Lies

TWENTY-SEVEN

“GET UP,” PEACE whispered. She shook Sanjit’s shoulder.

Sanjit had long been accustomed to being awakened at odd hours. That part of being the oldest kid in the Brattle-Chance family had long since lost its charm.

“Is it Bowie?” he said.

Peace shook her head. “No. I think the world is burning.”

Sanjit raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That seems kind of extreme, Peace.”

“Just come.”

Sanjit groaned and rolled out of bed. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost morning.”

“The key word being ‘almost,’” Sanjit complained. “You know what’s a better time to get up? Actual morning. Much better than ‘almost’ morning.”

But he followed her down the hall to the room she shared with Bowie and Pixie. The house had twenty-two bedrooms, but only Sanjit and Virtue had chosen to sleep by themselves.

Pixie was asleep. Bowie tossed and turned, still under attack from the fever that would not go away.

“The window,” Peace whispered.

Sanjit went to the window. It was almost floor-to-ceiling, a stunning view during the day. He stood there gazing toward the far-distant town of Perdido Beach.

“Go get Choo,” he said after a moment.

She came back with a poisonously cranky Virtue, rubbing sleep from his eyes and muttering.

“Look,” Sanjit said.

Virtue stared, just as Sanjit had done. “It’s a fire.”

“You think?” Sanjit shook his head, awestruck. “The whole town must be on fire.”

Red and orange flames were a bright dot on the horizon. In the gray predawn light he saw a massive pillar of black smoke. The scale seemed ridiculous. The bright fire was a dot, but the smoke seemed to be miles high, shaped like a twisted funnel.

“So that’s where I’m supposed to fly the helicopter?” Sanjit said.

Virtue left and returned a few moments later. He was carrying a small telescope. It wasn’t very powerful. They’d used it at times to try to see details in the town or on the wooded shore closest to the island. It had never shown much. It showed no more now, but even slightly magnified the fire looked terrifying.

Sanjit looked at Bowie, who was whimpering in his sleep.

“I’m getting a very bad feeling,” Virtue said.

“It’s not like the fire can spread here,” Sanjit said, trying to sound nonchalant and failing.

Virtue didn’t say anything. He just stared. And it dawned on Sanjit that his brother and friend was seeing more than just the fire.

“What is it, Choo?”

Virtue sighed, a heavy sound that edged toward a sob. “You never ask me about where I came from.”

Sanjit was surprised by the turn in the conversation. “Africa. I know you come from Africa.”

“Africa’s a continent, not a country,” Virtue said with a faint echo of his normal pedantry. “Congo. That’s where I’m from.”

“Okay.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

Sanjit shrugged. “Lions and giraffes and all?”

Virtue didn’t even bother to sneer. “There’s been war there for, like, ever. People killing one another. Raping. Torturing. Stuff you don’t even want to know about, brother.”

“Yeah?”

“I wasn’t in an orphanage when Jennifer and Todd adopted me. I was four years old. In a refugee camp. All I remember is being hungry all the time. And no one taking care of me.”

“Where were your real mom and dad?”

Virtue didn’t answer for a long time, and some instinct warned Sanjit not to push him.

Finally, Virtue said, “They came and started burning down our village. I don’t know why. I was just a little kid. I just know my mother-my birth mom-told me to run and hide in the bush.”

“Okay.”

“She told me not to come out. Or look. She said, ‘Hide. And close your eyes tight. And cover your ears.’”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” Virtue whispered.

“What did you see?”

“I…” Virtue took a deep, shuddering breath. In a strained, unnatural voice he said, “You know what? I can’t tell you. I can’t use words for it. I don’t want the words to come out of my mouth.”

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.

The 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.