Dawnslight

> > Something under my foot crunched.

I froze and scanned the small room through my scope again. Nothing. I lowered the gun and turned on my light. What in Calamity’s shadow …?

I’d stepped on a cluster of small objects that were growing from vines at the bottom of one of the trees. The bizarre plant tendrils grew out from under the bark like whiskers on a man wearing a mask. I had to take a closer look at what I was seeing because I could swear that at their tips were … cookies.

Yes, cookies. I knelt down, fishing among them for a moment. I pulled out a piece of paper. Fortune cookies, I thought. Growing from the tree.

I flipped the paper over, reading the words.

Help me.

Great. I was back in the horror movie.

Unsettled, I stepped back and snapped my rifle up into position. I looked around the room again, shining my mobile into shadowed corners behind tree trunks. Nothing jumped out at me. When I was convinced I was alone, I bent down to the cookies again and searched among them, reading other slips of paper. They all said either Help me or She has me captive.

Page 224 Chapter 28

Missouri held up a small slip of paper and showed it to me. Fortune cookie paper. Missouri, it read, hide. Hide now.

“When did you find this?” I asked.

“Last night,” she said. “Right before dawn. About a hundred of them said that. Creeped me out, I’ll tell ya. Figured I should do what it said. Why? You look sad.”

Epilogu, page 415-416