Lana sauntered over. “Have to admit: the guy has a genius for doing the wrong thing. We actually need him to be the bad guy, and suddenly he’s Mr. Meek and Mild.”
Quinn was too tired to think of some clever retort. His shoulders sagged. He let his head drop down. “I wish I knew how long we had to keep it together.”
“Until we can’t,” Lana said.
The panic started then. There was no cause that Quinn could see. Suddenly kids on the far side of the fire were shouting and some were squealing. Maybe nothing more than a rat passing through.
But those beside them didn’t know what it was and the panic spread lightning-quick.
Lana cursed and started running. Quinn was right behind her. But the panic came to meet them, kids suddenly screaming without knowing why, running, circling back to the fire, getting spooked and running again, knocking one another over, yelling.
Sanjit’s sister, Peace, knocked into Quinn. He grabbed her shoulders and yelled, “What is it?”
She had no answer, just shook her head and pulled away.
A kid ran into the darkness. His clothing was on fire; the flames streamed behind him as he fled screaming. Dahra Baidoo tackled him like a football player and rolled him over to kill the flames.
Other kids grabbed torches and formed into knots and paranoid clusters, back-to-back like ancient warriors surrounded by foes.
And then to Quinn’s utter horror a girl ran straight into the fire. She was screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!”
He leaped to cut her off, but he was too late. The heat drove him back as he cried, “No! No! No!”
Then, as if grabbed by a divine hand, the girl came flying back out of the fire. She was rolled across the ground. It was rough but effective. The fire that had just caught onto her shorts went out.
Quinn turned, grateful, to Caine. But Caine did not look at him. Quinn heard Lana shouting at kids, telling them to stop acting like idiots, to calm down.
Some listened. Others did not. More than one lit torch went off into the darkness. Quinn wondered how long it would be before he started seeing fires throughout this poor, beaten town.
Lana came storming back, furious, practically spitting with rage. “No one even knows what it was. Some idiot yelled something and off they went. Like cattle. I hate people.”
“Do we go after the ones that got away?” Quinn wondered aloud.
But Lana wasn’t ready for a calm discussion. “I really, sometimes, really just hate them all.”
She threw herself down on the steps. Quinn noticed a slight smile on Caine’s lips. Caine favored him with a curious look. “Question for you, Quinn: how long would you have stayed on strike?”
“What?”
“Well, seemed to me like you were ready to have all these people go hungry over Cigar.”
Quinn rested his fists on his sides. “How long would you have defended Penny?”
Caine made a small laugh. “Being in charge. It’s not easy, is it?”
“I haven’t tortured anyone, Caine. I haven’t turned anyone over to some psycho girl who’ll drive them insane.”
Caine sagged a little at that. He looked away. “Yeah, well… You pretty much had me beat, Quinn. Albert was already thinking about how he’d get rid of me, not whether.”
“Albert had his escape plans ready.”
Caine’s eyes glinted in the firelight. “We’ll see. I liked that island. Never should have left. Diana told me not to. There are other boats. Just maybe I’ll pay old Albert a visit one of these days.”
“You should do that,” Quinn said. He was remembering the sight of those tiny eyes like beans in the blackened sockets of Cigar’s head. Let Caine go after the island. It might be good to see whether those missiles Albert claimed to have would work.
But Caine seemed already to have lost interest in Quinn’s anger. “More likely we’re all dead soon,” he said.
“Yeah,” Quinn agreed.
“I would have liked to see Diana again. No baby now.”
“Are you relieved?” Lana asked harshly.
Caine thought it over for so long it seemed he’d forgotten the question. Then at last, “No. Just kind of sad.”
THIRTY-THREE
5 HOURS, 12 MINUTES
WAS THAT LIGHT?
Astrid opened her eyes wide. Stared.
Yes. An orange glow. A fire.
A fire!
“Cigar, I think I see town. I think I see a fire.”
“I see it, too. Like devils dancing!”
They walked forward eagerly. Astrid registered the fact that the ground beneath her boots was no longer flat and hard and occasionally interrupted by some unnamed weed, but had become bumpier, dry clods of dirt that tripped her as they rose and formed rows and from those rows rose neatly ordered plants.
What she noticed was the light.
And then Cigar’s screams.
But Cigar screamed a lot, so Astrid kept walking and ignored his mad shrieks that something was in his feet.
Then it all came together and Astrid knew. She felt something pushing at the leather of her boot.
“Zekes!” she cried, and stumbled back, fell down, jumped up like the ground was electrified, crawled, stood, ran back, back until the ground was hard and flat again.
She fumbled in the dark, fingers searching for and then finding the whipping worm, its head already through the leather and touching her flesh, and she got her hands around it even though it fought, and she pulled at it with all her strength and it came free and whipped around, quick as a cobra, and sank its nasty, tooth-ringed mouth into her arm, but she had the tail and yelled, “No! No!” and then it was away from her.