Sanjit stared at him, feeling as if he was looking at a stranger. Virtue had never talked about his early childhood. Sanjit berated himself for being so self-centered, he’d never asked.
“I see that fire and I just have a bad feeling, Sanjit. I have a bad feeling it’s getting ready to happen again.”
Taylor found Edilio with Orc, Howard, Ellen, and a few others. They were retreating from the worst of the fire.
Voices cried pitifully from the upper floors of a house that burned like a match head. Taylor saw Edilio press his hands to his ears.
Taylor grabbed his hand and pulled it away. “There are kids in that house!”
“Yeah?” Edilio said savagely. “Do you think?”
It was so unlike Edilio, it shocked Taylor. The others looked at her like she was an idiot. They all heard the cries. “I can do it,” Taylor said. “I can pop in and out before the fire gets me.”
Edilio’s furious glare softened just a little. “You’re a brave girl, Taylor. But what are you going to do? You can bounce, but you can’t carry anyone out with you.”
Taylor stared at the house. It was half a block away and even from this distance the heat was like a furnace.
“Maybe I can…” She faltered.
“What’s happening in there? You can’t stop it. And you don’t want to bounce in there just to see it. Believe me,” Edilio said. “You don’t want to see it.”
The cries were not heard again. A few minutes later the roof collapsed inward.
“The fire is spreading on its own now. We should try to make a fire break,” Ellen said.
“A what?” Edilio asked.
“A fire break. It’s what they do in forest fires. They knock down the trees that are in the path of the fire. It stops the fire from moving tree to tree.”
“You talking about knocking down houses?” Howard said. “You talking about Orc knocking down houses. That’s going to—”
“Shut up, Howard,” Orc said. Not mean, but definite.
Howard shrugged. “Okay, big guy, if you want to get all altruistic.”
“Whatever,” Orc said.
Dekka ran into Edilio. Literally. She was obviously half blinded by smoke.
“Dekka!” Edilio cried. “Have you seen Sam?”
Dekka tried to answer, choked, coughed, and ended up shaking her head.
“Okay. Come with us. The fire is still spreading.”
“What are you—?” she managed to ask.
“We’re going to make a fire break,” Edilio said. “The fire is jumping house to house. We’re going to knock some houses down and push them back.”
“Get Jack, too,” Dekka said, squeezing the words out and biting off the racking cough that followed.
“Good idea,” Edilio said. “Taylor?”
Taylor disappeared.
“Come on, guys,” Edilio said, trying to rally his sick, dispirited group. “We can maybe still save a lot of the town.”
He led the way and the others followed.
Where was Sam? Usually it would be Sam leading the way. Sam handing out orders.
Was Sam okay? Had he caught up with Zil? Had he done what he threatened to do? Had he killed Zil?
Edilio could still hear echoes of the cries from the burning house. He knew he would be hearing them in his dreams for a long time to come. He wasn’t going to manage too much sympathy for Zil if Sam had carried out his threat.
But even now it didn’t sit well with Edilio. It was just another symptom of a world gone crazy.
Taylor bounced back as they reached Sheridan Avenue. There was smoke everywhere. The fire was moving across backyards from Sherman to the west side of Sheridan.
“Jack’s on his way. Breeze tried to get up but she took like three steps and folded.”
“Is she okay?” Dekka asked.
“Flu and super speed don’t go too well together, I think,” Taylor said. “She’ll live.”
Edilio tried to make sense of the lay of the land. Fire raged to the west. There was no normal wind, there never was in the FAYZ, but it seemed as if the fire was making its own wind. Blowtorch heat blew. No question the fire would follow that wind.
“It’s coming this way,” Ellen said.
“Yeah.” The fires on Sherman made silhouettes out of the row of houses on the west side of Sheridan.
Suddenly, out of a swirl of smoke came a small boy pulling a larger one behind him.
“Hey, little man,” Edilio said. “Get straight out of here.”
The little boy, Edilio recognized him now, was Justin. Mary had asked him to keep an eye out for Justin. And Roger. Roger was in a bad way, unable to speak or even open his eyes.
“Don’t try to talk,” Edilio said. “Justin: get to the plaza, okay? Both of you. Lana will be there, probably. Go to her or go to Dahra Baidoo, okay? Right now! Get out of here!”
The two soot-covered kids took off, choking, staggering, Justin still pulling Roger behind him.
“I don’t think we can save the houses on that side,” Ellen said. “But the street’s pretty wide here. And if we can knock the east-side houses down, push them back, maybe that’ll be enough.”
Jack came down the street, looking stunned and cautious.
“Thanks for coming, Jack,” Edilio said.
Jack shot a dirty look at Taylor, who smiled blandly. Something had gone on there, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it. Taylor had convinced Jack, that was all Edilio needed to know.
“Okay,” Edilio said. “We’re going to take that house down. Taylor, check inside. Dekka, I guess we’ll have you weaken it first. Then Orc and Jack can go at it.”
Orc and Jack looked each other over. Orc reveled in his strength. Jack was almost embarrassed by his. But that didn’t mean he was prepared to be shown up by Orc.
“You take the left side,” Orc said.
Taylor popped back. “No one home. I checked every room.”
Dekka raised her hands high. Edilio wondered if her being sick would weaken her power. But the porch furniture was rising, weightless, smashing into the overhang. A long-disused bike floated up and into the sky.
The house groaned and creaked. Dirt and garbage rose in a sort of slow-motion, reverse rain.
Then, suddenly Dekka dropped her hands. The bike and furniture and garbage all crashed back to earth. The house complained loudly. A part of the roof fell in.
Orc and Jack moved in.
Orc slammed his fist through a wall near a corner. He hooked his arm through and pulled on the support beams. It was hard work, he strained, but all at once the corner broke. Siding splintered outward, wooden studs cracked and protruded like bones in a compound fracture. The corner of the house sagged.
Jack tore a light pole from its cement base, handed it off to Orc and then grabbed a second metal streetlight for himself. Once the house was reduced to sticks and slabs and broken pipes Dekka raised the whole mess off the ground.
There followed an awkward, dangerous sort of dance. Orc and Jack used the long lamp poles to shove the weightless debris back from the street. But it wasn’t an easy thing to manage because Dekka had to keep adjusting gravity to keep the debris from rising skyward, and Orc and Jack had to fight the differing gravity levels that at times made the light poles almost weightless, and at other times returned them to their full weight.
Eventually, the crumpled, shattered home was shoved into the parking spaces behind the buildings that fronted San Pablo and the town plaza. As they finished that first house the fire jumped to the home to their west. But there was now at least a chance that it would be stopped from crossing Sheridan.
Throughout the morning they worked. They slogged up and down three blocks of Sheridan, taking down the most directly endangered houses. Edilio and Howard searched each house, shuttled kids away from the danger, and ran behind Dekka, Orc and Jack, stomping out embers that landed on the east side of the street, smothering smoldering grass with trash can lids and shovels.
T
he sound of it all, the tearing, ripping and sudden crashes, joined the snapping and crackling and whoosh of the fire that ate its way down the west side of the street.
The sounds of Perdido Beach dying.
TWENTY-EIGHT
13 HOURS, 12 MINUTES
THE BOAT CHUGGED away from Perdido Beach.
There were only seven of them now. Caine. Diana. Penny. Tyrell. Jasmine. Bug. And Paint. Paint had gotten his nickname from huffing paint out of a sock. His mouth was invariably whatever color of paint he’d found most recently. It was red at the moment, Caine noted. Like Paint had gone vampire.
Of the seven, only two had useful powers: Penny and Bug. Diana still had the ability to gauge powers accurately, but how useful would that be?
The other three were here only because they’d had the good luck not to be in the Zodiac. Although maybe that was bad luck: those who had fallen in at the marina were probably being fed by Sam’s people.
“Where we going, man?” Paint asked for about the tenth time since they’d set out.
“Bug’s island,” Caine said. He was feeling patient. He’d gotten this far, proven that he could still hurt Sam, proven that he could still carry out a plan. As weak as he was, he had succeeded in moving himself and his followers from Coates right through the heart of enemy country.
The motor chugged reassuringly. The tiller vibrated in Caine’s hand. A memory of the long ago world filled with machines and electronics and food.
It was cramped in the boat. It wasn’t much of a craft. A bass boat, shallow-draft, flat-bottomed, low sided. Dirty white fiberglass. Or maybe it was aluminum. Caine didn’t care.
There were three life jackets on the boat, just three. Tyrell, Bug, and Penny had them on, strapped with varying degrees of effectiveness. A lifeboat full of starved refugees.
Diana didn’t take a life jacket. Caine knew why. She didn’t care anymore whether she lived. It had been hours since she had spoken.
It was as if Diana had finally given up. Caine could look at her openly now without having to pretend he wasn’t. She would no longer lash out with some mean-funny remark.
She was the wreck of Diana. She was what was left if you took Diana’s beauty and wit and toughness away. A crispy-haired, trembling, sullen, sallow-fleshed skeleton.
“I see more than one island,” Penny commented.
“Yeah,” Caine said.
“Which one is it?”
Not a time to admit that he didn’t know. And a bad time, probably, to admit that if they guessed wrong and managed to climb off onto the wrong island they’d probably die there. Not enough strength left in any of them to go island hopping.
“There’s food there?” Tyrrell asked hopefully.
“Yes,” Caine said.
“It’s like these totally rich people, these actors,” Bug said. A voice from a faint shadow of a boy sitting in the bow.
“Is there enough gas to get there?” Tyrrell asked.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Caine said.
“What if we run out?” Paint asked. “I mean, what do we do if we run out of gas?”
Caine was tired now of playing the confident leader. “We’ll float around helpless and die out here on the deep blue sea,” he said.
That shut everyone up. Everyone knew what would happen before they just let themselves starve out here, becalmed.
“You saw him,” Diana said to Caine. She didn’t even have enough energy to look at him.
He could lie. But what was the point? “Yes,” Caine said. “I saw him.”
“He’s not dead,” Diana said.
“I guess not.”
He deeply disliked the idea that Drake might be alive. Not just because Drake would blame Caine for his death. Not just because Drake would never forgive, never forget, never stop.
Caine hated the idea of Drake alive because he really hoped that death at least was real. He could face dying, if he had to. He could not face dying and then living again.
Jasmine stood up, shaky.
Caine glanced at her, indifferent really, but hoping she wouldn’t capsize the boat.
Without a word, Jasmine toppled over the side. She hit the water with a splash.
“Hey,” Diana said wanly.
Caine kept his hand on the tiller. Jasmine did not surface. A white lace doily of disturbed water marked where she had sunk gratefully into the deep.
And then there were six, Caine thought dully.
Hank dead.
Antoine gone, lost somewhere in the madness, maybe dead too, as bad as he was hurt.
Zil sat trembling. Home in his stupid little compound, with his stupid little girlfriend, Lisa, staring at him like a cow, with stupid Turk mumbling in the corner, trying to make up some kind of explanation of how all this was really a good thing.
Sam would come for him now. Zil was sure of that. Sam would come for him. The freaks would triumph. If they could kill Hank and maybe Antoine, too, oh God, then it was just a matter of time.
Caine could just as easily have smashed Zil himself into the water that way. If Zil had been the one shooting, Caine would have killed him as easily as he did Hank. Him! The Leader!
It wasn’t in the plan. Zil was supposed to use the confusion of the fire to rally as many normals as he could and take over town hall. Make Astrid a prisoner, hold her as a hostage so Sam wouldn’t…
A stupid plan. Caine’s plan. How was he ever going to rally kids in all that chaos? In all the smoke and panic and confusion, with Sam blasting Antoine and then Hank.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And then, attacking Caine to make it look good. Stupider, still. He couldn’t fight the freaks head-on.
Zil could still see the look on Hank’s face as he soared into the air. The scream that tore his throat as he came hurtling back down. The stretched-out quality of time as they waited for Hank to come back up, knowing he wouldn’t. Knowing that there was no way to survive that fall.
Like diving off a building into a cereal bowl of water, Lance had said. Hank was deep in the submarine mud. And it could have been Zil. It could have been him with his head buried in wet mud, maybe still alive for just long enough to try to take a breath…
“Good thing is, kids will totally believe us now,” Turk was saying as he chewed his fingernails.
“What?” Zil snapped.
“With Hank killed by Caine,” Turk explained. “I mean, no one’s going to think we had a deal with Caine.”
Zil nodded absently.
“That’s true,” Lance said. He didn’t quite grin, but almost. And for a second Zil saw something different in Lance. Something that didn’t match his handsome face and cool demeanor.
“Maybe we should just stop it.”
Lisa. Zil was surprised to hear the sound of her voice. She didn’t usually say anything. Mostly she just sat there like a bump on a log. Like a stupid cow. Mostly he hated her, and right now he hated her a lot, because she was seeing the truth, that Zil had lost.
“Just stop what?” Lance asked. He clearly didn’t like Lisa, either. Zil knew one thing for sure: Lisa wasn’t pretty enough that Lance would ever be interested in her. No, she was just the best Zil could get. At least, so far.
“I mean…,” Lisa began, but she ended with a shrug and fell silent again.
“The thing we need to do,” Turk said, “is keep telling people how it was all Caine. We keep telling people Caine burned the town.”
“Yes,” Zil said without conviction. He dropped his head and looked down at the floor, the dirty, ratty rug. “The freaks.”
“Right,” Turk said.
“It was the freaks,” Lance said. “I mean, it was. Who pushed us into it? Caine.”
“Exactly,” Turk said.
“We need some more people, is all,” Lance said. “I mean, Antoine was mostly just a stupid druggie. But Hank…”
Zil lifted his head. Maybe there was still hope. He nodded at Lance. “Yeah. That’s it. We need more kids.”
> “If kids know we were trying to stop Caine, we’ll get plenty more kids,” Turk said.
Lance smiled faintly. “We tried to stop Caine burning down the town.”
“Hank died trying,” Zil said.
He said it. And he knew that Turk already half believed it. In fact, he half believed it himself.
“Lance, kids will listen to you. You and Turk, the two of you, and you too, Lisa: Go out there. Spread the word.”
No one moved.
“You have to do what I say,” Zil said, trying to sound strong, not like he was pleading. “I’m the Leader.”
“Yeah,” Turk agreed. “Only…I mean, kids may not believe us.”
“Are you scared?” Zil demanded.
“I’m not,” Lisa said. “I’ll do it. I’ll go around and tell all our friends the truth.”
Zil peered suspiciously at her. Why was she being brave all of a sudden?
“Cool, Lisa,” he said. “I mean, that would be heroic.”
Lance sighed. “I guess if she can do it, so can I.”
Only Turk kept his seat. He glanced furtively at Zil. “Someone better stay here to protect you, Leader.”
Zil laughed mirthlessly. “Yeah, if Sam comes I’m sure you’ll stop him, Turk.”
“It’s the tribulation,” Nerezza said.
Orsay didn’t say anything. She’d heard that word before. Had she actually used it herself?
As if she’d guessed, Nerezza explained. “Tribulation. A time of trouble. When people look for a prophet to tell them what to do. You prophesied that this would happen.”
“Did I? I don’t remember.” Her memory was a cramped attic full of broken toys and damaged furniture. It was getting harder and harder to be sure where she was. Or when. And she had given up asking why.
They stood on the edge of the burned area, in the middle of Sheridan. The destruction was awful and eerie in the morning light. Smoke still rose from a dozen or more houses. Tongues of flame could still be seen here and there, peeking out from charred windows.
Some houses stood untouched, surrounded by devastation. Like they’d been spared by divine intervention. Some houses were only half burned. Some, you could tell, had been gutted but the exteriors seemed almost intact, aside from soot stain around blackened windows.