Cora impacts with the man and begins a furious struggle with each being slammed against the rocks on the ground and the trees next to the trail.

The shrunken fit of the clothes on their daughter’s attacker tells them it is most likely the teenage boy that had passed with his family earlier in the day. He is much larger than Cora, and Robert realizes she is not the focus of his attack when he finally bests her in fighting. He knocks her at least twenty feet away and into a tree. His head snaps in the family’s direction up the trail and his eyes lock on Robert’s.

“Tanya!” he yells to get her attention at the attacker’s approach.

They are handicapped in defense while having young children. Even against a normal attacker or pursuer, they wouldn’t stand a chance of escape or evasion. Their only prospect to defend themselves and their children against animals of the human or wild kind might not make a difference against this fast-moving threat of distorted humanity approaching them. Still, Robert raises his gun and fires at the running bulk heading toward them while lowering his daughter Emma to the ground with his left hand. Tanya steps up beside him, and they count the short seconds they have before the man reaches them while firing every loaded round they have.

He is hit multiple times in his approach and begins to turn away from them, but his momentum causes his body to fall and roll at them anyway. When he stops, he twists his body like a cat and crouches on his hands and feet as if ready to pounce. Robert is fumbling with a new magazine to reload his gun when Tanya pulls her trigger and starts putting bullets into the skull of this boy turned monster.

Instead of falling dead, he starts backing away as if in pain rather than mortally wounded. He doesn’t travel far before he is grabbed from behind by Cora who once again yells for her parents to “Go” before ripping into the neck of the wounded man.

They both hesitate to leave without their eldest child. Even with the horrific scene of her devouring their potential attacker and her distorted transformation, she is their child, she is a part of them. Tanya steps forward with her hand out and whispers Cora’s name.

The immediate look returned can only be described as animalistic and fierce. Robert grabs his wife’s arm and pulls her back to him as if she were attempting to grab a steak from a starving wolf. Cora pauses and has a small convulsion before telling them all they need to know.

“Leave me here, a part of me wants to do this to you.” Tears stream from her face as she forces the words out.

Tanya shakes and sobs as she gathers up her other children and turns them down the path toward their campsite.

“Goodbye, Cora. I love you.”

Robert leans down, picks Emma back up and turns away from his daughter’s gruesome feast. He only makes it ten feet before Cora lands in front of him, having jumped over his head from her place on the trail where she left her fresh kill. He freezes in fear for a moment, but she steps in and pulls him into an embrace and rubs her face against his chest smearing his shirt with the dirt, tears and blood of her ordeal.

Releasing him and Emma from what he believes would be the final act of tenderness and emotion he will receive from his daughter, she smiles briefly before frowning and crying anew. “There will be more. Just like me, just like him. You have to get prepared.”

With those words, she jumps away from her father and returns to the body of the boy, and Robert runs to catch up with his wife on the trail.

Along the trail, the deadly truth of Cora’s statement plays out before they make it back to camp. At first, they pass the body of an elderly man lying in the bushes. His skin is pale white, and his eyes are stretched wide in a gaze at the unusual blue-hued landscape. He is obviously dead and most likely drained of blood if other children are changing the way their daughter has. There is a fleeting moment of normalcy with Tanya’s desire to check on the man’s condition, but that moment passes as soon as they hear movement on the trail up ahead and see another two bodies.

Another girl, similar to Cora, is leaning over an elderly woman, probably the old man’s hiking companion. She is latched onto the woman’s neck.