diff --git a/lib/index.js b/lib/index.js
index 267ecbf..890f117 100644
--- a/lib/index.js
+++ b/lib/index.js
@@ -214,6 +214,13 @@ const fetch = (url, opts) => {
         signal && signal.removeEventListener('abort', abortAndFinalize))
 
       const body = new Minipass()
+      // if an error occurs, either on the response stream itself, on one of the
+      // decoder streams, or a response length timeout from the Body class, we
+      // forward the error through to our internal body stream. If we see an
+      // error event on that, we call finalize to abort the request and ensure
+      // we don't leave a socket believing a request is in flight.
+      // this is difficult to test, so lacks specific coverage.
+      body.on('error', finalize)
       // exceedingly rare that the stream would have an error,
       // but just in case we proxy it to the stream in use.
       res.on('error', /* istanbul ignore next */ er => body.emit('error', er))