Fear (Gone 5)

t.”

“Are you going to save Diana?”

“Kind of more thinking about killing Drake. But if that means I save Diana, I can live with that.” She tore off another piece of her precious pigeon meat and gave it to him. What did it matter? This was a suicide mission. She wasn’t coming back. She wouldn’t need much to eat.

Not a happy thought.

“The lady. Diana. I think her baby is going to come out.”

“Well, that would make everything just about perfect,” Brianna said with a sigh. “Kid. I have to keep going. You understand? You can keep heading back to the entrance. Or you can just sit tight right here and wait for me.”

“Are you coming back?”

Brianna gave a short laugh. “I doubt it. But that’s me, little dude. I’m the Breeze. And the Breeze doesn’t stop. If you get out of this somehow, and you get out of the whole FAYZ and get back home to your mom and dad and everyone out in the world, you tell people that, okay? Maybe find my family some—”

Her voice choked. She could feel tears in her eyes. Wow, where had that come from? She shook her head angrily, pushed her hair back, and said, “I’m just saying: you tell people the Breeze never wimped out. The Breeze never gave up. Will you do that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma’am,” Brianna echoed in an ironic tone. “Anyway. Later, okay?”

She began to make her way down the tunnel. She had worked out a way to move a little faster than a normal person might. She used her machete, twirling it ahead of her in a variety of different patterns to avoid getting too bored—figure eight, a five-pointed star, a six-way star. She could swing the machete maybe two, three times as fast as a regular person. Nowhere near her usual speed, but one had to adapt.

When the machete struck something, she slowed down until she found an open way. It was like a blind person using a cane, but so much more badass.

From time to time she would feel for a rock and throw it ahead, listening for something that might be, as Justin had called it, “a really long drop.”

She was very much against really long drops.

She tossed a pebble finally and did not hear it clatter on stone. “Ah. I believe we have the long drop.” She edged forward until, sure enough, she could sense a gap in the floor.

She crept to the edge of it on hands and knees. She positioned herself in a way to see straight downward. “Eyes open, don’t flinch,” she told herself.

She aimed the shotgun down into the hole and pulled the trigger.

Shotguns were never exactly quiet. But in the confines of the mine shaft it was like a bomb going off.

The muzzle flash stabbed thirty feet down, painting an indelible image of stone walls, a ledge perhaps twenty feet straight down.

The echo of the blast went on for some time. It sounded a bit like when a jet broke the sound barrier. Most likely Drake would hear, unless this shaft went down even farther than she imagined.

Brianna smiled. “That’s right, Drakey boy: I’m still coming.”

Two explosions. Two stabs of light.

No way to know how far away they were. The sound said a long way. The light seemed nearer. Impossible to tell.

It could be anyone. Brianna. Astrid. Or just any number of armed kids who might be lost in the darkness.

“Definitely a gun,” Sam said to no one. How weird that gunfire was almost reassuring.

He did not believe it had come from the same direction as the mine shaft. It was to the right. More like in a line to where he thought Perdido Beach might be. Which was not his objective. He wasn’t on a mission to find and rescue Astrid, if that was her. He was on a mission to—

“Too bad,” he snapped, again talking defiantly to no one.

If it was Astrid, and if she was in a fight, then having whoever she was fighting—maybe even Drake—see a line of Sammy suns approaching would give everything away. If it was Astrid—and he’d already convinced himself it was—he needed to move fast. He wouldn’t just have to walk tentatively into the dark, lighting his path back to home with a row of lights. He would have to run straight into darkness.

Sam fixed in his mind’s eye the direction the flashes had come from. He began to trot, lifting each step high to avoid tripping. He made it surprisingly far before something hard caught his foot and he slammed facedown into the dirt.