Page 31 of The Nook for Brooks (Mulligan’s Mill #6)

“Copy that,” Ronnie said. “Team two moving east on the old fire road.”

“No, sweetie, that’s not what he said at all.” Everyone heard Lonnie over the comms. “He said team three is taking the ridge road… oh wait… maybe it was team six. Wait a minute, how many teams are there?”

“I think we’re team six,” Ronnie said. “I mean, Sheriff Garrett didn’t explicitly say that, but I feel like we’ve earned team status, so I think it’s fair to say that—”

“Team one is now moving south at the old fire road,” Harry repeated, firm but calm. “Over.”

“Got it!” was Ronnie’s only response.

We took the south path. The ground was damp and uneven with tree roots. Our beams caught damp bark and curled ferns. Everything that caught the light seemed too close, everything beyond our torch beams felt unknown and frightening.

We walked for what seemed like a long time; in reality it might have been ten minutes, or it might have been an hour.

Behind us, the other flashlights grew smaller and smaller, then disappeared altogether.

So did their voices.

We called Brooks’s name in a staggered pattern, not too often, the way Sheriff Garrett had said to, to conserve the quiet for listening.

We crested a small rise. Harry halted us again and crouched. He shone his flashlight and ran his fingers through a patch of disturbed leaves like a man reading a Braille book.

“These aren’t boot tracks,” he said. “These are the footprints of someone wearing dress shoes. It’s difficult to tell where they go from here.”

I called out. “Brooks!”

I listened.

Our lights swept and settled on an area in the dark, swept and settled.

We slid around a muddy bend. The trail sloped left into leaf slime and rotting roots.

I was five paces behind when my boot got wedged in the fork of a fallen branch.

It tripped me up. I fell onto my knees, dropping my flashlight which scuttled ahead of me. I reached for it then shone it on the branch that had trapped my foot, when suddenly—

The trail to my left gave way.

Earth was no longer earth.

Solid ground was no longer solid ground.

It was a slide.

I gasped and toppled, skidding sideways as the earth beneath me liquefied into a rolling torrent of mud.

Mud surged under me, over me, into me. Cold grit slid beneath my collar, splattered across my teeth.

I tried to call for Harry and Dean, but all I could do was spit the mud out.

I grabbed at roots, branches, anything—but they snapped in my hands like wet spaghetti. My flashlight bounced ahead, beam cartwheeling through the dark before it hit a rock and winked out.

“Shit—fuck—shit!”

I half slid, half bounced, every impact jarring my ribs, every spin tangling me up in a battered heap, until I finally hit the bottom with a smack that knocked the “Fuck!” right out of me.

From the sucking sound I realized I was in a bog, my boots welded in by suction. The stink of rot slapped me in the face—old leaves, swamp water, and something dead enough to make me wanna dry retch… or at least, mud retch.

I fought my way onto my knees, gagging, dripping filth.

The world around me was black. My flashlight was gone, so my hand went instinctively to the whistle at my neck.

The cord was covered in sludge, the chamber of the whistle choked.

I spat a glob of grit from my mouth and shoved the whistle between my lips.

I blew hard, but all that came out was a wet thhbbbpt sound like a deflating balloon.

“Come on,” I hissed. I yanked the lanyard from around my neck, fingers scrubbing the whistle in the bog water, shaking it, desperate to clear the muck.

That’s when I heard it.

A high-pitched sound.

Like a tremor in the air, thin and sharp at first, then swelling into a thick, furious hum.

Buzzing.

My stomach dropped. “Oh, that’s not good.”

The drone multiplied, circling, closing in.

Wasps.

The first one flicked past my ear. The second smacked my cheek. Then the sound of the swarm rose.

I dropped the whistle.

My legs tore free of the bog, and suddenly I was running—blind, stumbling, crashing through the trees like a maniac with no plan, no map, no light, no help.

Branches whipped my face.

Roots caught my ankles.

I slammed into a trunk, ricocheted, spun, kept going.

The buzzing chased me, louder, hotter, angrier.

I hurled myself through bracken, clawed up a slope, slid back down it, shoved forward again. My chest rattled with panic.

And then—

The buzzing thinned. Faded. And was gone.

I guess they’d chased me far enough and weren’t willing to go any further.

I guess even wasps have a need to return home.

I staggered to a stop, dropped to my knees, chest heaving. Sweat and mud drenched me. My hands shook so violently I had to press them against my thighs to make them settle.

I turned in a circle, dizzy, disoriented. The dark shape of every tree looked the same. Every shadow leaned close. The ground felt like a mess of churned leaves and muck.

“Brooks!” I shouted, voice hoarse. “Brooks!”

The dark swallowed it whole.

“Harry! Dean! Help!” I tried again, desperate. “Somebody—help!”

Nothing.

No answer. No reply. Not even an echo. Just my words vanishing into the dark woods.

Exhaustion crashed over me. I slumped onto my side, collapsing into the leaves, trembling, filthy, utterly lost.