The rest of the hike through the woods was uneventful, save for spotting another two distortions. One of them looked like the first they had seen: bent trees, a shimmer in the air, and a crushing, sucking force at its center. There was no handy puddle of blood to create ripples and effectively gauge the “safe” time of the distortion, but it didn’t matter. Wil and the others kept far away from it, and it wasn’t an issue.

The second distortion they saw was a little different. The trees were, once again, the tell-tale signal that something was very much wrong. There was another roughly circular area that had been cleared of trees, and the trees around its perimeter had once again been altered. Wooden spikes, some as long as five feet, had extended from the trees. Their points were needle-sharp, their sides smooth. The spikes had emerged in thick, clustered bunches, and all of them pointed at the center of the clearing. Several birds and squirrels had been impaled on the spikes, with one or two still twitching. The only other similarity this distortion had to the other one was the shimmer in the air, precisely at the center of the cleared circle where the spikes pointed.

“Weird,” Gutierrez muttered as they continued past the distortion.

The woods continued to darken, and visibility was cut to just a dozen yards or so ahead.

“I was really hoping we’d be out before we needed to use flashlights,” O’Donnell said.

“It’s been a while. Aren’t we close?” Wil asked.

“We should be,” O’Donnell confirmed.

“If we’re not out by the time the sun finishes setting, we can re-evaluate. Mean time, keep it dark and quiet as long as we can,” Matsuda whispered. “As long as I can see the ground, I think we’re okay. When it becomes a hazard, we get a light out.”

“I’m with the old guy on this one,” Gutierrez said. Wil didn’t want to risk unwanted attention either, and so the trudged on through the growing dark.

It didn’t take long for the shadows to grow even deeper, and for the ground to become a nebulous haze of dark gray and black shapes. Wil was about to suggest they use a flashlight when he heard O’Donnell gasp.

“There!” he said and pointed.

It wasn’t much, but there was some light ahead. The trees stopped blending together in shadowy gray-black columns and could be seen distinctly as muted, pale light shone through from behind them. It was moonlight, and it illuminated a strip of grass turned pale green in the silver rays of the moon, beyond which was a thick bar of paved darkness, beyond which was more grass and more woods.

The highway.

“Holy shit!” Wil whispered. “O’Donnell I could kiss you.”

“I will,” Gutierrez said and broke the line to come up beside O’Donnell and kiss the red-headed man firmly on the mouth. “Nice guide-work there, Ranger.”

“Aw, shucks, ma’am,” O’Donnell said with an obviously put-upon folksy accent.

“That’s one problem solved then,” Matsuda said as he continued past the muted celebrations. Wil followed him, the faint pain in his leg forgotten, and emerged beside Matsuda as they broke the tree line.

They stood in knee-high grass that stretched for about fifty yards before it met the precise black surface of the highway. There were no cars, to Wil’s dismay, but there was also no sign of tragedy or catastrophe. The highway stretched in either direction, an unmarred dark river that flowed to Portland.

“Well, at least walking will be easier,” Wil said. “And no reason for flashlights now that the moon is out.”

“Kinda out,” O’Donnell said. There were a few wispy gray clouds blocking the moon, but most of the rest of the sky was clear, and the silver light managed to shine despite the minimal, receding cloud cover. And the stars were out as well, twinkling and distant as they had always been. Wil hadn’t really looked up at them in a while, his gaze was usually directed at his phone or his feet, but it was nothing short of a relief to see that they at least hadn’t changed. Whatever happened wasn’t enough to knock them out of their heaven.

“Gas station’s about a mile up this way,” Gutierrez said as she emerged behind O’Donnell. Wil took a step toward the road but Matsuda held up a hand.

“What is it?” Wil asked.

“The road will make walking easier, but we’ll be easy to spot out there even without flashlights. Anything in the woods would be effectively invisible to us while we’d be clearly visible to it.”

“We’d have a lot of space to see or hear anything coming at is if we stay in the middle of the road,” O’Donnell pointed out. “And if we stay along the tree line, we’re still at risk of tripping over something in the dark, unless we use flashlights which would make us even more visible.”

“Mm,” Matsuda grunted. “True. The road it is then.”

“Thank god,” Wil said as he and the others hopped over a low barrier along the edges of the highway. It was only about three feet high, made of thin metal, and rooted to the ground by thick, stubby wooden posts. If they’d still had their jeeps, they would’ve maybe been able to break through, but Wil doubted it. They’d be more likely to flip the vehicles or merely bend the railing.

“If the gas station is safe, we should rest there for the night,” Matsuda said.

“But——” Wil started to say.

“He’s right,” Gutierrez cut in. “We’re all tired. It’s night, we have no idea what’s out here. Even if we find a car, getting into Portland tonight is a bad idea. We need to recharge, rest-up, take stock. At least for a few hours. I don’t like it, but I can feel myself flagging. I’m not gonna get to my family if I die because I’m too tired to notice some thing lunging for my ass.”

Wil frowned, but she was right. A bite to eat and a nap sounded like heaven. But the idea of kicking his feet up while Naomi was still stuck in the heart of the city made his guts clench. Still, she’d be stuck even worse if nobody was able to come and get her.

They marched along the road, no need for O’Donnell’s map now. Their speed had picked up, despite all of their waning endurance. It was far easier to hike along a paved road than over loose rocks, gnarled roots, and weaving between trees.

“It’s dark,” Matsuda said.

“Uh, yeah,” Wil agreed. “It’s night.”

“We’re less than thirty miles outside of a major US city. There should be light pollution. There isn’t,” Matsuda said.

“Uh, yeah,” Wil said. “Well, the power went out hours ago at Oak Rest. And Naomi said it went out in Portland when I talked to her.”

“Mm. If it’s been out this entire time, that’s serious. It means the power stations are wrecked, or the infrastructure to get power going again isn’t in place. Also, I haven’t heard any choppers, jets, or explosions for hours, now.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Wil asked.

“No explosions, maybe. But no choppers or jets? It either means the emergency is over——but judging by the lack of power, I’d say that’s a no——or it means there aren’t any more choppers and jets,” Matsuda said.

“It doesn’t just have to mean those two things,” Gutierrez said, but there was tension in her voice. Wil wanted to agree with her, but what Matsuda said made a terrible kind of sense. During any noteworthy catastrophe Wil could think of, news choppers had been omnipresent. Aerial footage had been non-stop: terrorist attacks, forest fires, earthquakes, whatever.

“No sirens, either,” Wil said. Maybe they were still too far away, too isolated out in the forest, but everything was far, far too quiet.

“We can theorize once we’ve had some sleep,” O’Donnell said. “Frankly I’m hoping whatever this is will be worked out in the morning. Maybe not solved, but something will make sense at least.”

“Yeah I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” Gutierrez said. That brought the whispered conversation to an end, and the quartet or survivors marched on.

All of them kept an eye on the dark woods as they walked. The night wasn’t as silent as they would have liked. An inhuman howl or bellow broke the dark silence more than once, and whenever it did, all of them drew close and readied their guns.

Nothing emerged from the black forest, however, and the sounds echoed and faded with distance. O’Donnell figured they were miles away somewhere, and the others agreed. That was good enough for Wil, but still, he’d seen how fast the buck and other creatures had been. A few miles to them might be nothing at all.

After another several minutes of walking, they saw a dark, boxy shape on the side of the highway.

“Car!” Gutierrez hissed. They all walked a little faster toward what looked like an SUV, but stopped when they got close enough to make out the details.

It had crashed into the railing, the front end crumpled up like an empty beer can. Nobody was inside, but there was some blood on the dashboard, dried hours ago and turned a rusty brown.

“Shit,” Gutierrez sighed.

“Checking it,” Matsuda said as he reached into the open driver-side door and popped the trunk. They spent a couple of minutes examining the SUV, and found what appeared to be the supplies for a family going on a weekend camping trip. There was a plastic pink backpack shaped like a bunny in the backseat, along with a simpler black canvas backpack that had patches of what Wil guessed were metal bands he’d never heard of sewn into it. He assumed it was metal bands because they were all written in thorny faux-Gothic script and had names like “SATAN’S WHORES” and “LORDS OF VALHALLA” among others.

“Some MREs,” Matsuda said. “Sleeping bags. Gas stove. Might be worth it to haul this to the gas station just for the night.”

“Let’s go inspect the gas station first,” O’Donnell said.

“Agreed,” Matsuda replied.

“Why wouldn’t they take any of this?” Gutierrez asked as they continued past the SUV.

“Didn’t wanna carry it all?” Wil shrugged.

“Maybe not all, but they didn’t take any of it. A woman’s purse was still in there, and it looked like all of their individual carrying bags, too.”

“Maybe somebody picked them up?” O’Donnell said.

“Maybe,” Gutierrez said.

“Up ahead on the right. Gas station maybe? Quarter mile,” Matsuda said and pointed. There was a bend in the road that the woods followed, and there was some kind of structure in front of the dark forest.

“Yeah, that’s it,” O’Donnell said. “No power, big surprise.”

“At least we’re getting a little more light,” Gutierrez replied as the clouds moved away from the moon. It cast its pale light on a typical gas station: a handful of pumps stood below a wide overhang, adjacent to a squat building. A tall plastic sign out front advertised the current prices per gallon, and several cars, big and small, were parked around the station.

Wil didn’t see any movement inside or around the dark gas station, and glanced up at the moon to see if any clouds still blocked its light.

“Holy shit,” he said in a quavering whisper.

“What?” Gutierrez asked and held her shotgun close while she scanned the woods.

“The moon,” Wil said, and the others stopped to look upward.

Something had struck the moon and left an enormous, jagged crater in its surface. Thick chunks of moon rock floated around it or hung in orbit. Larger pieces could be seen floating away, streaking down toward the earth below, and lighting up as they ignited in the atmosphere before vanishing.

The heavens were not quite the same, after all.