Gone Series Complete Collection (128 page)

Brittney hesitated. “Why, Tanner?”

He gave no answer.

“Are we doing the Lord’s will, Tanner?”

Tanner did not answer.

“I am doing what’s right. Aren’t I?”

“Go toward the flames, sister. All your answers are there.”

Brittney lowered her arm to her side. It seemed strange, somehow. All of it. All of it so very strange.

She had burrowed up through the wet dirt. How long? Forever and ever. She had burrowed like a mole. Blind. Like a mole. No. Like an earthworm.

Tanner began chanting in a singsong voice. An eerie poem that Brittney remembered from so very long ago. A class assignment, a thing memorized and quickly forgotten.

But it was still buried in her memory. And now it came from Tanner’s mouth, his dead mouth gaping with black-edge fire dribbling like magma.

But see, amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes! — it writhes! — with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs . . .

Tanner smiled a ghastly smile and said, “
In human gore imbued.
”

“Why are you saying that? You’re scaring me, Tanner.”

“Not for long, sister,” Tanner said. Soon you will understand the Lord’s will.”

Justin woke suddenly. He immediately rolled to one side and felt the spot where he’d been sleeping. Dry!

See? He’d been right all along. He didn’t wet
this
bed.

But just to be safe he should run out to the backyard and pee because he could feel a little pressure. He was wearing his same old pajamas; they’d been in his same old drawer. They were so soft because they were still from the old days. His mommy had washed these pajamas and made them all soft.

The floor was cold under his bare feet. He hadn’t been able to find his old slippers. Roger had even helped him look. The Artful Roger was nice. The only new thing in this room was a picture Roger had colored for him. It showed a happy Justin with his mommy and daddy and a ham with sweet potatoes and cookies. It was taped on Justin’s wall.

Roger had also found the picture album for him. It was downstairs in the cupboard in the dining room. It was full of pictures of Justin and his family and his old friends.

Now it was under Justin’s bed. It made him feel pretty sad looking at it.

Justin crept down the stairs so he wouldn’t wake up Roger.

The old toilets didn’t work anymore. People all peed and did number two in holes in their backyards. No big deal. But it was scary going out at night. Justin was scared the coyotes would come back.

It was easier than usual to find the hole. It was kind of light out, a flickery orange light.

And it wasn’t quiet like it usually was. He could hear kids yelling. And it sounded like someone dropped a glass and broke it. And then he heard someone screaming, so he ran back in the house.

He stopped, amazed. The living room was burning.

He could feel the heat. Smoke was pouring out of the living room, swooping up the stairs.

Justin didn’t know what to do. He remembered he was supposed to stop, drop, and roll if he ever caught on fire. But he wasn’t on fire—the house was.

“Call 911,” he said aloud. But that probably wouldn’t work. Nothing worked anymore.

Suddenly a loud beeping noise. Really loud. It was upstairs. Justin covered his ears but he could still hear it.

“Justin!” It was Roger yelling from upstairs.

Then he appeared at the top of the stairs. He was choking from the smoke.

“I’m down here!” Justin yelled.

“Hang on, I’m—” Roger started coughing then. He tripped and went falling down the stairs. He fell all the way on his face. Roger hit the bottom and stopped.

Justin waited for him to get up.

“Roger. Wake up. There’s a fire!” Justin said.

The fire was coming out of the living room now. It was like it was eating the carpet and the walls. It was so hot. Hotter than an oven.

Justin started choking from the smoke. He wanted to run away.

“Roger, wake up! Wake up!”

Justin ran to Roger and tugged on his shirt. “Wake up!”

He couldn’t move Roger, and Roger did not wake up. Roger made a moaning sound and kind of moved, but then he fell back asleep.

Justin pulled and pulled and cried and the fire must have seen him there crying and pulling because the fire was coming to get him.

TWENTY-THREE

14
HOURS
, 7
MINUTES

TAYLOR
WAS
STARTING
to worry by the time she popped into the hallway outside Lana’s Clifftop home.

She would never bounce straight into Lana’s room. Everyone knew that Lana had been through an unspeakable hell. And no one believed she was totally over it.

But more than concern for Lana’s possible delicacy was deep respect and affection for her. There were far too many kids buried in the plaza. But without Lana the number would have been four or five times as high.

Taylor knocked and earned an instant barrage of loud barks from Patrick.

“It’s me, Taylor,” she called through the door.

A voice that betrayed no sleepiness said, “Come in.”

Taylor bounced in, ignoring the door.

Lana was on the balcony, back turned to her.

“I’m awake,” Lana said unnecessarily. “There’s some trouble.”

“You know about it?”

“I can see it,” Lana said.

Taylor stepped out beside her. Off to the north, up the coast, the orange glow of fire.

“Some idiot burning down their house with a candle again?” Taylor suggested.

“I don’t think so. This is no accident,” Lana said.

“Who would start fires deliberately?” Taylor wondered. “I mean, what does it accomplish?”

“Fear. Pain. Despair,” Lana said. “Chaos. It accomplishes chaos. Evil things love chaos.”

Taylor shrugged. “Probably just Zil.”

“Nothing in the FAYZ is ever
just
anything, Taylor. This is a very complicated place.”

“No offense, Healer, but you’re getting weirder all the time,” Taylor said.

Lana smiled. “You have no idea.”

Quinn’s little flotilla set out to sea. Dark as always. Too early. Sleep still crunchy in everyone’s eyes. But that was normal. Routine.

They were a tight little group, Quinn thought. It made him feel good. As much as he had screwed up in his life, he had done this well.

Quinn’s fishing fleet. Feeding the FAYZ.

As they cleared the marina and headed out to sea Quinn felt an unusual joy welling up inside him. What did I do when the FAYZ happened? he asked himself. I fed people.

Not a bad thing. A bad start, yes. He had freaked out. He had at one point betrayed Sam to Caine. And he had never gotten over the memory of that awful battle against Caine and Drake and the coyotes.

So many vivid, indelible memories. He wished he could cut them out of his brain. But other times he realized no, that was foolish. It was all those things that had made him this new person.

He wasn’t Quinn the coward anymore. Or Quinn the turncoat. He was Quinn the fisherman.

He pulled on the oars, enjoying the healthy burn in his shoulders. He was facing Perdido Beach.

So he saw the first small flower of flame. An orange pinpoint in the darkness.

“Fire,” he said calmly. He was in a pole-fishing boat with two other guys.

The others stirred and looked.

From a nearby boat a shout. “Hey, Quinn, you see that?”

“Yeah. Keep pulling. We’re not the fire department.”

They set to their oars again and the boats edged farther from shore. Far enough out that they could soon drop hooks and spread nets.

But every eye was on the town now.

“It’s spreading,” someone said.

“It’s jumping from house to house.”

“No,” Quinn said. “I don’t think it’s spreading. I think . . . I think someone is setting those fires.”

He felt his stomach churn. His muscles, warm from rowing felt suddenly stiff and cold.

“The town is burning,” a voice said.

They watched in silence as the orange flames spread and billowed up into the sky. The town was no longer dark.

“We’re fishermen, not fighters,” Quinn said.

Oars splashed. Oarlocks creaked. The boats pushed water aside with a soft shushing sound.

Sam and Edilio broke into a run. Across the highway onto the access road. Past the rusting hulks of cars that had crashed into one another or into storefronts or simply stalled in the middle of the highway on that fateful day when every driver disappeared.

They ran down Sheridan, passing the school on their right. At least it wasn’t on fire. Once they reached the cross-street at Golding the smoke was much thicker. It billowed toward them, impossible to avoid. Sam and Edilio choked and slowed down.

Sam pulled off his T-shirt and bunched it over his mouth, but it didn’t do much good. His eyes stung.

He crouched low, hoping the smoke would pass overhead. That didn’t work, either.

Sam grabbed Edilio’s arm and pulled him along. They crossed Golding and in the lee of houses on Sheridan they found the air was clearer but still reeking. The houses on the west side of Sheridan were black silhouettes cut out of the sheet of flame that soared and danced and curled toward heaven from Sherman Avenue.

They started running again, down the street and around the corner on Alameda, trying to stay on the sweet side of the very slight breeze. The smoke was still thick but no longer blowing toward them.

Fire was everywhere along Sherman. A roaring, ravenous, living thing. It was more intense north of Alameda, but it was moving fast south toward the water down the rest of Sherman.

“Why is the fire moving against the breeze?” Edilio asked.

“Because someone’s setting new fires,” Sam said grimly.

Sam glanced left. Right. At least six houses burning to their right. The rest of that block would go up, no stopping it, not a thing they could do.

“There are kids in some of these houses,” Edilio said, choking from emotion as much as smoke.

At least three fires burned to their left. As they watched Sam saw a twirling firework, a spinning Roman candle that soared and arced downward and crashed into the front of a house far down the block. He couldn’t hear the Molotov cocktail smash over the roar of fire around him.

“Come on!” Sam yelled, and ran toward the newest fire.

He wished he had Brianna with him, or Dekka. Where were they? Both could have helped save lives.

Sam barely missed plowing into a group of kids, some as young as three, all huddled together in the middle of the street, faces lit by fire, eyes wide with fear.

“It’s Sam!”

“Thank God, Sam is here! Sam is here!”

“Sam, our house is burning down!”

“I think my little brother is in there!”

Sam pushed past them, but one girl grabbed his arm. “You have to help us!”

“I’m trying,” he said grimly, and tore himself free. “Come on, Edilio!”

Zil’s mob was backlit by a sheet of orange that consumed the front of a colonial-style house. They danced and cavorted and ran with burning Molotov cocktails.

“Don’t waste them!” Hank shouted. “One Molotov, one house!”

Antoine screamed as he waved a lit bottle. “Aaaaarrrggh! Aaaaarrrgh!” Almost as if he were the one burning. He threw the bottle high and hard, and it soared straight through an upper floor window of an older wood house.

Immediately there were cries of terror from inside. And Antoine screamed back, an echo of their horror, twisted into savage glee.

Kids came pouring out of the door of the house as flames licked the curtains.

Sam did not hesitate. He raised his hand, palm out. A beam of brilliant green light drew a line to Antoine’s body.

Antoine’s berserk cries ended instantly. He clutched once at the three-inch-wide hole just above his belt. Then he sat down in the street.

“It’s Sam!” one of Zil’s thugs cried.

As one they turned and ran, dropping gas-filled bottles behind. The gasoline spread from the shattered bottles and caught fire instantly.

Sam tore after them in pursuit, racing to leap the patches of burning gasoline.

“Sam, no!” Edilio shouted. Edilio tripped over the body of Antoine, who lay now on his back, gasping like a fish, eyes staring up in horror.

Sam had not noticed Edilio fall. But he heard Edilio’s single shouted warning. “Ambush!”

Sam heard the word, knew it was true, and without thinking dropped and rolled. He stopped just inches away from rolling into burning gasoline.

At least three guns were firing. But Zil’s thugs had had no practice with weapons. They were firing wild, bullets flying in every direction.

Sam hugged the pavement, shaking from the close call.

Where were Dekka and Brianna?

Another weapon was firing now. Edilio’s rapid bam-bam-bam, short bursts from his machine gun. There was a big difference between Edilio with a gun and some punk like Turk with a gun. Edilio practiced. Edilio trained.

There was a loud shriek of pain, and the ambush was over.

Sam pried himself up a few inches, enough to see one of Zil’s gunmen. The kid was running away, a wraith in the smoke.

Too late, Sam thought. He aimed, straight for the boy’s back. The beam of burning light caught the gunman in the back of his calf. He screamed. The gun flew from his hand and clattered on the sidewalk.

Hank ran back to grab it. Sam fired and missed. Hank snarled at him, a face like a wild animal. Hank raced away as Edilio’s bullets chased him, plowing a furrow in the hot blacktop.

Sam jumped to his feet. Edilio ran up, panting.

“They’re running for it,” Edilio said.

“I’m not letting them get away,” Sam said. “I’m tired of having to fight the same people again and again. It’s time to finish it.”

“What are you saying, man?”