Lies

TWENTY-NINE

HUNTER HAD SIX birds in his bag. Three of them were crows, which didn’t have much meat on them. One was an owl. Owls tasted pretty bad, but they had more meat. But two were the kind of birds that had colorful feathers and were juicy. Hunter didn’t know what they were called, but he always looked for them because they were tasty and Albert would be very happy to get some of those.

He was high on the far side of the ridge, north of town, hauling the sack of dead birds up. Hard work. He carried them slung over one shoulder in a pouch that mothers used to use to carry babies.

Hunter had a backpack with his sleeping bag and his pan and his cup and extra socks and an extra knife. Knives broke sometimes, although the knife he had in his belt had lasted a long time so far.

Hunter was on the trail of two deer. He had tracked them through the night. If he caught them he would kill them. Then he would use his knife and clean them like he had learned to do, spilling their insides out. He wouldn’t be able to carry both deer down at the same time. He would have to gut one of them and then hang it from a tree, come back for it later.

Hunter sniffed. He had learned that he could actually smell the animals he was hunting. Deer had a smell, so did raccoons and opossums. He sniffed, but now what reached his nose was the smell of fire.

Hunter’s brow creased in concentration. Had he recently made camp near this spot? Or was someone else up here lighting campfires?

He was in a deep cleft, dark trees all around and overhead. He hesitated. The fire smell wasn’t right for a campfire. It wasn’t just burning wood and brush.

He was standing there, unprepared, when a big deer with a full rack of antlers appeared out of nowhere. It didn’t see him. It was running, not in panic but at a steady pace, bounding nimbly along over fallen logs and skirting the thicker thorn bushes.

He aimed both hands at the deer. There was no flash of light. Nothing at all that you could see or hear.

The deer took two more steps and fell forward.

Hunter raced to it. The deer was hurt but not dead.

“Don’t worry,” Hunter whispered. “It won’t hurt.”

He held his palm toward the deer’s head. The deer’s eyes turned milky. And it stopped breathing.

Hunter slid off his pack and his bird bag and drew his knife.

He was excited. This was the biggest deer he’d ever bagged. No way he could carry it. He would have to cut it into pieces. It was going to be a lot of work.

He took a long drink from his canteen and sat down, contemplating the job ahead of him.

Hunter hadn’t slept in quite a while, chasing the two other deer. He was sleepy now. And there was no longer any need to keep going. Between the birds and this buck he had two days of butchering and hauling ahead of him just to get it all to town.

There were some shallow caves not far from this spot, but some of them had flying snakes in them. Better not to go near those things. Better to stay out here in the open.

He lay his head on a soft rotted log and fell instantly to sleep.

How long he slept he couldn’t know, he had no watch, but the sun was overhead when he woke to the sound of clumsy movement. Someone trying to be sneaky and not doing a very good job of it.

“Hi, Sam,” Hunter said.

Sam froze.

Hunter sat up. “What are you doing here?”

Sam looked around like he was searching for an answer. He seemed weird to Hunter. He didn’t look like Sam usually looked. He looked like animals sometimes looked when Hunter had them cornered and they knew it was the end.

“I’m just…um…walking,” Sam said.

“Are you running away?” Hunter asked.

Sam looked startled. “No.”

“I smell fire.”

“Yeah. There’s been a fire. In town,” Sam said. “So. Is that a deer?”

It seemed like a stupid question to Hunter. “Yes.”

“I was getting hungry,” Sam confessed.

Hunter smiled his lopsided smile. Half of his mouth didn’t work quite right. “I can cook us a bird. But I have to give the deer to Albert.”

“Some bird would be great,” Sam said.

He sat down cross-legged on the pine needle carpet. He’d been hurt. There was blood on his shirt and he moved his shoulder stiffly.

“I can cook it with my hands. But it tastes better if I cook it with fire.”

Hunter gathered dried needles, small branches, and a couple of larger chunks of wood. Soon he had a fire going. He cleaned one of the colorful birds, burned off the pinfeathers, and cut it into smaller pieces. These he skewered with a wire clothes hanger he carried in his backpack and propped them over the coals at the edge of the fire.

He split the meat with scrupulous fairness. Sam ate greedily.

“This isn’t a bad life you have up here,” Sam said.

“Except when there are mosquitoes. Or fleas,” Hunter said.

“Yeah, well everyone’s getting fleas since most of the dogs and cats are…um…gone.”

Hunter nodded. Then he said, “I don’t have much talking.”

When Sam looked puzzled, Hunter explained. “Sometimes my head doesn’t want to give me words.”

Lana had healed him as well as she could, but the skull had never grown back all the way right. She’d fixed his brain well enough that he didn’t pee in his pants like he did for a while after the beating. And when he talked he could mostly make himself understood. But Lana had been unable to return him all the way to normal.

“It’s okay,” Hunter said, not realizing that he hadn’t said any of this out loud. “I’m just different now.”

“You’re important,” Sam said. “You’re a lifeline for kids. Do the coyotes ever bother you?”

Hunter shook his head and gulped some more of the hot bird meat. “We made a deal. I don’t go where they’re hunting. And I don’t hunt coyotes. So they don’t bother me.”

For a while neither of them said anything. The fire burned down. The last of the bird was consumed. Hunter pushed dirt onto the fire, smothering it.

“Maybe I could work with you,” Sam said. He held up his own hand. “I can hunt, too, I guess.”

Hunter frowned. This was confusing. “But you’re Sam and I’m Hunter.”

“You could teach me what you know,” Sam said. “You know. About animals. And how to find them. And how to cut them up and all.”

Hunter thought about it, but then the idea slipped out of his brain. And he realized he’d forgotten what Sam was talking about.

“If I go back I’m going to do things,” Sam said. He looked down at the ashes of the near-dead fire.

“You’re good at doing things,” Hunter said.

Sam looked angry. Then his face softened until he looked sad. “Yeah. Only I don’t always want to do those things.”

“I’m Hunter. So I hunt.”

“My real name is Samuel. He was this prophet in the Bible.”

Hunter didn’t know what “prophet” meant. Or “Bible.”

“He was the guy who picked out the first king of Israel.”

Hunter nodded, mystified.

“You believe in God, Hunter?” Sam asked.

Hunter felt a sudden stab of guilt. He hung his head. “I almost killed those boys.”

“What boys?”

“Zil. And his friends. The ones who hurt me. I was hunting a doe, and I saw them. And I could have.”

“Could have killed them.”

Hunter nodded.

“To tell you the truth, Hunter, I wish you had.”

“I’m Hunter,” he said, and grinned because it struck him as funny. “I’m not Boy Killer.” He laughed. It was a joke.

Sam didn’t laugh. In fact, it looked like he wanted to cry.

“You know Drake, Hunter?”

“No.”

“He’s a boy with a kind of snake for an arm. A snake. Or a whip. So he’s not really a boy. So if you ever saw him, you could hunt him.”

“Okay,” Hunter said doubtfully.

Sam bit his lip. He looked like he wanted to say something else. He stood up, knees popping after sitting so long. “Thanks for the meat, Hunter.”

Hunter watched him go. A boy with a snake arm? No. He’d never seen anything like that. That would be something. That would be even weirder than the snakes he’d seen in the caves. The ones with wings.

That reminded Hunter. He pushed up his sleeve to examine the spot where the snake had spit on him. It hurt. There was a little sore, a sort of hole. The hole had scabbed over, like any of the endless number of scrapes Hunter had suffered tearing through brush.

But as he looked at the scab Hunter was disturbed to see that it was a strange color. Not reddish like most scabs. This was green.

He rolled his sleeve back down. And forgot about it again.

Sanjit stood at the edge of the cliff. The binoculars didn’t show much detail. But it wasn’t hard to see the plume of smoke. It was like a massive, twisted exclamation point over Perdido Beach.

He tilted the glasses upward. Far up in the sky the smoke seemed to spread out horizontally. Like it was running into a glass ceiling. But that had to be an illusion.

He turned to his right and focused on the yacht. His view traveled from the bow to the stern. The helicopter.

Choo was trying to fly a kite for Pixie. The kite wasn’t really taking off. It never did, but Pixie kept hoping and Choo kept trying. Because, Sanjit reflected, as grumpy as Virtue was, he was a good person. Something Sanjit wasn’t sure he could say about himself.

Peace was inside, keeping watch over Bowie. His fever had stopped spiking. But Sanjit knew better than to think this was a permanent improvement. They’d been up and down like this for a long time.

He stared at the helicopter. Not a chance he could fly it. He was going to have to convince Choo of that. Because if Sanjit tried to fly the chopper he’d get all of them killed.

And if he didn’t then Bowie might die.

He was too lost in his dark thoughts to notice that Virtue was running toward him.

“Hey, there’s a boat coming.”

“What?”

Virtue pointed at the sea. “Right there.”

“What? I don’t see anything.”

Virtue rolled his eyes. “You really can’t see that?”

“Hey, I didn’t grow up searching the savannah for lions.”

“Lions. That’s right. That’s what I spent most of my time doing: looking for lions.”

Sanjit thought he could almost make out a spot that might be a boat. He aimed the binoculars. It took a while to pick out the boat and he found it by first locating its wake.

“It is a boat!”

“They don’t call you Wisdom for nothing,” Virtue said dryly.

“There’s people in it,” Sanjit said. He handed the binoculars to Virtue.

“It looks like maybe a half dozen people,” Virtue said. “I can’t see them very well. I can’t even tell for sure if they’re heading this direction. They might be aiming for one of the other islands. Or they might just be fishing.”

“The town burns up and suddenly we have a boatload of people on their way here?” Sanjit said skeptically. “I’m going to guess they aren’t fishing.”

“They’re escaping from Perdido Beach,” Virtue agreed. “Running from something.”

“The fire.”

But Virtue shook his head dolefully. “No, brother. Think about it. There’s a fire, so do you jump in a boat and head for an island? No. You just go where there’s no fire. Like to the next town.”

Sanjit fell silent. He was a little embarrassed. Now that he thought of it, it was obvious. Choo was right. Whatever they were doing in that boat it wasn’t about getting away from a fire.

“What do we do if they come here?” Virtue asked.

Sanjit had no easy answer. He stalled. “They’ll have a hard time landing. Even with no surf they’ll never get off that boat and up the cliffs.”

“Unless we help them,” Virtue said.

“What they’ll do is come around and try to get in by the yacht. If they go the right direction, they’ll come around and see it. Pretty good chance they’ll end up drowning if they try that. Crushed in between the yacht and the rocks. Even with no surf. It’s too tight.”

“If we helped them they could make it,” Virtue said cautiously. “It’ll take them a while to get here. That’s not exactly a fast boat. And they’re still a long way off.” He looked again through the binoculars. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Don’t know what?”

Virtue shrugged. “It’s not good to just decide you don’t like people, not even give them a chance.”

Sanjit felt the hairs on his neck tingle. “What are you saying, Choo?”

“I don’t know. I’m not saying anything. They’re probably fine.”

“Do they look fine?”

Virtue didn’t answer. Sanjit noticed that his jaw was tight. Brow furrowed. Lips pressed into a thin line.

“Do they look, fine, Choo?” Sanjit repeated.

“They could be like, refuges, you know?” Virtue said. “What are we going to do? Turn them away?”

“Choo. I’m asking you. Do they look fine to you? Crazy as it sounds, I kind of trust your feelings on things.”

“They don’t look anything like the men who came out of the jungle to our village,” Choo said. “But they feel like them.”

“Where are we supposed to land?” Diana asked.

The islands, which she’d been watching for what felt like days now, were finally within reach. The motorboat wallowed before bare cliffs that might have been one hundred feet high.

“There has to be something, like a dock or whatever,” Bug said. He was nervous, Diana knew. If his story about this island turned out to be a fantasy Caine would make him wish he were dead.

“We are about out of gas,” Tyrell said. “Maybe, like a gallon or whatever. I can hear it sloshing around, you know?”

“In which case the boat doesn’t matter,” Caine said. “We survive here, on the island, or we die.” He cast a reptilian look at Bug. “Some of us sooner than others.”

“Which way do we go?” Penny wondered aloud. “Right or left?”

“Anyone have a coin we can flip?” Diana asked.

Caine stood up. He shaded his eyes and looked left. Then right. “The cliffs look lower to the right.”

“Can’t you just go all magic powers and levitate us up to the top of the cliff?” Paint asked and then giggled nervously, slobbering down his red-stained lips.

“I’ve been wondering just that,” Caine said thoughtfully. “It’s a long way up. I don’t know.” He looked down at the kids in the boat. Diana knew what was coming next. She wondered idly who would get the honor.

“Let’s go, Paint,” Caine said. “You’re about useless, might as well be you.”

“What?” Paint’s alarm was comical. Diana would have felt sorry for him another time. But this was life and death and right now.

And Caine was right: Paint didn’t exactly contribute anything vital. He had no powers. He was no good in a fight. He was a druggie moron who had long since fried whatever brain he’d had.

Caine raised his hands and Paint floated up from his seat. It was as if Caine was lifting him from the middle of his body because Paint’s feet dangled and kicked and his arms waved. His long, ratty brown hair drifted and swirled as if he was in a slow-moving tornado.

“No, no, no,” he moaned.

Paint floated out over the water.

“If you lowered him a little it would be like he was walking on water,” Penny said.

Paint moved closer to the cliff, still just a few feet above the water, now twenty or thirty feet away from the boat.

“You know, Penny,” Diana said, “it’s not all that funny. If it works we’ll all be going up the same way.”

Somehow that fact had not occurred to Penny. Diana felt a distant sort of satisfaction at the way sadistic pleasure turned to worry on the girl’s face.

“Okay, now for the altitude,” Caine said. Paint began to rise again, up the cliff face. It was almost bare, hard-packed soil dotted with extrusions of rock and a few scattered bushes that looked like they’d chosen a very precarious spot to grow.

Paint rose. Diana held her breath.

“No, no, no!” Paint’s voice floated back down, ignored. He was no longer kicking. Instead he was trying to twist around to face the cliff, arms straining outward, looking for something-anything-to grab.

Halfway up, the height of a five story building, Paint’s ascent slowed noticeably. Caine took a deep breath. He didn’t seem to be straining physically. His muscles were not taut; the power he had was not about muscles. But his expression was grim and Diana knew that in some unfathomable way he was exerting all his power.

Paint rose, but more slowly.

And then he slipped. Fell.

Paint screamed.

He came to rest just ten feet in the air.

“Let’s go get him,” Caine said. Tyrell lowered the outboard into the water and the boat moved toward the screaming, wailing boy.

Caine dropped him into the boat. He landed hard, fell onto his rear end and began sobbing.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Diana said.

Caine shook his head. “No. I guess it’s too far. I could throw him that far. I’ve thrown cars that far. But I can’t levitate him.”

No one suggested throwing Paint. Diana’s warning that whatever worked would be done to each of them in turn kept them quiet. Diana mentally measured the distance Paint had traveled. Maybe seventy, eighty feet in all. So. Now she knew how far Caine could reach. The day might come when it would be very good to know that.