Gone Series Complete Collection (32 page)

Patrick was lowest of all in status, lower even than Lana. He was a big, strong dog, but he bounded along with his tail wagging, his tongue lolling, which the swift, efficient coyotes seemed to find contemptible.

The coyotes were solitary hunters, catching even the fastest rabbits or squirrels. Patrick was left to his own devices, and since he was much slower, he was going hungry.

Lana had been offered one of Pack Leader’s kills—a half-eaten, still half-alive jackrabbit, but she wasn’t that hungry. Yet.

She had almost forgotten that none of this was possible. Amazing how quickly she had come to accept a world defined by a giant barrier. Absurd that she knew she could heal with a touch. Ridiculous that she had accepted the fact that Pack Leader could speak. In words. In English, however garbled.

Madness.

Insanity.

But what had happened down in that mine, down where the seething darkness hid, far from the sun, far from the world of reason, had killed whatever doubt remained for Lana: the world had gone crazy.

She had gone crazy.

Lana’s task now was to survive, not to analyze or understand, just to survive.

Her shoes were already beginning to fall apart. Her clothing was ripped in several places. She was filthy. She’d had to urinate and defecate in the open, like a dog.

Her legs and hands had been repeatedly torn by sharp rocks, sliced by thorns, stabbed by mosquitoes. She had even been bitten by a cornered raccoon. But the wounds never lasted long. They hurt, each time they hurt, but Lana healed them.

They had run throughout the night, the coyotes, chasing the next meal.

It had been just twelve hours or so, but already it seemed like forever.

“I’m a human,” she told herself. “I’m smarter than he is. I’m superior. I’m a human being.”

But here in the wild, in the dark desert night, she wasn’t superior. She was slower and more clumsy and weaker.

To keep her spirits up, Lana talked to Patrick, or to her mother. That, too, was crazy.

“Really enjoying my time here, Mom,” Lana said. “I’m losing a little weight. The coyote diet. Don’t eat anything and run all the time.”

Lana fell into a hole and felt her ankle twist and break. The pain was excruciating. But the pain would last only a minute. The exhaustion was far deeper, the despair more painful.

Pack Leader appeared, looking down at her from a jutting rock.

“Run faster,” Pack Leader ordered.

“Why are you keeping me prisoner?” she demanded. “Kill me or let me go.”

“The Darkness says no kill,” Pack Leader said in his tortured, high-pitched, inhuman voice.

She did not ask him what he meant by “the Darkness.” She had heard its voice in her head, down at the bottom of Hermit Jim’s gold mine. It was a scar on her soul, a scar her healing power could not touch.

“I’m only slowing you down,” Lana sobbed. “Leave me here. Why do you want me around?”

“Darkness say: You teach. Pack Leader learn.”

“Learn what?” she cried. “What are you talking about?”

Pack Leader leaped at her, knocked her flat on her back, and stood over her with his teeth bare above her exposed throat. “Learn to kill humans. Gather all packs. Pack Leader leader of all. Kill humans.”

“Kill all humans? Why?”

Pack Leader was salivating. A long string of slobber fell from his muzzle onto her cheek. “Hate human. Human kill coyote.”

“Stay out of towns and no one kill coyote,” Lana argued.

“All for coyote. All for Pack Leader. No human.” With his strained, unworldly voice, Pack Leader couldn’t really rant for long, but the fury and hatred came through in very few words. She didn’t know what a sane coyote would sound like if it could talk, but there was no doubt in her mind that this was an insane coyote.

Animals didn’t get grandiose ideas about obliterating a whole species. That thought had not come from Pack Leader. Animals thought about food and survival and procreation, if they thought at all.

The thing in the cave. The Darkness. Pack Leader was its victim, as well as its servant.

The Darkness had filled Pack Leader with this evil ambition. But it had not been able to teach Pack Leader the ways to take on the humans. When Lana appeared at the gold mine, the Darkness had seized the opportunity to use her.

There were limits to the power of the Darkness, no matter how terrifying it might be. It needed to use the coyotes—and Lana—to carry out its will. And there were limits to what the Darkness knew, as well.

She knew what she had to do.

“Go ahead, kill me,” Lana said. She arched her neck, presenting it for him, defiant. “Go ahead.”

One quick bite and it would all be over. She would let the wound bleed. She wouldn’t heal it but would let her arteries pump her life out onto the desert sand.

At that moment, part of Lana wasn’t sure she was bluffing. The Darkness had opened a door in her mind, a door to something almost as frightening as the Darkness itself.

“Go ahead,” she challenged the coyote. “Go ahead and kill me.”

The coyote leader faltered. He let loose an anxious, mewling sound. He had never caught helpless prey that did not struggle for life.

It was working. Lana pushed Pack Leader’s wet muzzle away. She stood up, her ankle still painful.

“If you’re going to kill me, kill me.”

Pack Leader’s brown and yellow eyes burned holes in her, but she did not back down. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Pack Leader flinched. But then his eyes went to Patrick, and back, with a sly sideways leer. “Kill dog.”

It was Lana’s turn to flinch. But she knew instinctively that she could not show weakness. “Go ahead. Kill him. Then you’ll have no way to threaten me.”

Again Pack Leader’s scarred face showed confusion. The thought was complicated. It was a thought with more than one move, like trying to play chess and anticipate what would happen two or three moves further on.

Lana’s heart leaped.

Yes, they were stronger and faster. But she was a human being, with a human brain.

The coyotes had changed in some ways from what they had been: some had muzzles and tongues that now allowed tortured speech, and they were bigger than they should have been, stronger than they should have been, even smarter than they had any right to be. But they were still coyotes, still simple, driven by hunger, by the desire for a mate, by a need for a place within the pack.

And the Darkness had not taught them how to lie or bluff.

“The Darkness says you teach,” Pack Leader said, falling back on familiar territory.

“Fine,” Lana said, her brain buzzing, trying to decide where to lead this conversation. Looking for the advantage. “You leave my dog alone. And you get me some decent food. Some food that humans eat, not filthy half-chewed rabbits. And then I’ll teach.”

“No human food here.”

That’s right, you filthy, mangy animal, Lana thought as the next move fell into place. No human food here.

“I noticed,” she said, tamping down the triumph in her voice, keeping her face carefully neutral, giving nothing away. “So take me to the place where the grass grows. You know what I’m talking about. The place where the patch of green grows in the desert. Take me there, or take me back to the Darkness and tell the Darkness you cannot control me.”

Pack Leader didn’t like that, and he expressed his frustration not in human speech but in a series of angry yipping sounds that reduced the rest of the pack to anxious skulking.

He twisted away from her in a pantomime of frustration, unable to control or hide his simple emotions.

“See, Mom,” Lana whispered as she pressed healing hands on her ankle. “Sometimes defiance is a good thing.”

Finally, without a word, Pack Leader trotted off toward the northeast. He moved, and the pack followed, but slowly, at a pace that Lana could match.

Patrick fell into step beside his master.

“They’re smarter than you, boy,” Lana whispered to her dog. “But they’re not smarter than me.”

“Wake up, Jack.”

Computer Jack had fallen asleep at the keyboard. He was spending nights in the town hall, working to deliver on his promise of assembling a primitive cell phone system. It wasn’t easy. But it was fun.

And it took his mind off other things.

It was Diana who had awakened him, shaking his shoulder.

“Oh, hi,” Computer Jack said.

“That computer keyboard face? It’s not a great look for you.”

Jack felt his face and blushed. There were imprints of the square keys on his cheek.

“Big day today,” Diana said, moving across the room to the small refrigerator. She pulled out a soda, popped it open, raised the window shade, and drank while looking down at the plaza.

Computer Jack adjusted his glasses. One side was a little askew. “It’s a big day? Why?”

Diana laughed in her knowing way. “We’re going home for a visit.”

“Home?” It took Jack a few seconds to click. “You mean to Coates?”

“Come on, Jack, say it like you’re excited.”

“Why are we going to Coates?”

Diana came to him and put her hand against his cheek. “So smart. And yet, so slow sometimes. Don’t you ever read that list Caine has you keep? You remember Andrew? It’s his happy fifteenth. We have to get up there before the hour of doom.”

“Do I have to go? I have all this work to do. . . .”

“Fearless Leader has a plan that includes you,” Diana said. She spread her hands, dramatic, like she was a magician revealing the payoff of an illusion. “We’re going to film the big moment.”

Jack was both frightened and excited by the idea. He loved anything involving technology, especially when it gave him an opportunity to show off his technical knowledge. But, like everyone, he’d heard what happened to the twins, Anna and Emma. He did not want to see anyone die, or disappear, or whatever it was they did.

Yet . . . it would be fascinating.

“The more cameras the better,” Jack mused aloud, already working on the problem, already picturing the layout. “If it happens in a flash, we’ll have to get lucky to get a shot at the precise second. . . . Digital video, not stills. As expensive and high end as Drake can find. Each one has to have a tripod. And we’ll need lots of light. It would be best if we had a simple background, you know, like a white wall or something. No, wait, maybe not white, maybe green, that way I can chroma key. Also . . .” He stopped himself, embarrassed that he’d gotten carried away, and not liking what he was about to say.

“Also what?”

“Look, I don’t want Andrew to get hurt.”

“Also what, Jack?” Diana pressed.

“Well, what if Andrew doesn’t want to just stand there? What if he moves? Or tries to run away?”

Diana’s expression was hard to read. “You want him tied down, Jack?”

Jack looked away. He hadn’t meant to say that. Not exactly. Andrew was nice enough . . . for a bully.

“I didn’t say I want him tied down,” Jack said, emphasizing the word “want.” “But if he moves out of frame, out of where the cameras are pointed . . .”

Diana said, “You know, Jack, sometimes you worry me.”

Computer Jack felt a flush crawl up his neck. “It’s not my fault,” he said hotly. “What am I supposed to do? And, anyway, who do you think you are? You do whatever Caine says, same as me.”

It was as angry as Jack had ever allowed himself to be in front of Diana. He flinched, waiting for her biting reply.

But she answered softly. “I know what I am, Jack. I’m not a very nice person.” She pulled a rolling chair up and sat down close to him. Close enough that her nearness made him uncomfortable. Jack had only recently begun to really notice girls. And Diana was beautiful.

“Do you know why my father sent me to Coates?” Diana asked.

Jack shook his head.

“When I was ten years old, Jack, younger than you, I found out my father had a mistress. Do you know what a mistress is, Jack?”

He did. Or at least thought he did.

“So I told my mother about the mistress. I was mad at my father because he wouldn’t get me a horse. My mom freaked out. Big scene between my mom and dad. Lots of screaming. My mom was going to get a divorce.”

“Did they get a divorce?”

“No. There wasn’t time. Next day my mom slipped and fell down the big staircase we have. She didn’t die, but she can’t really do anything anymore.” She pantomimed a person barely able to hold their head up. “She has a nurse full time, just has to lie there in her room.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Yeah.” She clapped her hands together, signaling the end of sharing time. “Come on, let’s go. Pack up your little techie bag. Fearless Leader doesn’t like hanging around.”

Jack obeyed. He began stuffing things—small tools, a thumb drive, a juice box—into his Hogwarts shoulder bag.

“It doesn’t mean you’re bad just because your mom got hurt in an accident,” Jack said.

Diana winked. “I told the police my dad did it. I told them I saw him push her. They arrested him, it was all over the news. Messed up his business. The cops finally realized I was lying. Dad sent me to Coates Academy, the end.”

“I guess that’s worse than what I did to get sent to Coates,” Jack conceded.

“And that’s only part of the story. What I’m saying is that you don’t seem like a bad person, Jack. And I have a feeling that later on, when you realize what’s going on, you’re going to feel bad about it. You know, guilty.”

He stopped packing, stood with a set of earbuds dangling. “What do you mean? What do you mean about what’s going on?”

“Come on, Jack. Your little PDA of doom? The list you keep for Caine? All the freaks? You know what that list is about. You know what’s going to happen to the freaks.”

“I’m not doing anything, I’m just keeping the list for you and Caine.”

“But how will you feel then?” Diana asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Jack. How will you feel when Caine starts going down that list?”

“It’s not my fault,” Jack said desperately.

“You’re a deep sleeper, Jack. Just now, while you were sleeping? I held your pudgy little hand. Probably as close as you’ll ever get to holding hands with a girl. Assuming you even like girls.”