Michael Grant - Lies

He plunged down the street, aiming for the beach. He had to fight the urge to look over his shoulder for the boy who could not possibly be there.

They made it safely as far as the beach. But there they ran into a group of maybe twenty kids, all milling around gaping at the fire, crying, giggling, encouraging one another. Half like they were watching a show, half like they were personally burning in those flames.

At first the gaggle of kids didn’t notice Caine’s group, but then one glanced over and his eyes widened as he saw Diana. And then, Caine.

“It’s Caine!”

“Out of my way,” Caine warned. The last thing he wanted was a stupid, pointless, and time-wasting fight. He was in a hurry.

“You!” another kid cried. “You started the fire!”

“What? Moron.” Caine pushed past, using his actual hands, not his powers, not looking for trouble right now. But the cry was being taken up by others and now a dozen furious, terrified kids were in his face, yelling and crying and then one threw a punch.

“Enough,” Caine yelled. He raised a hand, and the nearest kid went flying. He landed with a sickening crunch twenty feet away.

Caine never even saw the person who brained him with a crowbar. The blow seemed to come out of nowhere. He was on his knees, too confused to be scared.

He saw the crowbar just before it hit the second time. A weaker blow, and badly aimed, but shockingly painful on the bone of his left shoulder. It sent a numbing electricity all the way down to his fingertips.

He wasn’t going to wait for a third blow. He raised his right hand, but before he could pulverize the little boy, Penny made her move.

The boy leaped back, almost as far as if Caine had thrown him.

He screamed and swung his crowbar wildly around him. When the crowbar flew from his fear-weakened grip, he began punching and clawing the air, eyes wild.

“What’s he seeing?” Caine asked.

“Very large spiders,” Penny answered. “Really large. And they jump really fast.”

“Thanks,” Caine grunted. He stood up and rubbed his numbed arm. “Hope they give him a heart attack. Come on,” he yelled. “It’s not far now. Hang in with me, everyone, by morning you’ll be eating.”

Mary didn’t have the energy to go home. Not much point, really…no shower…no…

She sagged onto the chair in the cramped office. She tried to lift her legs, rest her feet on a cardboard box, but even that required too much energy.

She rattled the pill bottle on her desk. She pried the top off and looked at what she had. She didn’t even recognize the pill, but it must be some kind of antidepressant. That’s all she ever got from Dahra.

She downed it dry.

When had she last taken a pill? She needed to keep track of them.

Two kids down with some kind of flu.

What was she supposed to…

What might have been dreams melded seamlessly with memory and Mary wandered for a while in a place filled with sick children and the smell of pee and her mother making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in giant stacks for some event at school and Mary wrapping the sandwiches in Ziploc bags, counting them into recycled plastic Ralph’s bags.

“Did you wet yourself?” her mother asked.

“I guess so. It smells like it.” She wasn’t embarrassed, just annoyed, wishing her mother wouldn’t make an issue out of it.

And then the door was opened and a little girl came and crawled onto Mary’s lap but Mary couldn’t move her arms to hug because her arms were made out of lead.

“I’m so tired,” Mary told her mother.

“Well, we’ve made eight thousand sandwiches,” her mother explained, and Mary saw from the stacks and stacks that teetered comically like something from a Dr. Seuss book, that it was true.

“You look sickly.”

“I’m fine,” Mary said.

“I want my mommy,” the little girl said in her ear, and warm tears rolled onto Mary’s neck.

“You should come home now,” Mary’s mother said.

“I have to do the laundry first,” Mary said.

“Someone else will do it.”

Mary felt a sudden sharp sadness. She felt herself sinking into the tile floor, shrinking as her mother watched, no longer making sandwiches.

Her mother held the knife covered with peanut butter and raspberry preserves. Globules of red, red fruit dripped from the edge of the knife, which was awfully large for making sandwiches.

“It won’t hurt,” her mother said. She held the knife out for Mary.

Mary jerked awake.

The girl on her lap had fallen asleep and peed. Mary was soaked by it.

“Oh!” she cried. “Oh, get off me! Get off me!” she yelled, still half in her dream, still seeing that knife floating, handle toward her, dripping.

The girl fell to the floor and, stunned, began to cry.

“Hey!” someone yelled from the main room.

“I’m sorry,” Mary mumbled, and tried to stand up. Her legs gave way and she sat down again, too suddenly. As she fell she reached for the knife but it wasn’t real, though the little girl’s cry was, and so was the voice yelling, “Hey, you can’t come in here!”

On the next try Mary managed to stand up. She staggered out. Three kids, faces dull with terror.

Not her age group. Too old.

“What are you doing here?” Mary asked.

The whole room was waking up, kids asking what was going on. Zadie, the helper who’d been yelling, said, “I think something’s wrong, Mary.”

Two more kids pushed through the front door. They smelled of something that wasn’t pee.

A boy ran in, shrieking. He had a livid burn all over the back of his hand.

“What’s going on?”

“Help us, help us!” a boy cried, and now it was all chaos, more kids streaming in the door. Mary recognized the smell now, the smell of smoke.

She pushed none too gently past the new arrivals. Outside, she coughed as she drew a lungful of smoke.

Smoke was everywhere, swirling, hanging ghostly in the air, and an orange glow reflected from the shattered glass of town hall.

Off to the west a tongue of fire suddenly shot into the sky and was swallowed by its own smoke.

No one else was in the plaza. No one but one girl.

Mary rubbed the sleep from her eyes, stared at her. Not possible, not possible, not real, some leftover fragment of dream.

But the girl was still there, face in shadow, a glint of chrome steel glinting from her braces.

“Have you seen him?” the girl asked.

Mary felt something die inside her, dread and horror like the impact of an explosion in her mind.

“Have you seen the demon?” Brittney asked.

Mary couldn’t answer. She could only stare as Brittney’s arm began to elongate, to change shape.

Brittney winked. Cold, dead blue eyes.

Mary ran into the day care. She slammed the door behind her and leaned back against it.

TWENTY-SIX

13 HOURS, 43 MINUTES

THE SMOKE ALTEREDthe familiar streetscape for Sam. He was turned around, unsure for a moment of where he was or which direction was which. He stopped, heard footsteps running behind him, and spun around, hands up, palms out.

But the footsteps headed away.

Sam cursed in frustration. The town was burning down and the smoke made it all but impossible to find the enemy.

He had to do this now, during the heat of battle, before Astrid intervened and forced him once again to sit helpless, waiting for her to invent some system they’d never be able to put in place.

This was the night. This was the time to do what he should have done a month before: finish off Zil and his insanity.

But he would have to find them first.

He forced himself to think. What was Zil up to, aside from the obvious? Why would he decide to burn the town down? It seemed bold for Zil. It seemed insane: Zil lived there, too.