On the eighth day of our adventure, as Pebbles calls it, we hear branches break.
A cry, a call.
Flint locks eyes with me. "What was that?" he asks.
"Quiet, girls." Eva's been babbling on my back and my muscles are so sore. Not that I would say I need a break. I know moving forward is more important than taking time off. We need to keep this momentum.
But now we pause, anxious. It could be a predator. That's this hardest part of living in the Stone Age. We never quite know what we're going to stumble upon. Or what is going to stumble upon us.
A.B. senses our fear and he begins to growl. It's a deep, low rumble coming from his core.
It is primal, terrifying if you didn’t know he was our gentle giant. He may be an herbivore who munches on grass all day, but when he feels threatened, his whole body rises in alert.
The spikes on his back seem to move ever so slightly, to sharpen. His tail begins thumping up and down, the club leaving a giant mark in the jungle floor.
"Holy shit," we hear someone shout.
Someone, a person.
I cover my mouth in shock. Surprise. A.B.'s tail swings.
"It's okay," Flint says. "A.B., it's okay." He sets his hand on A.B.’s nose, telling him everything's all right.
But is it?
Then I see two men emerge from the jungle. My eyes widen as we take them in.
"Holy shit," Flint says. "Stone? Rock?"
Their mouths drop open.
Three wild ass cave men run into one another's arms.
Pebbles on her father's back looks at me, confused. Just as a confused as I am.
"Fancy," Flint says. "These are the guys, my brothers from Special Ops. Holy fuck, you've been here this whole time?"
They nod. "Yeah. We found one another."
"Damn," Flint says. "Are you alone?"
That's when they grin.
Pulling back the vines of the jungle, they reveal a waterfall oasis, along with two women and their children.
"Wow," I say, relief flooding my weary body. "It looks like we've finally come home."
Epilogue 2
Summer
CAVE MEN
After a week of waiting for news on Fancy, I board a plane and head to the Yucatan jungle myself.
Of course the authorities are searching everywhere for the missing paleontologist, and it's not that I don't trust them to find my best friend, but I have to take things into my own hands.
It's Fancy we're talking about, my best friend since forever, my foster sister who's been with me through thick and thin. I can't lose her, not without looking as hard as possible for her myself.
I know she didn’t just leave her life behind. She’s a smart woman. She's been through too much to just do something reckless.
The authorities have suggested maybe she chose to walk away from her life. But anyone who knows her knows that isn't an option. She was excited about the research she was doing. This archeological dig was the finding of a lifetime.
I wipe my eyes as the plane takes off. It's totally out of my comfort zone. I've never flown on my own before. But I don't care about comfort zones right now. I only care about finding my best friend.
After a day of briefing with the dig team and the police, I realize they've done most everything possible.
There are no leads, nothing to go on.
She was in the Paradise Palms parking lot. When the rest of her team decided to go to the beach, she went exploring. They watched her turn left into the jungle and no one saw her again.
There’s no footage of her at any of the local resorts, no cameras catching her getting into a vehicle. There's no record of her at all.
Her phone was never used again, and it hasn’t been recovered.
There isn't a single clue as to where she went, except for this jungle. Her supervisor Carlos, is helpful to an extent. He shows me where Fancy slept, and tells me if there's anything I notice, I should let him and the police know.
But Fancy wasn't one for material possessions, and there's not much here. She didn't write in a journal, didn't keep a diary full of secrets. That wasn't Fancy's style. I was her closest friend and her only family.
Fancy's never even had a boyfriend, let alone a secret internet admirer she was running off to meet, as the police theorized. I'm not surprised to hear she didn't go to the beach with her teammates, though. That wasn't really her style either. She'd prefer a guidebook and gummy worms over a beach day.
Still, I can't give up. I care about finding her more than anyone else. So after I've talked to everyone who's working on this disappearance, I decide to set foot into the jungle myself.
I pack my bag with plenty of supplies. All of my home remedies, my elixirs and tonics and salves, because that's what I do. I am prepared, if nothing else. A childhood in foster care taught me that no one else is going to look out for me. It’s up to me to look after myself.