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His lips pulled away from grinding teeth. “You stumble onto one, two, five aphids, yeah, I’m sure you got that, no problem. What happens when you run into a swarm? You carry enough ammo to escape that?”

“Watch and learn, Lakota.” I spun toward the door, toward Roark’s enduro, trusting my internal radar to alert me long before I encountered more than I could handle.

Since my hair had grown halfway to my waist, I looped it up in a ponytail. Carbine strapped on the bike’s mount, I jumped on and fired up the single cylinder. The vibration seeped through my body and carbonated tingles to my fingers and toes.

Jesse stood over me. “Scooch.”

“Get your own bike.”

Muscles jerked under his scowl.

Behind him, Roark tucked his hands in his pockets. “Remind me to tell ye about the time she threw herself from that bike onto a street full of snarlies.”

Jesse grumbled something inaudible and stalked to the other bike.

Roark’s face filled my horizon. Droves of demands burned in his jade stare.

“Need a cage for that canary?” I asked.

“Do wha’ ye have to do, love, but if you’re gone long, I’ll come after ye with a whole flock of them.”

I ran a finger down the buttons of his cassock. “You think I’m a wanker.”

His sun-kissed face ruptured in a smile. “If you’re a wanker, I’m a wanker. Just keep your eyes up.” He brushed his lips over mine and stepped back.

Michio squatted on the porch, scratching Darwin’s muzzle. His eyes rose to the sky and flicked back to me. Unlike the others, he wouldn’t argue or hover. He was too sneaky for that. No doubt he planned to trail us, stealthily protecting me from myself.

I gave him a smile he didn’t return. Hmm. My tongue made a slow swipe over my top teeth. Ah, there it was. The world’s rarest smile.

Jesse rolled next to me. “Stick to my side.”

I punched the gas, fueled with expectancy. By the time I hit fourth, my heart fluttered with the bike’s purr and my top curled up my back. I followed Jesse along a ravine and though a grassland curtained by electric green hills and valleys. When we hit a straight stretch, I revved ahead. A flock of Greylag geese cackled above us. The wind whistled through my hair in a bouquet of grapes and loam.

Several acres ahead, a cement water tower rose above the meadow. Tattered fabrics flapped around a small form bound to the ladder. I sucked in a breath. A body? I’d come across bodies everywhere I’d traveled, but few were human and even fewer were children.

Jesse flanked me, and we gunned it, slipping our tires over the gravel.

A tiny torso came into focus. My muscles locked, and my skin bumped up. I skidded the bike sideways and rolled from it as it toppled over. My legs staggered through each step toward the tower.

Strips of denim hung from protruding bones and baked skin. Chunks of matted brown hair pasted a ghastly head. And tucked in the elbow of an ashen arm was a lovingly-worn teddy bear.

Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery, teach me how to trust my heart, my mind, my intuition,

my inner knowing, the senses of my body, the blessings of my spirit.

Teach me to trust these things so that I may enter my sacred space and love beyond my fear,

and thus walk in balance with the passing of each glorious sun.

American Indian Lakota Prayer

“Aaron?” Jesse said, frozen at my side. “Aaron, wake up.”

I unholstered the USP and spun. “What the fuck did you say?” I shoved the barrel in his face.

He held his hands up, eyes on mine, blank and cold. “Put the gun down.”

I stepped back, gun trained at his head. “You see him?” My voice cracked. “You can see my boy?”

My feet tangled in dried vines. Branches snapped. I stumbled but kept my footing. The gun shook in my hand as Aaron’s hollow-eyed face ripped out my heart.

“We’re here because he has something to show you.” Jesse’s voice scratched at my back.

I swung the pistol around. “Don’t fucking talk about him like you know him. Stay back. I mean it.”

Vines twined through the sunken torso and bound him to the ladder. Bark gnawed into gangrene skin. His head lolled to the side, eyelids stretched and dusty. I clawed one-handed at the woody stems, pulled at his body.

“If you only look with your eyes,” Jesse said, “he’ll be forced to use that.”

Miasma burned my nose. I freed the unnaturally bent arm and Booey tumbled to the ground.

Scrape. Scrape-scrape.

Eyelashes broke off, dusted his gaping shriveled lips. A bulge moved under the lid of one eye. The dry skin splintered. A needle-like leg punched out. Then another and another. A spider wiggled free from the socket with a wet suction sound. Its body was all-white, Aaron’s all-white eye. A tiny pupil dotted its back.