Fear: A Gone Novel

that something about the way Sam held Astrid was wrong.
    Sinder looked out across her garden, the plants she knew as individuals, many with names she and Jezzie had given them. And she saw the line of stain push slowly now, slowly but relentlessly, toward the sky.
    Drake found the light almost unbearable. The setting sun stabbed his eyes with jagged pain. How long since he had seen the sun? Weeks? Months?
    There was no time down in the gaiaphage’s lair, no rising or setting moon, no mealtime, bath time, wake-up time.
    The coyotes were waiting for him in the ghost town below the mine entrance. Pack Leader—well, the current Pack Leader, if not the original—licked a scab on his right front paw.
    “Take me to the lake,” Drake said.
    Pack Leader stared at him with yellow eyes. “Pack hungry.”
    “Too bad. Take me.”
    Pack Leader bared his teeth. The coyotes of the FAYZ were not the runts that coyotes had been back before the FAYZ. They weren’t as big as wolves, but they were big. But it was easy to see that they were not well. Their fur was mangy. There were bare patches on all of them where scraped gray-and-red flesh showed through. Their eyes were dull. Their heads hung low and the tails dragged.
    “Humans take all prey,” Pack Leader said. “Darkness says don’t kill humans. Darkness does not feed pack.”
    Drake frowned and counted the pack. He saw seven, all adults, no pups.
    As if reading Drake’s mind, Pack Leader said, “Many die. Killed by Bright Hands. Killed by Swift Girl. No prey. No food for pack. Pack serves Darkness and pack goes hungry.”
    Drake barked out a disbelieving laugh. “Are you bitching out the gaiaphage? I’ll whip the skin off you!”
    Drake unwrapped his tentacle arm, which had been wound around his torso.
    Pack Leader retreated a few dozen feet. The pack might be weak with hunger but they were still far too quick for Drake to catch. He felt uneasy. The gaiaphage would not listen to excuses. Drake had a mission. He had been to the lake before, but never alone. He knew he could follow the barrier, but the barrier itself was a long way off. If he wandered around lost he might be spotted. The success of his mission lay in stealth and surprise.
    And then there was the problem of Brittney. Had the gaiaphage told her what to do? Would she do it? Would she know how to find the way without the coyotes as guides?
    “How am I supposed to feed you?” Drake demanded.
    “Darkness say to coyote: don’t kill human. Did not say don’t eat dead human.”
    Drake laughed with a certain delight. This Pack Leader was definitely a smarter animal than the original one. The gaiaphage had ordered the beasts not to kill humans for fear they might unknowingly kill someone useful: Lana, or even Nemesis. But Drake knew which humans were expendable.
    “You know where I can find a human?” Drake asked.
    “Pack Leader knows,” Pack Leader said.
    “Okay, then. Let’s get you boys some dinner. Then we go get Diana.”
    Astrid found Edilio just coming back down from the Pit. The Artful Roger and Justin, the little kid Roger looked after, were with him, but Edilio sent them both away when he spotted Astrid.
    “I got that thing, that … whatever it was. Up under a tarp. You want to look at it now?” Edilio asked.
    “No. I’m sorry you had to do that. It couldn’t have been very pleasant.”
    “It wasn’t,” Edilio said flatly.
    “Listen, it looks like the stain is accelerating. Sam wants me to check the frames early.”
    “I saw it growing. Faster. A lot faster,” Edilio said. “But I understand if Sam wants more information.” He blew out a weary breath and drank from a water bottle.
    “Don’t come yourself,” Astrid said. “Just send one of your guys.”
    Edilio made an incredulous face. “And tell Sam something happened to you because I wasn’t there?”
    Astrid treated it as a joke and laughed.
    But Edilio didn’t join in. “Sam’s all we’ve got. You’re all Sam’s got. Come on, it’ll be a quick, easy walk without having to carry those frames.”
    The plan had been to allow twenty-four hours before checking the frames. The idea had been that a frame that was 10 percent stain might grow to 20 percent stain and that then Astrid could calculate the rate of growth.
    But now that the plan was revealed as absurdly optimistic. All the frames were 100 percent filled with black. There was no chance of an accurate calculation: it had grown too far, grown too fast. And the