I walk to the edge of the road and find a small stone in the tall reeds. I pick it up; my heart already beginning to batter my rib cage. With the stone held in my right hand, I walk away from the guard hut, down the dirt road, careful that my boots are quiet against the dirt.
I walk away from my post.
I leave Pastoral.
* * *
The border of Pastoral is marked by a wood fence along the right side of the road, and nailed to the last post is a hand-painted sign that reads: PRIVATE PROPERTY.
The sign is pointless—no one has come this way in over ten years. No one has made it through the dense forest. And if they did, they’d surely be sick with rot, and we couldn’t allow them through anyway. It’s not safe like it used to be. Still, I step across the boundary, and into the land that exists outside Pastoral: the place we do not cross.
But this is not the first time.
I walk five paces and stop at the misshapen rock placed on the road. The first time I set the rock here—over a year ago now—I remember my heart beating wildly and my breathing so loud I feared someone from the community would hear me. I crouched down and quietly placed the rock on the dirt road—marking how far I had made it—then I sprinted back to the safety of the gate and the hut. I didn’t go down the road for a week after that—I was too terrified. Instead, I would stare in the bathroom mirror each morning and lean close to the glass, examining my eyes, looking for something that wasn’t right: for the black of my pupils to expand like mud seeping up from the earth. I was looking for signs of the disease.
But it never came.
A week later, under a nearly full moon, I gathered enough courage to walk back down the road—my eyes darting into the woods, listening for the sounds of trees splitting open, bark peeling back—and when I reached the palm-size stone, I walked five paces past it, placing another stone in the dirt at my feet.
I’ve repeated this every night for the last year: walking five more paces up the road, then leaving another stone to mark my progress. I’ve been risking my life for something I’m not sure of, just to see a little farther, to know what lies beyond the next rise in the road.
And tonight, when I reach the last stone in the line, I look back at the gate, the little hut, both still visible in the dark. But ahead of me, the road makes an abrupt left turn, and I’ve never been able to see what’s beyond it. I squeeze the rock I plucked from the tall grass, and silently count off my paces. One, two, three, four… I swallow down a breath. Five. I’m not quite around the bend in the road, I can’t quite see what’s beyond it, but I set the stone on the ground at my feet—my heart a drum. I’m so close. In the trees, I hear a cracking sound, like someone running a hooked claw down the rough bark of a tree, peeling it away to reveal the soft white center inside. Like flesh. Like the parts of a tree you shouldn’t see.
The trees are separating themselves.
But I don’t run, I don’t turn back. I take another step forward, beyond the last stone.
Curiosity does this: It prods at the gut; it pushes fear aside and causes smart men to do stupid things.
I look back at the gate as it slips from view, and I round the bend in the road, my mind no longer counting my paces—my legs carrying me forward, one after the other—and then I see something ahead. Resting just off the side of the road.
A vehicle.
A truck.
* * *
There’s a feeling sometimes, when you wake up from a deep, deep sleep and your eyes flash open and for the briefest half moment you can’t remember where you are—the room and the movement of the curtains against the open window all feel foreign in that distant, not quite lucid way. Like you might still be asleep.
That’s how it feels, looking upon the truck.
A felled tree is lying across the road, limbs shattered and broken apart, effectively blocking the path. The truck is parked askew, between an opening in the trees, as if the driver had tried to steer off the road then gotten stuck—in deep spring mud or even deeper winter snow.
I move closer, ignoring the fear clamping down inside my chest. I shouldn’t be here.
The windshield and hood are covered in golden leaves and rotting pine needles, a couple seasons’ worth. The truck hasn’t been here long. The two driver’s-side tires are sunk into the earth, buried. Stuck. I touch the door handle and a shiver of northern wind passes over my neck, a quick gust, and then it’s gone.
I pull open the door and take a step back, expecting something to lunge out at me, or to find a calcified body slumped against the floorboards—frozen or starved or rotted to death. But there’s no corpse. No scent of decaying flesh.