The Gender Game 2 by Bella Forrest (audio ebook reader .TXT) 📕

red flies would find us. No amount of spray in the container would keep us safe and I was exhausted—I felt a bone-deep weariness that made everything around me seem slower. The past four days were all starting to add up and tax my system. Running on fear and adrenaline could only sustain me for so long. After a while, my body would be unable to produce more, and I would crash hard, my body shutting down against my will.

I couldn’t think about that, no matter how inevitable it seemed. I had to focus on the task at hand—finding a way to shelter us from the threat of the red flies. I looked up and realized I was falling behind, so I fixed my eyes on Viggo, trying to find the energy to keep up.

My body, however, had other ideas. The stitch in my side from earlier flared up, and as I tried to run faster, it pulled tighter, knocking the air out of my lungs. I had to stop.

“Viggo,” I gasped, staggering to a halt.

He paused, and turned. Sweat was pouring from his forehead, making his hair stick to the sides of his face and his mask. His shirt was drenched, his chest heaving as he gasped for air.

We were silent for a second—the buzzing had faded slightly, but we knew that wouldn’t be for long.

“I’m not sure we can do this,” Viggo breathed, shifting Ms. Dale’s unconscious form to his other shoulder.

I nodded in agreement. “We need to hide.”

He shook his head. “We can’t. Once the red flies sense blood, they hunt out their victim with unerring accuracy. It doesn’t take them long to find their prey once they have that taste.”

“But if we find a log…”

“A friend of mine is an expert at this. He’s tested their response time. It took them three hours to hunt down prey that was over ten kilometers away.”

I absorbed the information, my stomach shrinking. “So what can we do?”

Viggo handed me a canteen, and I drank a few sips, not wanting water sloshing around in my belly as we ran. He did the same, and closed the lid.

“I’m not sure,” he finally said, but I could see the answer in his eyes.

Abandon Ms. Dale, and run for it.

I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t considered the possibility. Once they had her, the swarm would likely ignore us for long enough to escape. We could flee while they drank her dry.

My stomach turned at the thought. No matter what happened, I wasn’t leaving anyone behind.

Viggo seemed to notice the determination stamped on my face, because he sighed. “We’ll keep an eye out. If we see something we can seal up with the blanket in my bag, we’ll try, all right?”

I nodded. Viggo whistled to Samuel, who had been standing next to him, panting the entire time. I watched as both of them started to move again, heading up the hill.

I took a moment to collect myself, and then followed behind them at a light jog.

The sun was setting, creating long dark shadows on the ground. I put one of the aerosol containers in my pocket and pulled out my flashlight, shining it. It did little to illuminate our paths as we ran, but it was better than nothing.

The forest flew by me, and I tried to keep my breathing even. My ears were trying to pick up the high-pitched keening of the flies over the sounds of our footsteps and panting, but since we fled the glen where we had found her, there was nothing. It was almost eerie, like the forest was holding its breath to see what would happen.

I kept trying to find places for us to hide, but it was hard. In the several times I had needed to hide in a log or a hollow, they had seemed plentiful. But this part of the forest was denying us any spark of hope.

I cut over to the first log I spotted, using the flashlight to illuminate the area. I inspected it quickly, but my heart sank. It had multiple holes along its length, likely left behind by some wood boring insect. Viggo’s blanket was too small for it to cover everything.

We started running again, and I kept my eyes peeled. I eventually saw a tree with a hollow spot in the center. The top half of the tree had collapsed, leaving the top part of the trunk a jagged ruin, with wooden slivers jutting up. I dashed over it, ahead of Viggo, and shined my flashlight inside. The hollow was a little more than a crack—there would be room for one of us to hide, but no more. I sighed, and resumed running.

The third place was one of those trees where the roots erupted from the ground like walls. I thought we could string the blanket up between two of them, and seal it off from detection, but the roots were spread too far apart, even at the base. There was no way it would work.

I felt my final sliver of hope diminish as the last trickle of light disappeared from the canopy.

Viggo had stopped to drink more water, and I jogged up next to him before stopping. Fire was raging under my skin as the muscles in my legs burned. I placed my hands on my knees to keep from collapsing, sucking in air through the mask.

“Vi—” Viggo said, his voice soft.

I shook my head. “No,” I insisted, knowing what he was going to say.

He sighed and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You are my priority,” he said, simply.

I gazed into his green eyes for a long moment. I was on the verge of saying okay, of agreeing to leave Ms. Dale there, when Samuel barked.

Turning the light on him, I saw him facing the way we’d come, his ears up and his body low. He was quivering in fear.

I heard it seconds later. The buzzing from the swarms I had heard before