Sam stopped. He made a gesture to Dekka, indicating she should shield her eyes. Then he launched a fireball into the air, a Sammy sun. The bushes immediately became a green-tinged ghost space.
Just off the trail a coyote flinched at the light but did not run away. It snarled, bared its teeth, and crouched for a leap.
Dekka was faster than Sam. The coyote found itself floating a few feet off the ground, unable to kick, unable to leap.
It was a bizarre sight, the mangy, dirt-yellow coyote squirming and yowling in midair. But at last it
let itself go limp.
“Why are you attacking us?” Sam asked. “Does Pack Leader know you’re trying to kill humans?”
“I Pack Leader,” the coyote said in its strangled, weird voice.
Sam stepped closer. Humans were not the only creatures to have evolved in the lawless universe of the FAYZ. One of the earliest had been the coyotes who served the gaiaphage. Some had mutated to develop the shorter tongues and flattened muzzles that allowed them a mangled sort of speech.
“Look,” Jack said. He was coming closer, pointing. “He has them, too.”
Sam walked cautiously around Pack Leader to see the other side. There were the insect jaws protruding from the matted fur. Two, maybe three of them.
“I came for hunter kill me,” Pack Leader said.
Sam knew this was not the original Pack Leader. Lana had killed that Pack Leader. But whether this was the second coyote to hold the title or some other coyote, he didn’t know. This one had slightly better powers of speech than the first.
“Hunter’s dead,” Sam said.
“You kill.”
“Yes.”
“Kill me, Bright Hands.”
Sam had no sympathy for the coyote. The coyotes had participated in the town plaza massacre. There were bodies buried in the cemetery that had been so badly ripped by coyote teeth that they were unrecognizable.
“The flying snakes cause this?” Sam asked, pointing at the awful parasites.
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
Pack Leader made a purely coyote growl deep in his throat. “No words.”
“Then show us,” Sam said. “Take us to them.”
“Then you burn me?”
“Then I’ll burn you.”
At first Brittney was confused. She wondered if she was dreaming. Dreaming of fresh, cool air and a sky overhead.
But no, she was not in the basement.
Drake had escaped!
She had to do something. Had to warn someone. Even if it meant being returned to the basement. If Drake was loose in the world, he would do evil.
But to be locked away again . . . Surely she could take just a moment to be free. Just a moment . . .
She realized she was not alone.