The sound outside had found a key and held it, every throat in whatever ocean was out there pumping air into the same relentless note.

A thud hit the siding beside the window. Another thud. A heavy body bounced, left a smear, dropped. A round belly flashed white before disappearing below the sill. Then another. Then a dozen.

Zubair’s fingers tightened on the rifle’s fore-end. "We hold," he told the room, which meant he was telling himself.

The sound of croaking drove harder, the sound vibration turning to a physical thing that made Lachlan’s molars tick.

He swallowed hard and caught the taste of pond on the air. It tasted like algae and old mud where there was no pond to be had. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The sound rushed closer through that field like a crowd breaking into a run.

The roof gave a small, rubbery groan. Whatever clung up there had weight now. A seam in the ceiling whispered dust.

"Okay," Lachlan managed, aiming for a light teasing tone. "New rule. If it tries to sell me insurance, I’m shooting it."

Zubair’s mouth might have twitched. It was hard to be sure.

Something slapped the window with a flat little smack and stuck there, a pale belly flattened to the only glass not covered by curtains, its green toes splayed out like hands.

A throat bulged round, then flattened, then bulged again. A second shape landed beside it. Then a third. The pane fogged under their heat, greased by whatever slick they carried on their skin.

Elias exhaled a single word. "Amphibians."

"No tourist brochure on earth could sell this as a good thing," Lachlan muttered under his breath as he yanked open one of the windows overlooking the front.

Outside, the yard moved.

It wasn’t a metaphor; it wasn’t a trick of the non-existent light.

The yard moved.

The ground itself had learned to crawl.

Dark bodies heaved over dark bodies, a churn that climbed one another, fell, climbed again.

Small flicks of bright flashed inside the mass. Green tree frogs leapt like tossed stones; heavy cane toads shouldering forward with the patience of bricks; bullfrogs the size of a fist; slender leopard frogs cutting through gaps with quick arrogance.

It was completely wrong species for this dirt and this hemisphere. Wrong climate. Wrong everything.

But apparently, the world had stopped caring about right when the zombies came.

A frog took the window headfirst, slid down nose-first in a thick squeal, and left a line of slime that caught the lamplight in one long green smear.

Lachlan’s stomach folded. He didn’t back away... but he wanted to.

A new noise joined: squeak—squeak—squeak, fast and relentless, as if a thousand tiny plunger cups worked in rhythm. The roof took the squeaks and translated them into a queasy little violin.

"They’re jumping," Elias realized, a scientist trapped in a bad parable. "From far. Hitting the roof because it’s the highest point. Then sliding off to regroup."

"And trying again," Alexei finished, as another wet thunk landed and skittered.

"Are you telling me that it’s raining frogs?" demanded Lachlan, his face turning just slightly pale at the thought.

"Of course not," replied Elias, rolling his eyes. "I just told you that they are jumping. It’s impossible for it to rain frogs."

Luci slid two inches forward and set his paws hard, claws clicking once on wood. His rumble rolled higher, not a warning now—a boundary lined in sound.

Sera’s knuckles ghosted the curtain’s edge. "They want inside." She didn’t reach for the fabric. She wanted to look. The curiosity on her mouth made something in Lachlan’s chest do a stupid little tilt.

And that was the moment the glass bowed inward.

Not much, but enough to find everyone’s eyes at once.

Satin-black gazes on the other side met their own—hundreds of them, lidless and glossy—and made an alien constellation.

Bellies pulsed.

Throats drummed.

Heat soaked through the pane.

Zubair shifted a quarter step to keep Sera behind his shoulder. His hand rose once more to the space between her shoulder blades. He didn’t push. He simply grounded himself in her presence.

The load on the roof slid as a sheet. Tin cried very softly at some seam only the night knew.

"Any options from the smart ones in the room?" Lachlan threw it out like a life ring.

"Fire later," Alexei replied. "Water sooner."

"Seal the vents," Elias offered, already moving.

He slapped a rag over the stove hood. A second frog found the vent’s outer grill, toes fanned hard, throat ballooning against metal. It croaked into the duct with a sound like a horn.

A heavy body thunked the porch rail and slithered along it, leaving a snail’s trail of slime over peeling paint.

Another landed on the knob outside and clung there, face flat to the brass as if listening.

The frogs’ weight found a rhythm that made the whole house feel like a drum skin. The walls hummed. The table hummed. Lachlan’s ribs joined.

He let out a breath he didn’t remember holding. "If this is a test, I’m so failing it."

Sera leaned just far enough to paint the shape of her breath on the fogging pane.

A little oval opened in the wet. Frogs pushed their bellies harder to occupy it. Little suction toes splayed. Their throats pounded so close their skin blurred.

Zubair drew her a step back with two fingers on her sleeve. No words. His eyes carried the whole sentence: Stay where I can reach you.

The first crack spidered across the bottom corner of the window. A web of fine white lines. The frogs didn’t notice. Or didn’t care.

Elias put his palm to the glass again, then jerked it back. "It’s hot."

"They’re cooking themselves to get in," Alexei observed, more fact than horror.

"Or we’re the only cool thing left," Lachlan answered, though the room sweltered around them. Sweat ran down his spine in thin quick lines. The humidity climbed with the noise until breathing tasted like drinking a pond.

Another crack crawled upward. The frame creaked. A faint tick of nail popped in the sill where a frog’s toe scrabbled for purchase.

Zubair angled the rifle, not to fire. To wedge. "Couch," he told Lachlan, the single word a rowboat in a flood.

They shoved the sagging thing toward the window.

Frogs on the sill ballooned and bleated, their sound as absurd as a squeaky toy shoved in a cathedral.

Lachlan took the weight, his heel slipping in a patch of slime that hadn’t been there a second ago.

He grunted, recovered, drove the couch hard into the pane.

The glass bowed deeper, a fish-eye bulge pushing back from the other side.

It was pressure against pressure.

And Lachlan was worried about what side would give in first.