Jesse

The air outside was thick with the acrid tang of smoke and something else, something coppery and foul that clung to the back of my throat. Main Street, usually a sleepy artery of Black Creek, was a charnel house. Shattered glass glittered like malevolent diamonds under the sickly glow of the streetlights, and the overturned shells of cars lay scattered like fallen soldiers. The screams had mostly died down, replaced by a guttural, wet rasping that sent shivers skittering down my spine. Sarah was safe, or at least, she had been when I’d last seen her scrambling out of that hellhole of a hospital. But Jesse… Jesse was still out there. My gut twisted with a familiar ache, the kind that comes from knowing you’ve got people you’d walk through fire for, and right now, fire seemed like a damn picnic compared to this.

Jesse Walker. My best friend since we were knee-high to a grasshopper, building forts out of scrap metal and dreaming of fixing up old pickup trucks. He was the steady hand, the quiet strength that always anchored me when the weight of the world, or more specifically, the weight of the mountain, got too heavy. He had a wife, Mary, and two kids, little Lily and young Sam. They were everything to him. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t find them, if I didn’t make damn sure they were okay.

I pushed aside the image of Jesse’s easy grin, the one he’d give me when we’d finally coaxed a stubborn engine back to life. My focus had to be razor sharp. I moved through the debris-strewn street, my boots crunching on shattered glass and something that felt disturbingly like dried blood. Every shadow seemed to writhe, every gust of wind carried the whisper of something unnatural. The familiar comfort of my town had curdled into a nightmare, and the people I’d known, the faces I’d seen every damn day, were now the monsters.