screws around with people’s neurochemistry. But Paracetco began as a legitimate drug intended to help victims of Alzheimer’s disease. Pyro was an accident. It was a home-brew— a basement drug invented by someone who was trying to assemble one of the other higher-priced street drugs. The inventor made a very small chemical mistake, and wound up with pyro.
That happened on the east coast and caused an immediate increase in the number of senseless arson fires, large and small.
Pyro worked its way west without making nearly as much trouble as it could have. Now its popularity is growing. And in dry-as-straw southern California, it can cause a real orgy of burning.
“My God,” Cory said when the radio report was over.
And in a small, whispery voice, she quoted from the Book of Revelation: “`Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils… .’”
And the devils set fire to the Payne-Parrish house.
At about two a.m. I awoke to the jangling of the bell: Emergency! Earthquake? Fire? Intruders?
But there was no shaking, no unfamiliar noise, no smoke. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t at our house. I got up, threw clothing on, debated for a second whether to snatch my survival pack, then left it. Our house didn’t seem to be in immediate danger.
My pack was safe in the closet, mixed in among blankets and bundles of old clothes. If I had to have it, I could come back and snatch it in seconds.
I ran outside to see what was needed, and saw at once. The Payne-Parrish house was fully involved, surrounded by fire. One of the watchers on duty was still sounding the alarm. People spilled from all the houses, and must have seen as I did that the Payne-Parrish house was a total loss. Neighbors were already wetting down the houses on either side. A live oak tree— one of our huge, ancient ones— was afire. There was a light wind blowing, swirling bits of burning leaves and twigs into the air and scattering them. I joined the people who were beating and wetting the grounds.
Where were the Paynes? Where was Wardell Parrish? Had anyone called the fire department? A house full of people, after all, it wasn’t like a burning garage.
I asked several people. Kayla Talcott said she had called them. I was grateful and ashamed. I wouldn’t have asked if Dad were still with us. One of us would have just called. Now we couldn’t afford to call.
No one had seen any of the Paynes. Wardell Parrish I found in the Yannis yard where Cory and my brother Bennett were wrapping him in a blanket. He was coughing so much that he couldn’t talk, and wearing only pajama pants.
“Is he okay?” I asked.
“He breathed a lot of smoke,” Cory said. “Has someone called— ”
“Kayla Talcott called the fire department.”
“Good. But no one’s at the gate to let them in.”
“I’ll go.” I turned away, but she caught my arm.
“The others?” she whispered. She meant the Paynes, of course.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded and let me go.
I went to the gate, borrowing Alex Montoya’s key on the way. He always seemed to have his gate key in his pocket. It was because of him that I didn’t go back into our house and maybe interrupt a robbery and be killed for my trouble.
Firefighters arrived in no great hurry. I let them in, locked the gate after them, and watched as they put out the fire.
No one had seen the Paynes. We could only assume they had never gotten out. Cory tried to take Wardell Parrish to our house, but he refused to leave until he found out one way or the other about his twin sister and his nieces and nephews.
When the fire was almost out, the bell began to ring again. We all looked around. Caroline Balter, Harry’s mother, was jerking and pushing at the bell and screaming.
“Intruders!” she shouted. “Thieves! They’ve broken into the houses!”
And we all rushed without thinking back to our houses. Wardell Parrish came along with my family, still coughing, and wheezing, and as useless— as weaponless— as the rest of us. We could have been killed, rushing in that way. Instead, we were lucky.
We scared away our thieves.
Along with our store-bought food and the radio, the thieves got some of Dad’s tools and supplies— nails, wire, screws, bolts, that kind of thing. They didn’t get the phone, the computer, or anything in Dad’s office.
In fact, they didn’t get into Dad’s office at all. I suppose we scared them away before they could search the whole house.
They stole clothing and shoes from Cory’s room, but didn’t touch my room or the boys’. They got some of our money— the kitchen money, Cory calls it. She had hidden it in the kitchen in a box of detergent.
She had thought no one would steal such a thing. In fact, the thieves might have stolen it for resale without realizing that it wasn’t just detergent. It could have been worse. The kitchen money was only about a thousand dollars for minor emergencies.
The thieves did not find the rest of our money, some of it hidden out by our lemon tree, and some hidden with our two remaining guns under the floor in Cory’s closet. Dad had gone to a lot of trouble to make a kind of floor safe, not locked, but completely concealed beneath a rug and a battered chest of drawers filled with sewing things— salvaged bits of cloth, buttons, zippers, hooks, things like that. The chest of drawers could be moved with one hand. It slid from one side of the closet to the other if you pushed it right, and in seconds you could have the money and the guns in your hands. The concealment trick wouldn’t have defeated people who had time to make a thorough search, but it had defeated our thieves. They had dumped some of the drawers onto the floor, but they had not thought to look under the chest.
The thieves did take Cory’s sewing machine. It was a compact, sturdy old machine with its own carrying case.
