Portia

*Day 30*My son was nine years old the night I died for him.I always figured a pole would get me. Forty feet up in an ice storm, a line that should have been dead and wasn't, one bad second. Fourteen years with the power company, and I'd made my peace with that kind of ending.Not this one. Not on my knees on a cellar hatch in the dark, with my boy underneath it."Mom." Eli's voice came up through the boards, thin and frightened. "Mom, let me up.""No, bug. Stay down."The front door started to go at 11:52. I knew because the battery clock over the woodstove was the last thing I'd fixed in that cabin, and I looked at it the way I've always looked at clocks. Like it owed me something.Thirty days. That was how long I'd kept him alive.Thirty days since I'd driven the company truck east through the first rainy night, Spokane burning orange in my rearview mirror and Eli's last text still glowing on my phone. *where r u*. Thirty days since my mother opened the cabin door in her bathrobe

Last Updated : 2026-11-09

The Hatchet

Day 34They waited like a crew waits on the foreman.That was the worst part. Not the gray skin or the torn clothes or the way the snow didn't melt where it landed on them. It was the patience. Three of them standing at the edge of the trees, heads tilted toward me, ready for whatever I said next.[Awaiting maternal command.]"I'm not your mother," I said.[Correction: Host designation is Mother of the Horde.]"Delete that."[Mandate cannot be removed.]Fine. Fourteen years on storm crews teaches you what to do when an order comes down that'll get somebody killed. You don't argue with dispatch. You find another way to do the job."Go," I told them. "Get away from this house. Don't come back."They turned together, the way birds turn, and shuffled into the trees. The snow swallowed the sound of them in seconds.Something cold slid through my chest. Not pain, exactly. More like a light going out in a room I hadn't known was there.[Command issued outside mandate parameters.][Noted.]No

Last Updated : 2026-11-10

Eli's Trail

Day 34Eli's trail left the logging road two miles down, where the cedars started.I almost missed it. A broken fern stem, bent the wrong way. Then a scuff on a mossy log where a small boot had slipped. Under the big trees the snow was thin, and the ground told the story if you knew how to read it. My dad taught me. I taught Eli. Now I was reading my own lessons back off the forest floor."How do you know that's him?" Dante asked.I crouched and touched a print half-hidden under a cedar bough. Small. Lug sole. The left heel worn down, because Eli walks on the outside of his left foot and always has."I know," I said.We followed it for an hour. Then the trail reached the creek, and it stopped.Not faded. Stopped. Prints going into the water, none coming out on the other side. I walked the bank a hundred yards each way. Nothing."He walked in the creek," I said, and my voice did something I didn't like. "I taught him that. If something's hunting you, get in the water. It can't follow y

Last Updated : 2026-11-10

Starving

Day 36The tracks ran straight to the river, and the river had one bridge.Old steel truss, two lanes, rust bleeding down the girders. Somebody had turned the near end into a wall. Two pickups nosed together, a school bus on its side, plywood and razor wire stretched across the gaps. Smoke rose from a barrel fire behind it.And in the mud at the foot of the bridge, Eli's prints. Lug sole, left heel worn down, walking between the adult boots. Across the bridge and gone."They let his group through," Dante said quietly."Then they'll let us through."He gave me a look I knew from a hundred job sites. The look that meant you're about to climb something you shouldn't."Let me talk first," he said. "Stay back. Keep your hood up."I hated it. I did it anyway.He walked out with his hands raised and his rifle slung behind him. A man stood up on the bus with a deer rifle. Two more appeared behind the trucks. Then a woman with gray braids and a shotgun, who was obviously in charge."That's clo

Last Updated : 2026-11-10

Feeding Opportunity

Day 36, nightI walked until I couldn't smell the bridge anymore.That took almost a mile. The blood followed me the whole way, in my clothes and my hair and the back of my throat, and every step I wanted to turn around. Not to help. Not to bury anyone. Just to go back.[Feeding opportunity detected.]"No."[Noted.]I sent the four of them into the trees with orders to stay there. Then I sat down on the steps of a burned-out ranger station on the far side of the river and held onto the railing like it was the last rung of a pole.Dante found me an hour later. He'd built a fire inside the ranger station's one standing room, and he didn't ask me to come in. He just came out and sat down on the step below mine with a first-aid kit in his lap."Jacket off," he said."I'm fine.""You've got two bullets in you, Portia.""One. The shotgun went through."He looked at me for a long time. Then he opened the kit.I took the jacket off.The hole under my collarbone had closed down to the size of

Last Updated : 2026-11-10

Onward

Day 36, nightDante was in front of me before I could tell him not to be.He didn't raise his rifle. He just stood up off the step and put his body between me and the river, big and solid, his heart slamming so hard I could feel it through the railing.The red dot slid off my chest and settled on his."Move," the voice said."No," Dante said.Behind the ranger station, out in the cedars, the four of them were on their feet. I could feel them the way you feel a storm coming through a bad knee. Every one of them was turned toward the river, toward that slow, steady heartbeat on the far bank.The letters came up white.[Threat to host detected.][Mission available: Defend the Mother.]I thought about the bridge. The kid in the red jacket. The way the thing in my head had liked it."No," I said.[Noted.]Stay, I told them. Stay where you are.They stayed. It felt like holding a door shut against wind."I didn't do your town," I called across the water. My voice came out hoarse. "Whatever

Last Updated : 2026-11-11

All Chapters of APOCALYPSE HOLLOW: DEATH WANTS HER BACK: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

Portia

The Hatchet

Eli's Trail

Starving

Feeding Opportunity

Onward