Gone Series Complete Collection (171 page)

She rinsed her mouth with salt water.

Then, shivering, she came back out of the water and ran back to Sanjit.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“Yes. I am. I’m a teenage boy. Beautiful girls in wet underwear have a tendency to cause staring in teenage boys.”

She bent down, picked up the blanket, shook the sand out of it, and wrapped it around her. Sanjit stood up.

She kissed him on the mouth.

A real kiss.

He cupped her wet head in both hands and kissed her back.

“That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Lana said.

For once, she noted with satisfaction, Sanjit did not seem to have a glib comeback. In fact he looked just a little sick, and very much as if he meant to kiss her again.

“Back to the hospital,” she said.

Brittney rose to consciousness on a narrow dirt path. Seven-foot-high dirt and stone walls hemmed her in, towered over her. And perched atop those walls, coyotes leered down, their mouths open, tongues lolling out.

Jamal was behind her, checking the wire that held her arms pinned together at wrist and elbow.

Her ankles, too, were tied, but with a loose rope so that she could take short steps, but not run.

“Where are we?” Brittney asked.

Jamal shrugged with his one good shoulder. “Somewhere Drake wants us to go.” He yawned, glanced up nervously at the coyotes, and yawned again.

“You should get some rest,” Brittney said. “You’re in pain and tired.”

“Here?” He laughed bitterly. “This feel like the place for a nap?”

No, Brittney acknowledged silently. There was something dark about this place, even though the sun was up in the sky. Something about the air. Something about the look in the eyes of the coyotes. A darkness that reached inside to her un-beating heart.

“I want to go back,” Brittney said.

“Yeah? Me, too,” Jamal said. “But if I do, old Drake will whip the skin off me.”

He shoved her forward. She stumbled when the rope snapped at her ankles and almost fell. But she caught herself and shuffled on, not knowing what else she could or should do.

What must I do, Lord, to earn my true death and my place in your heaven?

“This is a bad place, Jamal,” Brittney said. “I can feel it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Drake is a bad boy, and he goes to bad places. But better off with him than against him, I figure.”

They emerged from the cut-through in view of a half-ruined hole in the side of a sheer rock face. There was just enough pale pink light to see that the mine shaft was blocked by tons of fallen rock. The massive timbers that framed the hole were splintered and looked as if they might snap.

Whatever evil Brittney felt, it came from there, from that hole, that pile of rocks.

“Where are we?”

“The mine shaft,” Jamal said. “Haven’t you heard all about that? In there? That’s the thing that gave Drake his whip.”

“In where?” Brittney said. “It’s all collapsed. It’s sealed up.”

“That’s probably good, huh? ’Cause if that thing feels this bad from out here, I don’t want to know what it feels like up close.” He bit his lip and in a low voice said, “Like a big claw holding your heart. Like icicles in your brain.”

“Jamal, if you ran away . . .”

He shook his head. “Drake would come after me. Look, you can’t be killed, right? And he can’t be killed, right? Which means, I betray him, sooner or later he gets me.”

“Maybe fire,” Brittney said softly. “Maybe God’s holy fire can destroy us both.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t happen to have any of that.”

“Only Sam can end this.”

Jamal put up his hands in a
who, me?
gesture and said, “I am cool with that. If big Sam wants to take Drake out, I’m not going to say anything to stop him. But listen: all you’re trying to do is slow Drake down, girl. Him and Sam, they’re going to get into it eventually, right? So maybe you should be trying to speed him up, you see what I’m saying?”

Brittney stared at Jamal. Was it a trick?

Is this the devil tempting me?

“What did the demon Drake ask you to do?”

Jamal nodded at the cave. “He just said be here. He’s got in his head that he can talk to that thing in there. Or at least hear what it says.”

Brittney could believe that. How could she not believe in things that seemed supernatural? Her brother sometimes spoke to her as an angel. And God was with her always. Wasn’t He?

And she herself, this gruesome remnant of the girl she once was, she herself was something outside of nature.

Was Sam the Lord’s servant? The very tool God had chosen to liberate Brittney? She’d begged Sam often for liberation. But God’s ways were not knowable to her. His time was not her time. His will be done.

“What does Drake want of me?” Brittney asked.

“Just, you know, don’t always be trying to run away so I have to tie your legs and slow us down and all.”

“Is he going after Sam? Is that his plan, to go after Sam?”

She thought she caught just the slightest falseness in Jamal’s eyes as he said, “That’s exactly his plan. Straight for Sam, as soon as he checks in with . . . you know.”

“You can sleep, Jamal,” Brittney said. “Sleep until Drake comes back. I won’t run away.”

“How am I going to trust you?”

“Because I swear it. On the blood of the Lamb, I swear it.”

Jamal woke to the pain of Drake kicking him.

“What?”

Drake was actually smiling. It wasn’t a good look for him.

“You were asleep,” he said. “And I’m still here.”

Jamal jumped up and quickly untied Drake. “Yeah, I did just what you said, Drake. Just like you said. I told her that you would go after Sam first thing. Then Sam would burn you both up and . . .”

He gulped, suddenly realizing that this might be taking it too far.

But Drake was in a charitable, expansive mood. He patted Jamal lightly on the cheek with the tip of his whip. “You did good. And I will get Sam Temple. Sooner or later.”

Drake gazed at the mine shaft. What he felt toward the Darkness within was something very much like love. Fear, yes, but the Darkness deserved his fear. His fear and his devotion.

If he had to pull the rocks out of there one by one, and if it took weeks, he would reach the Darkness and free him.

“My old body’s down there,” Drake said, realizing it for the first time. “My old body is down there with him.”

Drake felt a sudden pang of longing. He wanted to press his body against the rocks in the mine’s mouth. It would bring him closer. Maybe the Darkness would reach out to him, touch his mind, tell him what to do next.

But he couldn’t do that in front of Jamal.

“Start hauling rock,” Drake said. “You have to pile it, like, back over there.” He pointed a relatively flat space. “I don’t know how far the rock fall goes. It may take us a while. Put Brittney Pig to work when she comes back.”

For two hours or more they lifted and carried. It would have helped if they had a wheelbarrow. It would have helped if Jamal’s arm weren’t broken. They had to lift each chunk of stone, each shattered timber. Some were big enough that they had to each take an end. Some were so big they couldn’t even budge them and had to just go around them.

At the end of two hours they’d moved no more than a foot and a half deeper into the shaft.

Brittney had reappeared once during that time and she had bought into the idea of helping with the digging. But Drake couldn’t kid himself: they weren’t getting anywhere. It could take months. Years. Forever.

The coyotes came and went, watching, no doubt thinking about eating Jamal. So when Drake heard the sound of movement coming from around the bend in the road, he assumed it was coyotes.

Only it wasn’t the usual stealthy
pad-pad-pad
of coyotes. This was a sound with clicks and sudden rushes.

Drake wiped his brow and turned warily toward the sound.

It looked like something from a science fiction movie. Like an alien or a robot or something, because it was way too big to be just an insect.

It was silver and bronze, dully reflective. It had an insect’s head with prominent, gnashing mouthparts that made Drake think of a Benihana chef flashing knives ceremonially. Its wickedly curved mandibles of black horn or bone protruded from the side of its mouth.

It smelled like curry and ammonia. Bitter but with a tinge of curdled sweetness.

More came now, scurrying up beside the first. They had eyes and antennae. The eyes were arresting: royal blue irises that could almost pass as human. But with nothing of human awareness, nothing of human vulnerability or emotion. Like ice chips.

They ran in a rush on six legs, stopping, starting, then skittering forward again at alarming speed. Their tarnished silver wings folded back against bronze carapaces, like beetles or cockroaches. The wings sometimes flared slightly as they ran.

Bugs. Maybe. But each at least five feet long and three feet tall, with antennae adding another foot.

Drake stared into the soulless blue eyes of the first bug.

He was ready with his whip hand, and Jamal was ready with his rifle, but Drake didn’t like his chances much if they were looking for a fight. There were a dozen of the creatures, jostling around one another, like ants pouring from a mound or wasps storming angrily from a disturbed hive.

Drake felt a stab of fear: could he survive being eaten? Chopped into chunks by those gnashing mouths and swallowed?

A coyote, keeping a cautious distance, loped to the top of the rise and spoke in the strangled speech his species had achieved.

“See the Darkness,” the coyote said.

“Them?” Drake asked. The coyotes and these monstrosities could communicate? “They want to see the Darkness? Fine,” Drake said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the mine. “Go for it.”

“They hungry,” the coyote said.

Drake didn’t have to ask what he was supposed to do about that. Because now the same foul, insinuating voice that was speaking through the coyote reached him directly, touched his willing, submissive mind and flooded it with a deep and awful joy.

Drake closed his eyes and rocked slowly back and forth, feeling the touch of his master.

Soon Drake would be with the Darkness. The Darkness would give him all he needed. And Jamal had served his purpose.

“So tell them to eat something,” Drake said. “Sorry, Jamal.”

“What?” Jamal waited for Drake to laugh, like it was a joke. But Drake just smiled and winked and said, “Dude, sooner or later I was going to kill you anyway.”

“No, no!” Jamal gasped. He backed away. He turned and ran.

The nearest bug, icy blue eyes focused with terrible intensity, flashed out something that might have been a tongue. It was black, and as thick as a rope with a barbed tip like a cluster of fishhooks. The tongue caught Jamal’s leg and Jamal fell facedown.

“Drake! Drake!” Jamal yelled. “Please!”

Drake laughed. He gave a little wave as the rope tongue yanked Jamal toward his doom.

Jamal fired.
BLAM BLAM BLAM
. At close range, then closer range, then inches from the bug’s hideous face.

The tongue released and snapped back. Then scimitar mandibles cut Jamal in half and there was no more firing, just a hopeless wail of despair.

The massive bugs surged, and within seconds nothing was left of Jamal.

Then, without a pause, the blue-eyed monsters went to work moving rocks at dazzling speed, pushing with their mandibles, rising on their hind four legs and gripping with their front two.

Drake felt Brittney returning. But that was okay, because now his Lord and Master, the Darkness, Drake’s one true God was with him, filling his heart and soul.

And It would not be thwarted.

TWENTY-THREE

9
HOURS
, 14
MINUTES

ASTRID WAS
IN
the backyard using the slit trench when it happened. She had sat by Little Pete’s bed for two days, waiting, fearing.

But even dehydrated, she still had to go eventually. She’d hoped it would be safe. She’d hoped to see that Albert’s people were delivering water and food and the epidemic was past.

But the streets were abandoned. She heard no distant sounds of truck engines, nor even the squeaky wheels of hand-drawn wagons.

So she did what she had to do at the slit trench in the yard and continued to pray as she had almost constantly.

Whooosh-craaack!

The entire upper floor of the house blew apart.

There was no fire. No flame.

The top floor—the tile roof, the siding, the walls, wood, and drywall, all of it—blew apart almost quietly. A big chunk of roof spun over her head, throwing off red tiles as it spun and dropped with a massive crash against the wall of the house next door.

She saw a window, the glass still somehow in place, go whirling straight up like a rocket. She followed it with her eyes, waiting for it to come spiraling down at her. It crashed into the branches of a tree and finally then the glass shattered.

The bed from her own bedroom was on a roof two houses down. Sheets and clothing fluttered to the ground like confetti. It was almost festive, like someone had set off a Fourth of July rocket and now she could oooh and aahh as the sparkles came down.

But no fire. No loud explosion. One second it had been a two-story house and now it was a one-story house.

One of Astrid’s kneesocks from her dresser landed on the grass, draped over the lip of the trench.

Astrid remembered she could move. She ran for the house yelling, “Petey! Petey!”

The back door was partly blocked by a small piece of siding. She threw it aside and ran through the kitchen and up the debris-strewn stairs.

The full weirdness struck her then. The handrail of the stairs stopped as it reached the level of the upper floor. The steps themselves ended on a splintered half riser.

Astrid stepped out onto what was now a platform, no longer the second floor of a house. Everything was gone. Everything. It was as if a giant had come along with a knife and simply sliced off the top, cutting through walls and plumbing pipe and electrical conduit.