The flood had swallowed Black Hollow whole by the time the sun tried—and failed—to rise the next morning. Gray light barely pierced the clouds, turning the entire valley into a slow-moving sea of brown water, floating corpses, and broken dreams. Power lines hung like dead snakes. The few remaining trailers looked like sinking ships.
The McCoy family no longer hid inside their own rotting home.
They owned the holler now.
Harlan stood waist-deep in the flood on the roof of the old church that had been abandoned since the mine closed. The chest rested on the steeple beside him, lid open, the two fetuses now the size of toddlers. Their extra limbs had thickened. One had grown a second torso. The other's wings had stretched into leathery flaps that dripped black ichor. They fed constantly—on fingers, ears, and chunks of breast meat the children tossed up to them like treats.
Billy and Sadie paddled past on an upside-down door they had turned into a raft. Both were naked except for blood and gore smeared across their skin like war paint. Sadie wore Brittany Parker's scalp as a wig; the long blonde hair was already matted with lice and mud. Billy had fashioned a necklace from Dale Parker's teeth and fingers.
Old Jeb walked along the flooded road as if the water wasn't even there. His body had changed overnight. The paralysis was gone. Muscles that had wasted for six years now bulged unnaturally, veins black under the skin. He dragged Tammy Parker's headless torso behind him by the hair, using it as a float.
Darlene no longer had legs. They had been eaten during the night—first by the fetuses, then by the children when they got hungry again. She crawled on her elbows across the roof of a submerged car, her open belly dragging behind her like a sack. Intestines trailed in the water, occasionally nibbled by fish that had learned to follow the family.
Harlan raised the axe high.
"Listen up!" his voice boomed across the water. "This holler is ours now. Every house, every body, every last scrap of meat belongs to the McCoys and the chest!"
From the water came weak screams.
The few survivors—meth cooks, welfare families, old widows—had gathered on the second floor of the abandoned schoolhouse. Maybe twenty people, armed with shotguns, baseball bats, and kitchen knives. They stared in horror at the floating nightmare approaching them.
Harlan smiled with blood-caked teeth.
"Time to collect rent."
The attack was not a battle. It was a feast.
Billy and Sadie were first in. They swam like eels, slipping through broken windows. Screams erupted inside. A shotgun blast tore Sadie's shoulder open, but she only laughed and bit the shooter's throat out. Billy ripped a man's arm off at the elbow and beat another woman with it.
Old Jeb smashed through the front doors like a battering ram. He grabbed a pregnant woman and tore the fetus straight out of her belly with his bare hands, then fed it live to the chest. The two growing creatures inside squealed in delight, their many mouths tearing into the tiny unborn child.
Darlene crawled up the stairs, leaving a slick red trail. Anyone who tried to run past her got their ankles bitten through. She chewed on calves and feet while whispering, "Join the family… we're all meat in the end…"
Harlan moved through the carnage like a butcher in a slaughterhouse. The axe rose and fell with wet, meaty thuds. He collected the best cuts—livers, hearts, brains—and tossed them into the chest. With every offering the fetuses grew larger, stronger, more human… and less human.
By the time the screams stopped, the schoolhouse had become a charnel house. Blood ran down the walls and mixed with the floodwater outside, turning the entire holler pink.
The McCoys gathered on the roof as the rain finally began to ease.
The two creatures from the chest had merged. What sat inside the wood now was a single entity—almost the size of a ten-year-old child, with too many arms, two heads that shared one neck, and a mouth that split vertically down the chest. Its eyes—dozens of them—looked at Harlan with something like love and endless hunger.
It spoke for the first time, voice like wet gravel and children laughing:
"More."
Harlan looked out over the flooded valley. Lights were still burning in three more trailers on the far ridge. Beyond them, the county road led to the next holler. Then the next town. Then the city.
He placed his hand on the creature's slick, pulsing head.
"Soon," he promised. "We'll feed you the whole damn state if we have to."
Sadie giggled and licked blood from her fingers. "Can we eat the preacher next? I want his tongue."
Billy nodded. "And the sheriff. His badge will look pretty on my necklace."
Old Jeb cracked his knuckles, now tipped with black claws. "I ain't stopped being hungry since 1987."
Darlene, barely alive, raised what was left of her arm in another bloody toast.
"To the McCoy family picnic."
The merged creature inside the chest opened every mouth at once and laughed—a sound that rolled across the flooded holler like thunder.
Far away, in the state capital, emergency alerts began flashing on phones:
"Flash flood warning. Multiple missing persons reported in Black Hollow. Stay indoors."
But it was already too late.
The rot had learned to swim.
And it was coming for dinner.
(End of Chapter 5)