Lies

TWENTY-TWO

DOWN THE ACCESS road they marched, the station lost behind them in the night.

Their numbers had diminished a little. Kids, the weak and scared ones, had peeled off unnoticed, slinking home once they’d had a taste of violence.

Weaklings, Zil thought. Cowards.

Just a dozen of them now, the hard core, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with softly clinking bottles, trailing the smell of gasoline.

Left at the school. Past the gloomy, darkened buildings. So alien now. So long ago, all of that.

Zil couldn’t make out individual windows in the edifice, but he could see approximately where his old home room had been. He imagined himself back then. Imagined himself sitting, bored during morning announcements.

And now here he was at the head of an army. A small army. But dedicated. All together in a great cause. Perdido Beach for humans. Death to freaks. Death to mutants.

On stiff legs he led the march. The march to freedom and power.

Right at Golding. Golding and Sherman, off the northwest corner of the school, that was the target zone, as agreed with Caine. No idea why. Caine had only said that they should start at Golding and Sherman. And move along Sherman toward the water. Burn all they could till they reached Ocean Boulevard. Then, if they still had any left, they could go along Ocean toward town. Not toward the marina.

“If I see you nitwits heading toward the marina, our little agreement is over,” Caine had warned.

Nitwits. Zil seethed at the memory. Caine’s casual arrogance, his contempt for anyone who wasn’t a freak like him. His time would come, Zil vowed.

“We’re here,” Zil said. But that wasn’t a very historic thing to say. And this, make no mistake, was history happening in the FAYZ. The beginning of the end for the freaks. The beginning of Zil being in control.

Zil turned to faces he knew were expectant, giddy, excited. He could hear it in their whispered conversation.

“Tonight we strike a blow for humans,” Zil said. That was the line Turk had come up with. Something everyone would be able to quote. “Tonight we strike a blow for humans!” Zil cried, raising his voice, no longer afraid.

“Death to freaks!” Turk shouted.

“Light up!” Hank cried.

Lighters and matches flicked. Tiny yellow pinpoints in the black night, casting eerie shadows on wild eyes and mouths pulled back in grimaces of fear and rage.

Zil took the first of the bottles-Molotov cocktails, Hank said they were called. The spark of the lighter caught the gasoline-saturated wick.

Zil turned and heaved the bottle toward the closest house.

It arced like a meteor, spinning.

It crashed onto the brick steps and burst. Flames spread over several square feet of porch.

No one moved. All eyes were fixed. Faces fascinated.

The spilled gasoline burned blue. For a while it seemed it would do nothing but burn itself out on the porch.

But then a wicker rocking chair caught fire.

And then the decorative lattice.

And suddenly the flames were licking up the pillars that supported the porch roof.

A wild cheer went up.

More bottles were lit. More wild arcs of twirling fire.

A second house. A garage. A parked car sitting on deflated tires.

Cries of shock and horror came from inside the first house.

Zil didn’t let himself hear them.

“Onward!” he cried. “Burn it all down!”

Down through the dark they shuffled and stumbled, Caine’s starved and starving remnants.

“Look!” Bug cried. No one could see him, of course, or his outstretched pointing hand. But they looked, anyway.

An orange glow lit the horizon.

“Huh. The stupid punk actually did it,” Caine said. “We have to hurry. Anyone falls out, they are on their own.”

Orsay climbed to the top of the cliff, weary but propelled by Nerezza’s helping hand.

“Come on, Prophetess, we’re almost there.”

“Don’t call me that,” Orsay said.

“It’s what you are,” Nerezza said softly but insistently.

The others had all gone ahead. Nerezza always insisted that the supplicants leave the beach first. Orsay suspected it had to do with Nerezza not wanting anyone to see Orsay struggling and scraping her knees on rocks. Nerezza seemed to think it was important for kids to see Orsay as above all that normal stuff.

A prophet.

“I’m not a prophet,” Orsay said. “I’m just a person who hears dreams.”

“You are helping people,” Nerezza said as they rounded a buried boulder that always gave Orsay trouble. “You are telling them the truth. Showing them a path.”

“I can’t even find my own path,” Orsay said as she slipped and landed on her palms. They were scraped, but not too badly.

“You show them the way,” Nerezza said. “They need to be shown a way out of this place.”

Orsay stopped, panting from exertion. She turned to Nerezza, whose face was just two faintly glowing eyes, like a cat’s eyes. “You know, I’m not totally sure. You know that. Maybe I’m…maybe it’s…” She didn’t have the word for what she felt at times like this, times of doubt. Times when a small voice down deep inside her seemed to be whispering warnings in her ear.

“You need to trust me,” Nerezza said firmly. “You are the Prophetess.”

Orsay topped the cliff. She stared. “I must not be much of a prophet. I didn’t foresee this.”

“What?” Nerezza called up from just below.

“The town is burning.”

“Look, Tanner,” Brittney said. She raised one arm and pointed.

Her brother, now glowing a dark green, like a billion little nodules of radioactivity, but still Tanner, said, “Yes. It is time.”

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.