Branches clawed at my jeans and tried to snatch my whip from my waist. I batted them away, ignoring the leaves slapping my face. I tried to think of spots along the route where we could hide, but there hadn’t been any caves. Short trees and brush; that was it. Ducking behind the trunks might provide some cover, but the odds of avoiding something that could fire stingers like a machine gun on steroids didn’t sound good to me. We skidded around the corner at the turnoff and kept running, our breaths so noisy that I couldn’t hear the drone of the creature over them. I wished that meant it wasn’t there anymore. Neither of us slowed down. Three and a half miles to go, was it? Would we be safe if we reached the van? I hadn’t tried breaking one of the three-inch-long thorns but they seemed too thin to pierce the metal siding of a car. The glass of the windows? I was less certain about that, given the velocity at which the jibtab fired them. Even though Autumn had succeeded in slicing one open, she had struggled.
