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I pinched the end of the rope between my boots and stretched upward, the nylon fibers creaking with the sway of my weight. The sun’s glare pushed through the gap in the trees, blinding and unbearable. I licked cracked lips and wiped my forehead on my shoulder, realizing too late I’d just smeared my face in rotten blood.
What I wouldn’t give for an ice-cold beer and a clean shower, back in my boarded-up home in Missouri. My family…
All gone. Dead.
An ache splintered behind my eyes, spread through my jaw, and tightened my throat. Grief was the worst enemy, sneaky in its assault, smothering and crippling.
Shut it down, Evie.
I anchored my hands, curling them tighter around the rope. But the bugs on the wall below were gaining speed, aided by talons and driven by hunger. Only ten feet away now. I wouldn’t be able to out-climb them. Switching my weight to one hand, I reached for the rifle with the other, adjusting how it hung across my chest on the sling and hoping for an accurate aim.
With the barrel trained on the closest bug, I squeezed the trigger. The bullet plinked off the rock, a foot from the snapping creature. Shit. I squeezed again and again. Missed. Missed. Missed! My blood pressure skyrocketed.
I fucking survived the fall of civilization, the mutations, the anarchy, and the monster who started it all. Deep breath. I could do this.
“Evie.” Jesse’s voice rode in on the humid breeze. “Forget the gun and climb the way I taught you. Brake and squat.”
Easy for him to say. The bastard wasn’t hanging over a gorge crammed with mutated humans. Diseased slobber hung from misshaped jaws. Strings of the oily gunk flung side-to-side, striping bloated chests. And the smell… Rancid and decomposing, I could taste that shit in the back of my throat.
Bile simmered, choking my words. “Go to hell, Jesse.”
He crouched on the ledge a few yards above. “Already there, darlin’.”
His copper gaze caught me, punching me with a challenge that had nothing to do with my climbing technique. He wasn’t a man who showed affection easily. Instead, he watched me from afar, prowling like a hungry predator. A predator with bed-ruffled hair, kissable lips…and a pissed-off scowl.
Oh, he wanted to help me. Bow and arrow in hand, eyes sharp, and muscles flexed, he vibrated with the need to swoop in and save. All I had to do was say the word, and he’d yank me to safety. But that would defeat the purpose of this training session.
With the rope wrapped around one leg, I clamped a boot down on the other, trapping the knotted end. Brake and squat? Right. The effort shifted more weight to my hand and shoulder, straining and popping the joints. God, that burned.
I didn’t consider myself scrawny. More like the strong side of petite. Still, it hurt like a motherfucker to hang a hundred and ten pounds from one arm. But not enough to let the M4 carbine hang on its sling. The short-barreled rifle saved my hide countless times since the virus hit two years prior. Locked and cocked, it would save me again.
A crustaceous body moved into the carbine’s cross hairs and grappled the ridge below. Viridescent skin. Pincers for hands. Pinpricked pupils in eyes shadowed by traces of humanity. Hard to imagine this thing was once someone’s son, mother, or lover. One toxic bite changed that.
“The bugs are climbing.” Jesse’s drawl, honeyed with a cadence once affiliated with cattle ranchers and oil barons, suffocated my senses, irritating and arousing.
I gritted my teeth. “They need a distraction. How ‘bout you throw your ass down there?”
Six feet below my swinging boots, the aphid’s jaw flowered open in a macabre bloom of mouthparts. I tightened my grip around what was left of the rope bridge we’d constructed across the ravine. A rope bridge I’d secured my arm through moments before I cut the supports and followed its fall.
“Find the focus you had when you cut the bridge.” He was holding a black and red feathered arrow and pointed the sharp end at me, as if his glare wasn’t piercing enough. “This is the part you struggle with.”
Yeah, because the drop always left my stomach in my throat. And no matter when or where I practiced the stunt, aphids always came. Too many. Too fast.
Despite the tremble in my arms and the maddening beat of my pulse, I kept my tone even. “Jesse?”
He leaned down and arched a dark eyebrow. “Hmm?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
He bared his teeth, not a hint of humor in that gorgeous almost-smile.
The aphid on the wall crept close enough to throw a rock at. I steadied the carbine and squeezed the trigger, but my fingers slipped on the rope, wobbling the aim. Shit!
A spiny forearm ripped away. Missed the kill shot, the one that would pulverize the brain. The aphid leveraged its shredded stump on a handhold and gained another yard. Heart rate spiking, I adjusted my grip. Exhaled. Squeezed.
