Fear

But not dead.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” she said.

“Me neither,” Orc said.

“I’m…” Dekka stared into the darkness, not even sure she was looking in his direction. She paused until a sob subsided. “I’m afraid I won’t ever be me again.”

“Yeah, I get that, too,” Orc said. He sighed a huge sigh, like he’d walked a million miles and was just so weary. “Some of it is stuff I did. Some of it is stuff that just happened. Like the coyotes eating on me. And then, you know, what happened after that. I never wanted to remember that. But none of it goes away, not even when you’re really drunk or whatever. It’s all still there.”

“Even in the dark,” Dekka said. “Especially in the dark.”

“Which way should we go?” Orc asked.

“I doubt it matters much,” Dekka said. “Start moving. I’ll follow the sound of your footsteps.”

“Aaaahhh,” Cigar screeched. His hand in Astrid’s squeezed with incredible strength.

It was not the first time he’d suddenly cried out. It was a fairly regular thing for him. But in this case there were other sounds. A rush of wind, a stink like rotting meat, and then a snarl.

Cigar was torn away from Astrid.

She instinctively dropped into a crouch. A coyote missed its attack as a result and rather than closing its jaws around her leg just plowed into her with enough force to knock her on her back.

She fumbled in the dark for her shotgun, felt something metallic, not sure which way it was pointing, fumbled, and was brushed aside by a rushing coyote, fur over muscles.

They could hunt in the dark, but the close-in killing work was harder without sight.

Astrid rolled over, flat, stretching her arm, trying to find the shotgun. One finger touched metal.

Cigar was screaming now in that despairing, beaten voice of his. And the snarling was intensifying. The coyotes were frustrated, too, it seemed, unable to pinpoint their prey, snapping blindly where their ears and nose told them the prey would be.

Astrid rolled toward the gun and now she was on top of it, feeling with trembling fingers, searching for—yes! She had the grip. She pushed it forward, probably filling the barrel with sand, probably jamming the trigger. She tried to tell where Cigar was, rolled once more, pulling the shotgun on top of her, and fired.

The explosion was shocking. A jet of light so much bigger than it had ever seemed before.

In the split-second flash Astrid saw at least three coyotes, and Cigar mobbed by them, and a fourth just a few feet away, lips back in a snarl, all of it freeze-framed for the duration of the flash.

The noise was awesome.

She pushed herself to one knee, aimed at the place where the fourth coyote had been standing, and pulled the trigger again. Nothing! She’d forgotten to jack another round in. She did it, aimed shakily at blank space, and fired again.

BOOM!

This time she was expecting the flash and saw that the coyote she’d aimed at was no longer there. Cigar was no longer mobbed by the beasts. His terrible, white marble eyes stared.

Something had happened to the coyotes. They had exploded.

The flash wasn’t enough to show more. Just that their insides were where their outsides had been.

Silence.

Darkness.

Cigar panting. Astrid, too.

The smell of coyote guts and gunpowder.

It was a while before Astrid could master her voice. Before she could reassemble her shattered thoughts into something like coherence.

“Is the little boy here?” Astrid asked.

“Yes,” Cigar said.

“What did he do?”

“He touched them. Is it… Is it real?” Cigar asked tentatively.

“Yes,” Astrid said. “I think it’s real.”

She stood with her smoking shotgun in her hands and looked at nothing. She was shaking all over. Like it was cold. Like the darkness was made of wet wool wrapped all around her.

“Petey. Talk to me.”

“He can’t,” Cigar said.

Silence.

“He says it will hurt you,” Cigar said.

“Hurt me? Why doesn’t it hurt you?”

Cigar laughed, but it wasn’t a joyful sound. “I’m already hurt. In my head.”

Astrid took a breath and licked her lips. “Does he mean it will make me…” She searched for a word that wouldn’t hurt Cigar.

Cigar himself was beyond worrying about euphemisms. “Crazy?” He said. “My brain is already crazy. He doesn’t know how to do it. Maybe it would make you crazy.”

Astrid’s fingers ached, she was clutching the gun so hard. There was nothing else to hold on to. Her heart beat so loud she was sure Cigar must hear it. She shivered.

Anything else. Not that. Not madness.

She could get all the answers she needed by way of Cigar. Except that Cigar was coherent for only snatches of time before he spiraled down into lunatic rantings and shrieks.

“No,” Astrid said. “Not taking the risk. No. Let’s get going.”

Like she knew which way to go. She’d been following Cigar, who had been following—or so he said—Little Pete.

Panic. It tickled her, teased her. There was something smothering about the darkness. Like it was thick and hard to breathe.

The darkness was so absolute. She could walk in circles and never know it. She could walk into a zeke field and not know it until the worms were inside her.

“Just turn the damned lights on, Petey!” she yelled.