Hunger (Gone 2)

“Human, stop!” Pack Leader demanded.

Lana drove the truck backward. The back wheels rolled up and over the mummified corpse of the truck’s owner.

The truck was all the way inside now, as far as it would go. The mine shaft ceiling was mere inches above the cab. The walls were close. The truck was like a loose cork in the shaft. The coyotes, feeling the walls closing in, had to decide whether to be trapped by the truck. They opted to slither out of the way, back to the front of the truck where they took turns leaping on and off the hood, snarling, snapping, scrabbling impotently at the windshield with their rough paws.

The truck stopped moving, held tight. The doors would no longer open.

That was fine. That was the plan.

Lana twisted around in her seat, aimed carefully to avoid hitting the big tank in the back, and fired a single shot.

The rear window shattered into a million pieces.

Shaking with fear and excitement Lana crawled gingerly out of the cab into the bed of the truck. This excited the coyotes even more. They tried to shove themselves through the gap between the sides of the truck and the mine shaft walls, trying to get at her. One furious head jammed sideways between roof and a crossbeam.

They yapped and snarled and Pack Leader cried, “Human, stop!”

Lana reached the valve of the LPG tank. She twisted it open. Immediately she smelled the rotten-egg odor of the gas.

It would take a while for the gas to drain out. It was heavier than air, so it would roll down the sloping floor of the mine shaft, like an invisible flood. It would sink toward the deepest part of the mine. It would pool around the Darkness.

Would he smell it? Would he know that she had sealed his fate? Did he even have a nose?

Lana paid out the fuse she’d made. It was a hundred feet of thin rope she’d soaked in gasoline. She’d kept it in a Ziploc bag.

She took a coil and tossed it into the dark of the mine. It didn’t have to reach far.

She carried the rest with her, back into the cabin of the truck. She stepped on the brake, turning on the brake lights and illuminating the shaft in hellish red. It was impossible to see the gas, of course.

Lana waited, hands gripping the steering wheel. Her thoughts were a jumble of disconnected images, wild jump-cuts of her captivity with the coyotes and her encounters with the Darkness.

The first time she had—

I am the Gaiaphage.

Lana froze.

You cannot destroy me.

Lana could barely breathe. She thought she might pass out. The Darkness had never before spoken its name.

I brought you here.

Lana reached into her pocket and fingered the lighter. It was simple physics. The lighter would light. The gasoline-soaked rope would burn. The flame would race down the rope until it reached the gas vapor.

The gas would ignite.

The explosion would shatter the ceiling and walls of the shaft.

It might even incinerate the creature.

It might kill her, too. But if she survived, she would be able to heal any burns or injuries. That was her bet: if she could simply stay alive for a few minutes, she would be able to heal herself.

And then she would be truly healed. The voice in her head would be gone.

You do my will.

“I am Lana Arwen Lazar,” she cried with all the shrill force she could manage.