Luckily, these soldiers are citizen soldiers, newly minted and inexperienced. Hopefully, this one hasn’t shot anyone yet and isn’t willing to have a desperate mother be his first kill.

19

WITHOUT THINKING, we all look up. At first, I’m not even sure why I do it.

Then I realize that there’s a buzzing coming from the sky. So low that it’s barely audible.

But it’s growing louder.

Through the gaps in the trees, I can see a dark blotch in the twilight sky. It grows closer at an alarming rate.

The buzzing stays low, just enough to feel it in your bones rather than hear it. It’s an ominous sound, like something recognizable at a primal level, a deeply buried unconscious fear turned into sound.

Before I can identify it, people turn and run.

No one screams or shouts or calls out to anyone. People just silently and desperately run.

The panic is contagious. The men holding my mom let go and join the stampede. Almost immediately after, the guys holding my sister release their ropes and run as well.

Paige pants, staring up at the sky. She looks mesmerized.

“Run!” I yell. That breaks her spell.

My sister turns and runs the other direction, away from the Resistance camp. She runs deeper into the grove with her ropes trailing in the dirt like snakes slithering in the shadows after her.

Mom glances at me. Blood trickles from her cut eye. Even in this light, I can see a bruise beginning to form.

After the briefest of hesitations, my mother chases my sister into the trees.

I stand frozen as the buzzing gets louder. Do I go after them or run back to safety?

The decision is made for me when the dark cloud gets close enough for me to make out individual shapes.

Winged men with scorpion tails.

Dozens of them darkening the sky. They’re flying low and getting lower.

There must have been another batch of them or several other batches outside the aerie.

I run.

I sprint away from them, which has me running toward the school like everyone else. I’m the last one of the bunch, so I’m an easy target.

A scorpion swoops down and lands in front of me.

Unlike the ones I saw at the aerie, this one is fully baked, complete with shaggy hair and teeth that have matured into lion’s fangs. Its arms and legs look disturbingly human except that its thighs and upper arms are extra beefy. Its body, at first glance, is human, but the belly and chest look a little like a cross between defined abs and the sectioned underbellies of grasshoppers.

The teeth are so large the beast can’t seem to close its mouth and drool drips from its lips. It growls at me and rears its fat scorpion tail above its head.

Fear grips me in a way that’s never happened before.