It was silver and bronze, dully reflective. It had an insect’s head with prominent, gnashing mouthparts that made Drake think of a Benihana chef flashing knives ceremonially. Its wickedly curved mandibles of black horn or bone protruded from the side of its mouth.
It smelled like curry and ammonia. Bitter but with a tinge of curdled sweetness.
More came now, scurrying up beside the first. They had eyes and antennae. The eyes were arresting: royal blue irises that could almost pass as human. But with nothing of human awareness, nothing of human vulnerability or emotion. Like ice chips.
They ran in a rush on six legs, stopping, starting, then skittering forward again at alarming speed. Their tarnished silver wings folded back against bronze carapaces, like beetles or cockroaches. The wings sometimes flared slightly as they ran.
Bugs. Maybe. But each at least five feet long and three feet tall, with antennae adding another foot.
Drake stared into the soulless blue eyes of the first bug.
He was ready with his whip hand, and Jamal was ready with his rifle, but Drake didn’t like his chances much if they were looking for a fight. There were a dozen of the creatures, jostling around one another, like ants pouring from a mound or wasps storming angrily from a disturbed hive.
Drake felt a stab of fear: could he survive being eaten? Chopped into chunks by those gnashing mouths and swallowed?
A coyote, keeping a cautious distance, loped to the top of the rise and spoke in the strangled speech his species had achieved.
“See the Darkness,” the coyote said.
“Them?” Drake asked. The coyotes and these monstrosities could communicate? “They want to see the Darkness? Fine,” Drake said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the mine. “Go for it.”
“They hungry,” the coyote said.
Drake didn’t have to ask what he was supposed to do about that. Because now the same foul, insinuating voice that was speaking through the coyote reached him directly, touched his willing, submissive mind and flooded it with a deep and awful joy.
Drake closed his eyes and rocked slowly back and forth, feeling the touch of his master.
Soon Drake would be with the Darkness. The Darkness would give him all he needed. And Jamal had served his purpose.
“So tell them to eat something,” Drake said. “Sorry, Jamal.”
“What?” Jamal waited for Drake to laugh, like it was a joke. But Drake just smiled and winked and said, “Dude, sooner or later I was going to kill you anyway.”
“No, no!” Jamal gasped. He backed away. He turned and ran.
The nearest bug, icy blue eyes focused with terrible intensity, flashed out something that might have been a tongue. It was black, and as thick as a rope with a barbed tip like a cluster of fishhooks. The tongue caught Jamal’s leg and Jamal fell facedown.
“Drake! Drake!” Jamal yelled. “Please!”
Drake laughed. He gave a little wave as the rope tongue yanked Jamal toward his doom.
Jamal fired. BLAM BLAM BLAM. At close range, then closer range, then inches from the bug’s hideous face.
The tongue released and snapped back. Then scimitar mandibles cut Jamal in half and there was no more firing, just a hopeless wail of despair.
The massive bugs surged, and within seconds nothing was left of Jamal.
Then, without a pause, the blue-eyed monsters went to work moving rocks at dazzling speed, pushing with their mandibles, rising on their hind four legs and gripping with their front two.
Drake felt Brittney returning. But that was okay, because now his Lord and Master, the Darkness, Drake’s one true God was with him, filling his heart and soul.
And It would not be thwarted.
Chapter Twenty-Three
9 HOURS, 14 MINUTES
ASTRID WAS IN the backyard using the slit trench when it happened. She had sat by Little Pete’s bed for two days, waiting, fearing.
But even dehydrated, she still had to go eventually. She’d hoped it would be safe. She’d hoped to see that Albert’s people were delivering water and food and the epidemic was past.
But the streets were abandoned. She heard no distant sounds of truck engines, nor even the squeaky wheels of hand-drawn wagons.
So she did what she had to do at the slit trench in the yard and continued to pray as she had almost constantly.
Whooosh-craaack!
The entire upper floor of the house blew apart.
There was no fire. No flame.
The top floor—the tile roof, the siding, the walls, wood, and drywall, all of it—blew apart almost quietly. A big chunk of roof spun over her head, throwing off red tiles as it spun and dropped with a massive crash against the wall of the house next door.
She saw a window, the glass still somehow in place, go whirling straight up like a rocket. She followed it with her eyes, waiting for it to come spiraling down at her. It crashed into the branches of a tree and finally then the glass shattered.
The bed from her own bedroom was on a roof two houses down. Sheets and clothing fluttered to the ground like confetti. It was almost festive, like someone had set off a Fourth of July rocket and now she could oooh and aahh as the sparkles came down.
But no fire. No loud explosion. One second it had been a two-story house and now it was a one-story house.
One of Astrid’s kneesocks from her dresser landed on the grass, draped over the lip of the trench.
Astrid remembered she could move. She ran for the house yelling, “Petey! Petey!”
The back door was partly blocked by a small piece of siding. She threw it aside and ran through the kitchen and up the debris-strewn stairs.