Phil’s eyes are wild and also hollow, like he’s in a trance. He wrenches free of me and lights another cocktail.
“Phil! You better toss that into the burning house and stop, or I’m gonna beat you bloody!” He glares at me, then shakes himself and tosses the firebomb underhanded into the fire.
I grab the wagon handle. “Let’s go!” We race to the outlet we left for people to escape and dive for cover behind some bushes.
But no one’s escaping. The guys inside are running around like their brains are broken while the fires that surround them grow bigger and brighter. Men run out of houses in their underwear, like we woke them up. Except for the burning arsenal, there’s a layer of housing between these guys and the fires, but shit. Some of them are standing in front of the arsenal and waving their arms like they’re cursing it. Do they think it spontaneously combusted? I don’t understand. And where’s Ray? I need to find Ray.
Greta and Max dive behind a hedge down the street to our right, aiming their rifles into the inferno. Milo and Danny should be here by now. Where are they? Did they forget the plan? Are they burned?
Inside the enclave, guys aren’t getting touched by fire, but they’re clustered around two bodies on the street. I don’t need the binoculars to know that these bodies are burned. The stench of charred flesh gags me.
Why aren’t they running or shooting at us? What am I missing? Are they fucked up on smack?
But one of them picks up something in the street and waves it in the air. It’s the brown neck of a beer bottle. He’s yelling, and a whole lot of faces turn toward the escape route and us. We duck.
The flickering reflection of firelight in the night sky gets suddenly brighter, and I peek out to see a big live oak aflame next to the arsenal. Within seconds, fire is jumping from one tree to the next, running fast along interlocking branches and racing across canopies and down trunks, catching in bushes and dropping flaming limbs and embers onto rooftops and the men below.
Then a herd of maybe forty men in camouflage moves toward us in a kind of controlled slow-motion charge through the opening we left them, their rifles pointed in our direction. Why did we come over here? We could’ve stayed hidden. I thought I could call them out and get them to surrender. How stupid am I?
A leader is in front of the herd—I thought Ray was the leader. This other leader’s making hand signals to spread the group wider. I jump up and shoot him in the head. Men scatter, firing over my head as I duck. Before I can blink, Greta and Max hurl Molotov cocktails at the men, who are breaking into chaos. A bottle bursts into flame in front of them, stopping their forward motion. Another hits a guy’s rifle butt to set his clothes on fire. He’s screeching so loud. Mother of God.
Phil raises up and strafes the herd with his AR-15. Some guys hit the ground and crawl like fast-moving snakes toward the flames behind them. Others jolt backward like they’ve been hit. Greta shoots one between the eyes. Then shots are hitting them from the side. What?
And I see Milo on a roof with a burning tree in front of it, picking off guys at a rapid rate. I raise up and start firing, too. But I have a bolt-action rifle and I’m slower. A guy turns and aims at Milo, and I hit the fucker in the shoulder. He drops his gun. But another guy shoots and hits the roof at Milo’s feet. Milo scurries backward over the roof crest. Where’s Danny?
I want to run to Milo and get him out of here. But we started this bloodbath, and now we have to finish it.
Are we winning? We might be winning. I’m fired up with adrenaline about this; some kind of relief’s washing over me. Maybe I made a great plan.
But behind the scattered men, four more appear and race toward us, firing AKs. I’m plastered to the dirt, peeking through the bush in front of me. Those aren’t men. They’re boys, Milo’s age and younger. Tweener kids coming at us like armed, rabid rats. How do we kill fucking kids?
They’re about to burst out of the enclave right on top of us when a tall pine tree goes up like a torch and falls over them, scattering flames that pop with pine resin. Phil and I leap sideways out of the way, but those kids are caught in the flames. What are we doing? We’re monsters!
A kid who looks like a younger Milo, a blond, skinny boy, stares into my eyes as flames catch his clothes, and his shrieks rise above all the others. His screams ricochet all through me, and I shoot him in the eye.
Kids are screeching and burning, and the air is riddled with the stink of charred flesh. Men are shrieking, burning trees are collapsing, burning roofs are caving in, burning bodies are running in circles and rolling on the ground. The bed of the pickup full of rifles roars with flame.
Phil is staring at burning people, frozen with some kind of gleam in his eyes. I yank the AR-15 away from him and fire at burning men and boys, trying to kill them before they have to feel themselves burn for another instant.
Greta and Max are shouting, “Woohoo!”
I whirl to face them, aiming at them without meaning to. “Shut the fuck up! You’re insane!”
Milo and Danny come flying around the corner toward us, running like lightning with their wagon full of gas cans, and somewhere from the middle of the inferno, a burst of shots rings out. Danny and Milo hit the pavement as bullets ping against the street just past them.
I hand the AR-15 to Phil and shake him. “Shoot them! Shoot them all!” Phil snaps to and shoots into the flames without stopping while I run to our boys and drag them to their feet to duck behind a stone wall.
Phil changes clips and keeps shooting like a madman into the blaze, but no one’s moving in there. Where’s Ray? Is he dead in there? I haven’t seen him. What if he’s not here?
“Cut it out, Phil!” Greta yells as she reaches him. He stops firing and looks at her, empty-eyed. “They’re all dead, man! Stop!” Phil gapes at her, and she pushes his rifle barrel down.
Before us, the fire’s getting brighter, threatening to spread beyond the enclave and our half-circle of fire surrounding it. More trees are catching fire. They haven’t been trimmed since the sun zapped us, and their branches stretch across roads, lacing themselves into the branches of other trees. I didn’t think of trees when I thought of this insane plan. What’s gonna stop this fire from taking out half of South Austin?
I run to Phil. “Gather up the wagons. We need to get out of here.”
He looks at me with those dead eyes. “Wagons? Oh, wagons.” He lopes off to retrieve them where they’re scattered around.
“What about the gas cans we left over there?” Greta points toward where she started her fire.
“Forget the gas cans!”
“No, man. We need them!” She trots over and snatches a wagon handle from Phil, then rushes around the corner, saying, “Go on. I’ll catch up.”
“We’ll wait!” I holler.
“You’re dead, prissy boy!” Fuck, that’s Ray.
I whisk my head to peer into the inferno. Ray’s charging up the center of the compound, skirting clumps of flame, leaping over burning corpses, heading straight toward me with his AK poised to shoot.
Milo raises his rifle, but for once, I’m quicker, and I shoot Ray in the center of his chest. He’s still stumbling toward us, firing a burst of shots that go sideways, and then he falls face-down into a burning tree limb, his camo jacket erupting in flames. He rolls over with his face up, holding his chest and screaming like a demon from Hell.
My rifle still up, I watch, stunned, as Ray’s hair catches fire and his face starts to bubble. I gag and spin away, breathing in smoke and choking. Takes me a minute to get a grip.
I sputter out to Danny and Milo, “Gather up our rifles, and if there’s extra ones you can get to without getting burned, grab them, too.”
Max plops down on his butt and starts bawling.
I step to him and clutch his shoulder. “I get it, man. But let’s go. We’ve got the rest of our lives to cry.”
/> Milo and Danny come back with six or seven rifles between them.
“Come on. We’ll meet Greta at the corner.” As soon as we get there, we see her running toward us with a wagonful of gas cans.
“Go, go, go!” I point toward home and we run, dragging our wagons, with the fiery pits of Hell burning behind us and a throbbing hole in my chest where my soul used to be.
When we reach Dittmar and the extra wagon we stashed, I lurch forward to puke and puke and puke until blood comes out of my mouth.
“Fuck, Keno,” Max says. “Are you bleeding inside?”
Greta puts her hands on my shoulders. “Probably popped a blood vessel in your throat. You all right?”
“Right as fucking rain.” I spit out more vomit and blood. “Get me out of here.” I climb to my feet and we run.
CHAPTER 39
Day is breaking by the time I can see our home compound through the binoculars. Looks like half the neighbors are waiting in the park, sitting on the monkey bars, standing atop the slide, climbing the swing set, straining their necks to stare east toward the conflagration we started—the fucking massacre we perpetrated—smoke and flames still visible to the east above the tree canopy.
“Is that them? Way down the street?” someone shouts, and I turn my back and sit down on the pavement, covering my face.
“I can’t go in there!”
“Why not, man?” Danny asks.
“They’re gonna treat us like heroes. We are not heroes!”
“Come on, Keno,” Greta says. “We saved the neighborhood with your plan. Enjoy the kudos.”
“Fucking kudos? You think we deserve kudos? They oughta take us to the Criminal Court in the Hague. We burned forty, maybe fifty men alive. We burned kids. Fucking kids!”’
“They were armed kids trying to kill us,” Greta says.
“I don’t care! We shouldn’t’ve been in that position. We shoulda been smarter than that!”
Behind me, I hear the crowd running toward us. I look at Phil, whose dead eyes are deader than ever. I look at Max, who’s been crying all the way home. I feel like both of them and more. Only Greta and Danny seem elated at our so-called victory.
Milo’s got a stoic, unreadable expression on his face, and he’s studying me with tired eyes. He pulls me to my feet and squeezes my arm. “I got you, man.”
If I had any emotional bandwidth left, I’d collapse against Milo and cry for a month. But a crowd of neighbors is upon us, slapping our backs, hooting and hollering, grabbing us in hugs, smiling and laughing and dancing around. I make my way past them and sprint for home.
“Keno? I heard you were back,” Alma says from the kitchen when she hears me slam the front door. She comes around the corner into the living room and sees me, and the rosy color in her cheeks drains away.
I shake my head at her, but no words come. I jerk my head back, lean into the door, and cry out some kind of wailing lament that sounds like a roar.
“Oh, baby. I’m so sorry,” she says. “Let’s get you upstairs.”
I flinch when she reaches to touch me, and she draws back.
“Oh,” she says, closing her eyes, taking deep breaths. She hooks her finger in mine and leads me to the upstairs bathroom, sits me on the closed toilet, and carefully peels off my clothes. I keep flinching, and she notes my every twitch.
“We’ll have to burn these clothes,” she says.
“They’ll go up like a fucking torch.”
“Yeah. Come sit in the bathtub. I’ll give you a bath.”
“You can’t carry all that water up here.”
“Don’t worry. Just wait here. Close your eyes and rest.”
Outside the bathroom, I hear Mom asking about me and Alma answering too quietly for me to follow. I try to do what Alma said and close my eyes, but my head is full of burning boys and pain-riddled screams.
Mom says, “I’ll get you some water. Then I’ll bring food.”
And Alma says, “Thank you.”
When Alma comes back, I’m drawn to her presence like a magnet, and I squeeze the fuck out of her hand. I’m needy enough to suck the life clear out of her, so I let go.
“Baby, you’re in shock,” she tells me.
“It’s worse than that,” I mutter, my voice breaking. “The things we did—”
“Shh… shh…” She’s petting my head, and I zone out until Mom taps on the door and sets a big jug of water inside the room.
“I should pour that water for you,” I say to Alma.
“Nope. I’ll just lean it over the tub and let the leverage do the work.”
“Leverage.” I sigh.
She covers me in water, and I sink down in the tub to let my head go under. I could stay here. I don’t have to kill anyone down here. But Alma is soaping me up, and her touch is the only reason I come up for air. I have no feeling in my heart, but I’m putty in her hands.
Alma gets me clean while I stare into space. She has me stand, dries me off, and dresses me. She sits me on the closed toilet again, then bandages my arm.
“Be right back.” As she shuts the door, she says to someone, “Can you help me get him to bed?”
“He needs help?” Mom asks.
I need to get out of here.
I don’t want Mom or anyone else to fawn over me and give me sympathy.
“Drink this,” Alma says. I didn’t even know she was there. I drink some kind of tea, and my mind floats away. Then faceless people lead me to bed in a bad dream I can’t escape.
I need to get out of here.
I wake up screaming, and it’s dark outside. The next night? Maybe I didn’t scream, because Alma’s asleep, curled up beside me, her hands locked around my arm.
I screamed in my dream; I know that. I watch Alma sleep. I want to love her, but I don’t feel anything except horror and exhausting dread.
I need to get out of here.
Before people wake up, before I have to see them worrying about me. Before anyone tries to thank me again for what we did.
They must’ve drugged me. I’m in some kind of twilight, drifting in and out of dreams.
“God, you piece of shit asshole!”
“No one is fucking safe!”
“Ray abused me, okay?”
The sky’s twisting with color. Undulating bands of light, like northern lights, every color of the rainbow.
“Hands up, motherfucker!”
And I run, darting behind cars, leaping hedges. I vault over a fence then another then another, tripping on junk metal. Zigzagging, looking for cover.
A rifle shot zings against the pavement, and I jump sideways over a hedge as more bullets whiz past. I plunge into a thicket of trees. A dog barks behind me.
“Grandpa, what did you do? You got him killed! I should kill you for this!”
“God damn it! God damn it! He’s dead. He’s fucking dead!”
And the hole, the empty little hole.
Fire bursts out and spreads across the arsenal roof. Phil slams another cocktail into the woodpile, and the whole arsenal erupts in flame.
Screaming. So much screaming. God damn it. God damn it. Fire’s jumping from tree to tree, dropping flaming limbs onto rooftops and men. Phil strafes men with his AR-15.
A kid who looks like Milo, a blond boy. He’s too much like Milo! He stares into my eyes as flames catch his clothes.
Kids screeching and burning, air stinking of charred flesh, men shrieking, burning trees collapsing, burning roofs caving in, burning bodies running in circles.
“You’re dead, prissy boy!”
Ray’s hair catches fire; his face starts to bubble.
Grandpa’s machete hits Whiskers’s head, splitting his skull and face down the middle. Tat Man screams bloody murder and fires a shot straight into Uncle Eddie’s forehead.
“Noooo!”
Eddie’s eyes roll back in his head, like he’s trying to see where the bullet went.
Shit! I might be thrashing in bed, but if I am, I’m too doped to stop. I can’t wake up. I’ve got to wake up.
I need to get out of here.
I’m in a deep hole of pain, and I’m screaming and screaming with no end. I can’t stop. Can’t even try to. It feels like my new reality. I’ll be screaming for eternity now.
But then Nana is here with her hand on my heart. The younger, healthy Nana. She caresses my forehead with her other hand.
“Shh… shh…” she’s saying. “I love you.”
“Nana, he has a hole in his head!”
“I know, honey. I’m so sorry.”
“Is he with you?”
“Not yet, but I hope he will be.”
“Is Tasha there?”
“I can feel her, so yes.”
“Nana, I need you! I need all three of you!”
She places both hands on my heart and presses down, kindling a warmth that spreads through my freezing muscles down to my fingers and toes. A bright yellow light shoots out of my chest and fills this hole I’m in.
“He’s in your heart, Keno. We are all in your heart. Use your love to get you through.”
“But it’s my fault, Nana. I started this shit, and now Eddie’s dead.”
“Honey, you couldn’t have known it would end this way.”
“But what do I do now?”
“You know what you have to do.”
“But you set this place up for us. You were brilliant to do that.”
“The only certainty in life, my love, is that things always change.”
“Are you saying—?”
She runs her hand down my cheek and smiles sadly.
“I’m saying you know what to do.”
I startle awake. I’m getting out of here.
CHAPTER 40
Alma’s on the patio when I come downstairs carrying a half-loaded hiker’s backpack with a bedroll attached. The sun is rising, and Alma looks busy, like she’s cooking a big breakfast.
If the Light Escapes: A Braving the Light Novel Page 26