And she did. Had for several minutes already, without knowing what it was, what to call it.
“How close do you have to be to do your thing?” Edilio asked.
When Dekka tried to answer, she found her mouth was too dry, her throat too tight. She swallowed dust and tried again. “Close.”
The Jeep reached the bottom of the trail. Edilio pulled the car around so that it was facing away. He left the keys in the ignition. “I don’t want to have to fumble for the keys,” he said. “Hopefully the coyotes haven’t learned to steal cars.”
Dekka found she was strangely reluctant to get out of the Jeep. She saw sympathy and understanding in Edilio’s eyes.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I don’t even know what I’m scared of,” Dekka said.
“Whatever it is,” Edilio said, “let’s go kill it.”
They started up the trail. They soon came upon the fly-covered corpse of a coyote.
“We got one at least,” Edilio said.
They stepped carefully past the dead animal. Edilio kept his machine gun at the ready, sweeping the barrel slowly, side to side. The pistol was heavy in Dekka’s hand. She searched each rock, each crevice, waiting, tense, clenching muscles she didn’t know she had.
Slowly they climbed.
And there, at last, the entrance to the mine.
“Can you do it from here?” Edilio whispered.
“No,” Dekka said. “Closer.”
Dragging feet through the dirt and gravel. Like they were walking through molasses. Every molecule of air seemed to drag at them. Slow-mo. Edilio’s finger flexing spasmodically on the trigger. Dekka’s heart thudding.
Closer.
Close enough.
Dekka stopped. Edilio, with exquisite slowness, turned to point his gun at the two coyotes that had appeared almost by magic just above the mine shaft.
Dekka tucked her pistol into the back of her belt. She had some vague, distant memory of someone telling her, “Better if it goes off to shoot a hole in your butt than in your…”
A million years ago. A million miles away. Another planet. Another life.
Dekka raised her hands, spread them
wide and…
Movement from within the cave.
Slow, steady. A hint of pale flesh in the shadow.
Lana moved like a sleepwalker. She came to a stop just within the cave, under the overhang.
She looked right at Dekka.
“Don’t,” Lana said in a voice not her own.
When Sam came to some time later, Brianna was kneeling beside him, a first-aid kit open on the floor. She was spraying cold liquid bandage onto his worst whip marks.
“Drake,” Sam managed to gasp.