A blast of heat, like opening an oven, staggered Sam. Astrid had said it wasn’t the fire that killed you. Well, she hadn’t seen this fire, or guessed that a little kid could shoot flame from her hands.
Sam held the child in his arms. Fire to his back and to his right, crisping his eyelashes, baking his flesh.
A window straight ahead.
He stumbled forward. He dropped the kid like a sack of dirt and slammed the window up with both hands. Smoke roiled around him, the fire chasing it toward this fresh source of oxygen.
Sam felt in the gloom for the child and found her. He lifted her, and there, miraculously, was a pair of hands waiting to take the kid. Hands reaching through the smoke, seeming almost supernatural.
Sam collapsed against the sill, half hanging out of the window, and someone grabbed him, and dragged and slid him down the aluminum ladder. His head smacked the rungs and he did not mind one tiny bit because out here was light and air and through squinting, weeping eyes he could see the blue sky.
Edilio and a kid named Joel manhandled Sam down to the sidewalk.
Someone sprayed him with a hose. Did they think he was on fire?
Was he on fire?
He opened his mouth and gulped greedily at the cold water. It washed over his face.
But he couldn’t hold on to consciousness. He floated away. Floated on his back on gentle surf.
His mother was there. She was sitting on the water just beside him. Her chin rested on her knees. She wasn’t looking at him.
“What?” he said to her.
“It smelled like fried chicken,” she said.
“What?” he said.
His mother reached over and slapped him hard across the face.
His eyes flew open.
“Sorry,” Astrid said. “I needed to wake you up.”
She knelt beside him and placed something against his mouth. A plastic mask. Oxygen.
He coughed, and breathed. He pulled the mask away and threw up, right on the sidewalk, doubled over like a drunk in an alleyway.
Astrid looked away discreetly. Later he would be embarrassed. Right now he was just glad to be able to throw up.
He breathed more oxygen.
Quinn was holding the garden hose. Edilio was racing to hook one of the bigger fire hoses up to the hydrant. There was a trickle, then, as Edilio worked the long-handled wrench and opened the hydrant all the way, a gusher. The kids on the other end had to wrestle the hose like they were fighting a python. It would have been funny some other time.
Sam sat up. He still couldn’t talk.
He nodded to where half a dozen kids knelt around the little firestarter. She was black, black by race and from the coating of soot. Her hair was gone on one side, burned away. On the other side she had a little girl’s pigtail held with a pink scrunchy.
Sam knew from the reverential way the kids knelt there. He knew, but he had to ask, anyway. His voice was a soft croak.
Astrid shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said.
Sam nodded.
“Her parents probably had the stove on when they disappeared,” Astrid said. “That’s most likely what caused the fire. Or maybe a cigarette.”
No, Sam thought. No, that wasn’t it.
The little girl had the power. She had the power Sam had, at least something like it.
The power he had used in panic to create an impossible light.
The power he had used once and almost killed someone with.
The power he had just used again, dooming the very person he was trying so hard to save.
He was not the only one. He was not the only freak. There was—or had been—at least one other.
Somehow, that realization was not comforting.
FIVE
291 HOURS, 07 MINUTES
NIGHT CAME TO Perdido Beach.
The streetlights turned on automatically, doing little to push back the darkness, doing a lot to cast deep shadows on frightened faces.
Close to a hundred kids milled around the plaza. Everyone seemed to have a candy bar and a soda. The little store, the one that sold mostly beer and corn chips, had been looted. Sam had snagged a PayDay and a Dr Pepper. The Reese’s and Twix and Snickers were all gone by the time he got there. He’d left two dollars on the counter as payment. The money was gone within seconds.
The apartment building had burned half away before the fire had run out of energy. The roof had collapsed. Half the upper floor was gone. The ground floor looked like it would survive, though the shop windows were smoke-blackened on the inside. Smoke rose now in tendrils, not billows, and the stench was everywhere.
But the hardware store and the day care had been saved.
The body of the little girl still lay on the sidewalk. Someone had put a blanket over her. Sam was grateful for that.
Sam and Quinn sat on the grass, toward the center of the plaza, near the dead fountain. Quinn rocked back and forth, hugging his knees.
Bouncing Bette came over and stood awkwardly in front of Sam. She had her little brother with her. “Sam, do you think it’s safe to go to my house? We have to get something.”
Sam shrugged. “Bette, I don’t know any more than you do.”
Bette nodded, hesitated, and walked away.
All the park benches were taken. Some little family units draped sheets over the few benches, making limp pup tents. Many kids went home to their empty houses, but others needed people around them. Some found comfort in the crowd. Some just needed to see what was going on.
Two kids Sam didn’t know, probably fifth graders, came up and said, “Do you know what’s going to happen?”
Sam shook his head. “No, guys, I don’t.”