“It shouldn’t be, though, should it?” Andrew backed up a step, Marsh hanging close to his side. “They don’t…wait. They follow. They search. They don’t set traps or linger or whatever this is.”

“No,” Kant agreed. “They shouldn’t.”

Nora and Ray were shuffling closer to Margot, their lights darting across the environment. The dead ones were drawing in, narrowing their net. Faces were beginning to grow visible through the mist. Lips twitching beneath the dark threads.

“We can’t stop,” Andrew said. He threw a look back toward Kant. “Should we go off the path?”

Kant didn’t answer. His expression was heavily shadowed, nearly unreadable, but Margot thought she saw a flicker in his eyes. Fear?

“Kant?” Andrew asked. His voice grew tighter as the bodies around them pressed inward.

“Yes,” Kant said, and the words seemed to cost him. “Leave the path.”

They moved as a group, breaking into a jog as they went left, swerving around the figure with the broken, twitching fingers. Its head turned to follow them, nostrils flaring as they passed.

Dew-laden grass flicked across Margot’s ankles. Her breath came hard and raw, rasping through her lungs. Kant loped at her side, holding pace with her. Distantly, she thought she could make out lights. The employee’s area. It wouldn’t be an easy run, but she could make it that far, she was sure.

Then Kant stumbled. Margot’s reflexes were slow, and she reached out to him a second too late. He hit the ground with a muffled grunt, his shaggy hair covering his face. Margot turned and grasped his arm, trying to pull him back to his feet. She couldn’t move him.

That was when she saw it. A long, gray limb reached out of the earth. It had clamped around his leg, just below his knee, its knuckles bulging as it dug into him.

The earth seemed to bubble. Margot lost her own footing, collapsing in the spongy soil, the air knocked out of her. More arms rose from the ground, rising up around Kant, latching onto his legs, his back.

Pulling him into the earth.

No. Margot scrambled forward and grabbed Kant. She wrapped herself around his shoulders and pulled, desperate, trying to drag him free.

“Go,” he rasped. “Run.”

The ground was no longer solid. It churned, grass and grubs and damp soil boiling like lava. Pulling Kant into it. It was at his chest already. His breathing became tight, labored, as the pressure intensified.

Margot felt her own legs sliding into the earth as she pulled against him. Help me, she wanted to yell, but there was no air left in her lungs.

Andrew yelled something. A gunshot fired. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a gray body stagger from the impact, then continue walking forward.

Guns can’t stop them. Nothing can.