Gone (Gone #1)(80)

"It's the FAYZ, Sam. It's not you: it's just the FAYZ."





TWENTY-NINE


113 HOURS, 33 MINUTES

LANA'S FOOT CAUGHT a rcot and she tell onto her hands and knees. Patrick bounded over to look at her, but kept his distance.

Nip, the coyote who was Una's personal tormentor, snapped his jaws at her.

"I'm getting up, I'm getting up" Lana muttered.

Her hands were scraped. Again.

Her knees were bloody. Again.

The pack was well out in front, weaving through sagebrush, leaping ditches, stopping to miff at gopher holes, then moving on.

Lana could not keep up. No nutter how tast she ran, the coyotes always outpaced her, and when she fell behind, Nip would snap at her heels, and occasionally draw blood.

Nip was a low-ranked coyote, anxious to prove himself to Pack Leader. But he wasn't vicious, not like some of them, so he wouldn't rip and tear at her with his teeth, he would only snarl and snap. Bui when she delayed the pack with her slow, clumsy human running, then Pack Leader would snarl at Nip and slash at him while Nip whimpered and abased himself.

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 Wis 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, tar 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 right, the coyotes, chasing the next meal.

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

*Tm a human" she told herself. Tm smarter than he is. Vta superior, Ym 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 cown 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.

*Tm only slowing you down" Lana sobbed. "Leave me here. Why do you want me around?"

"Darkness sav: 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 liiry and hatred came through in very few words. She didn't know what a stne 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 wot 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