Hunger

crunch of gravel. Limbs heavy. Mind in something like a dream-state now, all focus narrowed down to a simple task.
    She reached the mine shaft entrance. There above it,perched on the narrow ledge, stood Pack Leader snarling down at her.
    She aimed her flashlight and swung the pistol to follow the beam, but the coyote darted away.
    He’s not trying to stop me, Lana realized. He’s just observing. The eyes and ears of the Darkness.
    Into the mine entrance. The beam searched and stopped when it found the object.
    The face was like a shrunken head, yellow skin taut against bones that waited patiently to emerge. The rough, patched denim seemed almost new by comparison with the ancient-looking mummy flesh and sere-grass hair.
    Lana knelt beside him. “Hey, Jim,” she said.
    She now had to choose between the gun and the light. She laid the gun on Jim’s collapsed chest.
    She found his right front pocket. Wrangler jeans. The pocket loose. Easy enough to reach in. But the pocket was empty. She could reach the hip pocket easily enough as well, but it was also empty.
    “Sorry about this.” She seized the waist of his jeans and rolled him toward her, exposing the other hip pocket. The body moved oddly, too light, too easily shifted, so much weight evaporated.
    Empty.
    “Human dead.”
    She knew the voice instantly. It wasn’t a voice you ever forgot. It was Pack Leader’s slurred, high-pitched snarl.
    “Yes, I noticed,” Lana said. She was proud of the calmnessof her tone. Inside, the panic was threatening to engulf her, just one pocket left, and if the keys weren’t there?
    “Go to the Darkness,” Pack Leader said.
    He was a dozen feet away, poised, ready. Could she reach the gun before Pack Leader could reach her?
    “The Darkness told me to pick this guy’s pockets,” Lana said. “The Darkness says he wants gum. Thinks maybe Jim has a pack.”
    During her time as Pack Leader’s captive, Lana had come to respect the coyote leader’s ruthless determination, his cunning, his power. But not his intelligence. He was, despite the mutation that allowed speech, a coyote. His frame of reference was hunting rodents and dominating his pack.
    Lana shoved the corpse away from her, rolling it back to reveal the remaining pocket. The gun clattered onto the rock, Hermit Jim between Lana and the weapon.
    No chance now that she could reach it before Pack Leader could reach her.
    Lana fumbled for and found the pocket.
    Inside, something cold and hard-edged.
    She drew the keys out, squeezed them tight in her fist, then thrust them into her own pocket.
    Lana leaned out over poor, dead Jim and swept the flashlight until she found the gun.
    Pack Leader growled deep in his throat.
    “The Darkness asked for it,” she said.
    Her fingers closed on it. Slowly, knees creaking, she stood up.
    “I forgot. I have to get something,” she said. She walked directly toward the coyote.
    But this was too much for Pack Leader.
    “Go to Darkness, human.”
    “Go to hell, coyote,” Lana answered. She did not move the light, did not telegraph her move, just snapped the gun up and fired.
    Once. Twice. Three times. BangBangBang!
    Each shot was a bolt of lightning. Like a strobe light.
    There was an entirely satisfying coyote yelp of pain.
    In the strobe she saw Pack Leader leap. Saw him land hard, far short of his objective.
    She was past him and running now, running blind and heedless down the path and as she ran she screamed. But not in terror.
    Lana screamed in defiance.
    She screamed in triumph.
    She had the key.

TWENTY-SEVEN
    17 HOURS , 48 MINUTES
    BRIANNA WOKE.
    It took a while for her to make sense of where she was.
    Then the pain reminded her. Pain all down her left arm, left hip, left calf, left ankle.
    She had been wearing a denim jacket over a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. The hoodie was burned away on her left shoulder and arm, a skid burn. A three-inch oval was gone from her shorts on the same side.
    The skin beneath was bloody. She had hit the roof at high speed. The concrete had been like sandpaper.
    It hurt amazingly.
    She was on her back. Staring up at the bogus stars. Her head hurt. Her palms were scraped raw but nowhere near the scraped-to-the-meat injuries on her side.
    Brianna picked herself up, gasping from the pain. It was like she was on fire. She looked, expecting almost to see actual flames.
    It was scary bright on the roof of the power plant. So she could see the wounds all too clearly. The blood looked blue in