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Love softened the heart when it needed to be weak and hardened it when it needed to be strong.

Which was why mankind would endure. The human race was capable of so much love, and that love would not end with us.

I felt that conviction in every step to the truck, in every mile toward West Virginia, and in every aching muscle cramp as we climbed the mountains in search of the Lakota camp.

Twenty-six days passed. If I went by weather patterns, I figured it was July or August. But to circle a day on a calendar was anyone’s guess.

The morning we left the animal reserve, I started tracking the days with grains of rice from a box none of us had the energy to cook. Every morning, I added a new grain to the outer pocket of my backpack.

This morning there were twenty-six grains in the pocket, some sticking together from the goddamned humidity. And I might’ve dropped a few along the way.

We’d been traveling about a month, and it had only rained once, leaving behind a sweltering haze of misery. The truck ran out of gas fifteen miles before we reached the mountains, forcing us to walk the barren interstate in search of fuel with no luck. So we walked, snatching an hour of sleep here and there, holing up in broken-down cars, barns, and gas stations.

Darwin couldn’t tread long distances, let alone repel the mountainous inclines. Shea was no better, given the lingering affliction of her mutation.

We lost time while Jesse made a simple litter to carry Darwin, crafted from branches and blankets. We were further delayed as Jesse and I carried that stretcher over the rough terrain.

And Roark carried Shea. It injured her pride to allow it, but she didn’t have the muscle strength or endurance to keep our pace.

We’d spent fourteen of those twenty-six days in the Allegheny Mountains. As I crested another peak, my lips cracked from the heat, and my shoulders jerked against the stinging bites of a gazillon flies. And still no sign of the Lakota.

I juggled Darwin’s stretcher between my arm and thigh to free a hand. “Hold up.”

Jesse stopped, breathing heavily, as he glanced back at me. A sunburn reddened his nose and cheeks, and his eyes creased with fatigue.

I swiped the itchy sweat from my upper lip, somehow managing to smear more dirt and salt into my pores. Flies swarmed my face, maddening in their assault. I waved a hand around my head, useless in my attempt to scatter them. Fucking irritating bastards. Fuck!

“How bloody long have we been hiking in this heat?” Roark griped behind me. “Good thing me last bath was with a baby wipe, because I’m about to finish this walk through the valley of the shadow of death in me fecking birthday suit.”

Jesse hissed through his teeth. “Shut the fuck up, Roark. And for the love of God, keep your damned clothes on.”

Twenty-six days, the toiling uphill hike, the heat, the fucking flies, all of it was more than I’d bargained for.

This was a mistake. We could’ve delayed the hike, waited until Shea and Darwin were at full health. Only we didn’t have a home, didn’t have a hideout that could be safeguarded for more than a day or two by our exhausted group of four.

And forget about sleeping. Jesse and Roark talked, walked, and breathed on a tripwire of edginess. It was the two of them against a brutal world of men who still believed women were extinct.

None of us wanted to find out what would happen if Shea and I were discovered. Jesse and Roark weren’t prepared to take on a gang of hard dicks.

So we hid every time we smelled, heard, and saw human life. And barbarous men were out there, everywhere, the trappings of their existence in the bullet holes covering fresh human corpses, in the scent of nearby fires, and in the distant shouts and booms of gunshots.

And the aphids… The numbers we’d fought off to reach this far had beat us into spiritless shells. Those ugly green fuckers came at us at all hours of the day and night.

I was down to my last two magazines of ammo.

And that was before we began the hike up the mountain.

The safety of the Lakota camp was the only thing that kept us going. Safety in the isolation of backwoods mountain country. Safety with men we trusted.

Exhaustion burned through my muscles and burrowed deep into my bones. Slopes and branches tripped my feet. And the unrelenting heat turned my body into a thermal current, breaking me down, step after grueling step.

Shea was more vocal in her discomfort. For the last hour, she lagged behind with Roark on her heels, opting to walk to give him a reprieve.

“I’ve changed my mind. I can’t live here.” She piled her sopping hair on her head, her armpits dripping rings of sweat to her waistband. “Let’s go to Alaska. Or the Antarctic. I bet aphids hate glaciers.”