Hettie woke up to the distant rumble of thunder.
She hadn’t thought she’d been sleeping—usually, she lay staring into the darkness, waiting for Walker to fall asleep before getting up to do something more productive. But then her eyes had snapped open. A heaviness filled the air, and her head throbbed as she sat up. Walker was not there.
She found him standing outside the tent, staring into the dark across the tops of the trees poking up through the unfathomable shadows below. Only the faintest sliver of moon was visible, as if a thumbnail had punctured the inky sky. The rumbling continued, but it was more like a series of low pops outside.
“What is that?” She strained to hear.
Others were crawling out of the tents now, guns drawn in trepidation. The air was cold, and a faint acrid sce
