Fear: A Gone Novel

while later she spoke, using the vision of Diana still to say, “Turk, the time has come.”
    “Mmm?”
    “Caine humiliated me,” Penny said with Diana’s voice.
    “What?”
    “He’s the only one who can stop me,” Penny said. “He’s the only one who can humiliate me like that.”
    Turk was dumb but not that dumb. He pushed her away.
    She became herself again.
    “One of these days he’ll kill you, Turk,” Penny said. “Remember what he did to your friend Lance?” She drew a long arc in the air and punctuated it with a “Splat!”
    Turk looked nervously around. “Yeah, I remember; that’s why I am totally loyal to the king. He’s the king and I don’t mess with him.”
    Penny smiled. “No, you just fantasize about his girlfriend.”
    Turk’s eyes widened. He swallowed anxiously. “Yeah, well, what about you?”
    Penny shrugged.
    “Anyway, she’s not even his girlfriend anymore,” Turk said.
    She stayed silent, waiting, knowing he was so very weak, so very fearful.
    “What are you even talking about, Penny?” Turk cried. “You’re crazy.”
    Penny laughed. “We’re all crazy, Turk. The only difference is I know I’m crazy. I know all about me. You know why? Because sitting there with my legs broken and wanting to scream every single minute, eating the scraps Diana brought me, that kind of clears out your mind and you start seeing things the way they are.”
    “I’m out of here,” Turk yelled, and jumped up. He made it two feet before Caine was standing right in his path. Turk stepped back, one leg collapsing, barely caught himself from falling.
    The Caine illusion disappeared.
    “Just let me go, Penny,” Turk said shakily. “I’ll never tell anyone. Just let me go. You and Caine … whatever, okay?”
    “I think you’ll end up doing what I want you to do,” Penny said. “I’m done being ignored and I’m all done being humiliated.”
    “I’m not going to kill Caine. No matter what you say.”
    “Kill? Kill him?” Penny shook her head. “Who said kill? No, no, no. No killing.” She pulled a prescription bottle from her pocket, twisted it open, and shook six small, pale, oval pills into her palm. “Sleeping pills.”
    She slid the pills back into the bottle and closed it again.
    “I got the pills from Howard. He’s very useful. I told him I was having a hard time sleeping and I paid him with… Well, let’s just say that Howard has his own fantasies. Which, by the way, you would not believe.”
    “Sleeping pills?” Turk said in a shrill, desperate voice. “You think you’re going to take Caine down with sleeping pills?”
    “Sleeping pills,” Penny said, and nodded with satisfaction. “Sleeping pills. And cement.”
    Turk’s face was drained of color.
    “Find a way to get him here. To me, Turk. Bring him to me. Then it will be just the three of us running things.”
    “What do you mean, three?”
    Penny smiled and with Diana’s lips said, “You, me, and Diana.”
    Howard smelled them before he saw them. The coyotes smelled of rotten meat.
    He quelled the urge to run in panic when Pack Leader slouched onto the road ahead of him. He couldn’t outrun a coyote. But the coyotes hadn’t attacked anyone in a long time. The rumor was that they had been warned off by Sam. That was what people said, that Sam had laid down the law and threatened to go medieval on the whole coyote population if they messed with anyone.
    The coyotes were scared of Bright Hands. Everyone knew that.
    “Hey,” Howard said with all the bluster he could summon, “I’m a good friend of Bright Hands. You know who I mean? Sam. So I’m just going to walk on.”
    “Pack hungry,” the coyote said in his slurred, high-pitched, mangled speech.
    “Hah, very funny,” Howard said. His mouth was dry. His heart was pounding. He swung his heavy pack down. “I don’t have much food, just a boiled artichoke. You can have that.”
    He reached into the pack, fumbling noisily among empty bottles, searching for the feel of metal. He found it, closed his hand around the heavy knife, and pulled it out. He waved it in front of him and yelled, “Don’t do anything stupid!”
    “Coyote not kill human,” Pack Leader said.
    “Yeah. Yeah, you’d better not. My boy Bright Hands will burn you mangy dogs down!”
    “Coyote eat. Not kill.”
    Howard tried a couple of times to speak but the words would not come. His bowels were suddenly watery. His legs were shaking so hard he feared they would