Deception

Chapter Forty-Two RACHEL

“Stop!” Logan yells, and runs toward the southern tree line.

“Logan?” Frankie asks, already running toward him even before he knows what’s wrong.

“Rowansmark tracker!” Logan tosses the words over his shoulder as he plunges into the forest.

I leap up to follow them when the concussive boom of an explosion tears across the field. Before I can turn to see what happened, another boom sends me to my knees. The explosions sound like thick rocks being torn apart. I skid forward on my palms, and a sheet of yellow-white flame blazes to life from the ground three yards to my left.

One second, there was nothing but grass and a flat, white stone I nearly tripped over when I took my place at the guard station assigned to me. The next second, the force of the explosion knocks me to the ground as a wave of voracious heat rolls through the air, sucking out the oxygen and leaving the exposed skin on my face and neck feeling crisp and tender.

Dense, white smoke pours out of the flames, and I cough in harsh, hacking sobs as I crawl toward the next guard post. Behind me, another explosion rocks the field, and another sheet of pale flame leaps for the sky.

People scream. Run toward the wagons or toward the forest. Fall down and crawl while others run past them.

It’s chaos. And chaos kills.

I struggle to my feet as another explosion rips through the air, this one closer to the tree line. Those running toward the forest skid to a halt and look around wildly for another plan. Before they can move, another piece of the ground bursts into flames, right beneath the feet of an older man I recognize as one who’d taken to sitting by Jeremiah every evening to play checkers.

He screams, a long, high wail of agony that tapers off into silence as his body twists away from the fire and falls to the grass in a smoldering heap.

A woman next to him leans over and vomits while another man grabs her around the waist and pulls her away.

I rush toward Drake, who stands ten yards from me at the next guard station. Another small slab of white rock, about the size of a loaf of bread, is hidden in the long grass. It catches my foot, and I fly into the air before slamming down onto the ground a yard from the stone.

The fall saves my life.

Behind me, the slab of stone sizzles for a second and then bursts into flame with a terrifying explosion of sound and heat. I press my face into the grass and start crawling as a thick cloud of white smoke pours from the fire. The smoke is bitter and leaves an acrid taste in my mouth.

Someone snatches the back of my cloak and drags me forward. My eyes are streaming as I look at Logan’s furious expression.

“He did this,” he says, and I know he means the man he chased into the woods. “We have to get everyone away from the fires.”

“It’s the stones.” My voice is hoarse from the smoke, and I cough until I taste blood.

Another explosion. Another sheet of flames. This time to the south of us, putting another obstacle between our people and the trees. The fire licks at the grass and begins to spread.

“What stones?” he asks as he hauls me upright and looks around to assess the situation.

“The white stones. I just tripped over one, and a few seconds later, it exploded.”

Logan frowns and stares at the collection of fires burning with brilliant white-gold flames. “Light flames. Tremendous heat. Thick smoke that smells like . . .” He sniffs the air.

“Garlic,” I say, because the taste is scorched onto the back of my tongue.

He locks eyes with me. “It’s white phosphorous. We have to get everyone off this field now.”

“White phosphorous?” I jog at his side as he hurries toward Drake, who is busy shouting instructions and rallying people to him.

“Made by chemically altering phosphorous. Spontaneously combusts when it comes in contact with oxygen. He must’ve coated the phosphorous with something that would eventually let the oxygen through. Don’t get burned, whatever you do. The phosphorous keeps burning you until either you starve the wound of oxygen or you die.”

We reach Drake. Behind him, a thick white stone rests on the grass.

“Get back!” Logan shoves Drake away from the stone as it sizzles and then explodes.

By this point, no fewer than ten fires burn. The thick, noxious white smoke billows out, forming an impenetrable haze, and lines of flame snake away from their source like veins of brilliant gold spreading across the field.

Logan begins yelling instructions to Drake, Frankie, Ian, Willow, and Quinn. He wants Drake to recruit five others and drive the wagons back to the path we took to get to the field. Anyone close to the wagons can ride inside as long as no white stones lie in wait beneath the wheels, ready to turn the last of our resources into ash. The rest of us are to take quadrants of the field, shepherd the people there past any phosphorous, and meet at the path as well.

Controlling over one hundred panicked people isn’t going to be easy. I scan my quadrant, which stretches from the western edge of the forest to where I stand now. People race away from the tree line, which is almost completely obscured by smoke. Some rush toward the wagons. Others flee back toward the path we took to get here. They can’t go south or west because the fires burning along those edges completely cut us off.

Another stone comes to life, this time to the east, like another link in a bracelet of fire. Another board in a white-gold fence.

A fence.

“Logan, look!” I grab his arm before he can leave my side and point at the semicircle of fire. “We’re being fenced in.”

He swears, and yells to those closest to him, “Go north!” He points. “We’ll regroup a hundred yards up the path.” Then he looks at me. “I have to go redirect Drake and make sure the others know where to go.”

What he’s really saying is that he has to leave me alone and doesn’t want to do it. I don’t want to see him face danger without me by his side, either, but we don’t have a choice.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get my people there. Be safe,” I say, and race toward the group of terrified people milling around my quadrant, unsure where they should go.

The first trio I reach is a man and a woman who support a boy about my age. Burns cover his left leg, and he moans in pain.

“Get back on the path beside the river. Go north. Fast,” I say. “The fires are closing in around us. Once you get there, smother those wounds, or they’ll just keep burning.”

I don’t wait to see if they comply.

I run toward a man and his little girl who are doubled over coughing and choking. He presses his daughter to his chest, trying to shelter her from the worst of the smoke, while his eyes stream and his breath tears its way out of his lungs in harsh gasps.

As I close in on them, I see a white stone resting on the ground beside the little girl.

“Get back. Get back!” I scream, but the smoke curls into their lungs and steals their breath. Even if he could hear me, he can’t move.

I’m less than two yards away. The stone starts to sizzle as I close in. I’ll never make it in time. Digging my toes into the ground, I bend my knees and leap forward, arms straight out.

My hands collide with the child, sending her flying backward, and I slam into the father as the stone beside us roars to life. Pain—searing, vicious pain unlike any I’ve ever felt—blazes a trail of agony down my right forearm. I scream and belly crawl away from the terrible heat that reaches for me. Ripping the remains of my sleeve away from my arm, I see a fiery trail of phosphorous eating through my skin and turning it black.

The man beside me snatches up his daughter and stares at my arm. “Water,” he croaks from a throat ruined by coughing, and looks around as if he can magically make water appear when none exists.

The pain is a white light blazing up my arm, digging into my shoulder, and setting my teeth on edge. I can barely think. Barely breathe.

Not water. I don’t need water. I need . . . something else.

The man hacks and chokes, and I realize the little girl is barely breathing. I have to get up. Have to move. Have to save us.

Another scream rips its way past my clenched teeth as I struggle to stand. There are more people in this quadrant. More lives to rescue. And I didn’t come all this way and survive every awful thing that’s happened in the last few months so I could die on a field at the whim of a madman.

“Go.” I wave my left arm north. “Get out of the smoke before you die.”

“You need help,” he says.

“Your daughter needs it more than me. Go.”

He obeys me, and I hold my right arm against my stomach as I stumble into the smoke, looking for more survivors. The pain is as sharp as a shard of glass slicing through my arm. I cover my mouth and nose with my cloak and try to ignore it. Every movement jars me, and I suck in little gasps of pain with each step.

More explosions sound in the distance, but the roar of the flames near me and the thick cushion of noxious smoke nearly drown out everything but the sobbing moans of pain escaping my lips as I walk.

I find the next group of people by walking straight into a man who’s created a chain of survivors, linked by holding hands. All of them cover their faces with their cloaks. I can’t tell who they are, but it doesn’t matter. We have to get off of this field before we all die.

“We’re going north. Any others in this area?” I ask, and tiny pinpricks of light dance at the edge of my vision.

“Not that I could see,” the man at the head of the line says. His voice is muffled by his cloak.

I try to turn away. Try to lead us north, but the pain is consuming me. My knees wobble and refuse to hold me as my head fills with buzzing, like a swarm of bees is trapped inside my brain.

As I slide toward the ground, he reaches out and catches me. Pulling me close to him, he tips my head onto his shoulder.

I can’t feel my tongue. Or my fingers. My arm, though, is one continuous shriek of agony.

“Are you hurt?”

My head lolls back, and the world swims around me, a confusion of smoke, white-gold flame, and a pair of familiar eyes staring into mine.

“Logan?” I ask, though I know I’m wrong.

“Shh.” He presses a finger against my lips so hard my teeth cut into my lip, and my mouth fills with the metallic tang of blood. His hand slides down my right arm until he comes to the burned flesh. “Pain is such a useful thing. It corrects us when we’re wrong. It shapes our character. It teaches us that we’re alive.” He grabs my wound with rough fingers and squeezes.

I scream, an unrelenting wail of agony, and he snarls at me. “Don’t you feel alive?”

My scream dissolves into choked gasps. He leans down to whisper next to my ear. “Judge and be judged, Rachel.”

Someone shouts, and he lets go of me. I try to stand. To find my equilibrium. But the buzzing in my head spreads down my body, and I tumble to the ground as everything goes dark.