The hum comes from the ground. Not through the air—Bob feels it in his boots first, a low thrum that climbs his shins, settles in his chest. He stops at the edge of the pines where the orchard gives way to wild grass. Petunia's ears are up. She's not growling. That's what makes him nervous. When she growls, he knows what she's found—a deer, a coyote, sometimes just a shadow that moved wrong. But this silence is different. She's listening the way he listens when his father's voice comes through the radio static, straining to catch something just out of reach. Bob's hand rests on her back. The fur is warm, dense, familiar. She doesn't lean into him. She's fixed on something past the tree line, past the last row of apple bins, toward the ridge where the cell towers blink red against the darkening sky. "You hear it too, don't you?" She doesn't answer. She never does. But the slight twitch of her tail tells him everything. The hum shifts. Drops half a tone. Bob's teeth clench. It's not mechanical—he's heard generators, irrigation pumps, the distant grind of a semi on the highway. This is something else. Something that vibrates in the space between his ribs. He pulls out the device. The one he found buried near the old burn pile, the one he hasn't shown Johnny yet. The screen glows faintly, pulsing in rhythm with the ground. A single line of symbols flickers, then steadies. Petunia whines. Low. Urgent. "I know," Bob whispers. "I see it." The device reads the hum. Translates it. And what it's telling him doesn't make sense, because it can't be right—but the numbers don't lie. Something is coming up from below. And it's already here.