Everybody is thinking about it anyway.
I force myself to stay focused. We cannot afford mistakes. Not now. Not when I finally found them.
"Five years," Quinn says after a while. "You really lived with cavemen for five years?"
"No. Less than a year. We were in that saucer for years first."
She shakes her head. "I don't know how you're still sane."
"I'm not entirely sure I am," I tell her. "I did some weird things recently. This here doesn’t even rate in the top ten."
That earns another polite laugh. I haven’t told them about Vyrathion, so they don’t know what I mean. And if they’d known, they would probably have gone straight back inside the crater.
For a few minutes we simply rest. The jungle hums around us. Creatures rustle in the bushes. A distant dinosaur calls from far away, answered by another even farther off.
The silence gives me ample time to think abouthim. I have to focus to not break down again
Still, something else gradually starts to bother me. At first I can't put my finger on it. A twig snaps somewhere among the trees. Then another. The sounds aren't especially loud, and under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't even notice them. But there is something deliberate about them. The noises don't blend into the background the way jungle sounds usually do. They seem connected somehow.
I sit up straighter.
Beth notices immediately. "What is it?"
"I'm not sure."
I listen again. A few seconds later I hear another crack of breaking wood. Then another. Not close together. Not random either. Whatever is making the noise is moving.
My stomach tightens. "Clyde," I say.
The Plood turns his enormous black eyes toward me.
"Do you see something?"
He doesn't answer, of course. He never does. But several of the other Plood have already gone still. Their attention has shifted away from us and toward the jungle surrounding the boulder field. One by one they turn their heads as though tracking movement between the trees.
The girls notice it too.
Abigail rises to her feet. "Morgan?"
I don't answer immediately. My eyes are moving from one patch of jungle to another, searching for whatever the Plood have seen.
For several seconds I find nothing. Then a figure slips between two tree trunks. I only catch a glimpse of him before he disappears again, but it is enough. Human-shaped, but bigger. And moving with purpose.
Every muscle in my body locks tight. "We have to leave," I say urgently. “Back inside the crater!”
The girls are already getting to their feet. We barely manage three steps before a tribesman walks out from behind a tree directly ahead of us. He carries a sword and wears little besides a loincloth, like usual with these guys. He stops when he sees us, and for a moment nobody moves.
Then another man emerges from the trees twenty yards away. A third appears farther up the slope. A fourth steps out from behind a boulder.
My blood turns to ice.
"They found us," Quinn whispers.
The first tribesman simply stares. He isn't looking at me specifically. His gaze moves across all four girls, lingering on each of us in turn. More movement catches my eye. Men are appearing throughout the jungle now, emerging from the undergrowth and stepping into the open.
The Plood react before I can think of anything useful to do. They hurry together from every direction and form a loose circle around us. Clyde ends up beside my shoulder, staring outward along with the others.
For a brief moment I feel a flicker of relief. Then more tribesmen arrive. They emerge from every side of the clearing in twos and threes. Some carry spears. Others have swords. Some have huge sledgehammers that look new.
