Gone

said.
    Patrick moved cautiously closer to the opening. His hackles went up and he growled.
    But he wasn’t growling at the opening.
    Lana heard the rush of padded feet. Down the side of the mountain, like a silent avalanche, raced a pack of coyotes, maybe two dozen of them, maybe more.
    They flowed down the mountain with shocking speed.
    And as they came Lana could hear them whispering in strained, glottal voices, “Food…food.”
    “No,” Lana told herself.
    No. She had to be imagining that.
    Lana shot a panicked look over her shoulder back at the shack now far below her. The right wing of the pack was already racing to cut her off.
    “Patrick,” she yelled, and bolted for the mine entrance.
    The instant they were past the threshold of the mine the temperature dropped twenty degrees. Like stepping into air-conditioning. There was no light but that which came from outside, and Lana’s eyes had no time to adjust.
    There was a terrible smell. Something foul, sweet, and cloying.
    Patrick turned back to face the coyotes and bristled. The coyotes boiled around the entrance to the mine, but stopped there.
    Lana, half blind, felt around in the dark for something, anything. She found rocks as big as a man’s fist. She began hurling, not aiming, just frantically flinging the rocks at the coyotes.
    “Go away. Shoo. Get out of here.”
    None of Lana’s missiles connected with a target. The coyotes sidestepped them daintily, effortlessly, like they were playing a not very challenging game.
    The pack split in two, forming a lane. One coyote, not the biggest, but by far the ugliest, walked with head high through the pack. One of his oversized ears was half torn off, he had mange that left bare patches of skin showing on the side of his shrewd muzzle, and the teeth on the left side of his mouth were partly exposed by some long-ago injury that had given him a permanent sideways snarl.
    The coyote leader growled at her.
    She flinched but raised a large rock in threat.
    “Stay back,” Lana warned.
    “No human here.” The voice was slurred, like dragged boots on wet gravel, but high-pitched.
    For several long seconds Lana just stared. It wasn’t possible. But it sounded as if the voice had come from the coyote.
    “What?”
    “Go out,” the coyote said. This time it was unmistakable. She had seen his muzzle move, caught the struggle of his tongue behind sharp teeth.
    “You can’t talk,” Lana said. “This isn’t real.”
    “Go out.”
    “You’ll kill me,” Lana said.
    “Yes. Go out, die fast. Stay, die slow.”
    “You can talk,” Lana said, feeling like she was crazy, really crazy now.
    The coyote didn’t respond.
    Lana stalled. “Why can’t I stay in the mine?”
    “No human here.”
    “Why?”
    “Go out.”
    “Come on, Patrick,” Lana said in a shaky whisper. She began backing away from the coyote pack leader, deeper into the darkness.
    Her foot hit something. She glanced down quickly and saw a leg sticking out of overalls caked with blood. She had found the source of the smell. Hermit Jim had been dead for a long time.
    She hopped backward over the body, putting it between herself and the coyote.
    “You killed him,” Lana accused.
    “Yes.”
    “Why?” She spotted a lantern, just a big square flashlight, really. She bent quickly and picked it up.
    “No human here.”
    The coyote yapped a command to his pack and they rushed into the cave and leaped over the body. Lana and Patrick turned and ran.
    Lana fumbled with the light as she ran, trying to find a switch. The darkness was quickly total.
    A sharp pain in her ankle almost brought her down, but she stumbled on. She found the switch and suddenly the mine shaft was bathed in eerie light that revealed only jagged rock and straining wooden beams. The shadows were like claw fingers closing around her.
    The coyotes, startled by the light, fell back. Their eyes glittered. Their teeth were faint white grins.
    And then they came for her.
    A jawlike vise closed around the muscle of her calf and she fell in a heap. The coyotes swarmed over her. Their stink was in her nose, their weight hammered her down.
    She fought to get up onto her elbows. A second vise closed over her upper arm and she fell, knowing she would never get back up. She heard Patrick’s terrified barking, so much deeper and louder than the coyotes’ excited yip yapping.
    All at once the coyotes released her. They yelped in surprise and pranced and twisted their heads left and