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- [00:00]
A
This episode is sponsored by Bellesa. Everyone, stop what you're doing and listen up for a second. Bellesa and I are teaming up to give away free spicy toys and gift cards this month. And it's going out to every single one of you. This isn't a raffle or a drawing where a couple of people get lucky. Every listener who signs up gets something. If Bellesa is new to you. Very by women for everyone company they that's basically rewriting the whole sexual wellness category. Their most viral pieces are famous for a reason. The Rose is that iconic little flower shaped suction toy you've seen all over the Internet. Their Whisper collection was the first fully silent line of vibrators on the market. Which is either a nice to have or a total game changer, depending on your living situation. And their new Pebble Pro just upgraded their best seller with three interchangeable heads. So one toy pretty much does it. All my friends at Bellesa and I had to hook all of you up. So we're sending out free toys or gift cards for toys to everyone who signs up. You heard that right. Every single one of you wins something. Just click the link in the episode description or head to bbvibes.com Redwood that's B B-V-I-B-E-S.com Redwood.
- [01:22]
B
At dsw, we ask the important questions like what shoes are you going to wear? Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay, the right shoes can make or break an rsvp. So own the moment. You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes. At the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with Designer Shoe Warehouse. Head to your DSW store or dsw.com today and let us surprise you.
- [01:54]
C
Beware the Redwood Bureau. A secret organization which captures and researches creatures and objects that defy explanation. Their reckless procedures have led to countless innocent lives lost. I am Agent Conroy. I worked for the Redwood Bureau. But I have escaped them to leak their reports to the unsuspecting public. You have the right to know. This is Cipher. I'll be brief because there is a lot of material I want you to hear and this is unfolding fast. I recently brought you a case. A return of something malicious that turned into something we didn't expect. I told you then that I didn't have the full picture. That I was working with fragments, and that when I had more, I'd drop it. I have more. There's so much to this event that we're barely even scratching the surface. But I believe the truth will prevail. We will keep nothing from you. Whatever we know, you will know as soon as we can tell you. I want you to remember one thing going into this. None of it needed to happen. Every person who died in that city died inside a perimeter the Bureau drew on a map, and every one of them died for a mistake they didn't make. Somewhere in the middle of what you're about to hear, another decision was made. And after that, well, you'll know soon enough. I don't need to tell you how to feel.
- [03:56]
D
Nicole was washing and I was drying, and the kids were with Wes in the front room, playing the animal guessing game. Then the floor moved. It wasn't an earthquake, more of a deep roll coming up through the floor and continuing long enough that it put my mind in an odd kind of heightened state. The glasses in the cabinet rang against each other. Nicole shut off the water and we just stood there looking at each other, waiting for it to get worse or stop. Earthquake, she said. I've never felt an earthquake like that. Then the sirens started blaring, all from the east, all at once, many of them too many to isolate the exact number. The sounds were just overlapping and blurring into one resonating noise that seemed to shake the windows. Nicole was already moving up to the front room. Stay together. Don't go anywhere.
- [05:00]
E
What's happening?
- [05:01]
D
Dylan asked. She didn't answer him. I grabbed my phone off the counter. Dead. Nothing but a black screen that wouldn't power on, and I had charged it an hour ago. I held the button and held it again. Nothing. In the front room, Wes was clicking the remote at the tv, gone black and displaying nothing. Nicole's phone was dead in her hand. I flipped the light switch and the lights came on fine. The power was on. It was everything else. Every phone, the tv, the computer. None of it would power on, then, far off. Popping. It started as a few and then grew into a cacophony. There were more and more. On an ordinary day I'd have assumed this was an event, that someone was lighting a whole bunch of fireworks in celebration of some holiday I must have forgotten. But with everything happening, the sinking feeling in my gut was telling me that these were gunshots. Then another noise, a long low groan I could feel in my chest, and then a crash that rolled over us and shook the windows, and the continuous sirens and popping just stopped. Nicole had both kids by the shoulders. She looked at me. I looked at her. Neither of us wanted to Say what we were thinking in front of Charlie. We got them into the hall, middle of the house. No windows. Wes dragged blankets in. I locked the doors and we all sat there in the dark while the groans and pops got closer, followed by crashing and tearing. It sounded like the whole town was coming apart. The kids were crying, and I couldn't give them an answer that would make them feel better. I wanted to believe it was a storm, but even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew it wasn't true. The tearing sounds got closer, each one nearer than the one before. It sounded like something huge was demolishing everything in its way to us. Charlie had gone quiet against the cold, and seeing that fear in him made me feel worse than if he were crying. Then it sounded like a house nearby came apart. A rip and a terrible crash, all in one. It was close, maybe four doors down. And mixed in with it was a scream that cut off midway. I was up. Nicole was up with Charlie on her hip. No discussion. Waiting was done. Whatever was happening would be happening to our house within minutes, maybe less. I had Dylan by the arm. Back door.
- [08:00]
C
Go.
- [08:02]
D
I opened the back door and the sky was rust, dark orange. Brown hanging low, pressing down. And no sun anywhere in it. Just that color and something thick up high, like smoke swallowing the light. The air came in tasting like a penny. Charlie started crying again, and Nicole turned his face into her neck as. As she carried him two blocks up. Something was pulling a house apart. I couldn't focus on it. My eyes would just slide off it, like trying to get a good look at a floater in your vision. It was taller than a house, made of vibrating pieces that didn't belong together and wouldn't stay still. The house was coming apart and it was taking the pieces into itself. Shapes came out of the house toward it. They floated up into the air, struggling and kicking, suspended there until they began to dissolve into small, neat fragments. They were unraveled, and those fragments were pulled into the thing's body. I'd seen enough. I grabbed Nicole and pointed the other way, and we ran around the side of the house for the car. I had them wait against the house while I carefully made my way to the car, opening it with the key rather than risking any attention with the unlock beep. I inserted the key into the ignition and turned it. Nothing. No stutter, no click. No dash light. I turned it again. Nothing. It was completely dead. That car never once failed to start, and there wasn't enough time to troubleshoot it with what was coming our way. This had to be a bad dream. This just wasn't right, she whispered, peeking out from behind her house. She had Charlie's face buried on her shoulder, and her eyes were a mirror of what I felt Scared. Desperate. We run.
- [10:20]
E
The bird put us down on the east side of town at 20 to 9, low enough that the rotor wash tore loose shingles from the laundromat below us and threw trash across Whitmore Avenue. We were the fifth helicopter circling that block alone, and when I looked west through the open door, I counted another 11 hanging over the rooftops through the smoke. I stopped counting after that. Nobody commits that many aircraft to an operation they don't understand. They commit that many when they understand enough to be afraid. A koa sat across from me with sweat darkening the collar of his undershirt even though the cabin was cold. Ames had his rifle across his knees and his eyes shut, moving his lips as he counted something under his breath. Rusk and Vaughn were beside me. Halston stood near the cockpit, one hand gripping the overhead strap while he studied a laminated sheet that disappeared into his vest. The moment he noticed me looking, he came through the headsets.
- [11:25]
D
Standard first lance for anything. Standard won't penetrate. Blue stays sealed unless I call it.
- [11:33]
E
Ames opened his eyes and looked across at me. The briefing had told us almost nothing. A gate had appeared somewhere near the center of town. Local police entered first and stopped transmitting. The Bureau arrived before sunrise, sealed every road for 15 miles, and began inserting perimeter teams without showing any of us a photograph of what had come through yet. We had three different classes of ammunition, and Hulston had a threat sheet. The helicopter flared over the intersection, and we went out fast, boots striking pavement before the landing gear had fully settled. The bird lifted immediately, leaving us in a storm of dust, paper, and hot exhaust. Perimeter four had already been built across the junction of Whitmore and Vance. Four armored trucks were angled across the road, with gaps between them for fields of fire. Two heavy guns covered Main street to the north. Men from three other details occupied storefronts, rooftops, and the windows of an insurance office whose front doors had been broken out before we arrived. The town looked evacuated until you noticed the cars stopped in intersections, the front doors hanging open, and the dark smears leading away from places where people had abandoned whatever they were doing. Ames handed out lance magazines while Rusk pulled the blue canister from its padded carrier long enough to check the seal. It was the size of a thermos, wrapped in a shock frame with a blue ceramic cap. I had never seen one outside a training manual, and the instructor who showed it to us had refused to explain what it did. Halston pointed us into position behind the northern truck.
- [13:21]
D
Our line is the intersection nothing crosses south.
- [13:25]
E
Seven shapes broke through the smoke at the north end of Maine, moving quickly enough that I mistook them for dogs until I brought up my optic. The magnification showed the terrible truth. They ran on clusters of mismatched limbs that seemed to have been taken from several unrelated bodies and assembled around a soft central mass. One had a human looking leg at the front, while the limbs behind it were black and jointed like an insect's. Another pushed itself forward on pale arms, ending in hard points that struck sparks from the road. None of them had faces. Each had a hollow at the front of its body, a dark opening that remained aimed toward us even when the rest of the things thing twisted sideways. Standard, Halston ordered. Vaughn fired first, and the intersection erupted. Six rifles and both mounted guns met them halfway down the block. The first creature folded around the impacts, its central mass bursting across the pavement, but its legs continued running and carried the remains another 10 yards. The second lost half its limbs and dragged itself forward on what remained. One made it close enough that I saw the hollow on its front contract around the rifle flashes. Rounds tore it apart before it reached the trucks. The gunfire stopped in uneven stages, leaving brass scattered around our boots and pieces of the runners twitching. Across Main Street. A hand shaped section pulled itself into the gutter on fingertips. Something resembling a hip joint rolled repeatedly against the curb, trying to get its remaining limb underneath it. We spent another magazine, making the pieces stop. Vaughn lowered his rifle turtle. It came from the east before anyone answered him. The thing was only 2ft high, built low to the pavement, with narrow limbs tucked close beneath a shell the color of old teeth. It crossed the alley so fast that my eyes lost it between one stride and the next. Vaughn pivoted and fired. The rounds struck the shell and flattened, throwing bright fragments into the brick behind it. Vaughn got three shots off before the creature hit him at the knees. His legs folded beneath him and the thing climbed his body in the same motion, its limbs opening around his torso. We couldn't fire without shooting through him. Vaughn screamed once when it reached his abdomen, then it was muffled while its shell split open along the underside. Something inside it drove down through his vest. His back arched so violently that his helmet came off and rolled beneath the truck. Halston already had the lance ammunition loaded, rifle shouldered and fired. The round struck the creature at the base of its shell and detonated inside It. The blast flattened the thing across the road in a spray of pale fragments that drove Vaughn's body several feet, stopping against the truck tire. By the time we reached him, what was left of his vest had collapsed into the cavity where most of his chest had been reset.
- [16:55]
D
20 meters south.
- [16:57]
E
We dragged Vaughn behind the second truck and reset. By then something had begun rising above the western rooftops. At first it looked like a column of smoke behind the downtown buildings, black and uneven against the gray morning. Then the smoke shifted and the shape remained. I ranged it at a little over four kilometers. Command perimeter four, I transmitted. Unidentified structure forming in the central zone. Estimated height is 60m and increasing.
- [17:34]
D
Copy 4.
- [17:37]
E
That was all they said. The tall one came up Main street shortly before 11. It had no head and stood nearly nine feet at the shoulder, walking on two backward jointed legs, each step covering more ground than its pace should have allowed. Its skin was a gray material somewhere between hide and stone. Shapes moved beneath the surface, pressing outward in different places, as though several animals were trapped inside and trying to escape. A bloom of black filaments opened above its shoulders, each strand turning independently through the air. The filaments swung toward our position, spreading wider, and the creature changed direction toward us.
- [18:26]
D
Halston called out, lance Center Mass.
- [18:31]
E
Ames raised his rifle and fired. The round punched in and vanished. The surface sealed behind it with a slow contraction, and the creature continued forward. We all poured controlled fire into the mark left by the first round, and after 20 or 30 precise shots, the creature split vertically. Both halves peeled away from the center and struck the road with enough weight to shake the truck's suspension. The nest of filaments fell between them, spreading out across the pavement like snakes, heading in every direction. Several reached the barricade and climbed the tires before we burned them down with a mechanized flamethrower. I don't know who brought that, but I was sure glad they did. One made it through and wrapped around Rusk's boot. He cut through it with his knife, and the severed strand continued tightening around the leather until it had to be burned away. Halston was already searching the rooftops before the remains stopped moving, the structure downtown had risen above the skyline. The thing that took Ocoa arrived just after noon. There was no warning and no sound. A sheet of dark slid from beneath the delivery truck across the street, spread so thin against the pavement that it looked like nothing more than a shadow. It passed beneath the truck, climbed over the curb, and reached AOA before he knew anything had eyes on him. It ran up his boots and disappeared through the fabric. His entire body jerked. The dark sheet vanished inside him, moving beneath his uniform in a ripple that rose from his legs to his chest. His arms spread. His mouth opened for less than two seconds. His skin bulged in several places, as though hands were pressing outward from inside him. The material poured from his back without tearing. The uniform hit the road, crossed the wall of a nearby house, and flowed over the rooftop. Ocoa remained standing. His rifle was still shouldered and his finger was still against the trigger guard. He looked down at himself, then at me, and his expression carried such a complete confusion that I reached him before Halston ordered us back. Okoa. His lips moved. Air passed through his mouth with a soft, hollow hiss. There was nothing behind his teeth. The inside of his mouth opened into darkness all the way down through him. No tongue, no throat. No blood. The gear remained fitted around the shape of his body, but he was hollow. His knees bent and the uniform collapsed inward as he sat on the curb, folding around an empty space. His helmet tipped back. The chin strap pulled his jaw open wider as his empty body folded in on itself. Rusk reached for him. Don't, halston said. Back in formation, a koa fell sideways and struck the road with the weight of wet clothing. The structure downtown continued to rise. At noon it stood above every building in town by two. Its upper section disappeared into the smoke layer. Thousands of shapes moved across its surface, climbing channels along the sides and carrying material upward. At 4km, they looked like insects. My rangefinder put several of them at more than 7 meters long. Through my optic, I watched a section of rooftop lift from a downtown warehouse pass through a chain of moving bodies and disappear into the structure's side. Steel beams, Vehicles, Concrete people. I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began once they reached it. Ames watched the distant shapes crawl over it while he checked his rifle. What are they building? The things attacking the perimeter were only part of what had come through. Somewhere in the center of town, other entities were seemingly working together together toward a common purpose. A creature kills because it is hungry or threatened. Construction requires intention. It requires roles, material communication, and intelligence. Whatever crossed that gate was more than alien wildlife. We were looking at some kind of civilization. At a quarter to three, someone called out, Northside civilians. I brought up my optic and found them running through the smoke. There were maybe 50 men, women, older people struggling to keep pace, parents carrying children while other children ran beside them. Several were injured. One man had wrapped a shirt around his head and blood had soaked through it. A woman near the front waved both arms as soon as she saw our trucks, I keyed Command Perimeter 4. Approximately 50 civilians approaching from inside the zone. Requesting permission to receive and move them behind. Secondary denied. I thought I had heard them incorrectly. Command, these are civilians. They have children with them.
- [24:09]
D
Denied. Maintain perimeter protocol. Halston has the order.
- [24:15]
E
Halston switched to our local channel.
- [24:18]
D
Nothing crosses the line.
- [24:21]
E
I turn toward him. We can route them behind three or
- [24:25]
D
no, they've been inside the zone.
- [24:28]
E
So have we. His expression did not change.
- [24:33]
D
The call has been made. Put your rifle on the road.
- [24:38]
E
They were close enough now that I could hear individual voices beneath the noise of their feet. Someone shouted, thank God. A woman carried a boy on her hip. He had both arms around her neck and kept looking backward toward the smoke. I kept my rifle lowered. Halston stepped beside me.
- [24:58]
D
Reef, you have about three seconds to go somewhere else in your head. You have your orders.
- [25:06]
E
The woman at the front reached 40 meters. Houston gave the mark. Countless rifles and the four mounted guns opened into the crowd. The first row fell almost together. The people behind them were running too hard to stop and collided with the bodies folding over one another while rounds tore through the pile. Some turned back toward the zone. We shot them from behind because the order covered both directions. I watched my rectangle cross bodies, watched people drop behind it, and felt as though I were standing behind myself while another man operated the rifle. Houston put a hand on my shoulder.
- [25:51]
D
Cease fire, Reeve.
- [25:53]
E
My finger came off the trigger. Ames inserted a fresh magazine. Rusk turned back toward the north. I reloaded and noticed that my hands wouldn't stop shaking. Then a contact call came from the eastern rooftop and there was no time left to think about what I was we held the intersection for another hour. At four minutes after four, the structure downtown made a sound. It was too low to hear properly. I felt it through the soles of my boots and in the fillings of my teeth, a vibration that rolled beneath the streets and made every window along Whitmore flex inward. The smoke around the structure pulled toward it. Somewhere beyond our sight, something answered with a long rising call that passed from one end of town to the other. In the bank parking lot a 12 foot figure moved its head, or the upper portion where a head might have been, lifted toward the structure. The arms hanging at its sides opened along hidden seams and unfolded into branching lengths that spread across the lot. The general channel erupted. Perimeter Two reported a mass movement from the central zone. Five said their northern line had collapsed. Someone from seven screamed for lance ammunition. Another transmission consisted entirely of gunfire until the Signal cut off. Then command came through.
- [27:24]
D
Over everyone, all perimeters, all teams, full withdrawal. Head to extraction immediately. 20 minute window.
- [27:34]
E
The channel went silent for several seconds. Nobody said anything because Bureau agents are not ordered to withdraw. We are reinforced, abandoned, or erased where we stand. Halston stood with his hand against his headset as its unfolded arms spread across the building behind it. Ames looked at him.
- [27:56]
C
Sir.
- [27:57]
E
The figure turned toward us. Halston ripped the blue canister from Ames pack.
- [28:03]
D
Move and cover to extraction now.
- [28:07]
E
The first of the new wave came through the smoke on Main Street. Before he reached the trucks. There were dozens of runners, followed by taller shapes carrying bodies or pieces of bodies against their chests. They no longer moved as scattered animals. They advanced in lanes, using buildings and parked cars for cover while the smaller creatures sprinted ahead. Rusk opened with the truck gun and cut the first lane apart. Ames fired lance into a tall carrier, splitting it across the middle, but two more stepped over the remains without breaking stride. The figure from the bank crossed the parking lot in one enormous step. Its unfolded arm struck the pavement, punching through asphalt and lifting slabs of road. One branch swept over the truck and peeled the mounted gun away while Rusk was still gripping it. He released the handles a fraction before it tore the weapon off its mount. Halston armed the blue canister. The ceramic cap broke beneath its thumb and a cold light appeared inside it, bright enough to show through the housing down. He threw it beneath the figure. The street disappeared into blue. There was no heat and almost no sound, only a flat flash that stripped every color from the intersection. The figure's lower body collapsed inward, folding in on itself as the space it occupied had suddenly narrowed. Its arms whipped across the buildings, cutting through brick and glass while the runners caught inside. The light dropped into loose piles of separated parts. The blue faded after a few seconds. Half the block was gone.
- [29:53]
C
Move.
- [29:54]
E
We ran. The route to extraction took us back past Ocoa's empty skin and gear where it had folded beside the curb, past Vaughn beneath the COVID someone had thrown over him, and to the intersection of road where the civilians bodies lay piled over one another. Behind us, something struck the street. The impact lifted me off my feet. I landed among the bodies, one hand sinking against wet fabric, and Ames hauled me up by the back of my armor. The helicopter rotors were audible three blocks away. Entities poured from side streets as the perimeter collapsed around us. Rusk fired controlled bursts while walking backward. Ames used the last of his lance rounds on something, climbing across a row of parked cars, and the detonation threw hot fragments over our helmets Halston stayed at the rear with Vaughn's rifle, firing into anything that came close enough to touch. The birds were already lifting when we reached Secondary One. Helicopter was struck by something from a rooftop and rolled sideways, its rotor striking the corner of an apartment building. The aircraft came apart above the street and scattered burning wreckage across the extraction zone. Our pilot kept his bird down. We climbed aboard while rounds and lance charges crossed beneath the rotor disc. Halston came in last, firing until the crew chief caught his vest and dragged him into the cabin. The helicopter climbed hard enough to press us against the seats. Nobody said a word. Through the open door. I watched the perimeters shrink beneath us. The streets were no longer visible in places beneath the movement thousands of bodies converging toward downtown, some running, some crawling, some carrying pieces of the town toward the structure. Its surface opened in long vertical sections, exposing a depth of moving light inside, and the things climbing across it began disappearing through those openings. Other helicopters circled at our altitude. Farther out, Bureau aircraft formed a second ring beyond the town.
- [32:25]
D
Warning signal interruption detected
- [32:30]
B
this summer. Say I do.
- [32:32]
D
I am marrying a stranger like never before. Am I crazy?
- [32:35]
B
It's a whole new Married at First Sight on Peacock. Thank God I woke up in love with new experts. My name is Dr. Lisa.
- [32:42]
D
My name is Paul Brunson.
- [32:43]
B
Lord Couples, this could be the start of a very successful marriage. And Lord surprises. Or maybe not everything is just not enough.
- [32:51]
D
You're a little bit crazy.
- [32:52]
B
I don't know what's going to happen. I want my fairy tale ending. Married at First Sight now streaming new episodes Thursdays only on Peacock.
- [33:01]
D
This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses. Setup required. Compatibility and availability various 18
- [33:27]
B
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- [33:56]
D
Signal connection restored.
- [34:09]
E
Senator, sorry for the hour. How's Margaret?
- [34:12]
D
I was up. She's well thank you for asking. Good.
- [34:17]
A
Good.
- [34:19]
E
That situation we discussed has developed. It's past handling. We're going to have to clean the area.
- [34:31]
D
Define the area. All of it.
- [34:36]
E
I wanted you to hear it from me and not from a television.
- [34:40]
D
You don't call me at midnight to tell me a thing's already been decided. That's not the arrangement. There are people I answer to. There are committees that are going to want.
- [34:51]
E
That's why I called.
- [34:55]
B
How far?
- [34:56]
E
Everything inside the county line.
- [34:59]
D
Possibly further. My God.
- [35:02]
E
Indeed.
- [35:05]
D
There's no version of this we can make out to be an accident?
- [35:09]
C
No.
- [35:12]
D
So what's the story?
- [35:14]
E
Whatever you want it to be. Look, I know we've worked together a long time. This is beyond my control. It has to be done. The best I can do is give you time to get out in front of it.
- [35:29]
D
How much time?
- [35:31]
C
Hours.
- [35:34]
D
Understood.
- [35:36]
E
Good night, Senator.
- [35:45]
D
We run. I kept it low, trying to sound calm. Stay together. Away from downtown. As quickly as possible, we went up the street, away from that abomination, away from the sounds of gunfire and death. Before we made it half a block, the world started coming apart at the edges. The rust sky pulsed, dimming in, going dark and coming back. Like something so enormous was passing over us that it cast everything we could see into shadow. Everything had the color drained out of it, like the world and everything in it had gone gray. I had Dylan by the hand. Nicole had Charlie. Her brother. Wes was behind us, walking backwards, half the time watching behind us. I kept turning around and counting them. 4, 4, 4. Some animal part of my brain latched onto that task because it was one of the few things I could do. 4, 4, 3. I turned to count, and west wasn't there. There was no sound at all. No scream, no scuffle, nothing. One turn, he was a few feet back, and the next there was just an empty street and something at the far end of it already folding down low and pouring itself away between two houses. And it was gone. And Wes was gone with it. I stopped and said his name. Nicole's hand closed on the back of my shirt. I saw the look on her face and it broke my heart. I shook my head and whispered, no. No. The kids. Dylan was staring down that empty street, looking left and right with his mouth open. I clamped over his mouth and got him walking. He'll find us, I whispered and didn't look back again. I knew it was a lie, but I had to think of Nicole and the kids first. A woman was standing in the road on Fairmont, walking in a slow Circle with no shoes on. She saw us and came at us fast. Grabbed my arm with both hands and started talking. I could hardly understand her. Something about her husband in the garage and how she couldn't. And she tried in the door. Nicole tried to calm her down. She wouldn't even acknowledge her. She kept talking at me, faster and faster, her fingers digging into my forearm hard enough to leave marks. We took her with us after their uncle. I didn't want the kids to see us leave a woman in the street, not with what was out there. So she came along. And I kept asking her to keep it down, please, quieter. And she'd manage a few steps and then start right back up. We made it a few blocks before Dylan called out to me. He was looking off to our right, at the gap between a fence and somebody's garage. I didn't see. See anything, but he told me there was something there. I looked. A fence, a garage, a dark space in between. I was about to tell him there was nothing. And then I saw it. Off to my left, at the periphery of my vision. A line. A tall, thin line standing straight up in the middle of this street. Street taller than a man. My body went cold and I turned my head to look right at it. There was nothing but an empty street. I turned my head and looked from the corner of my vision. There it was. I looked at it straight on. And it wasn't. It was a pale seam standing up out of the pavement. And the second I put my eyes. Eyes on it, there was nothing there but air. Nicole saw it too. I watched her head start to turn and stop halfway. She had Charlie's face against her shoulder and her hand on the back of his head. And she said very quietly, let's go. Dylan's breathing was going fast and shallow. I took his hand, dragging him. Walk faster. I slept. Said straight ahead, nobody stop, nobody turn around. Just walk. So we walked and it stayed behind us. I could see it when I turned my head, keeping pace, thin as a razor blade, standing on its edge. I just pulled my family ahead as fast as I could get them to safely move, Checking ahead, checking the houses, the side of them, and watching whatever it was that was following us. Dylan was shaking so hard I could feel it coming up through his arm, but he kept his eyes forward. Nicole had Charlie's head pinned against her so he couldn't lift it. The woman stopped and turned around. She spun on her heel, yelling. She got out maybe half a sound and then she was falling over. But she didn't just fall back toward us. She fell to the side, both sides. Her body had split down the middle. The street was an instant pool of blood, and I could see each one of her eyes still blinking. A few times. The pool collected around a nearly invisible line, standing perfectly still between the woman's halves. Dylan stopped and was looking at the woman's body, still pouring red onto the street. He made a little noise before his knees gave out. I grabbed him and hauled him into my arms. He'd gotten heavy, but at that moment he weighed nothing.
- [42:12]
C
Run.
- [42:13]
D
I yelled, and Nicole and I were tearing down the street and cutting south between two houses. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see that line unmoving in the pool of blood. The man found us as he came out of a side yard with his hands up and open in front of him and said, I'm not going to hurt you. He had a woman with him, small and quiet, holding a kitchen knife that was never in a hundred years going to do her any good. I didn't stop. I told them to run, and we went right past them. A few blocks down, I finally glanced back and noticed they were following us. That was good. There could be safety in numbers. A little further down, and we had to stop to catch our breath, hiding the enclosed patio behind someone's house. The man said his name was Doran. He said they'd been down in a basement, but they heard things getting closer. The sound's indescribable, so they got out. Dylan had folded his arms over his knees and buried his head in them against a wall. Charlie had fallen asleep, still clutching the collar of Nicole's shirt. Doran was steady even after I told him what we'd seen, his hands open, his voice level, and he asked if we knew a way west, if our car hadn't worked either. I told him it hadn't, that we were going west, trying to get as far away from the city as possible. He said that we should go together, and after a few more minutes of rest, we did. It was better. Not good, but better. There was another capable man, another set of eyes, another line of defense between those things and my kids. We cut through backyards, trying to stay off the main roads and keeping our exposure to a bare minimum. We were most of the way through Vance street when we walked straight into the swarm. Small things, low to the ground, moving over a lawn and up the side of a fence and across a driveway, each one about the size of my fist, and they were fast. We stopped. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. They went around us. They parted and flowed around us and kept right on doing whatever they were doing, and the six of us stood frozen in the middle of them, and I watched them pour up over a fence. They weren't a bunch of little things, each doing their own thing. They were moving and acting in unison. Their texture was constantly changing. I couldn't focus on any individual one long enough to make out exactly what it looked like. They were black, roughly spherical, but had spiky appendages that extended and retracted. They were like a solid and a liquid, an object and an animal. Doran whispered to his wife not to move. I could see the panic building in her eyes, like up until now she hadn't really believed this was what we'd said it was. And now, standing in the middle of these things, she wanted nothing more than to get away. She more than moved. She tried to run, stepping on top of one of those things. As soon as she did, the appendages shot up and into her foot, coming out through the top. Her second step tried to adjust for what she hadn't realized had just happened, and the same result. She went down into the swarm. They went into her and through her, and they kept right on going. Each one that did took a small piece of her. By the time she hit the ground, there wasn't enough of her left to recognize. She never screamed. It happened too fast for that. Then the last of them poured over the fence. The street was empty and the four of us were standing over Doran, who'd collapsed to his knees. Then he thought up, face red and wet, and said, west, his voice barely a whispered crack, and he started walking. We made it a ways further before we heard it, this grinding roar with something wet underneath, and it was coming up across the street, two blocks over, and it was coming fast. Doran was yelling for everyone to get down and hide. It came through the intersection ahead of us, going straight through the corner house, like it was nothing. I have never seen anything that big move that fast. It was up over the roof lines, 40ft at least, and long behind that. It came through that house, and the house was just pieces scattered all over the street. It was moving down the street, destroying everything in its path. I don't think it even knew we were there. It was just going where it was going, and everything in its way just went. It had things stuck in it, all over the front and the sides of it, worked into it, sticking out cars, broken houses, half a playground, and people, arms and legs and heads embedded in the mass of that thing, and some were still moving. It was carrying it all around like some kind of fucked up hermit crowd. Nicole was screaming. Doran was pulling me by the jacket. I turned around for Dylan and I got his hand. I had him. It changed direction, took a hard left with a burst of speed and blew past us. The shockwave threw us off our feet and tumbling across the street. Doran had gone one way, I went another, holding Dylan by the hand. And Nicole was blown into some bushes with Charlie clutched in her arms. I got to my feet, pulling Dylan up with me, and I almost fell back. He was light, like he weighed nothing light. I looked down and I was holding only his arm. It was still warm, still dripping blood, and he wasn't attached to it. I screened his name, looking around and unable to drop the only part of him I could see. Then. Then I saw where we'd been standing a moment ago. A crater with a bloody paste at the bottom of it. I couldn't think, I couldn't reason. I went after it. I got about four steps before Doran took me off my feet and put me on the pavement and got his whole body on top of me. I fought him and he took it. I was hitting him and clawing at him and he just held on. He put his mouth down next to my ear and said, you can't.
- [49:41]
C
You can't.
- [49:41]
D
Ray, please listen. I hit him in the mouth as hard as I have ever hit anything. He took that, too. He didn't let go of me. He just said it again and quieter.
- [49:55]
E
Charlie and Nicole are still here.
- [49:59]
D
That got through. I failed Dylan. I couldn't fail them. Nicole was on her knees in the middle of the road. She had Charlie's face pressed into her shoulder with both hands. And she was staring down at the street where Dylan had been moments ago. She wasn't making any sound at all. She didn't. Out there with our now only son in her arms and looked at me. I walked over to her slowly and helped her up. There was nothing I could say. There was no fixing this. Nothing would be okay. But we had to go on. We still had to protect our child. Warning signal interruption detected. Got a Sam's Cafe pizza order up. You know the best part about this spicy Italian sausage?
- [51:00]
E
I voted for this topping. Yeah, just another perk of being a member.
- [51:04]
D
Come join us, Sam's Club.
- [51:07]
A
Hey there. Darkness prevails here. Founder of eeriecast, my little network of scary shows. I appreciate you listening to our scary content, but did you know you can Support us? Get ad free feeds of your favorite shows, get a 20% discount code to the Eriecast store and unlock access to members only audiobooks all at the same time. Just go to eericast.com/ and become a member today. It's cheap and really helps us out. That's eericast.com/thank you. Hey there. Darkness prevails here. If you're like me, you need way more scary stuff and folk horror in your life. I'm excited to say that you don't have to worry because we have you covered. That's because Freaky Folklore is now on YouTube with exclusive folklore videos that are as educational as they are creepy. Want to know how to identify a skinwalker? Or what to do when a Wendigo decides to make you food? Or maybe you want to discover new folklore monsters you've never heard of, like the Wood Booger of Appalachia? Well, head on over to Freaky Folklore on YouTube right now. Just search for Freaky Folklore on YouTube. Subscribe and watch some creepy videos while you're there. You can also just go to freakyfolklore.com to go right there. Thank you.
- [52:32]
D
Signal connection restored the park at the end of Hollis has four blocks of open grass with a school on the far side. That's where we came out, because the streets north of us were gone. They were holes. What looked like giant tunnels going through the park was the only way forward. People were standing all over the field in neat rows, unmoving, and something was in the middle of was bigger than the school. The base of it had sunk down into the field under its own weight, and above that it went up in round stacked sections until the top was past where the light would show me. The front of it was an angular dark slope that flashed in patterns of white. It had dozens of arms coming off it at every height, and no two the same. Some were long and thin and ended in what was almost a hand. Some were short and clubbed, some were nothing but a blade on the end of a stalk. Some I couldn't even imagine what they were for, and every single one of them was busy. It was working eight or 10 people at once, all up and down its height, and no arm was doing the same job as the one beside it. The sound came across the field flat, a wet clicking like a hundred pairs of scissors cutting the air. It would lift a person off the grass and hold them out, and four or five arms would come in at once and go over it quick, taking them apart in an order it had worked out extensively. Then the arms swung out over the field and dropped each piece into a designated pile. The piles were everywhere. There was one that was hands, there was one that was hair, There was one that was nothing but eyes. And there were piles. I couldn't figure out what they were. Stacked just as neat, neat and just as careful as the rest. You could see the size of the piles and guess how many people it had already gone through. I couldn't understand why these people were just standing there. At least a hundred people still lived, standing there in lines, not fighting, not running, just waiting while the thing worked its way down the road toward them. And when it reached the next one, the arms came down and picked them up and took them apart, while the rest of them just stood waiting their turn. We crept along the fence, intending to go around by sticking to the shadows under the trees. We were most of the way when the trees parted. Hadn't even heard it move. Something that big shouldn't be able to move that quietly. Nicole, Charlie, and I rolled into the bushes and she clamped her hand over his mouth while we held our breath. It stretched into the sky, higher than I could see. It had Doran around the waist. He was screaming and pounding against one of the hands. It brought him to its movie theater screen sized front, flashing white shapes and patterns, and Doran went slack. His arms dropped to his sides and he just didn't move. It carried him back out into the field, past the sordid piles to the end of a row and put him down next to the last man in the line. Then it turned around and went back to work. Doran stood there like all those around him. Nicole had my sleeve. She was pulling. We went. There was nothing else we could do. We got out of the park and Nicole handed me Charlie because her arms were finished. He put his face in my neck. He'd stopped crying a long time ago. He just held on. We made it a few more streets west before we heard the hammering. That's what it sounded like. A slow, heavy, wet knocking over and over like somebody a long way off driving in fence posts. It was coming from the direction we were walking. Nicole slowed down. I didn't. There wasn't another way to go, and the sound wasn't moving. And if it wasn't moving, then it wasn't coming for us. We came around the corner onto Belmont and something was building a structure. It stood about 20ft tall and it was working with its back to us. What it was making ran the whole width of the street and had already gone up higher than the houses on both sides. It was setting pieces into it and filling the gaps with people. I could see the ones near the bottom. They'd been there a while. They were pressed in and worked together. And there was something between them, holding it all up. The ones near the top were fresh. It would reach down out of sight on the other side and come up with a body. And it would fold it and put them into the row it was working on and then bring the heel of its hand down on. On them. That's what the hammering was. Some were still alive when it did it. Nicole made a sound behind me, small. The first sound she'd made since Dylan. I started backing up slow, watching it work, looking for somewhere to hide. We got to the corner when I noticed it had stopped hammering. It came over the top of the wall without turning around, straight backward, over its own shoulder. And it was on the street in front of us, 20ft in one motion. It went for the closest thing it could reach, and that was Nicole. I had Charlie in my arms, and I didn't even get one step toward her. It picked her up like she weighed nothing at all. And it turned back toward the wall. She was screaming and fighting it with both hands, hitting it, biting at it. And it didn't seem to notice. I saw her face over its arm. She stopped fighting. She looked at me, and she went completely still. And I stood in that road with our son in my arms. And I understood there was nothing on this earth I could do about it. And she understood it, too. And neither of us said anything. I turned around and I ran. It carried her back to that structure, and it started to fold her. She was alive and awake and looking at me. And I turned around and I ran with our son. And I left her there behind me. And the hammering started again. I got us behind a house. There was a low brick wall with a gap between it and the siding. And I got us into it and sat down with my back against the brick and my boy in my lap. And I couldn't get any more air in. Charlie spoke for the first time in a long time. He asked me if mom was going to be here soon. I put my hand on the back of his head and pulled him into my chest. I told him she was. That we would see her again soon enough. He put both fists in my shirt and held on. It came all at once and from everywhere. There was no sound. Just white filling up every. Everything. And my boy in my arms. And it came through him and through me, just blinding white. And then the heat. And then There was nothing but the white.
- [61:18]
C
I want to take a step back from what you just heard and put some numbers on the table. The city was Ridgemont. 152,000, according to the last census. Median household income right around the national average. A region of hospital, a community college, three high schools, a paper mill on the north end that had just been through a rough round of layoffs. It's not a place many have heard of. It's the kind of place three or four generations of the same family live in without ever considering leaving. My working estimate, based on population figures and the timing of the perimeter is that between 140,000 and 150,000 people were still inside the containment line when they launched that device. Every person in that county who wasn't already out on the interstate before the roads closed. Men, women, children in school, patients in bed. Everybody. And they knew somebody at the top of the beach Bureau sat down with a document that had files in it, and they put those files in the hands of several strike team commanders before they sent those teams out by helicopter. Which means this wasn't first contact with these things. This was the day the thing they'd not been preparing for finally happened. And they got caught with their pants down. And over 140,000 civilians paid the tab. You can walk the whole trail from Leeds. His program produced the bone weaver. His program was signed off on by people who read what he was doing and thought it sounded like a good idea. When his program produced the thing that killed him. The Bureau spent three years failing to contain it. When it finally moved on Ridgemont, they threw everything at it. And everything they had was the last of what it needed. When they made it worse, they wiped an entire city off the map without permission, without hesitation, and without consequence. None of them are going to answer for any of it because the machinery that would have them answer for their crimes has been under their thumb for decades. Now that you know the truth, you're going to be hearing a lot of the lies. And whatever we end up doing about those lies, whatever votes get taken, whatever bombs get dropped, whatever names get added to whatever list I want you to remember. It started here, in a room, on a phone call between two men who knew each other's wives. That's who the Bureau is. That's who your politicians are. Stay alert, stay alive. And don't let them deceive you.
- [64:30]
B
Breaking news. We are continuing to follow major developments tonight in the aftermath of the attack on Ridgemont. Multiple administration officials now say U.S. intelligence agencies have reached a preliminary assessment linking the attack to a militant organization operating from inside Helmajistan. Earlier this evening, Jamaat ul Ahar released a video claiming the destruction and warning that other American cities will be targeted. The authenticity of that recording has not been independently verified. However, officials familiar with the investigation say intercepted communications and evidence recovered from the site have given the administration what one source described as a high degree of confidence in the group's involvement. The president has canceled tomorrow's public schedule and remains in consultation with the National Security Council. An address from the Oval Office is expected at 8pm Eastern. House and Senate leaders have also recalled members to Washington for classified briefings. Staff from both parties are reportedly drafting an emergency room resolution authorizing military force against the organization and any foreign government found to have provided it with weapons, funding or sanctuary. Senator Cook, who has long called for stronger action against the government of Palmajistan, emerged from tonight's intelligence briefing saying there was, in his words, no longer any meaningful distinction between those who carried out this attack and the regime that enabled them. The Department of Defense has placed additional forces in the region on heightened alert. The Secretary of Defense called the attack on Ridgemont the deadliest foreign directed terror attack in the history of the world and promised that those responsible would be pursued to the ends of the earth. No military action has yet been officially announced, but tonight, as recovery efforts continue, the number of dead remains unknown. Washington is no longer discussing whether the United States will respond. The question now is how soon? More on this story as it unfolds. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's Name your Price Tool for years. Now, with the Name youe Price Tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com find a rate that works for you with a name, your Price Tool Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state
- [67:15]
D
law Good energy in, Good energy out. Zero sugar 200 milligrams of caffeine and
- [67:28]
E
immunity Support energy for life.