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Roark leaned forward, his fingers absently tapping my leg. “When we go after Michio and the Drone, we’ll need a mechanic with us. All that fecking walking…” He rubbed his stubbly jaw. “It’s wheels only from here on out.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Paul rested his elbows on the railing and looked at Roark. “Already talked to Link about it.” His eyes hardened. “After losing my wife and kids, I would love a chance to gut the monster who created the plague.”

I bit down on my bottom lip, waiting for my overzealous hoots of joy to break free.

“He desecrated the religion of Islam.” Paul’s brows pulled down, forming a harsh line. “I’m Muslim, and we’re a peace-loving people. I hate that he wiped out the planet in the name of Allah.”

“Me too.” I offered him a soft smile. “But you realize he’s mentally deranged, right?”

“Yeah.” Paul nodded. “I’m not sure Allah would forgive him at this point. I don’t, which is why I want to help take him down.”

“You need a cook?” Eddie held up a hand, waving it. “Count me in.”

“Me, too,” Hunter said, his knees bouncing. “I want to go.”

That did it. I laughed loudly and shook my head. I didn’t get it, though. I mean, why would they want to leave all these women and join us?

There it was, my poisonous suspicion.

Jesse sat quietly, chin tilted down, seemingly lost in his head until his eyes drifted up, scanning the three men. “A thief, a cook, and a mechanic. None of you were on Link’s security team before the outbreak.” He nodded at the house. “Why are you here? What do you get out of this?”

Paul straightened and met Jesse’s eyes. “Twenty…fifty…hell, hundreds of years from now, people will tell stories about the brave men and women who ended the suffering and gave hope to the new world. They’ll write children’s songs about us, name cities after us, and erect bronze statues of our naked bodies.” He made a face. “They better give me a full-sized penis. None of those little shriveled-up Roman peckers.”

He wanted a statue of himself with his dick hanging out?

Hunter and Eddie nodded their heads in agreement.

I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Sounds a little narcissistic, don’t you think?”

Eddie cocked his blond head. “Would you rather us be motivated by something more cliché, like raping and killing?”

I dropped my hand. “Of course not.”

Hunter frowned at the dark landscape. Maybe he was older than twenty, but the twin dimples denting his hairless cheeks made him appear permanently boyish. “We want a better life, Evie, and we want to be a part of its creation. We’ll sweat and bleed for it. Some of us will die in the process. So why not be remembered for our efforts?”

Understandable. They wanted to be forefathers, legends, and maybe they would be. Not through gathering or cooking or killing the Drone, but through the most basic, most important responsibility of all: Reproduction. There were thirteen women upstairs, most of which would likely become pregnant within the next couple months.

Even now, I felt more women on the horizon. It was a subtle feeling, just a blip here and there, lost in the vibrations of aphids. But nymphs were coming, the flickering chill of their torment tapping like ice-cold fingers against the lining of my stomach.

I gripped Roark’s hand. “There are nymphs out there. They’re far away, farther than I thought I could sense them, but they’re headed this way.”

Five pairs of eyes locked onto me, the men’s shoulders snapping to attention.

“How many?” Roark pulled me into his lap, moving my legs to straddle his. He was probably recalling the agony I’d suffered last time, his arms wrapping around my back as if to comfort me. “How far away?”

I smoothed a hand over the bumps of braids above his ear. “Miles. Days. I don’t know. It’s so faint, but it’s an accumulated feeling. A gathering? There could be hundreds of them.”

“Hundreds?” Jesse jumped up, grabbed his bow off the ground, and strode across the front lawn, searching the darkness. “We don’t have the capacity to help hundreds. Why now? Why so many?”

I sighed. “I don’t know.”

He paced in front of the porch. “Are you evolving? Sending out signals? Or is it the combined potency of so many cured women together?”

“I don’t know!” My teeth gnashed in frustration. I softened my voice. “But we have a little time before they show up.”

“Okay.” He shoved a hand through his hair and climbed the stairs to crouch beside me. “Okay. We’ll figure it out. We have help now.”

He looked at Hunter, Paul, and Eddie like he wanted to trust them, but I wasn’t sure he did. I wasn’t certain I trusted them. Reaching that level of confidence, believing a person was good, honest, and able to be depended on took time. It required consistent proof. Especially in this brutal world.