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6 HOURS, 11 MINUTES
DRAKE EMERGED .
He was holding a stone. Which meant Brittney had been holding the same stone.
It must have been heavy for her but his tentacle wrapped around it and held it without much strain.
Around him the bugs were looking less and less like insects. Not even like really large insects. The least of them was as big as a Dalmatian. The largest were as big as ponies. They reminded him more of Humvees or tanks.
They seemed more fragile at this size, as though the same weight of burnished exoskeleton had been stretched to make a much larger creature. Only half of them were still carrying out debris. The rest, the larger ones, had stepped aside and now waited with an impression of impatience about them. Like jets waiting for takeoff.
That’s what they reminded him of: fighter jets. They had a predatory, dangerous air about them. Like all they had to do was get the word and they’d go blasting off, dealing out death and destruction.
Who was to give them the word? Him?
The coyotes had disappeared. Had they decided to leave? Or had the bugs eaten them finally? Drake noticed a smear of blood on a slab of rock and thought he knew the answer.
Had the Darkness made the coyotes sacrifice themselves to feed his new servants?
Drake tossed his rock onto the pile. Then he turned back toward the mine shaft. Back to the welcoming shadow of that hole in the earth. His step was light. His heart beat fast, but from joy, not fear.
He felt the mind of the Darkness touching his. Felt that powerful will. It wanted him. And he was sure now what the Darkness would ask of him, and what weapons it would give him.
The mine shaft was clear but still a dangerous place. The supporting timbers had not been replaced and now the stone roof was jagged, hanging precariously in some places, while in others it had been hollowed out into dark cathedral domes by the collapse.
“I’m coming,” Drake whispered. But why whisper? “I’m coming!” he yelled.
He left the last of the light behind. Total darkness now. He felt his way forward, step by step, hand and whip hand outstretched. He scraped against jutting rocks, stubbed his toes dozens of times. The air smel
led stale. It was hotter than it should have been in the shaft, warmer than the outside. He was sweating in the pitch black, gasping for scarce oxygen.
“I’m coming!” he shouted again, but his voice now was metallic and flat and did not carry any distance. He tripped and fell to his knees. When he stood up, he banged his head.
He was going down a long, long slope. How far had he come? He couldn’t say. He heard the rustle of the bugs coming behind him. In tight places they had to squeeze through, like massive cockroaches, flattening themselves to squeeze beneath low-hanging ledges, squirming onto their sides to edge past piers of solid rock.
They were following him. His army. Yes. He was certain of it. They would be his to command, his to use.
His army!
He could no longer breathe the air. But this was not his first time without oxygen. He still could see in vivid flashes the long, slow claw up through the mud of his grave.
No, Drake did not need air. Air was for the living, and Drake was something so much better than alive.
Unkillable.
Immortal.
The immortal soldier of the gaiaphage. His head swam with the joy of it.
Suddenly the floor ended and he pitched forward, face-first. He fell for several stretched seconds. He slammed into unyielding rock, bounced, rolled over, and laughed a soundless laugh.
He felt around with his hands and knew he was on a narrow ledge on one side of a deep vertical drop.
He stood up, put his toes on the edge, and looked down. Far below, a dim green light glowed, the only light in this pit of blackness. It might be a hundred feet, it might be a mile, it might be a hundred miles. There was no way to know.
He fell and fell, like Alice down the rabbit hole. It seemed to go on forever. Not seconds but minutes. An eternity.
WHUMPF!
