Fuck's sake. [ Emerges all in a breath, his voice a ragged scrap. He sways on his feet, adjusts his sweaty grip on the walkie. They're fine. Makes no fucking sense, but they're fine.

Leaving him to try and fit a vision to words. There's a pause, his gaze cutting across the landscape. He resists the compulsion to look back. ] I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you what I saw. I'm up in the mountains a ways, yeah, and I, it's—

They're swarming the forest. I mean for miles that's all there was, en fucking masse. Trees're crawling with them. Like, like flies on a corpse, don't know what you're looking at at first. [ He stops. Not really a pause: he's run out of words or maybe energy.

Eventually: ] Where are you?