“Take them off,” I said.
Rafe sauntered down the hill. “You were just waiting for the chance to say that.”
“Shut up.” Everson tossed him the holstered gun and pulled off his shirt to reveal washboard abs.
I hadn’t been waiting for the chance to see him shirtless, but maybe I should have been. I cleared my throat so my voice didn’t come out squeaky. “We can find him new clothes. That’s easy, right?” I dragged my gaze away from Everson’s perfect chest to look at Rafe, but he was staring at the sky. I glanced up to see what had put the crease in his brow — the setting sun.
“We’re done traveling,” he said abruptly. “We need to find a place to hole up for the night.” Then he seemed to remember Everson. “Oh crap. You’re gonna bring them right to us.” With two hands, he shoved Everson backward into the lake.
“Bring what to us?” I asked.
Everson came up spitting mad, but Rafe pushed him down again, getting himself soaked as well. “Get the blood out of your clothes!” His tone made it clear this was no joke. Everson rubbed his pants down under the water.
“That’ll have to do. Come on,” Rafe hissed, waving him out. “See that?” He pointed at a small cottage on the other side of the lake. “That’s where we’re sleeping tonight.”
“Why not pick one in town?” I asked, gesturing up the hill to the road. “Those are closer.”
“Because that one is boarded up.”
He was right. Big wood shutters covered the cottage’s windows as if someone had closed up the place for the winter.
Holding his shirt in one fist, Everson slogged onto the bank. At that moment, a faint rattling sound started up, as if dried seedpods were shimmying in a breeze. But the lake’s surface was still, and the cattails on the bank around us remained ramrod straight.
“What’s that sound?” I asked.
Rafe froze, listening, and his expression darkened. “A whole lot of nothing good. Go.” We took off, cutting through the tall reeds along the lake’s edge with Rafe leading the way.
As the sun sank toward the horizon, the lengthening shadows seemed to turn up the volume on the odd sound. Less of a rattle now and more like the hard, dry clicking of a hundred bead curtains being swept aside. The houses on the ridge seemed to quiver with the noise. I sloshed through the marsh and tramped over fallen logs, trying to match Rafe’s fast pace. But the clicking intensified to the point where I swore I could feel the sound waves bouncing off my skin. I glanced back. Up on the ridge, black smoke billowed out of a church spire.
I stumbled to a stop and turned to watch. “It’s on fire….”
“What is?” Everson paused beside me.
“Everything.”
Smaller wafts of black smoke rose from the houses, pouring from upper-story windows and holes in the roofs. High in the darkening sky, the undulating columns melded together to become one rippling, shifting mass. And suddenly, I knew — remembered — what I was seeing. “That’s not smoke….”
“Don’t stop!” Rafe yelled, but when he followed our hypnotized gazes, he froze midstride. “Oh, come on!” He swiped a fist at the growing black cyclone. “What is this, their spawning season?”
Everson shouted to be heard above the frenzied clicking. “Are they bats?”
I clamped my hands over my ears. “Weevlings.” The word alone triggered mental epilepsy, but making it worse was my father’s description of how the creatures would descend upon a cow like a smothering black shroud, only to fly off a moment later, leaving nothing but a skeleton. “Piranha-bats.”
Rafe shook off the trance first. “Go, go, go!” But it was too late. Moving with gang intelligence, the weevlings zoomed in our direction. “Scratch that, hit the ground!”
A musky smell pressed down on us two seconds before the clicking mass descended.
18
I dropped my bag and burrowed into the tall reeds between the guys. We dragged the stalks closed above us as the torrent of weevlings passed overhead. I couldn’t breathe, wouldn’t move. I might as well have been drowning. My muscles quivered from terror and lack of oxygen, but then Everson entwined his fingers with mine. The warmth and strength of his grip calmed me, and I took in small amounts of air until the weevling funnel swept over the lake and crested the trees.
“Go,” Rafe whispered. “Keep low and run.”
In the failing light we sped for the two-story wooden cottage. A piercing howl tore out of the woods and I shuddered, knowing that the weevlings had descended upon some poor creature. The howl came again followed by agonized yowling and then finally — thankfully — silence.
We clattered onto the porch and Rafe motioned for me and Everson to stay put. No problem. Rafe approached the door. As he pulled out his tools for the lock, I scanned the sky for the black cloud. I’d left the messenger bag somewhere in the reeds by the lake but I wasn’t going back for it. Everson was still clutching his wet shirt.
There was a creak behind us, followed by Rafe’s “Okay.”
As I hurried past him through the now-open door, the light from outside caught the glimmer of spiderwebs. I stopped in my tracks.
“Give me a hand with this.” Rafe swatted the webs aside without so much as a flinch and pointed at a couch with rotting upholstery. “We don’t want anything bursting in on us while we sleep,” he said and got no argument from us. Together, we propped the couch against the front door and then Rafe dug into his knapsack for a flashlight. “Don’t open any door that might go to the attic,” he said. “In case you missed it, that’s where weevlings like to roost.”
“If fish don’t get Ferae, how can weevlings be part piranha?” I asked.
“Because they’re bats that have been infected with fish DNA, not the other way round,” Everson said.
“This area is the only stretch that I’ve come across them,” Rafe said. “But I’ve never seen a swarm that big. If they keep breeding like that, they’ll be everywhere before too long. And won’t that be fun?”
Musical notes suddenly banged behind us. We whirled to see an old piano. Rafe grinned at our alarm. “Mice. What, don’t you have them in the West? Or were they stopped at the wall like the other vermin? Tuck your cuffs into your socks when you sleep. Keeps them from crawling up your pants.”
“What if they bite?” I searched the shadows for infected mice.
“Mice don’t get Ferae….” Rafe said. “No rodents do. Same with squirrels and rabbits.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Ask the geek.”
Everson shrugged. “They’re resistant to rabies too.” His pants were still dripping with lake water and he was bare chested.
I shivered, thinking again of the puddle of blood that he’d landed in. “We should find you some clean clothes.” I plucked Rafe’s flashlight from his hand and headed for the staircase with Everson beside me.
“If he gets grabby, give a shout,” Rafe called after us.
Everson shot an annoyed glance over his shoulder. “She doesn’t have to worry about that.”
“Why not?” Rafe asked. “You don’t think she’s pretty?”
“No, I — Shut up.”
Rafe’s laugh followed us up the stairs.
A tingle ran down my back. Rafe had been trying to bug Everson — I knew that — but the way he’d said it … it had almost sounded as if Rafe thought I was pretty. And Everson had nearly admitted it too.
It doesn’t matter, I reminded myself. As soon as I did the fetch, I’d never see either of them again. Anyway, pretty was relative. Life was hard on this side of the wall and people here looked older than their years. Of course I seemed like a clean, shiny doll to Rafe. And Everson? He’d been locked up in his mother’s house until he joined the patrol. The only girls he knew marched around in military fatigues. So, there was no reason for me to be feeling giddy right now. Or flattered. None at all.