Sherman was ablaze. It looked like a volcano had erupted in the middle of town. And now the flames were advancing toward the center of town along Alameda.
His doing, all of this. His creation. And now they would all know that he was serious. Now they would all know that you didn’t mess with Zil Sperry.
“Take me to Lana,” Antoine moaned. “You guys have to take me to Lana!”
The sun wasn’t up yet, so it wasn’t possible to see the smoke plume, but Zil sensed that it was huge. There was not a star to be seen in the sky.
“Think we got Sam?” Lance asked.
No one answered.
“Should we go back and get more gas?” Turk asked. He, like everyone else, was ignoring Antoine.
Zil couldn’t answer. A part of him wanted to burn it all down. Every last house. Every vacant, useless store. Burn it all down and dance up here atop the Winnebago while it burned.
The plan was to create chaos. And to help the freak Caine to escape.
“Leader, we need to know what to do,” Turk urged.
“Help me,” Antoine moaned. “We gotta stick together, don’t we? Don’t we?”
Hank said, “Antoine, shut up or I’ll shut you up.”
“He burned a hole in me. Look at it! Look at it!”
Hank glanced up at Zil. Zil turned away. He didn’t have an answer to the problem of Antoine.
The truth was, Zil hated seeing wounds of any kind. He’d always been squeamish about blood. And the one quick glance he’d stolen at Antoine’s injury had made him sick to his stomach.
Which probably didn’t help Antoine much.
Hank said, “Come on, Antoine. Come with me.”
“What? What are you…I’ll be good, it’s just that it hurts, man, it hurts so much.”
“Dude, come on,” Hank said. “I’ll get you to Lana. Come on.”
Hank bent low and propped Antoine up as he struggled onto his feet. Antoine shrieked in pain.
Zil climbed down the ladder that was bolted to the back of the Winnebago.
“What do you think, Lance?” Handsome Lance. Tall, cool, smart Lance. If only, Zil thought for not the first time, all Human Crew could look like Lance. Lance reflected well on Zil. Whereas fat, drunken Antoine, Turk with his dragging foot, and Hank with his nasty ferret’s face made it seem that he was surrounded by losers.
Lance looked thoughtful. “Kids are spread all over the place. All confused. What do we do if they decide we were responsible for burning the town and decide to come after us?”
Turk laughed derisively. “Like the Leader hasn’t thought of that? We tell people it was Sam.”
Zil was surprised by the suggestion. He’d given it no thought, but obviously Turk had.
“Not Sam,” Zil corrected, thinking on the fly. “We blame Caine. Kids won’t believe it was Sam. We say it was Caine and everyone will believe us.”
“Kids saw us throwing Molotov cocktails,” Lance argued.
Turk snorted. “Man, don’t you know? People believe all kinds of stuff if you tell them it’s true. People will believe in flying saucers and stuff.”
“It was Caine,” Zil said, making it up as he went along and liking it more with each word he spoke. “Caine can make people do what he wants, right? So he used his powers to force some of us to do it.”
“Yeah,” Turk said. His eyes lit up. “Yeah, because he wanted to make us look bad. He wanted it to be on us because he’s a freak and we fight the freaks.”
Hank reappeared. He took a position behind Lance. The contrast between the two was all the more clear when they were close together.
“Where’s ’Toine?” Turk asked.
“Dumped him down the beach,” Hank said. “He’s not going to make it. Not with that hole in him. He’d just slow us down.”
“Then he’ll be the first to give his life for the Human Crew,” Turk said solemnly. “That’s major. That’s hard-core. Murdered by Sam.”
Zil reached a sudden realization. “If people are going to believe Caine is responsible for all this, we have to fight Caine.”
“Fight Caine?” Turk said blankly. He took an unconscious step back.
Zil grinned. “We don’t have to win. We just have to make it look real.”
Turk nodded. “That’s really smart, Leader. Everyone will think Caine used us and then we managed to chase him off.”
Zil doubted everyone would believe that. But some would. And that doubt would slow down Sam’s reaction as the council tried to make sense of everything.
Each hour of chaos would leave Zil stronger.
Would his big brother, Zane, have figured it all out this well? And would he have had the nerve to pull it off? Not likely. Zane would have been on Sam’s side.
It was almost a pity he wasn’t here.
TWENTY-FIVE
14 HOURS, 2 MINUTES
EDILIO HAD WATCHED Sam go with a feeling of doom. What chance was there if Sam had lost it? What chance did Edilio have to fix anything?
“Like I could,” he muttered. “Like anyone could.”
It was very hard for him to see what was happening around him. He heard screams. He heard shouts. He heard laughter. He saw only smoke and flame.
Gunshots rang out. From where, he couldn’t say.
He glimpsed kids running. So brightly lit, they looked like they were burning. Then they were obscured by the smoke.
“What do I do?” Edilio asked himself.