Gone (Gone #1)(129)

The second car in the garage was a luxury car, an Audi with a sunroof. Panda jumped behind the wheel, and Diana rode shotgun. Caine took the backseat for himself.

Panda pushed the automatic garage door remote control. Both doors rose.

Both cars lurched forward. The Subaru wagon promptly crunched into the side of the Audi.

Chaz was driving the wagon. He rolled down his window. "Sorry."

"Great start" Diana said.

"Go," Caine ordered tersely.

Panda accelerated into the street, keeping his speed to a prudent twenty-live miles per hour. The wagon stayed a block back.

"Bada bum bada bum bada bum bum bum." Diana began humming the William Tell Overture "Knock it off" Caine snapped.

They had gone two blocks when Panda slammed on the brakes.

A dozen coyotes streaked across the street.

Caine rose up through the sunroof and yelled, "What are you doing? Where are you going?"

Pack Leader stopped and glared with yellow eyes. "Whip Hand gone," he snarled.

"What? What happened at the day care?"

"Whip Hand go. Pack Leader go," the coyote said.

"No way" Caine said. To Diana, he said, "They've got the day care. What do I do?"

"You tell me, Fearless Leader"

Caine slammed his fist down on the roof of the car. "Okay,

Pack Leader,unlessyou'reacowsrd,follow me"

"Pack leader follows the Darkness. All others follow Pack

Leader. Pack is hungry. Pack must eat"

Tve got food for you." Caine said. "There's a plaza full of kids."

Pack Leader hesitated.

"It's easy" Caine said. "You can come with me and take as many kids as you want. Get every one of your coyotes. Bring them all. It's a buffet"

Pack Leader yipped a command to his pack. The coyotes circled back toward him.

"Follow us" Caine cried, caught up in it now, eyes wild and excited. "We go straight toward the plaza. You go straight at the kids there. It will work perfectly"

"The fire list is there?"

Caine frowned. "Who? Oh. Sam. Fire fist, huh? Yes, hell be there, but I'll take care of him" Pack Leader seemed dubious.

"If Pack Leader is frightened, maybe someone else should be pack leader"

"Pack Leader no tear" "Then let's kick," Caine said-

"Oh, man" Howard said."Oh God, oh God, what happened to you. Ore?"

He had slipped out of Caine's hideout and made his way to the house he had once shared with Ore. He found his protector there, sitting on a couch that had broken beneath Ore's weight, collapsed in the middle. Empty beer bottles were everywhere.

Ore held up a game controller. *My fingers are too big to work this thing "

"Ore, man, how did this ... I mean, man, what happened to you?"

Ore's face was still half his own. His left eye, his left ear and the hair above it, and all of his mouth were still recognizably Ore. But the rest of him was like some slumping statue made of gravel, lie was at least a head taller than he had been. His legs were as big around as tree trunks* his arms as thick as fire hydrants. He had burst through his clothing, which now hung from him and provided the barest degree of modesty.

When he shifted in his seat, he made a sound like wet stones.

"How did this happen, dude?"

"It's a judgment on me," Ore said flatly.

"What's that mean, man?"

"For hitting Bette. It's God, Howard. It's His judgment on me."

Howard fought the urge to turn and run screaming. He tried to look at Ore's one human eye but he found himself looking into the other eye, a yellow oyster beneath a brow of stone.

"Can you move? Can you stand up?" Ore grunted and stood much more easily than Howard expected.

"Yeah. I still have to be able to get up to pee," Ore said. "What happens when it spreads to your mouth?" "I think it's done spreading. It stopped a few hours ago, maybe."

"Does it hurt?"

"Nah, Uul il itches when it's spreading" As if to illustrate, he used one of his sausage-sized stone fingers to scratch the line between his gravel nose and his human cheek, "Heavy as you are, man, you must be pretty strong just to stand up.*'

"Yeah" Ore dipped his hand irto the cooler by his feet and came up with a can of beer. He tilted his head back and opened his mouth. He squeezed the top of the can and it blew out an eruption of liquid and foam. Ore swallowed what landed in his mouth. The rest dribbled down his face onto his rocky chest. "Only way I can open 'em now. My fingers are too big to pull the tab"

"What are you doing, man? You just been sitting here drinking beer?"

"What else am I gonna do?" He shrugged his slag heap shoulders. His human eye was either crying or teared up, "Thing is, Pm almost out of beer"

"Man, you have to get back in the game. There's a war coming. You need tobeinon it, making your statement, you know?"

"I just want to get some more beer"

"Okay, then. That's what we'll do, Ore; We'll get some more beer"

Stars filled the sky.

The moon glinted off the steeple.

A coyote howled, a wild ululation, a ghostly cry of despair. In his mind Sam saw the mutants in the church. He saw Edilio concealed with a handful of trusted kids in the smoked-out ruins of the apartment building, He saw Quinn on the roof with the machine gun he might use or not. He saw the kids milling and lost and scared at the south end of the plaza, And Mar>' and the little kids still in the day care. And Dahra in the church basement awaiting casualties.