Gone (Gone #1)(131)

The beam hit the front of Gained car. The sheet metal blistered, and Caine climbed awkwardly out through the sunroof while others Sam didn't care erough to identify bolted through the doors.

Sam fired and Caine dodged.

A blast hit Sam, stopped him as dead as if he'd run into a wall. He searched wildly for Caine. Where? Where?

Muffled screams from inside the church joined the background roar, a noise out of a chile's hell, high-pitched cries for mother, agonized cries, desperate, pleading.

A flash of movement and Sam fired.

Caine tired back and the statue on the fountain was blown oft* its pedestal and fell with a splash in the fetid water.

Sam was up and running. He had to find Caine, had to find him, kill him, kill him.

More machine guns firing and Edilio's voice yelling, "No, no, no, stop firing, you're hitting kids!"

Sam rounded the burning Audi. Caine running ahead, leaping a fire hydrant.

Sam fired and the ground under Caine's feet burst into flame and oily black smoke. The pavement itself was burning. Caine went sprawling onto the street, rolled quickly, got to one knee, and Sam took a massive blow that laid him Hat on his back, stunned, blood coming from his mouth and ears, limbs all askew, unable to ... unable... Caine, a wild, bloody, screamhg face-Sam felt hatred burn through him and erupt from his hands.

Caine jumped aside, too slow, and the scourging light seared his side. Shirt burning, Caine screamed and beat at the flame.

Sam tried to stand, but his head was swimming.

Caine bolted into the burned-out apartment building, through the same door Sam had entered to try and save the little firestarter.

Sam wobbled but ran after him.

Up the stairs and to the scorched hallway, still stinking of smoke. The top Iloor was a wreckage of burned timbers and asphalt-tiled slopes of roof like children's slides, and fragments of walls and incongruous jutting pipes.

A blast and Sam could actually see the half-wall beside him ripple from the impact.

"Caine. Let's finish this," Sam rasped.

"Come get me, brother," Caine cried in a pain-squeezed voice. "I'll bring this place down on us both "

Sam located the sound of his voice and ran down the hallway, ran beneath the stars, firing the deadly light from his hands.

No Caine.

A creaking door, still hanging from hinges though the wall around it was gone, swung slowly.

Sam kicked it, spun, and fired irto the room.

A charred wooden beam flew through the air. Sam ducked under it. The next one hit his left arm, shattering the elbow. More debris, a torrent of it, drove Sam back.

Suddenly, there was Caine, not ten feet from him.

Caine's hands were raised over his head, fingers splayed, palms out. Sam clutched his shattered left elbow with his right hand.

"Game over, Sam," Caine said.

Something blurred behind Caine and he reeled. He clutched his skull.

Brianna stood over him, brandishing her hammer.

"Run, Breeze!" Sam yelled, but too late. Even as he staggered backward, Caine fired at point-blank range and Brianna flew backward into the walk through the wall.

Caine jumped after her through the opening.

Sam fired into the walk burned a hole. Through it he could see Caine blowing away the next wall.

Sam felt the floor buckle beneath him.

The building was collapsing.

He turned and ran, but all at once the floor was gone and he was running in midair, falling, and the building with him, all around him, on him.

He fell and the world fell on him.





FORTY-FIVE


14 MINUTES

QUINN WATCHED IN frozen horror as the coyotes attacked the children.

He saw Sam fire and miss.

He saw Sam agonize for a terrible moment as Caine attacked the church.

Sam ran toward the church. Quinn shouted, "No!" He aimed.

"Don't hit the kids, don't hit the kids," he sobbed, and squeezed the trigger. Aiming at the mass of coyotes. So many more than before.

The coyotes barely noticed him.

One fell, twisting, like it had tripped, and didn't get up.

Then he could shoot no more, the beasts were in with the kids. He ran for the ladder and s id and fell and landed hard in the alley.

Run away, his brain screamed, run from it. He took three panicked steps away, toward the beach, running toward ihe beach, but then, as though some invisible force had taken hold of him, he slopped.

"Can't run away, Quinn," he told himself

"Can't."

And even as he said the words, he was running back, into the day care, pushing past Mary shielding a child in her arms, past her out to the plaza, wielding the gun as a club now, running and screaming his head off like a lunatic, swinging the gun butt to a sickening crunch on a coyote's skulk

Edilio was there and kids were shooting and Edilio was shouting, "No, no, no," and then blood was in Quinn's eyes and blood was in his brain and blood was everywhere and he lost his mind, lost his mind swinging and screaming and hitting, hitting, hitting.

Mary clutched Isabella lo her and huddled with John, and the kids cried hearing the madness outside, the screams and snarls and guns.

"Jesus, save us, Jesus, save us," scmeone was repeating in a racked, sobbing voice, and Mary knew in some distant way that it was her.

Drake heard the coyote howl in the night and knew in his black heart what it meant.