Gone (Gone 1)

“More time.” Astrid nodded agreement. “We don’t hurry. In fact, maybe we have to force some of the kids, maybe they’re arguing. You’re right, Caine won’t show up till he’s sure.”

“If we’re lucky, we have a half hour,” Edilio said. He glanced at his watch, not easy to read in the swiftly falling night.

“Yeah. Okay. All I’ve done so far is screw up. So if this is crazy, someone tell me.”

“You’re our guy, Sam,” Edilio said.

Astrid squeezed his hand.

“Then here’s what we do.”

Mary read.

She sang.

She did everything short of tap-dance. But there was no distracting the children from the horror before them. With solemn, fearful expressions they followed Drake’s every move. The whip hand filled every eye.

Some of the coyotes had gone to sleep. Others, though, eyed the children with a look that could only be described as hungry.

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Mary wished she had another Diazepam or maybe three or maybe ten. Her hands shook. Her insides churned. She needed to go to the bathroom, but she needed to stay with the children, too.

Her brother, John, was changing a diaper, no different from usual, except that John’s mouth was an upside-down “U” of trembling lips.

Mary read, “I would not eat green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-am.”

And in her head, going around and around like a crazed merry-go-round she could not stop, was the question: What do I do? What do I do if…What do I do when…What do I do?

A boy named Jackson raised his hand. “Mother Mary? The dogs stink.”

Mary kept reading. “I will not eat them in the rain. I will not eat them on a train…”

It was true, the coyotes did stink. The smell of them was suffocating, the heavy scent of musk and dead animals. They urinated freely against crib legs and tables and chose the corner with the dress-up clothes to defecate.

But the coyotes were not at ease, far from it. They were jumpy, nervous, unused to being in an enclosed space, not used to being around humans. Pack Leader maintained order with snarls and yips, but even he was jumpy and unsettled.

Only Drake seemed at ease. He lounged in the glider that Mary used to rock the tinies to sleep at night or feed them a bottle. He was endlessly fascinated by his whip hand, kept holding it up for inspection, coiling and uncoiling it, reveling in it.

Save the kids? Save John? Could she save anyone? Could she save herself?

What do I do?

What do I do when the killing starts?

Suddenly a girl was there. Taylor. Just there in the middle of the room.

“Hi. I brought food,” she announced. She held a plastic McDonald’s tray. It was piled high with uncooked hamburgers.

Every coyote head snapped around. Drake was too slow to react, caught off guard.

Taylor flung the tray against the common wall shared by the day care and the hardware store. Meat slid down the gaily painted cinder blocks.

Drake’s whip hand cracked.

But Taylor was gone.

The coyotes hesitated only a moment. Then they lunged toward the meat. In a flash they were snarling and snapping at one another, pushing, jostling, climbing over one another in a feeding frenzy.