It isn’t a singular scream, however, it is the repeated and broken crying out of someone in painful agony. The distant screamer continues their cries of pain, and the world around them explodes into a terrifying symphony of sounds. A rushing din fills the air of what seems like every bird in the area taking to the skies. They are cawing and chirping their displeasure at what is occurring in the world. Squirrels and chipmunks also start crying out, and even the dragonflies and other buzzing insects of the world erratically take flight around them.

Robert draws his handgun and looks over to Tanya to see she already had hers out and ready. The next sound fills his heart with pain and fear. Having been distracted by the reaction of the wildlife to the blue light and the explosion of noise responding to the distant scream, he failed to notice his own daughter collapsed on the trail in front of them. Elizabeth, their second oldest and Cora’s best friend, is at her side screaming for her parents to do something. Her concern turns to fear, and she jumps up and backs away from her sister when the first sound of cracking emanates from Cora’s body.

Cora’s own agonized screaming accompanied by the sound of her breaking bones fills their ears. Their daughter is writhing on the ground in front of them and appears to be wrestling with an invisible attacker. An attacker that is snapping all of her bones. Her arms, legs and fingers are all bending by themselves in unnatural directions as they all watch helplessly. Each new bend is accompanied by the popping sounds of the bones beneath the skin breaking and renewed cries of agony from her.

Behind Robert and Tanya, their other kids are screaming and crying, and Robert grabs onto Elizabeth to prevent her from running back to Cora’s side. Mere seconds pass as the frequency of her bones breaking intensifies into a crackling sound. It is more like the loud crumpling of a newspaper rather than solid bones.

Her body begins straightening out, twisting itself back into a form similar to her original shape, but longer and more muscular.

With one final popping sound, as if everything just snapped back into place, her head pivots toward her family, and she jumps to her feet facing them. Her clothes are ripped and dangling off of her in places both from her increased size and the violent thrashing against the ground. Their twelve-year-old daughter is easily a foot taller than she was a few seconds earlier. She looks more like a steroid-bulked Olympic runner than the lithe little girl who was with them less than twenty seconds ago.

Robert watched it happening, and he still doesn’t believe what he is seeing. Still, worse than their daughter transforming into a young adult in front of them, is the look in her eyes. There is a fierceness in them, and she seems to be looking at them not as her family, but as something else. What that something else is becomes apparent when she opens her mouth to scream at them and they see her teeth. Her canine teeth have reformed with the growth of her body and resemble the often laughed at image we know only from exaggerated movies. She has the teeth of a vampire.

Tanya steps to Robert’s immediate left and the rest of their children crowd in behind them as they look at the person or creature Cora has become. Her face is smeared with dirt, and fresh tears continue to pour from her eyes. She smells the air between her and her family, and it looks as though her ears twitch before she abruptly turns her back to them and crouches down in a defensive pose against an attacker no one else can see.

Looking beyond her on the trail in the direction they were heading, they see what appears to be a man running, but moving unnaturally fast. Cora turns back to her family one more time before uttering one word, “go” and then runs to a collision course with the man heading their way.

Tanya grabs Gabriel, Robert picks up Emma, and they turn to run, but the parents’ eyes linger in the opposite direction of their body’s movement to see what will unfold.