Michael Grant - Lies

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 STARTINGto 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.