Gone

she’ll be really happy she made me come here.”
    She would not have noticed the eyes glittering in the dark, except that Patrick was up all at once, bristling and growling like nothing she had ever heard before.
    “What is it, boy?”
    Green eyes, hovering, disembodied. Staring straight at her. The eyes blinked at a lazy speed, opened again.
    Patrick was barking like crazy now, prancing back and forth.
    The mountain lion roared. It was a hoarse, deep-throated, snarling sound.
    Lana yelled, “Go away! Leave me alone!” Her voice was pathetic—weak, and aware of its own weakness.
    Patrick ran back to Lana, then turned, finding his courage again, and faced the mountain lion.
    In a flash, battle was joined, an explosion of snarling, canine and feline, deep, terrible sounds. In half a minute it was over and the mountain lion’s glittering eyes reappeared farther away. They blinked once, stared, then were gone.
    Patrick came back slowly. He slouched heavily beside Lana.
    “Good boy, good boy,” Lana cooed. “You scared off that old lion, didn’t you, boy? Oh, my good dog. Good boy.”
    Patrick wagged his tail weakly.
    “Did he hurt you, boy? Did he hurt you, my good boy?”
    She ran her one usable hand over her dog. His ruff was wet, slick to the touch. It could only be blood. She probed, and Patrick whimpered in pain.
    Then she felt the flow. There was a deep cut in Patrick’s neck. The blood was pumping out, surging with each heartbeat, draining the dog’s life away.
    “No, no, no,” Lana cried. “You can’t die. You can’t die.”
    If he died, she would be alone in the desert, unable to move. Alone.
    The mountain lion would come back.
    Then the vultures.
    No. No. That wasn’t going to happen.
    No.
    The fear was too much to contain, it couldn’t be reasoned with, it couldn’t be resisted. Lana cried out in terror, “Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. I want my mom! Help me, someone help me! Mommy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I want to go home, I want to go home.”
    She sobbed and babbled, and the pain of loneliness and fear felt even greater than the agony of her battered body. It choked the air from her lungs.
    She was alone. Alone with pain. And soon the mountain lion’s teeth…
    Patrick had to live. He had to live. He was all she had.
    She cuddled her dog as close as she could without her own pain obliterating consciousness. She placed her palm over his wound, pressing as hard as she dared.
    She would stop the blood.
    She would hold him and stop his life from escaping.
    She would hold life inside him and he wouldn’t die.
    But blood still drained through her fingers.
    She held on and focused all her will on staying awake to hold the wound, to keep her friend alive.
    “Good boy,” she whispered through parched lips.
    She fought to stay awake. But thirst and hunger, pain and fear, loneliness and horror were too much for her. After a long while Lana fell asleep.
    And her hand slipped from the dog’s neck.

    Sam, Quinn, and Astrid spent much of the night searching the hotel for Little Pete. Astrid figured out how to access the hotel’s security system and make a plastic passkey that worked on all doors.
    They checked each room. They did not find Astrid’s brother, or anyone else.
    They came to an exhausted halt in the last room. The barrier cut right through it. It was as if someone had put up a wall in the middle of the room.
    “It cuts right through the TV,” Quinn said. He picked up a remote control and punched the red power button. Nothing.
    Astrid said, “I’d love to know what it looks like on the other side of the barrier. Did someone’s half a TV just turn on over there?”
    “If so, maybe they could tell me if the Lakers won,” Quinn said, but no one, including him, was in the mood to laugh.
    “Your brother is probably safely on the other side, Astrid,” Sam said, then added, “with your mom, probably.”
    “I don’t know that,” Astrid snapped. “I have to assume that he’s alone and helpless and that I’m the only one who can do anything to help him.”
    She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged herself tightly. Then, “I’m sorry. That sounded like I was mad at you.”
    “No. You just sounded mad. Not at me,” Sam said. “We can’t do any more tonight. It’s almost midnight. I think we should go back to that big room we saw.”
    Astrid could only nod, and Quinn looked about ready to crash. They found the suite. It had a huge balcony that overlooked the ocean far