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Roark’s fingers lazily combed through my hair, and just as I began to drift off, a rustle of papers drew my attention to the front of the cab.
Jesse bent over his maps on the dash and squinted in the glare of dawn. “Doc, slow down.” He pointed at something on the left. “Pull off there.”
I crawled away from Roark and knelt between the front seats, my sleepy voice cracking. “What do you see?”
Dark circles smudged the rims of Jesse’s eyes but didn’t dim their intense focus. “According to the map, it should be here.” He leaned forward, staring at a dirt road that led into a thick clump of woods. “Fresh tire tracks.”
A flutter skipped through me as I took in the various widths of ruts in the mud. Multiple vehicles? Survivors? “So we follow them.”
“It’s a risk.” Michio stopped the truck and rested his forearm on the steering wheel. “If there’s a nymph, she could be guarded.”
Because the man in the safari truck, presumably her boyfriend or husband, might’ve left her in the care of others.
His brows lowered, and a frown line etched between them. “Are we prepared to confront armed men who might not be happy to see us? Maybe a couple of us should scout ahead?”
“We stay together.” I gripped his thigh. “We don’t have a way to communicate if we’re separated, and we’re safer in this truck.”
“Men have fought for centuries without radios,” Michio countered.
“But they haven’t been fighting aphids.”
Their horrendous talons could break the truck windows, but it would slow them down and give us time to kill them.
A flex rippled in Jesse’s jaw. “I agree with her. Just be ready to turn us around, Doc.”
Michio nodded and drove up the path. Several miles carved through the woods and surrendered to a wide pasture. A gate lay discarded, its sign still attached.
PINE MOUNTAIN ANIMAL SAFARI. STAFF ONLY.
Excitement and fear bubbled through my stomach. “Wild animals without caretakers.” I scanned the barren landscape. One could assume all the animals had been eaten by aphids, but just in case… “Can a hungry lion break through the windshield?”
Roark leaned over my shoulder, his stubble scraping my face as he planted a kiss on my cheek. “Not if we kill it first.”
It would be a shame to kill one. Who knew how many species the aphids had eaten to extinction?
Michio followed the tracks across the plain. Halfway through the stretch of tall grass, he stopped the truck and rested on the steering wheel, his eyes searching the area before us.
Single story concrete buildings squatted on the horizon. Peeling paint. Broken windows. Cages separated a few of those lonely structures. But no beasts. At least, not the kind one would expect on a wild animal reserve. The cages crawled with aphids, all of them locked within, clinging to the bars, wanting out.
A stripe of blue moved between two chain-wire fences, there and gone before I could blink.
“Did you see that?” I pointed.
Roark handed a pair of binoculars over my shoulder. Jesse adjusted them and scanned the compound. “Blue shirt. Dark skin. He looks human.” A hiss pushed through his teeth. “Shit, he ran.”
I blew out a breath. “He saw us? Do we chase him?”
Jesse passed the binoculars to Michio. “He could be getting reinforcements. We don’t want to scare him. Let them come to us.”
Outside the truck, grasshoppers sprung through the feathery grass. Beside me, Jesse’s thumb slid back and forth on his bow string. The musk of anxious men saturated the cab.
A moment later, a tremor sparked in my chest, pulling and expanding to my stomach. “There’s…there’s something.”
Jesse pivoted, the scruff on his jaw glowing red in the sunlight. “Be more specific.”
Michio raised the binoculars, angled at the cages. “The aphids, Evie?”
I closed my eyes and mentally searched my body's responses, focusing on the weird sensations. Invisible pulses stitched across my skin and folded inward, colliding and forming a knot of hostility in my stomach. Magnetic feelers stretched from the coiling energy, reaching outward and strengthening.
I opened my eyes. “Aphids at one o’clock. They’re coming.”
Boots scuffed the metal floor behind me, and leather creaked as weapons were removed from holsters. I grabbed my carbine from the floor and checked the magazine.
Jesse strapped his quiver on his back, eyes on me. “How many?”
I followed the threads of vibrations. Ten…twenty…thirty came from the cages, growing closer. Lighter strands tingled from farther away. “At least thirty are out of the cages. More are coming.”
“The fucker released them to scare us away.” Jesse nodded to Michio. “Get us out of here.”
Shit. I didn’t want to leave without talking to the guy or searching for the nymph. “He wouldn’t release them unless he had a safe place to hide. We could find him, flush him out.”
Michio ignored me and threw the gear shift in reverse. The tires spun.
