The Weeping Forest
The fog hadn't lifted yet when Avery heard the engines.
She was already awake—had been for an hour, curled on the window seat of the attic with a wool blanket around her shoulders, watching the sky bruise from black to gray. Hollow Creek did not usually wake to sound. It woke to roosters, to the creak of Old Man Petrovich's porch swing, to the distant clang of the mill bell if someone forgot to shut it off. It did not wake to the growl of diesel engines climbing the switchback road from the valley, dozens of them, grinding up through the mist like a herd of iron beasts that had lost their way and found something better to eat.
She pressed her palm against the cold glass and watched the first truck crest the hill.
It was enormous—canvas-backed, mud-splattered, the kind of vehicle she'd only seen in the newsreels they sometimes played at the town hall before harvest festivals, footage from wars in places with names she couldn't pronounce. Behind it came another, and another, until the main road through Hollow Creek was choked with them, headlights boring twin holes through the fog, engines idling in a chorus that rattled the windowpane under her fingers.
Men climbed down from…
