The Ghost Town

The gravel road eventually merged with a cracked, two-lane blacktop that wound its way through the hills. After another half-day of cautious travel, they saw it. A small town, nestled in a valley, its main street a quaint collection of brick storefronts and clapboard houses. A faded wooden sign at the edge of town read: "Welcome to Harmony Creek. Population: 1,254." The sign was riddled with bullet holes.

The town was eerily quiet. There were no bodies littering the streets, no burned-out cars, no obvious signs of a struggle. But the silence was wrong. It was not the peaceful quiet of a sleepy rural town; it was the heavy, breathless silence of a place holding its breath, waiting for something terrible to happen.

"This doesn't feel right," Quinn said, stopping the van on a ridge overlooking the town. "It's too clean. Too quiet."