The car began shaking so intensely that the dashboard rattled and the windows buzzed alarmingly; the seat beneath us vibrated like a massage chair.
Griffin jerked forward to tap Brady on the shoulder. “Pull over, man. We gotta get out of here in case it gets worse and the glass shatters.”
The glass and steel of Bonnie only shuddered all the more violently as Brady guided the car onto the shoulder.
“Keep going,” Hunt said. “Over there. You can park behind those trees and they might not, uh, you know … us so easily.”
They might notspotus immediately with at least a little bit of cover. Then again, they probably had a tracker on the car too. Fuck, it was all too much. If only we could be transported back in time to before the Fischer House party.
By the time Brady parked Bonnie and we tumbled out of the car, the trees surrounding us on all sides of the road were oscillating in a way trees definitely aren’t supposed to.
Bobo whined as he pressed against my legs, and Layla leaned into one side of me.
“I don’t like this.”
Griffin grabbed my free hand and tugged me toward the road’s shoulder. “Come on. We’re running if we want a chance at figuring out what’s going on.”
Without another word, we set off, the rhythmic pounding of our feet a counterpoint to the thrashing unease of nature reacting to whateverunnatural force was disturbing it.
“Ireallydon’t like this,” Layla amended as we crested a hillock. “Something feels majorly off.”
When we reached the top of the incline, we immediately ducked behind the trees, their leaves trembling far above us. Bobo was being an obedient boy; I’d told him to keep “quiet” and “follow” in my command voice, and he was doing exactly that.
The buggy was parked in front of a hill with two thick cement walls lining an entrance leading down into it. Fanny, Don, and half a dozen men in tactical gear swarmed out front, chasing a guy who looked to be about our age as he sprinted back and forth trying to avoid them.
“Damn,” Layla whispered, though we were a good fifty feet from the cart, far enough that no one should be able to hear us, especially not with the constant humming and grumbling of the earth and trees. “You weren’t fucking kidding. They were keeping mega secrets. That entrance looks like it leads to, like, a secret underground lair or something. It’s like a bunker.”
“That’s exactly what it looks like,” Brady muttered, shooting out a hand to steady himself against the trunk of a tree as the ground jerked beneath us. Birds took flight in a sudden flutter of wings. “Fuck them for having something like this.”
Whatever it actually was.
“We don’t know what’s inside it,” Hunt said. “Could be pretty much anything. Though no doubt it’s not anything good.”
“No fucking doubt,” Layla seethed as the guy, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, dodged a couple of the guys in tactical gear, then sprinted up and around the hill—only to be pushed back down to the front by another handful of armed men dressed all in black, with what looked like bulletproof vests and panels along their extremities. They all wore helmets, and Don was in the process of passing one to Fanny while affixing his own.
“Shouldn’t we help him?” I asked.
“How?” Brady said. “It’s not like we have super strength or anything. Plus, if they’re dressed like a fucking bomb squad, who’s to say he won’t destroy us.”
“The whole point of us being here is ’cause we’re indestructible,” Layla pointed out.
Hunt harrumphed. “Maybe, maybe not. We basically don’t know shit about ourselves other than we’ve survived death a bit and we’re part of some lifelong experiment. We still know too little.”
“Magnum’s gonna do his best to kill us anyway,” I said. “Shouldn’t we at least die trying to help this kid?”
From beside me, Griffin tipped his head, a sign he agreed and was considering.
Bobo whimpered softly as he rubbed against my legs, trying to find comfort.
I crouched and hugged him to my chest, kissing his neck. “Sorry, boy. I didn’t mean to drag you into any of this.” Whatever the hellthiseven was.
The guy was fast, and he took off at a dead run, evading several of the arms reaching for him as he raced off toward the forest.
Before he could vanish into the camouflage of the tree line, Fanny yelled, “Shoot him!”
“Aw, shit,” Hunt growled, standing from where he squatted, observing with squinty eyes. “We can’t let this happen.”
I was already shaking my head. “No, we can’t.”
