Gone (Gone #1)(76)

It was a spooky place, silent, yloomy, with wrecked glass-less windows like sad eyes staring down at her.

Behind the wreckage of the main street, out of sight of casual passersby—although why anyone would ever come to this desolate, unlovely place Lana could not imagine—was a more sturdy structure. It was built of the same gray lumber, but was still upright and topped with a tin roof. This structure was the size of a three-car garage. The tracks led there. "Come on, boy," Lana said.

Patrick ran ahead, sniffed at a weed near the shed's door, and came back, tail still high,

"So there's no one inside," Lana reassured herself. "Or else you would have barked"

She threw the door open, not wanting to creep in like some girl in a horror movie.

Sunlight came through dozens of holes and seams in the tin roof and knotholes in the wood. Still, it was dark.

The truck was there. Newer than her grandfather's truck, with a longer bed.

"Hello? Hello?" She waited. Thei, "Hello?"

She checked the truck first. The tank was half full. The keys were nowhere to be found. She searched every square inch of the truck and, nothing.

Frustrated, Lana began a search of the rest of the shack. It was mostly machinery. What looked like a rock crusher. Something that looked like a big vat with heat jets positioned beneath. A liquid petroleum gas tank that sat off in a corner.

"Okay. We either find the keys and probably kill ourselves driving" Lana summarized to an attentive Patrick. "Or we walk however many miles through the heat to Perdido Beach and maybe die of thirst"

Patrick barked.

"I agree. Lei's keep looking for the keys"

In addition to the tall double door on the front of the shed, there was a smaller door in the back. Through this Lana found a well-trodden path that wound through ugly piles of rock, past a graveyard of rusted-steel machines, and ended in a timber-framed opening in the ground. It looked like the mountain's surprised mouth, a crooked square of black with two broken support beams forming jagged buck teeth.

A narrow train track led into the mine.

"I don't think we want to go in there," Lana said.

Patrick moved cautiously closer to the opening. His hackles went up and he growled.

Bui he wasn't growling at the opening.

Lana heard the rush of padded feet. Down the side of the mountain, like a silent avalanche, raced a pack of coyotes, maybe two dozen of them, maybe more.

They (lowed down the mountain with shocking speed.

And as they came Lana could hear them whispering in strained,glottal voices,"Food .. .food."

"No," Lana told herself.

No. She had to be imagining that.

Una shot a panicked look over her shoulder back at the shack now far below her. The right wing of the pack was already racing to cut her off.

"Patrick," she yelled, and bolted for the mine entrance.

The instant they were past the threshold of the mine the temperature dropped twenty degrees. Like stepping into air-conditioning. There was no light but that which came from outside, and Lana's eyes had no time to adjust.

There was a terrible smell. Something foul, sweet, and cloying.

Patrick turned back to face the coyotes and bristled. The coyotes boiled around the entrance to the mine, but stopped there.

Lana, half blind, felt around in the dark lor something, anything. She found rocks as big as a man's fist. She began hurling, not aiming, just frantically flinging ;he rocks at the coyotes.

"Go away. Shoo. Get out of here"

None of Lana's missiles connected with a target. The coyotes sidestepped them daintily, effortlessly, like they were playing a not very challenging game.

The pack split in two, forming a lane. One coyote, not the biggest, but by far the ugliest, walked with head high through the pack. One of his oversized ears was half torn off, he had mange that left bare patches of skin showing on the side of his shrewd muzzle, and the teeth on the left side of his mouth were partly exposed by some long-ago injury that had given him a permanent sideways snarl

The coyote leader growled at he*.

She flinched but raised a large rock in threat.

"Stay back " Lana warned.

"No human here." The voice was slurred, like dragged boots on wet gravel, but high-pitched—

For several long seconds Lana just stared. It wasn't possible. But it sounded as if the voice had come from the coyote.

"What?

"Go out," the coyote said. This :ime it was unmistakable. She had seen his muzzle move, caught the struggle of his tongue behind sharp teeth.

"You can't talk," Lana said/This isn't real" "Go out"

"You'll kill me," Lana said. "Yes. Go out, die fast Slay, die slow" "You can talk" Lana said, feeling like she was crazy, really crazy now.

The coyote didn't respond.

Lana stalled. "Why can't I stay in the mine?"

"No human here."

"Why?"

"Go out"

"Come on, Patrick" Lana sad in a shaky whisper. She began backing away from the coyote pack leader, deeper into the darkness.

Her foot hit something. She glanced down quickly and saw a leg sticking out of overalls caked with blood. She had found the source of the smell. Hermit Jim had been dead for a long time-She hopped backward over the body, putting it between herself and the coyote.