I skidded in across moist dirt, the others piling in behind me. The inside of the tunnel looked like a giant intestine, the translucent white poly tarp fluttering and lifelike. It stretched five feet tall, so a worker could walk down the middle with only a slight hunch. The trapped heat pressed into our skin.

Keeping a low profile, I crawled a ways into the tunnel, the heels of my hands mashing kale and chard into the mud. A snapping sound turned my head. I froze to watch the outlines of the corn rows through the translucent tarp. Patrick banged into me from behind. A cornstalk bent forward and tapped the outside of the poly.

I dropped flat on my stomach, my cheek pressed into a knot of cucumber vine. Rustling sounds told me that Alex and Patrick had also gone flat. I could only pray that my brother could keep Cassius quiet. Patrick started to raise the shotgun, but I looked back at him over my shoulder and put my finger to my lips.

In the place where the corn had dipped forward, a form emerged. Its shadow, backlit by the moon, fell onto the tunnel right next to me. A head with two holes through it, grotesquely stretching up the curved wall of the tarp. As the Host lumbered forward, the shadow evolved, shoulders and torso and waist, until the entire outline seemed to hover over us.

Wind whipped across the mouth of the tunnel, giving off a low wail. We waited, trying not to move, trying to not even breathe. The smell of fertilizer burned my nostrils.

More crackling came from outside, and then other shadows played over the tarp all around us. Behind me I heard Cassius growl, but Patrick hushed him quietly and he listened.

The figures shuffled by, just outside the tunnel, their shadows flickering past the half hoops of PVC piping, riding the bumps of the segments.

The last Host finally ambled away. I stayed still until I could no longer make out the crunch of his boots in the rich soil. Then I sat up. Patrick and Alex looked at me, their faces drained of blood in the ghostly light of the tarp-filtered moon.

I said, “That was close.”

A Chaser shot through the wall on the other side, long nails tearing a dagger slit in the tarp. A tilted face, eyeless, covered by tangles of hair. She lunged forward, grabbing Alex’s ankles. Alex screamed and hacked at the skinny arms with her hockey stick, knocking them away.

The Chaser’s waist hung up on the tarp as she tried to pull herself through. Her head twitched; raspy breaths leaked through her cracked lips. Patrick rolled over and yanked a rebar spike out of the ground, the segment of tarp flapping up. Then he rolled back and drove the stake through the Chaser’s skull. She shuddered and went limp.