Page 4 of Treasured By the Hunter

“We get back at them,” I said. “We get back at those sons of bitches.”

“Yeah. But how?”

“They’re going to steal the SUV and other gear. But that’s going to be useless to them if we sabotage all the safe houses and charging stations.” Suddenly, my brain was working at double speed, and the plan became clear. “We’ll change the passcode to all the lockers so they won’t be able to take any more of our weapons and ammo.”

“Yes. Let’s do that.”

We made a plan, with her traveling more or less straight toward Sanctuary and taking out all the charging points along the way except for one, which I would use on my way back. I would make the bigger loop, shutting down all the other charging stations before heading to Sanctuary and dealing with the final safe house.

“We’ll meet at Sanctuary,” I said.

“Don’t do anything stupid.” She clasped onto my forearms. “You’re all I have left now.”

***

I squinted against the blazing sun as I peered out through the crack in the curtains, spying the bright red roof of the neighboring barn in the distance. Right beside that, but out of sight, was my next target: the farmhouse. The last time I’d been here with Riley, we’d stashed some food and clean water under some loose floorboards.

With the sun at its zenith above me, flyers circled, their keen, buggy eyes ever vigilant for anything edible. In this apocalyptic Earth, that was me. Or anything that moved, for that matter.

High noon was a horrible time to be out and about. Anyone who’d survived this long in the bugpocalypse knew that. But I had no choice; I had to keep moving. Corey and his friends were on my tail, and I didn’t live through six fucking years of space bug-filled terror to be done in now by human hands.

Nope. No fucking way.

One of the flying insectoids shrieked, calling out the location of possible prey, and all the others reoriented to seek out their next food source, including the one closest to my location.

With the aerial menace’s attention diverted, I opened the door and made a run for it, dashing across the dried-up lawn toward the ditch that ran alongside the road. My pack, which had the electric scooter strapped to it, was heavy, but I couldn’t leave either of them behind. Not if I wanted to outrun the assholes who were after me.

I might not be able to use my electric scooter through the fields, but it gave me an upper hand through the streets and intersections blocked by abandoned vehicles.

I was huffing and puffing, my lungs feeling like they were about to explode as I slid into the ditch. With so little cover from buildings or trees, this was my best bet if I wanted to make it to my destination alive. There were shrubs and other vegetation growing in intervals along the ditch, and normally, they took advantage of the water collected there to weather out the periods of drought.

Except this winter, both rain and snow had been scarcer than ever, and all the vegetation was yellow and dried. I traveled along the ditch, crouching as I went until I neared the farmhouse. It looked the same as it had the last time I was here, and the collection of tin cans Riley and I had set up to serve as an early warning system was still hanging under the porch roof. Spying no bugs, I sprang up out of the ditch and ran toward the robin’s egg-blue front door of the farmhouse.

They appeared from around the barn when I was halfway there. I felt the electric stab of fear right through to my fingers and toes at the sight of the half dozen or so scuttlers that had been traveling toward the flyer’s screech in search of prey.

I dropped to the ground and froze, hoping they hadn’t spotted me. Unlike flyers, scuttlers hunted predominantly with scent, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t see, especially when they were so close I could see the toxins gleaming on the edges of their blade-like claws.

I’d sprayed myself down with a concoction of nose-burning floral perfumes earlier, so I was pretty sure I didn’t smell edible to these bugs. If I just stayed very still—

But one of the creatures stopped and waved its mandibles in my direction. I’d seen this behavior before. It was tasting the air. Shit. Did that mean the perfume wasn’t working? Then the rest of its group stopped as well, almost as if it had said something to them. They all turned in my direction.

Fuck!

Should I make a run for it? The door was right there!

The scuttler that had stopped first started toward me.

I scrambled to my feet and bolted for the door as the rest of the horrid creatures hurried my way. The sounds of their feet against the dried-up lawn echoed in my ears. It was the reason we called them scuttlers. They made a scuttling sound as they moved, a sound that haunted my nightmares on the daily.

I dove inside and then slammed the door shut. Or at least, I tried to. The creature tried to shove its way into the house, even as the cans Riley and I had strung up came crashing down. We’d filled the cans with rocks and anything heavy we could find and duct-taped them shut. Their main job was to make a loud sound, alerting us if we were inside the home, but if the intruder was human, they would also hurt quite a bit. But against the space bug’s chitin-rich carapace, they did jack shit.

I put my back to the door and leaned my weight on it, trying to dig my heels in and shove it closed with brute force. Instead, my combat boots skidded on the wooden floor.

Suddenly, there was a shout from outside, and the creatures—there were more than one now—that had piled up in front of the door turned to face it. The door slammed shut, and I bolted it.

But that shout didn’t bode well for me. It meant Corey had caught up.

I didn’t bother to push any furniture up against the door. Knowing Corey and his goons, they’d probably sneak in through the side door.

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