Gone Series: Plague Part 30

At the end of two hours they'd moved no more than a foot and a half deeper into the shaft.

Brittney had reappeared once during that time and she had bought into the idea of helping with the digging. But Drake couldn't kid himself: they weren't getting anywhere. It could take months. Years. Forever.

The coyotes came and went, watching, no doubt thinking about eating Jamal. So when Drake heard the sound of movement coming from around the bend in the road, he a.s.sumed it was coyotes.

Only it wasn't the usual stealthy pad-pad-pad of coyotes. This was a sound with clicks and sudden rushes.

Drake wiped his brow and turned warily toward the sound.

It looked like something from a science fiction movie. Like an alien or a robot or something, because it was way too big to be just an insect.

It was silver and bronze, dully reflective. It had an insect's head with prominent, gnas.h.i.+ng mouthparts that made Drake think of a Benihana chef flas.h.i.+ng knives ceremonially. Its wickedly curved mandibles of black horn or bone protruded from the side of its mouth.

It smelled like curry and ammonia. Bitter but with a tinge of curdled sweetness.

More came now, scurrying up beside the first. They had eyes and antennae. The eyes were arresting: royal blue irises that could almost pa.s.s as human. But with nothing of human awareness, nothing of human vulnerability or emotion. Like ice chips.

They ran in a rush on six legs, stopping, starting, then skittering forward again at alarming speed. Their tarnished silver wings folded back against bronze carapaces, like beetles or c.o.c.kroaches. The wings sometimes flared slightly as they ran.

Bugs. Maybe. But each at least five feet long and three feet tall, with antennae adding another foot.

Drake stared into the soulless blue eyes of the first bug.

He was ready with his whip hand, and Jamal was ready with his rifle, but Drake didn't like his chances much if they were looking for a fight. There were a dozen of the creatures, jostling around one another, like ants pouring from a mound or wasps storming angrily from a disturbed hive.

Drake felt a stab of fear: could he survive being eaten? Chopped into chunks by those gnas.h.i.+ng mouths and swallowed?

A coyote, keeping a cautious distance, loped to the top of the rise and spoke in the strangled speech his species had achieved.

"See the Darkness," the coyote said.

"Them?" Drake asked. The coyotes and these monstrosities could communicate? "They want to see the Darkness? Fine," Drake said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the mine. "Go for it."

"They hungry," the coyote said.

Drake didn't have to ask what he was supposed to do about that. Because now the same foul, insinuating voice that was speaking through the coyote reached him directly, touched his willing, submissive mind and flooded it with a deep and awful joy.

Drake closed his eyes and rocked slowly back and forth, feeling the touch of his master.

Soon Drake would be with the Darkness. The Darkness would give him all he needed. And Jamal had served his purpose.

"So tell them to eat something," Drake said. "Sorry, Jamal."

"What?" Jamal waited for Drake to laugh, like it was a joke. But Drake just smiled and winked and said, "Dude, sooner or later I was going to kill you anyway."

"No, no!" Jamal gasped. He backed away. He turned and ran.

The nearest bug, icy blue eyes focused with terrible intensity, flashed out something that might have been a tongue. It was black, and as thick as a rope with a barbed tip like a cl.u.s.ter of fishhooks. The tongue caught Jamal's leg and Jamal fell facedown.

"Drake! Drake!" Jamal yelled. "Please!"

Drake laughed. He gave a little wave as the rope tongue yanked Jamal toward his doom.

Jamal fired. BLAM BLAM BLAM. At close range, then closer range, then inches from the bug's hideous face.

The tongue released and snapped back. Then scimitar mandibles cut Jamal in half and there was no more firing, just a hopeless wail of despair.

The ma.s.sive bugs surged, and within seconds nothing was left of Jamal.

Then, without a pause, the blue-eyed monsters went to work moving rocks at dazzling speed, pus.h.i.+ng with their mandibles, rising on their hind four legs and gripping with their front two.

Drake felt Brittney returning. But that was okay, because now his Lord and Master, the Darkness, Drake's one true G.o.d was with him, filling his heart and soul.

And It would not be thwarted.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

9 HOURS, 14 MINUTES.

ASTRID WAS IN the backyard using the slit trench when it happened. She had sat by Little Pete's bed for two days, waiting, fearing.

But even dehydrated, she still had to go eventually. She'd hoped it would be safe. She'd hoped to see that Albert's people were delivering water and food and the epidemic was past.

But the streets were abandoned. She heard no distant sounds of truck engines, nor even the squeaky wheels of hand-drawn wagons.

So she did what she had to do at the slit trench in the yard and continued to pray as she had almost constantly.

Whooosh-craaack!

The entire upper floor of the house blew apart.

There was no fire. No flame.

The top floor-the tile roof, the siding, the walls, wood, and drywall, all of it-blew apart almost quietly. A big chunk of roof spun over her head, throwing off red tiles as it spun and dropped with a ma.s.sive crash against the wall of the house next door.

She saw a window, the gla.s.s still somehow in place, go whirling straight up like a rocket. She followed it with her eyes, waiting for it to come spiraling down at her. It crashed into the branches of a tree and finally then the gla.s.s shattered.

The bed from her own bedroom was on a roof two houses down. Sheets and clothing fluttered to the ground like confetti. It was almost festive, like someone had set off a Fourth of July rocket and now she could oooh and aahh as the sparkles came down.

But no fire. No loud explosion. One second it had been a two-story house and now it was a one-story house.

One of Astrid's kneesocks from her dresser landed on the gra.s.s, draped over the lip of the trench.

Astrid remembered she could move. She ran for the house yelling, "Petey! Petey!"

The back door was partly blocked by a small piece of siding. She threw it aside and ran through the kitchen and up the debris-strewn stairs.

The full weirdness struck her then. The handrail of the stairs stopped as it reached the level of the upper floor. The steps themselves ended on a splintered half riser.

Astrid stepped out onto what was now a platform, no longer the second floor of a house. Everything was gone. Everything. It was as if a giant had come along with a knife and simply sliced off the top, cutting through walls and plumbing pipe and electrical conduit.

All that was left was Little Pete's bed. And Little Pete himself.

He coughed twice. He licked his lips. His eyes stared blankly up at open sky.

Astrid followed the direction of his gaze. And there, in the blue morning sky, a puff of gray cotton. Directly above the house.

Brianna was seething. She seethed a fair amount at the best of times, but she was still doing a long, slow burn over the fight with Drake and the fact that Jack had left town without even telling her so she had to hear it from Taylor.

She didn't much like Taylor. She had once suggested that Taylor should adopt a cool name, like Brianna had with "the Breeze." "The Teleporter," maybe. Taylor had laughed at her.

Brianna wasn't supposed to be on the street. The quarantine was still in effect. But she was thirsty, hungry, humiliated, and furious, and she was looking for trouble.

Or at least a sip of water.

She was giving this whole waiting-around thing a few more minutes and then she was going to run up to Lake Evian herself for a drink. Taylor said the road was dangerous, that the greenies were there. But Brianna didn't fear flying snakes. Not even flying snakes that peed green bug eggs, or whatever that was all about. She was too fast for some stupid snake, flying or crawling.

Someone had nailed plywood up over a window in town hall.

"What's that about?" she wondered aloud.

She shrugged and was getting ready to zoom when she heard a sound like chewing. Like a lot of chewing getting rapidly louder. And coming from the window with the- Splinters pushed out through the bottom of the plywood. They were pushed by something silvery that moved with respectable speed.

Brianna stared up at it for a few seconds and then, quite suddenly, metallic-looking insects, each the size of a small dog, began to force their way through the plywood.

The first to emerge spread beetlelike wings and floated to the ground.

Brianna had plenty of time to observe its gnas.h.i.+ng mouth and its antennae, and to be utterly creeped out by eyes the color of rubies.

She could guess what they were. These were the things that Taylor had gotten all freaked out by. The things that had supposedly come out of Hunter's guts. Only now they were right here and pouring down the wall from the second floor of town hall.

The instant the first bug landed it launched itself at Brianna. She sidestepped it like a matador with a bull.

"You're quick, I'll give you that," Brianna said. "But you're not the Breeze."

As one the swarm raced toward her, scythe mandibles slas.h.i.+ng and mouthparts gnas.h.i.+ng and red eyes blazing.

This was more like it. She could just zoom far away, of course, but she was enjoying this game.

Until Edilio came at a run, unlimbering his automatic rifle and yelling at the top of his lungs.

"Oh, well," Brianna said. "Time to end this, I guess."

She unsheathed her big knife and sliced the antennae from the nearest bug. Then, just for show, just because it was a cool move, she somersaulted and landed almost astride another bug. She stabbed it, aiming for the s.p.a.ce between its hard-looking wings. Her blade bit the wing instead and did not penetrate.

The bug twirled, fast, very fast. Not fast enough. Brianna stabbed straight for the bloodred eyes and the blade sank deep into one.

The bug stopped moving.

"That's why you don't bug the Breeze," Brianna said.

Edilio had almost arrived and Brianna was pretty sure he would spoil her fun. So she awaited the charge of another bug, dropped low, swept her knife, and sliced through its two front legs. It crashed forward onto its horror-movie face.

BLAM! BLAM!.

Edilio fired at one of the bugs that had evidently had enough and was running from the Breeze.

Brianna saw the bullets. .h.i.t. And she saw them ricochet off the hard wings.

"Head shots!" she yelled to Edilio. "You have to get 'em in the head!"

She had meant to point to the one she killed as an example. But the dead bug was moving.

So was the bug from whom she had subtracted the front legs.

With a frown she pulled out her shotgun. She caught up to the wounded bug, placed the muzzle right in its eerie eyes, and pulled the trigger.

The bug head blew most of the way off. Greenish-black brain goo sprayed.

The bug shook itself like a wet dog. Then kept moving.

"No, no, no," Brianna said. "I may lose to Drake, but I do not lose to a bunch of bloodshot roaches."

BLAM! BLAM!.

Edilio shot his bug twice more. Then, seeing Brianna hesitate, he yelled, "Try to crush them!"

"With what?"

Edilio looked around helplessly. "I don't know."

"They're getting away!"

The bugs, half a dozen of them, were ignoring Brianna and Edilio now and racing off down the street, away from town.