Fear: A Gone Novel

anything, not even a finger held right up to her eye, but she could feel the power of it. They had reached the entrance to the mine shaft. The darkness, already absolute, was now tight around them.
    It was easier to find their way, just to feel for the timbers along the side. But harder to breathe.
    A low moan escaped from Diana.
    Penny had a fleeting impulse to give her something to be scared of. But that was the problem: fear was the very air they were breathing now.
    “There are some hard places,” Brittney warned. “There’s a big, big drop. It will break your legs all up if you fall.”
    Penny shook her head, a gesture no one could see. “No way. No way. Done that, not doing it again.”
    Brittney’s voice was silky. “You could always leave.”
    “You think I …” Penny had to struggle to take the next breath. “You think I won’t?”
    “You won’t,” Brittney said. “You’re going to the place you always wanted to be.”
    “No one tells me—” Penny snarled. But the defiance died in midsentence. She tried again. “No one…”
    “Careful,” Brittney said smugly. “This next section is all jumbled-up rock. You’ll have to crawl over it.” Then, in that weird singsong voice she got from time to time, she said, “Crawl on our knees, on our knees we crawl to our lord.”
    Brianna was breathing hard without moving.
    The darkness, it was her kryptonite. Couldn’t use super-speed when you couldn’t see where you were going.
    So dark. It was actually worse than the images Penny had put in her head. Those had been cool in a way. This, though, this was just nothing.
    Just nothing nothing nothingness.
    Well, not total nothing, now that she thought about it. When she held the machete up in front of her face there was the tangy smell of steel. She drew her shotgun and there was the feel of the short stock and the smell of gunpowder residue.
    She could imagine the muzzle flash. It would be loud.
    Bright, too.
    Now there was a thought. She had what? Twelve rounds?
    Yeah. Interesting.
    There were sounds, too. She could hear them all up the path. Probably at the mine shaft entrance by now.
    Brianna could feel the dark presence of the gaiaphage. She wasn’t immune to that dark weight on her soul. But she wasn’t paralyzed by it. She felt the gaiaphage, but it didn’t frighten her. It was like a warning, like a terrible deep voice saying, “Stay away, stay away!” But Brianna didn’t scare worth a damn. She heard the warning; she felt the malice behind it; she knew it wasn’t a fake or a joke; she knew it represented a force of great power and deep evil.
    But Brianna wasn’t wired the way most people were. She’d known that about herself—and about other people—for some time. Since even before the FAYZ, but much more now since she had become the Breeze.
    She remembered once when she was young. How old was she then? Maybe three? Her and some older kids, that boy and his stupid sister who used to live three houses down. And they said, “We’re going to sneak into the old restaurant that burned up.”
    It was a big old Italian restaurant. It looked half-normal from the outside except there was yellow police tape across the charred front door.
    The two kids, she had no idea what their names were, tried to get little Brianna to be spooked. “Oh, look, that’s where some guy burned up. His ghost is probably haunting this place. Boo!”
    She hadn’t been scared. Actually she’d been disappointed when she realized there was no ghost.
    Then came the rats. There must have been two dozen of them, at least. They came scurrying out like they were being chased, rushing from the burned-out kitchen into the smoke-stinking dining room where the three kids were and the Olafsons—that was their name, Jane and Todd Olafson; no wonder she didn’t remember it—those two had screamed and run for it. The girl, Jane, had tripped and cut her knee pretty badly.
    But Brianna had not run. She’d stood her ground with her talking Woody doll in one hand. She remembered one of the rats had stopped and cocked its rat face to look at her. Like it couldn’t believe she wasn’t running. Like it wanted to say, “Hey, kid, I’m a huge rat: why aren’t you running?”
    And she had wanted to say, “Because you’re just a stupid rat.”
    She felt her way step by step now. Way too slow for a normal person, let alone the Breeze.
    “Oh, I feel you, old dark and scary,” she muttered. “But you’re just a stupid