Fear: A Gone Novel

had not washed away the stain.
    Diana Ladris, beaten and scourged and crying out to heaven for forgiveness, would still be the mother of a monster.
    Brianna had a little roasted pigeon in her backpack. She had a more than healthy appetite, and she liked to always keep food handy. A history of starvation did that to people: made them nervous about food.
    Now she tore a piece of the pigeon breast away from the bone, felt through the meat with dirty fingers for any fragment of bone or cartilage. Then she found the little boy’s hand and put the meat into it.
    “Eat that. It’ll make you feel a little better.”
    They were deep inside the mine shaft. She’d almost laid into Justin with her machete before realizing he was sniffling, not snarling.
    Now what, though? She could walk him out to the mine shaft entrance, but what difference did it make? It was dark in here, and it was dark out there. Although at least out there that oppression of the soul that came with proximity to the gaiaphage might be lessened.
    “What can you tell me, kid? Did you see the thing?”
    “I can’t see anything.” He sniffed. But he was cried out. More like shell-shocked, that was how he sounded. Brianna felt an unaccustomed stab of sympathy. Poor kid. How was it right that this kind of stuff happened to a little kid? How was he ever going to forget it?
    He’d forget when he was dead, Brianna thought harshly, and that wouldn’t be too long from now, most likely.
    Then, surprisingly, Justin said, “There’s a really long drop.”
    “Up ahead, you mean?”
    “That’s where they forgot about me.”
    “Yeah? Right on, kid, that helps me to know that.”
    “Are you going to save Diana?”
    “Kind of more thinking about killing Drake. But if that means I save Diana, I can live with that.” She tore off another piece of her precious pigeon meat and gave it to him. What did it matter? This was a suicide mission. She wasn’t coming back. She wouldn’t need much to eat.
    Not a happy thought.
    “The lady. Diana. I think her baby is going to come out.”
    “Well, that would make everything just about perfect,” Brianna said with a sigh. “Kid. I have to keep going. You understand? You can keep heading back to the entrance. Or you can just sit tight right here and wait for me.”
    “Are you coming back?”
    Brianna gave a short laugh. “I doubt it. But that’s me, little dude. I’m the Breeze. And the Breeze doesn’t stop. If you get out of this somehow, and you get out of the whole FAYZ and get back home to your mom and dad and everyone out in the world, you tell people that, okay? Maybe find my family some—”
    Her voice choked. She could feel tears in her eyes. Wow, where had that come from? She shook her head angrily, pushed her hair back, and said, “I’m just saying: you tell people the Breeze never wimped out. The Breeze never gave up. Will you do that?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Ma’am,” Brianna echoed in an ironic tone. “Anyway. Later, okay?”
    She began to make her way down the tunnel. She had worked out a way to move a little faster than a normal person might. She used her machete, twirling it ahead of her in a variety of different patterns to avoid getting too bored—figure eight, a five-pointed star, a six-way star. She could swing the machete maybe two, three times as fast as a regular person. Nowhere near her usual speed, but one had to adapt.
    When the machete struck something, she slowed down until she found an open way. It was like a blind person using a cane, but so much more badass.
    From time to time she would feel for a rock and throw it ahead, listening for something that might be, as Justin had called it, “a really long drop.”
    She was very much against really long drops.
    She tossed a pebble finally and did not hear it clatter on stone. “Ah. I believe we have the long drop.” She edged forward until, sure enough, she could sense a gap in the floor.
    She crept to the edge of it on hands and knees. She positioned herself in a way to see straight downward. “Eyes open, don’t flinch,” she told herself.
    She aimed the shotgun down into the hole and pulled the trigger.
    Shotguns were never exactly quiet. But in the confines of the mine shaft it was like a bomb going off.
    The muzzle flash stabbed thirty feet down, painting an indelible image of stone walls, a ledge perhaps twenty feet straight down.
    The echo of the blast went on for some time. It sounded a bit like when a jet broke