Southern Horror · A Novel
They were never supposed to drink blood.
Every thirteen years, they come up to sing. This spring, they came up to feed.
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The premise
It starts small. A prize heifer drained white in a pasture. A family dog dead at the gate, not a drop of blood left in him. A country vet named Marcy Thompson starts a list — and when she pins it to a map, the dead are not scattered. They are pointing. Every one of them leans toward a single sealed and forgotten coal mine, and toward a number climbing in the warm ground beneath everyone's feet.
Sixty-four degrees. That is when the brood comes up. And what rises was never supposed to exist — a thirteen-year cicada that has learned to drink blood, on a clock that does not stop.
No one is coming to save them. So a thousand ordinary people — farmers, veterans, truckers, kids with no school left to go to — decide to save themselves. The ground is already warm.
Also by Justin Ryan Carver
Ordinary people dropped into an extraordinary situation — and the true horror of how they react. In the same key as The Usual and The Good News.