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anyway.”
    Brown walked around the table and shook Nathaniel’s hand. “Of course. We’ll be in touch as they get closer.”
    Nathaniel gave everyone a curt nod before leaving through the front.
    “Damn,” Adam said when they heard the door slam shut. “And I thought we had bad news to deliver.”
    Lance looked over at him. He had forgotten that Adam was even in the room. He hadn’t said a word the entire time.
    “What do you mean?” Cass asked. “What happened out there?”
    They recounted the holes they’d found in Latrobe.
    Brown leaned against the doorjamb, his head low, eyes studying the floor. He listened without speaking until the story was finished. “And you heard a sound coming from both of the holes?”
    “Yeah,” Lance said.
    “And you believe that you were sitting atop some sort of constructed maze? A way for them to travel, like a subway or sewer system?”
    “I don’t know what else it could have been.”
    Cass cradled her head in her hands for a few seconds before looking at Lance. “So you were right about last night then.”
    Lance nodded, but said nothing.
    “If they’re digging giant ass holes, then they’re probably organized somehow,” Cass continued. “There is no way that one Vladdie is digging through Latrobe like that.”
    “Could it be some kind of instinct? Like ants or bees?” Eifort asked Brown. “Maybe the nesting and digging is just a part of whatever it is they’ve become.”
    Brown said, “This doesn’t appear to be instinct to me.”
    “Why do you think that?” Adam asked.
    “Because of the trap they made for Lance last night. That’s not instinct.” Brown peered through the window. “If their attacks on our compound are going to get more advanced, then we might have to go on the offensive, as Cass did in Pittsburgh.”
    Lance frowned. “I don’t like—”
    A scream came from outside.
    “What was that?” Lance asked.
    “I don’t know,” Cass said. “My x-ray vision isn’t working right now.”
    “Douche.”
    They ran outside, taking the back door. A small crowd stood by the rear shed, circling around something Lance couldn’t see.
    A woman screamed again.
    Brown shoved his way through the people. “What’s going on?”
    No one answered him.
    The doc stopped by the building, staring into the woods.
    Cass and Lance stepped beside him, following his gaze.
    “Son of a bitch,” Cass said.
    The decapitated head of a woman rested atop a stump just beyond the tree line.

Chapter 6
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    F lies buzzed around the flayed flesh of the neck.
    The tongue, swollen and discolored, canted out of the mouth at a grotesque angle. The hair was straggly and blood soaked.
    Lance grimaced as he stared into the rolled eyes, their whites exposed. He didn’t recognize the face.
    “Does anyone know who this woman was?” Brown asked. “Is anyone missing from the camp?”
    Murmurs filled the crowd, but most people shook their heads.
    Cass stepped closer. “Jesus.”
    Brown stood in front of Lance, leaning in so the others couldn’t hear him. “If this is the work of those things ...”
    The sentence, unfinished, hung between them. Lance got the meaning. This wasn’t the act of a hungry animal.
    It was a warning, a shot across their bow.
    A sign of things to come.
    “That is fucking disgusting, bro.” Greg stood two-people deep in the crowd, pinching his nose shut. “Why would someone do that?”
    “I don’t know.” Lance didn’t want to say yet that he didn’t believe a person had done it.
    Brown waved his arms over his head. “Everyone needs to fan out. We’re going to search the woods for the rest of the body. Shout if you see it.”
    Lance worked to position people a few feet apart before meeting Cass, Brown, and Eifort in the middle. He took Cass’ hand in his own and squeezed, needing the comfort of her touch. Too many things had piled on in the past day.
    Eifort covered the head with a tarp she’d taken from a