The Bone Yard

The Construction Site

The air smelled like hot tar and rotting meat as Luz guided the rig toward the distant construction site. The closer they got, the more wrong the landscape became—telephone poles bent like praying mantises, their wires dangling like severed tendons; road signs melted into Rorschach blots of warning.

Cole hadn't spoken since the toll booth. He just clutched Mateo's tape in his lap, fingers twitching as if fighting the urge to press play.

Then they crested the final hill.

Luz's stomach dropped.

The site sprawled for miles—a grotesque parody of highway construction. Figures in tattered DOT vests moved in eerie synchronization, their movements too fluid, too jointless. Some poured steaming black asphalt from skeletal paving machines. Others welded support beams that weren't metal at all, but rib bones the size of train cars.

And at the center…

The bridge.

Not a crossing. A monument.

Twin arches of fused vertebrae rose thirty stories high, their curves mimicking a ribcage mid-breath. Between them, where the deck should have been, hung a pulsating mass of black tissue threaded through with glowing red veins.

Luz's hands shook on the wheel. "What the hell is that?"

Cole finally looked at her. His pupils had elongated—vertical slits like a cat's.

"The heart."

The First Recording

They parked behind a derelict bulldozer crawling with black vines. Cole produced a handheld recorder from his coat—an old Sony Pressman, its case scratched with symbols Luz didn't recognize.

"Your brother made it inside," Cole said, nodding toward the site. "This is what he found."

He pressed PLAY.

Static. Then Mateo's voice, hushed and shaking:

"Luz, if you hear this—don't come looking. The roads aren't just alive. They're pregnant."

A wet crunching sound interrupted him. When he spoke again, his voice was tighter, pained:

"They're growing something under the asphalt. Not the Big Man anymore. Something worse. It's using Jake Carter like a—"

A new voice cut in—Rachel's—but distorted, layered with something guttural:

"—blueprint. We're the architects now."

The recording ended with a scream that didn't sound human.

Luz wiped her face. She hadn't realized she was crying. "Where is he now?"

Cole pointed to the pulsating mass inside the bone bridge.

Luz reached for the door handle. Cole grabbed her arm. His grip burned like dry ice.

"Touch nothing. Speak to no one. And when you see him—don't react."

Among the Workers

The construction site hummed with wrongness. The workers didn't turn as Luz moved between them, their faces slack, their mouths slightly open. Up close, she saw why—

Their teeth were moving.

Not chewing. Not talking. Just… vibrating, as if singing at a frequency too low to hear. Black sludge seeped from their gumlines like engine oil.

Then she saw the first familiar face.

Sheriff Holloway—or what was left of him—stood directing traffic that didn't exist. His chest cavity gaped open, the ribs splayed like a display case. Inside, instead of organs:

A cassette player.

Spinning silently.

Luz edged past him toward the bone bridge. The ground here wasn't dirt—it was skin, stretched taut over something shifting beneath. Every step made it dimple like water.

Then she heard it.

"Her-mana…"

Mateo's voice. Coming from the heart.

The Heart of the Highway

Up close, the pulsating mass was worse. The black tissue was translucent in patches, revealing shapes suspended inside like insects in amber. Luz recognized some from missing persons posters. Others wore familiar faces:

Amber Langford, curled fetal around a rusted gas can

Sheriff Dawson, his mouth sewn shut with asphalt thread

And at the center—

Mateo.

His eyes opened as she approached. Not black like Cole's. Not human either. They reflected—showing not the construction site, but a sprawling network of black veins spreading under America.

His lips moved. The voice wasn't his:

"Luz… help… build…"

Behind her, the workers stopped moving.

All at once.

All facing her.

Cole's warning echoed in her head: Don't react.

Too late.

The Offering

The first worker lunged.

Luz dodged, but a second grabbed her jacket. The fabric tore, revealing the Zippo in her pocket.

Mateo's eyes locked onto it.

"FIRE," the thing inside him boomed.

The workers recoiled. Luz didn't hesitate—she flicked the lighter and thrust it toward the heart.

The flame burned black and hungry.

The mass shrieked, its surface boiling. Mateo's face contorted in pain—or relief?—as the tissue around him withered.

Then Cole was there, dragging her back.

"Enough!" he snarled. His eyes were fully black now, his fingers elongating into talons. "You'll ruin everything!"

Luz swung the lighter between them. Cole hissed but retreated.

Around them, the workers collapsed like marionettes with cut strings. The bone bridge groaned, cracks spiderwebbing up its arches.

And from deep below, something roared.