Fear (Gone 5)

ng 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.