Rewrite the Apocalypse dream (by Dee Cari) novel Chapter 363

Chapter 363 Thousands Of Them

Chapter 363 Thousands Of Them

+10 Free Comme

Joanna followed Levi, RJ, and Jake up the stairs to the top of the wall, where the rest of her team d already gathered, breath fogging in the cold morning air. Nobody was joking now. Nobody was even talking. Every eye was fixed on the ridge, bare and brown where the last of the snow had finallylted

away.

Raven stood at the edge of the parapet, hands twisted in her jacket, Titan pressed hard against her legs whining low in his throat. “Joanna.” Her voice was barely steady. “Annie’s is calling us, and I just heard her. It’s not words anymore. Just… pain. We have to go. Now.”

Joanna grabbed Raven’s hand, pulled her into her space, and jumped. One blink. Two. They landed on the ridge, and the silence hit her first. No wind. No birds. Even the damp, thawed earth seemed to be holding its breath.

Then she saw the trail. A wide, dark smear dragged across the bare mud and rock, leading toward the den Red-black, still wet.

“Annie?” Raven whispered.

They followed it around a spur of rock, and Joanna’s stomach dropped.

Annie lay stretched across the stones, her massive body torn in a dozen places. Scales had been ripped away in ragged patches, and deep gashes cut by mandibles wept dark blood into the soil. One long wound ran down her flank, exposing raw muscle that twitched with every labored breath. Broken fragments of chitin were still lodged in her hide, the jaws of ants that wouldn’t let go even in death. Her slitted eyes were dull and clouded.

She tried to lift her tail. The rattle that came out was a weak, dry whisper.

Raven dropped to her knees beside the great head, pressing a hand to the cold scales. She went very still, listening. Her face crumpled.

“She says they came from underneath. She never felt them until they were already inside the den.” Raven swallowed hard. “She says thousands are coming, Joanna. These were just the first.” Her voice cracked. “She says the cuts are too deep. She can’t stop the bleeding. She says you should run. Nothing will stop them.”

Annie’s tongue flicked once, slow and faint, tasting the air one last time. The weak rattle fluttered, stuttered, and faded.

Her great chest rose, fell, and did not rise again.

Nobody moved. The wind finally stirred, tugging at Joanna’s hair, carrying the sound of Raven crying. And beneath it, so faint at first she thought she’d imagined it, a sound began to rise from the ground itself.

Click. Click-click. Click.

Titan’s hackles shot up. He pressed flat against Raven and bared his teeth at the soft, thawed earth. The clicking grew, layered and rhythmic, a thousand tiny claws against stone, and the ground beneath their boots began to tremble. Pebbles danced across the rock. A thin crack split the mud a few feet from Annie’s tail.

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09:58 Fri, Oct 23

Chapter 363 Thousands Of Them

+10 Free Coms

Joanna’s hand curled into a fist against the lifeless scales, grief hardening into something cold and sharp

e didn’t look away from the widening crack.

“Raven,” she said quietly, “take my hand. We’re going back. Now.”

Joanna didn’t wait for the ground to finish splitting. She grabbed Raven, pulled her into her space and jumped, and the world blinked past in a smear of brown rock and gray sky. They landed on the w’s parapet just as the first shape crested the ridge.

It wasn’t a shape. It was a stain.

A dark, glistening tide poured over the ridgelines on every side, spilling down the bare slopes like bil leaking from a cracked jar. Ahts. Thousands of them, each the size of a wolf, their blood-colored shells clicking and grinding against one another as they surged forward in a living carpet that swallowed the valley floor. Mandibles snapped in ragged, rippling waves. Antennae lashed the air in unison, tasting, hunting. The sound reached the wall a heartbeat later, a rolling, grinding roar of chitin on stone, so loud it vibrated in Joanna’s teeth. Where the tide passed, the brown earth vanished beneath it. Nothing moved except the swarm.

Her blood went cold. She had fought hordes of the dead, mutated beasts, and armed men. She had never seen anything like this.

“Everybody up!” she shouted, her voice cracking across the courtyard. “Get ready to fight! Now!”

The base erupted.

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