Gone (36 page)

"Okay, I get the mommy thing, liut I got another question" Drake said harshly. "What's that thing with the teeth?"

88 HOURS, 24 MINUTES

ALL THROUGH THE night the coyotes slammed against ihe door, trying to break it down. But Sam and Quinn and Edilio had stripped the cabin
ot
everything that could be used to strengthen the door, and it would hold. Sam was confident of that.

For a while, at least.

"They're locked out," Sam said

"And we're locked in," Lana agreed.

"Can you do it?" Astrid asked Sam.

"I don't know," Sam admitted. "I guess. But I have to go out there to do it. If it works, okay. Maybe. If it doesn't.. "

"More pudding anyone?" Quinn, trying to lighten the mood.

"Better to stay in here," Astrid opined. "They'll have to come through the door. That means one or two at a time. Wouldn't that be easier, Sam?"

"Yeah, it'll be a party." He held out his tin cup. "Quinn: pudding me."

After several long hours the coyotes tired of slamming against the door. The trapped kids grabbed a few hours of sleep each, two at a time* always making sure two were awake.

The sky began to lighten to pearl gray, not enough to see clearly, but enough for Edilio to find a knothole that gave him a dim view of
the
front yard.

"There's got to be, maybe, a hundred of them out there" he reported.

Lana got up from repairing her clothing with a needle and thread and looked for herself. "That's more than one pack" she said.

"You can tell that?" Astrid asked, yawning and rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"I know a little about coyotes now" Lana said. "If we see this many, it means there's at least twice as many around here. Some have to be out hunting, Coyotes hunt day and night"

She sat back down and picked up her sewing. "They're waiting for something"

"What?*

"I didn't see Pack Leader, Maybe he left. Maybe they're waiting for him to come back"

"Sooner or later they'll lose interest, won't they?" Astrid asked.

Lana shook her head. "Normal coyotes, sure. But these aren't normal coyotes"

They waited and every hour or so Sam or Edilio would check the view, and every time they saw coyotes.

Suddenlv there came the sound of a hundred canine voices raised in excited yips.

Patrick stood up, bristling.

Sam ran to the peephole. Lana shone the flashlight on him. "They have fire" Sam said.

Lana pushed past him and climbed up to see for herself.
"Its
Pack Leader" she confirmed."He has a burning branch *

"It's not just a burning branch, it's a torch " Sam said. "It's not just something he found. It's only burning at one end. a branch wouldn't do that. Someone with hands had to have made it. Someone gave it to him"

"The Darkness," Lana whispered.

"This cabin will burn like a match " Sam said.

"No. I don*t want to burn" Lana cried." We have to get out, make some kind of a deal with Pack Leader."

"You said he'd kill us," Astrid said. She had her hands over Little Pete's ears.

"They want me alive, they want me to teach them human ways* that's what the Darkness said, he can't kill me, he needs me."

"Try," Sam said.

"Pack Leaded Lana shouted. "Pack Leader," "He doesn't hear you."

"He's a coyote, he can hear a mouse in its hole from fitly feet away" Lana snapped. Raising her voice to a scream then> "Pack Leader. Pack Leader. I'll do whatever vou want."

Sam was back at the spy hole/'He^ right outside," he whispered.

"Pack Leader, don't" Lana begged. "They're all backing away,* "Oh, God."

"Smoke" Edilio said, and pointed a flashlight beam ai ihe door's threshold.

Lana hefted a gold brick and began beating at the boards they had nailed over the door Ecifio grabbed her arms.

"You want to burn alive?" Lana demanded.

Edilio released her

"We're coming out," Una shouted as she banged at the boards. "We're coming out."

But the boards were no easier to remove than they had been to put up. A yellow tongue licked beneath the door.

Sam pulled back suddenly from the spy hole. "Fire"

"I don't want to burn " Lana wailed.

"It's the smoke that kills you," Sam whispered, looking at Astrid. "There's got to be a way out"

Astrid said,"You know the way out"

From the back wall now, smoke snuck in through cracks and seams.

Lana hammered at the boards. Smoke was gathering under the rafters. The cabin was burning quickly. Already the heat was becoming intolerable.

"Help me" Lana cried. "We have to get out"

Edilio sprang into action, helping to pull boards away.

Sam leaned over Little Pete's head and kissed Astrid on the mouth. "Don't let me turn into Caine" he said.

"HI keep an eye on you " she said.

"Okay. Everyone get back from the door," Sam said, but too quietly for it to register above the panic sounds.

He grabbed Lana's hand as she swung with a gold brick.

"What are you doing?" she cried.

"You saved my life with your power," Sam said. "My turn."

Lana and Edilio and Quinn shrank back from the doorway.

Sam closed his eyes. It was easy to find the anger. He was angry at so many things.

But for some reason, when he tried to focus on the outrage of this attack, his mind's eye did rot call up pictures of the coyote leader, or even of Caine. The picture in his mind was of his own mother.

Stupid. Wrong. Unfair of him, even cruel.

But still, When he reached for his anger, it was his mother he saw.

"It wasn't my fault," he whispered to that image. He raised his hands. Fingers splayed wide, ttut at that moment the half-burned door burst open. Flames and smoke were everywhere, a torrent of choking smoke.

And through the inferno leaped a coyote as big as a Great Dane.

That, Sam thought, made it easier.

A flash of green-white light erupted from his upraised hands and the coyote dropped to the floor. An eight-inch hole was burned clear through his body.

A second flash, like a thousand flashbulbs, and the front of the cabin blew apart.

The sudden vacuum swallowed some of the flame, not all, just a pause in the inferno and
Szm
was moving, dragging Astrid by the arm, Astrid dragging Little Pete in turn. The others shook off their shock and followed.

They advanced through ihe hole in the cabin and the coyotes surged forward, a mass of dangerous teeth beneath cold, focused eyes.

Sam let go of Astrid, raised his hands and the light exploded again. A dozen coyotes caught fire and fell or writhed or ran screeching into th* night like mad sparklers in the retreating gloom.

"Pack Leader" Lana warned in a voice reduced to a croak by the smoke that swirled around them. She was leaning on Edilio's arm, the two of them safely out of the cabin but tar from safe on the lawn.

The cabin tell with a crash behind them and burned like a bonfire. The orange light revealed a hundred staring, uncomprehending canine faces. Their eyes and teeth shone.

Pack Leader stood out from his pack, facing Sam, bristling, fearless.

Pack Leader barked a command and the entire pack moved as one, a wave of snarling tury.

Sam held his hands high and beams of purest green-white light fired. The first wave of ccyotes caught fire instantly. They turned in terror and raced Dack through their brothers and sisters, setting oft complete panic.

The pack turned tail and ran into the night. And Pack Leader was no longer fearless* nc longer leading, but following, racing to keep up with his beaten army. Some burned as they ran and set alight dry shrubbery.

Sam lowered his hands to his sides.

Astrid was beside him.

"Dude" Quinn said in an awestruck voice.

"I don't think they'll come back" Sam said.

"Where to now, man?" Edilio as

Sam stood gazing out at empty desert, so dark still that it swallowed all the light of the burning cabin. He wanted to cry, He hadn't known he had that much anger inside. It made him sick. His mother had done herbest, she wasn't to blame. He wanted to throw up.

Astrid saw that Sam was in no condition to talk, so she said, "We'll head back to Perdido 3each. We'll go back, and we'll make things right."

"And Caine will just step aside," Quinn said. "No problem, la di da."

Astrid flared. "Pm not saying it will be easy. It will be a test for us."

Edilio shook his head. "Isn't going to be a test. It's going to be a war"

"Sun will be up soon. Well be able to see something," Drake said.

"See what?" Panda whined. "There's nothing but desert out there."

"Caine says he's probably staying close to the barrier, to find his way back."

Panda sounded nervous when he said, "Caine thinks Sam is coming back?"

Panda was still sulking about his sprained ankle and almost useless, so Drake had grabbed two other Coates kids. The first was a fat Chinese-American kid called Chunk-Chunk was a low-level bully, not someone Drake would normally have hung out with. Plus, he would not shut Up but chattered away, mostly bragging about what bands he'd seen in concert and what movie stars he'd met. Chunk's lather was a talent agent in Hollywood. If there still was a Hollywood.

The other kid was a girl, skinny little black girl named Louise, one of the drivers. With Panda semiuseless, Drake needed a driver.

After the Andrew poof, Caine and Diana, along with the creepy little nerd, Jack, had gone to deal with Frederico and try to get things back under control at Coates. Caine had sent Drake off with orders to see if he could find Sam-Drake didn't like having to follow this order. He was sleepy and, as he pointed out to Caine, :here was a lot of emptiness out there* let alone at night, so how was he supposed to find Sam, even if he was still following the barrier?

"There's a road goes up Piggyback Mountain," Caine said, "Remember? The field trip? You can see for miles."

So despite it still being dark, and despite the fact that Louise was a much crazier driver than cautious Panda* and despite Panda's whining and Chunk's babble, they had driven up Piggyback Mountain and after a time found the lookout.

They had been there for a while, listening to coyote howls from down in the valley, Drake threatening to punch Chunk if he didn't shut up about how he had met Christina Aguilera onetime.

Drake was steaming, unhappy to be up here in the middle of nowhere, with no food or sodas or anything, just a bottle of water and these idiots.

"So what happened with Andrew?" Louise asked during one of Chunk's rare silences.

"He ditched, man. He cut a hole," Panda said.

"I still got more than a year, I'm only thirteen " Louise said, like anyone cared. "Someone will come rescue us in a year, right?"

"Sooner would be better," Drake drawled, "what With me having a month"

"I got till June," Chunk said. "You know what that makes me? I'm a Cancer"

"Got that right" Drake muttered.

"Sign of the crab" Chunk added.

"I have to go" Drake said. He climbed down out of the SUV they were in and walked to the edge of the lookout, up to the railing. He started peeing over the side and that's when he saw it. It looked like a match being carried through the night. Impossible to tell distances.

"Chunk! Get the binoculars"

Chunk came hustling up a few seconds later. Drake had watched as the tiny, flickering light went racing in zigzags far below.

Chunk said, "This is like being up in the Hollywood Hills, you know? Up on Mulholland Drive, which is where all these famous actors and stuff live. One time I went to this guy's house, he was, like, a director that my dad reps, right? And—"

Drake yanked the binoculars from Chunk's hands and tried to capture the spark in his field of vision. Almost impossible. He would catch it and then lose i:. Even when he managed to follow it for a few seconds, he couldn't make anything out, it was just an orange flame wandering through a featureless void. But it was almost surely moving too fast to be carried by a person, even a fast person.

Then the spark stopped moving. And gradually Drake realized the flame was growing.

He peered intently and thought he could make out some kind of structure, like a house or something in the spreading glow.

Panda had limped over to join them. Drake handed him the binoculars. "What do you think that is?"

Panda peered through the binoculars and at that moment there was a flash of light and he tore the binoculars away and yelled.

The second flash was even clearer, and now there were sparklers making light trails through the darkness of early morning.

Panda looked again. "There's some kind of house ... and a tower or something. And there's, like,... like dogs or something,"

A third blinding light and now even more of the number of crazily weaving sparklers.

"I don't know, man," Panda said.

"I think maybe we just found what we were looking for" Drake said.

Chunk, scared, said, "You think that's this kid you're trying to catch? Dude's got the power, man. Like in that movie—"

Drake yanked the gun from his belt and said,"No, Chunk: this is the power. And I've got it"

That shut Chunk up for a few seconds.

"The fire is spreading," Louise pointed out. "It's probably ail dry down there and bushes and stuff catching fire."

Drake had noticed the same thing. He glanced back in the direction they'd come from, tried to make sense of the topography. "Coates is back that way. The barrier is over that way" He pointed. "There's no wind, so the tire is going to climb the hilL Which means theyll be coming this way, toward Coates. They'll pass down below us"

"What are you going to do, shoot them when they walk past?" Chunk asked, eager and afraid.

"Yeah, that's right, three thousand feet down this hill and I'm going to shoot them with a handgun," Drake said sarcastically. "Moron."

"So what do we do?" Panda asked. "No wonder Caine's scared of this guy. Dude can do all that?"

"That's a four bar, right there, I bet" Chunk opined. "I seen all kinds of stuff at Coates with Benno and Andrew and Frederico, none of them could do that kind of stuff. You think he can take Caine down?"