Rewrite the Apocalypse dream (by Dee Cari) novel Chapter 352

Chapter 352 The Moles With No Hope

Finished

The three of them moved into position around the fallen tree, Uncle Nate and Ryan fanning out to flank the exposed roots while Allen planted his feet firmly in the snow a short distance away, hands spreading wide.

“On my mark,” Allen said, concentration settling over his face.

The ground rippled.

ward

It started subtle – a faint tremor beneath the snow, barely visible – then built steadily, radiating from Allen’s position like a slow-rolling wave beneath the earth’s surface. Snow shifted and cracked along the length of the tunnel network they’d mapped, dirt churning visibly beneath the white.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then the ground near the fallen tree’s roots burst open.

What emerged was nothing like the small, timid creature Joanna might have pictured. The mole that clawed its way up into the daylight was the size of a large dog, body thick and barrel-shaped, covered in dense, dark fur slicked with dirt, powerful shovel-like claws easily as long as knives extending from paws built for tearing through packed earth. Its tiny, vestigial eyes were nearly useless, sealed almost shut beneath folds of leathery skin, but its snout twitched rapidly, nostrils flaring, clearly reading the world through scent and vibration instead.

It froze the moment it surfaced, head swinging in their direction, nose working overtime.

Raven stepped forward carefully, voice calm and even despite the creature’s unsettling size. She spoke for a moment, pausing to listen, then turned back. “It’s startled, but not aggressive. Just confused why the ground shook.”

The mole gave a few more agitated snuffles, then turned and burrowed back down in a surprisingly quick, fluid motion, disappearing beneath the snow entirely.

“Where’d it go?” Jake asked, tense.

“Getting their chief,” Raven said. “Apparently that wasn’t someone important enough to talk to us properly.”

A minute passed in tense silence, the group watching the disturbed earth for any sign of movement, before the ground split open again – this time slower, more deliberate, and a second mole emerged. Larger than the first, scarred along one shoulder, moving with an unmistakable air of authority despite its blindness.

Joanna stepped forward. “Raven – ask if the moles had anything to do with Jolie.”

Raven relayed the question, then paused, head tilting as she focused on the response. “The mole says it wasn’t them.” Another pause, longer this time, and Raven’s brow furrowed deeper. “But… they know who did it.”

Joanna’s pulse picked up. “Who?”

Raven’s eyes widened slightly as the answer came through, and she looked up at Joanna, clearly startled by what she was hearing. “…Really?” she murmured, almost to herself, before refocusing. “The mole says it was the ants.”

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Chapter 352 The Moles With No Hope

“Ants?” Julian repeated, skeptical.

Finished

Raven-nodded slowly, still processing it herself. “Not normal ones. He says there are thousands of them and they’re as big as the moles themselves.” She swallowed. “He thinks they wanted to eat her.”

Raven’s focus sharpened again as the mole continued, its scarred head swaying slightly as it communicated, and her expression grew more troubled with every passing second.

his

“He says it’s worse than just the one incident,” Raven relayed. “The ants have been killing moles aer whole colony. Picking them off, tunnel by tunnel.” She paused, swallowing hard. “There’s only thirty of them left. Out of what used to be – he didn’t give me a number, but it sounded like a lot more than that

The group fell quiet at that, the weight of it settling over them. Thirty, scarred and blind and burrowed deep in the snow, clinging to whatever territory they had left against something clearly far more dangerous than any of them had accounted for.

Raven’s voice dropped lower as she relayed the rest. “And he says once that snake fully wakes up from her winter sleep – properly wakes, not just agitated like today – she’ll finish off what’s left of them for good. He thinks it’s only a matter of time.”

Joanna’s jaw tightened, the picture rapidly expanding far beyond a single poisoned bush or one missing friend. A dwindling mole colony caught between a starving mutant snake and some kind of massive ant swarm, all of it happening practically in her own backyard, close enough that whatever imbalance was brewing out here had already reached out and touched her own people once.

“Ask him how big the ant colony actually is,” Joanna said quietly. “And where.”

The mole’s scarred head swayed again, Raven tilting her own in careful concentration as she worked to translate the next part.

“He says the queen lives deep in the valley – further in than anywhere his colony ever tunnels anymore, not since the swarms started taking territory. But the swarm itself isn’t confined to her nest. They’ve spread out, claiming the upper ridges as hunting ground. That’s where most of his colony’s been lost – the workers patrol far from the queen, and they don’t stop for anything in their way.”

Joanna’s eyes narrowed slightly. “The upper ridges,” she repeated. “That’s the same area where-” She didn’t finish the thought out loud, but her mind was already racing backward, back to Jolie, back to the bushes shaking in a line like something sprinting through them, back to the poison that had put Jolie in the ground. a full mile from where she’d fallen.

Raven continued, her brow furrowing deeper as she listened. “There’s something else. He says the ants have some kind of relationship with the survivors living a ridge over – the quiet ones, the ones hiding in the caves. He doesn’t know exactly what it is. Just that the ants don’t attack them. Don’t even seem to notice them, the way they’d notice literally anything else moving through their territory.”

A heavy silence settled over the group.

Joanna went still, pieces she hadn’t let herself fully connect suddenly snapping into place. Survivors who moved in total silence, who vanished into rock crevices and never reappeared. An insect swarm vicious enough to wipe out most of a mole colony, yet utterly indifferent to a group of human beings walking the same ridges. A poison that acted fast, delivered on the wind, deployed with precise, deliberate timing right as Jolie got close.

That wasn’t natural. That wasn’t a coincidence.

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Chapter 352 The Moles With No Hope

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“They’re connected,” Joanna said quietly, almost to herself. “Somehow, whatever’s happening with those

vivors and whatever’s happening with this ant swarm-

they’re connected.”

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er focus narrowing as the mole’as caponede’s response came through, longer this time,

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