The End of the Trail

There’s no handbook for being part of an apocalypse squad.

No orientation, no welcome packet, no HR rep gently explaining your role as “narrator-turned-journalist-turned-team-member.” Just chaos, caffeine, and the growing suspicion that you might be the dumbest smart person alive.

There are unspoken rules, though.

Rule one: Don’t ask where you’re going. Hana already knows. Or pretends to. Same thing.

Rule two: Don’t touch Sota’s bag. He has snacks. He will bite.

Rule three: If Kaito starts monologuing, something’s about to explode. Possibly him.

Rule four: We don’t talk about how our parrot speaks perfect grammar.

We especially don’t talk about the fact that he now critiques our grammar. Loudly. While eating our snacks.

And rule five?

If someone says “It can’t get worse,” run.

Being part of a squad at the end of the world is like joining a group project in hell. Everyone’s underqualified, overly emotional, and possibly contagious.

Also, sometimes the god of language sends you a push notification telling you where to find him.

Which brings me to this morning.

Because just when I thought we’d earned one moment of peace, one semi-normal breakfast in a haunted forest with canned oatmeal and existential dread...

Ding.

Yeah.

Squad life.

Apocalypse edition.

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Morning in Allegheny National Forest. Birds are singing. The forest is unusually calm. Too calm.

Being part of the apocalypse squad, I’ve learned, comes with certain responsibilities. You wake up early. You pack up quickly. You argue about the meaning of GPS signals that clearly point directly into cursed foliage. You drink instant coffee that tastes like betrayal. And, most importantly—

You check your phone for ominous notifications from a possibly divine, definitely vengeful green owl.

Kaito was the first to stir.

He blinked up at the grey sky with the bleary expression of someone still emotionally recovering from being launched into space, then rolled over and groaned. Loudly.

Sota was next—half buried in a sleeping bag he had somehow zipped himself into completely, like a particularly sweaty burrito.

Hana was already up, of course. She was carving a directional stick into the dirt like the forest owed her money.

The parrot was nowhere to be seen, presumably scouting the treetops or talking trash to squirrels.

Then: Ding.

Kaito’s phone buzzed.

He frowned, picked it up, squinted, and mumbled:

“…‘Come and find me’?”

That woke everyone up fast.

Sota sat up like he’d just been tasered. “What? What that mean? Who say that?”

Kaito turned the phone around.

One sender.

Duolingo.

One location pin.

Deep in the forest. Not far.

The title:

“🦉 Come and find me.”

“Nope,” I said automatically, from my perch on a rock nearby. “We do not ‘find’ mysterious messages from owls. That’s how horror movies start.”

“Too late,” Hana replied. “We’re already in one.”

Kaito stood, stretched, and blinked a few more times.

Then he frowned.

“What… am… we… gonna—”

He froze.

We all did.

I blinked. “Did you just say—?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. I meant—what are we going to do now.”

Sota dropped the thermos he was holding.

“Oh no.”

“What?” Kaito asked, rubbing his eyes.

“You… you got it. I made you got it! Is flu? Is contagious grammar? You caught it from me!?”

“No, I’m fine,” Kaito said, waving a hand. “It was just a word slip.”

“You said what am we,” Sota squeaked. “You plural-singulared. That—That Babel logic!”

“I plural-singulared?”

“YES.”

Hana stood up and clapped her hands once—loud and sharp.

“That’s enough.”

Everyone stopped.

She looked between the two of them. Kaito, now visibly panicked. Sota, hyperventilating. Me, halfway into taking notes I would later pretend were objective.

“No more screaming,” she said. “No more grammar guilt spirals. We got a location. We got a sender. We go.”

The parrot returned, landing on a branch above. “Also, the squirrels voted to exile us. So let’s move.”

Kaito ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Okay, yeah. You’re right. It’s probably just stress. We’ll figure it out.”

“Duo said ‘Come and find me,’” Sota mumbled. “Like boss battle. Or trap. Or last level of mobile game.”

Hana already had her bag slung over her shoulder. “Only one way to know.”

She looked back at us. All of us.

“Squad up.”

And just like that, we headed into the trees.

Toward the next clue.

Toward the tomb.

Toward whatever “find me” meant.

Or whatever I accidentally made it mean.

Now let me tell you something.

The thing about following ancient owl gods through cursed forests is that you start to lose track of what’s a “clue” and what’s just someone’s bad camping leftovers.

The path was barely a path. Just dirt pretending to be a trail. Occasionally, we’d find something Duo-related nailed to a tree: an old flashcard, a plastic beak, a laminated sticker that read ¿Dónde está la biblioteca? and had clearly been there since the app’s 2013 update.

Then we heard voices.

Not chanting.

Not the Cult.

Just… scared murmurs.

A group of travelers sat in a loose circle near a crooked wooden sign that read “Camp Safe If Maybe”. Their clothes were ragged. Their eyes were wide. One guy was eating leaves. Unironically.

When we stepped into view, half of them screamed.

The other half flinched like grammar had just punched them.

“Wait!” Sota waved both hands. “No scare! We friend!”

The travelers froze.

One of them—a woman with a badge made from an upside-down Scrabble tile—spoke first:

“Not go direction… beastie-thing bad. Much teeth. Sound go skraa.”

“Teeth thing eat guy. Not guy now,” another added.

“I—I think they mean there’s a monster,” Sota whispered to the group.

“They said all that?” Kaito asked.

“Loosely.”

“Where?”

Sota turned back to the group. “Monster where being?”

One of the travelers pointed with a shaking soup spoon toward the exact direction we were going.

“Up where bark-tree bent. Past sign go no,” the traveler said.

Hana stepped closer. “What kind of monster?”

“Teeth big. Walk like skreeee. Sound like homework. Bad.”

“Homework,” Kaito repeated.

“Monster do loud. Hurt grammar.”

“That could mean anything,” I said. “It could be a raccoon. A raccoon with strong opinions about sentence structure.”

But even I didn’t believe that.

Sota looked around at the terrified travelers, then back at us.

“They scared real. I feel scared too. Chest do thump.”

He put a hand on his heart.

Kaito exhaled. “Well. That settles it. We’re definitely going that way.”

The parrot landed beside us. “Plot requires forward movement.”

The group of travelers gave us something like a wave—more like a gentle wobble of despair—and watched us vanish into the brush.

Toward the bark-tree bent.

The forest got louder the deeper we went—not with birds or wind, but with things that didn’t belong. Clinks. Beeps. The occasional automated voice whispering “Please present credentials” into the void like it forgot who it was talking to.

We found the first warning sign five minutes after leaving the frightened travelers.

It was a sock.

Pinned to a crooked tree with a spoon. Written across it in faded marker:

“DANGER BEEP WALKER BAD BAD”

Sota translated: “Monster warning. Probably. Or it’s soup-related.”

Kaito squinted at the sock. “Why is it always the weird ones?”

“Because the normal ones died out six months ago,” Hana said flatly, stepping over a log.

We kept moving.

More signs followed:

-A traffic cone with a frown drawn on it.

-A stick tied with wires humming faintly.

-A carved wooden sign that read simply: “NO.”

By the time the trees grew too close together for light to slip through, we were all on edge.

Even the parrot whispered.

Sota was the first to hear it.

“Noise,” he muttered. “Crunching. Maybe… beep scream?”

“Excuse me?” I said.

But then I heard it too.

The mechanical whir of gears struggling against time.

A slow, jerky scrape.

And something wheezing, like a fax machine learning how to breathe.

Then—

“AUTHORIZATION... ERROR.”

A figure limped out from behind a tree.

Rusty. Bent. Covered in moss and warning stickers.

It was a drone.

Not a flying one—more like a walking traffic camera bolted to an old delivery bot. Its screen flickered. Its speaker coughed.

“PLEASE... VERB... PROPERLY...”

It spotted us.

The light on its “face” turned red.

“SUSPICIOUS SYNTAX DETECTED.”

“Oh no,” Kaito said.

“Oh yes,” Sota added. “This the monster.”

Hana pulled out a pocket knife. “Stay behind me.”

The drone revved.

Then lunged.

Not fast.

Not coordinated.

Just loud and terrifying and angry.

“PLEASE ARTICULATE INTENT OR FACE CONSEQUENCE,” it screeched, flinging a puff of smoke and firing what looked like a confetti cannon loaded with shredded dictionaries.

We ducked behind a tree.

Sota peeked out and shouted: “We not want trouble! We friend! We... go peace!”

The drone twitched violently.

“GRAMMAR FAILURE.”

It began spinning.

“NO!” Hana yelled. “You’re making it angrier!”

“I’m trying best!” Sota cried. “I stress-speaking!”

“Let me try,” Kaito said, stepping forward with his hands up. “Uh… We come in peace. We are… authorized… backpackers?”

The drone slowed.

Its screen glitched.

Then it barked: “IDENTIFY: OBJECTIVE CASE PRONOUNS.”

We all stared.

Sota whimpered. “I knew I forget something important...”

The drone advanced again, confetti hissing.

I panicked.

“You!” I shouted. “We’re official forest inspectors! Here to inspect the… trees!”

The drone paused.

The red light turned yellow.

It beeped twice.

“...TREE? ACCEPTED.”

Then—just like that—it shut down.

The screen blinked off.

It said one last thing:

“Lesson... complete.”

And collapsed sideways with a puff of dust.

We stared at it in silence.

The parrot coughed. “This forest sucks.”

And just like that...we continued.

We didn’t speak much as the trees began to thin. The path turned into stone. The air shifted—colder, heavier.

Ahead of us stood a moss-covered structure. It looked ancient and theatrical at the same time. Like someone tried to build a cathedral out of conspiracy theories. Carved across the archway in old stone:

DUO.

We’d made it.

Kaito exhaled. “Is that—?”

“The tomb,” Hana confirmed.

Sota nodded slowly, even though he was clearly unsure what a tomb was at this point.

And then—

A shape stepped into the clearing.

Wide-brimmed sombrero.

Long dark coat.

The glint of metal at his side.

I didn’t need to write this in my notes. I knew exactly who it was.

Kaito froze. “No.”

Sota groaned. “Not again.”

The Man in the Sombrero stood in our path, perfectly still. A ghost with a bounty and no sense of timing.

“You’re late,” he said, voice like gravel wrapped in velvet.

Hana stepped forward, hand already on her hidden blade. “Get out of the way.”

He smiled. Just slightly. “Or what?”

I reached for my pen. Kaito reached for his last nerve.

And the parrot, bless him, quietly whispered: “This is why I hate birds with hats.”

We didn’t move.

He didn’t either.

We were here.

And so was he.