CHAPTER NINE
Luna woke to the sound of snuffling and whining. For a moment, she thought it was some strange dream, and that eventually it would change into the sound of her mother trying to wake her up because she was going to be late for school.
Then she remembered that her school, and her mother, and just about everything else on Earth, was gone, and the sheer pain of that thought was enough to propel her into wakefulness, her eyes snapping open to take in the interior of the storm drains, the morning light coming in at their edge.
She saw the coyotes there, yapping and dragging something, their mouths bloody. It took her a moment to realize what was going on.
“Coyotes! They’ve got Bear’s body!”
She ran forward, trying to scare them off, because she’d heard somewhere that coyotes we
