Gone (Gone #1)(52)

She yelled at the top of her voice and ran straight at the coyote in her path.

The animal recoiled in surprise.

There was a (lash of something small and dark and the coyote yelped in pain.

Lana was past him in a heartbeat. Ten steps to the cabin door. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six ...

Patrick ran ahead of her, panicked, and shot inside.

Lana was on his heels, spun, and slammed ihe door shut without even slowing down. She skidded to a stop, turned, ran back to the door, and threw herself against it.

But the coyotes did not pursue. They had other problems. She heard wild yelping, canine cries of pain and rage.

After a while the yelping slowed, slurred, and finally stopped. A new coyote voice set up a wild howling, howling at the moon. Then silence-In the morning, with the sun bright and all the night's terrors banished, Lana found the coyote dead, a hundred feet from her door. Still attached to its muzzle was half a snake with a broad, diamond-shaped head. Its body had been chewed in half but not before the venom had flowed into the coyote's bloodstream.

She looked for a long time a: the snake's head. It was a snake without any doubt. And yet she was sure she had seen it fly.

Lana put that out of her mine. And along with it she dismissed the whisper she had heard because flying snakes and whispering coyotes the size of Great Danes, well, none of that was possible. There was a word for people who believed impossible things: crazy

"I guess Grandpa wasn't that big an expert on desert wildlife after all," she said to Patrick.





NINETEEN


132 HOURS, 46 MINUTES

'YOU DON'T HAVE to like the dude, brah, but he's doing good stuff" Quinn was poised lo knock on ihe door of iheir third house that morning. It was Sam and Quinn and a Coates kid, a girl named Brooke. They were "search team threes It was day eight ol the FAYZ. The tilth day since Caine had moved in and taken over.

The second day since Sam had kissed Astrid beside a freshly dug grave.

Caine had organized ten search teams to move through the town, each covering a square block to start. The idea was to go into each house on each of the four streets that formed the block. They were to make sure the stove was off, the air-conditioning was off, the TV was off, interior lights were off, and the porch lights lit. They were :o turn off automatic irrigation systems and turn off hot water heaters.

If they couldn't figure any of that out, they would add it to a list for Edilio to follow up on. Edilio always seemed able to figure out mechanical things. He was running around Perdido Beach with a tool belt and two Coates kids as "helpers"

The search teams were also tc search for lost kids, babies who might have been abandonee, might be trapped in cribs. And pets, too.

In each house they made a list of anything useful, like computers, and anything dangerous, like guns or drugs. They were to note how much food there was and collect all the medicines so they could be sent to Dahra. Diapers and formula went to the dav care.

It was a good plan. It was a good idea.

Caine had some good ideas, no question, Caine had tasked Computer Jack to come up with an emergency communication system. Computer Jack had the idea of going old school: he'd set up short-wave radios in the town hall, the fire station, the day care, and the abandoned house Drake used for himself and some of his sheriffs.

Bui Caine had taken no action against Ore.

Sam had gone to him to demand action.

"What am I supposed to do?" Caine had asked reasonably "Bette was breaking the rules, and Ore is a sheriff. It was a tragedy for everyone involved. Ore feels very bad *

So Ore still prowled the stree:s of Perdido Beach. For all Sam knew, Bette's blood was still on the bully's bat. And now the fear of the so-called sheriffs was magnified ten times over.

"Let's just get this over with," Sam said. He wasn't going to get into a discussion of Caine in front of Brooke. He assumed ihe ten-year-old was a spy. In any case, he was in a foul mood because one of the houses they were to visit later was his own.

Quinn knocked. He rang the bell. "Nada" He tried the door. It was locked. "Bring on the hammer" Quinn said.

Each search team had a wagon, either taken from the hardware store or borrowed from someone's yard. They carried a heavy sledgehammer in the wagon.

It had taken them two hours to deal with the first two houses. It was going to be a while before every home in Perdido Beach had been searched and rendered safe.

"You want to do the hammer?" Sam asked, deferring to Quinn.

"I live for the hammer, brah"

Quinn helled the hammer and swung it against the door, just below the doorknob. The wood splintered, and Quinn pushed the door back.

The smell hit them hard.

"Oh, man, what died in here?" Quinn said, like it was a joke.

The joke tell flat.

Just inside the door, on the hardwood floor lay a baby's pacifier. The three of them stared at it.

"No, no, no. I can't do this," Brooke said.

The three of them stayed on the porch, no one willing to go in. But no one was willing to close the door and just walk away, either.

Brooke's hands were shaking so badly, Sam reached for them and held them in his. "It's okay" he said. "You don't have to go in?

She was chubby, freckled, with straw-dry reddish hair. She wore the Coates uniform and had seemed, up until this moment, almost a cipher. She never joked or played around-just did what she was supposed to do, following Sam's lead.