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On the one hand, even here, a mile away from her, Drake could feel her hunger. Her hunger was his hunger. His only hunger since he—whatever he was—no longer felt the need for food. Or water. Or air.
But pain? He could still feel that, at least the pain she gave him. If he brought her too little, there was the thing the gaiaphage could do to him, that twisting inner agony, that little visit to hell.
Just then he spotted a roadrunner. The bird was about a foot and a half long from sharp beak to the end of its long tail. Of course that was mostly feathers and bone. But maybe a few ounces of actual meat, too, and if he nailed it he could head back to Gaia in the certainty of a pleasant, or at least pain-free, welcome.
They were quick little birds, though. Not as fast as the cartoon Road Runner, but quick and dodgy.
The bird had its head cocked. One eye was aimed right at Drake. He froze. He needed to halve the distance before he could strike.
The bird darted half a foot and suddenly had a lizard in its mouth. The lizard was still alive, thrashing in the bird’s beak, and that distraction let Drake advance with, slow, silent steps.
Then: the unsettling feeling that presaged the emergence of Brittney. Since they had been buried together and resurrected they had shared . . . well, not a body, really. In fact they shared nothing except that they seemed to trade existences. He would be there, and then Brittney would emerge, and while she was present, he was simply gone.
“Not now!” he hissed, frustrated at the thought of losing his prey.
He snapped his whip arm, but it was already a foot shorter. The roadrunner was gone.
Brittney opened her eyes to see she was alone, in a very dry-looking place, nothing but brambles and sand and stone. She noticed the bag on her belt. Looking in she saw a wad of lizards, some in pieces.
The hunger that had motivated Drake filled her as well, the hunger of her god. The thought of Gaia eating well, growing stronger, made Brittney smile. What a miracle to have her god take on human form, become the baby Gaia! No, not a baby anymore, a beautiful little girl, and growing at an amazing rate. By the time Brittney got back to her, she could be a preteen.
Wouldn’t that be exciting!
Food. That was the first thing.
She saw a roadrunner dart into a thornbush. She wasn’t fast enough to catch the bird, but she wondered . . .
Brittney dropped to her hands and knees and crawled to the bush. She got as low as she could and shielded her eyes from the glare of the true sun beating down very hard here near the center of the FAYZ.
It was shadier beneath the bush, but she could still see clearly, and there was her reward: a circular nest and in the center of that nest three small, white eggs, no more than an inch and a half in diameter.
Brittney carefully lifted the eggs from the nest and put them in her bag. She pulled apart a bit of the nest and used it to pack the eggs carefully so they wouldn’t break.
Now this would be a feast for Gaia!
She backed slowly, carefully, out of the thornbush, indifferent to the multitude of tiny cuts.
Brittney had no warning of the wire that went around her throat. No time even to flinch as the wire cut into her neck, severed the empty, bloodless arteries, and stopped tightening only when it had closed around her upper spine.
“Wish it was Drake, not you, Britt,” Brianna said.
Then Brianna put her foot on Brittney’s back and heaved as hard as she could. The wire sliced through cartilage and nerve tissue, making a sound like a knife cutting gristle, and suddenly Brittney’s head rolled free and landed in the dirt with a thump.
Brittney could not move her head, but she had rolled to an angle where she could see Brianna. Brianna was sweating from exertion. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand. The garrote—a two-foot-long piece of piano wire strung between steel grips that had once been part of someone’s home gym—hung from her free hand.
Brianna looked down at her, quite satisfied, and said, “Now I’m going to chop you into little bits and spread the pieces all over the place. See if you or Drake can reassemble yourself then.”
Brittney was not dead. Aside from no longer being attached to her body she didn’t feel any difference, just a dull pain in her neck. When she strained her eyes upward, she could see her body. The body was attempting to stand up all by itself.
But when Brittney tried to speak, she found she could only whisper, and the sound of her whisper was partly drowned out by the gasping noise of air sucked into her severed esophagus.
“You can’t kill us,” Brittney whispered.
“Maybe not. But I’m sure going to try.”
Brianna carried a sawed-off shotgun in her specially adapted runner’s backpack, and a machete, also slung over her back. She pulled out the machete and swung it so fast Brittney couldn’t see the blade move. She just saw the fact that her body was now minus a leg, which caused it to topple over.
Whump!
