and then snaps the barrel into place.

  “I’m going to get help,” she says to Steph. Case pulls out her phone and drops it onto the ground next to Steph. “Use this. Try to find reception.” Then again, Case says, “You should go back to the house.”

  Steph says nothing, just looks to her sister. She puts a bloody hand flat between Kendall’s collarbones.