Sky on Fire

Greasy grabbed the other bottle and drank right from it.

‘That’s gross, man,’ Kildow told him.

‘Who cares?’ Greasy answered. ‘There’s aisles full of this stuff.’

He looked at the bottle.

‘Ew, what is this?’

‘It’s juice, but it’s got, like, vegetables in it,’ I said.

‘It’s juice, but it’s got, like, vegetables in it,’ Greasy parroted, mocking me.

I shrugged.

Zarember came forward, taking the other bottle. He poured a tumbler of it and drank.

‘Tastes good to me,’ he said, winking at me.

I felt bad, Zarember was definitely the nicest one. Here he was standing up for me and I had just drugged him.

Jake ambled over.

‘What’s this?’

I tried to tell him with my eyes, but he didn’t see me. Too dark.

‘Juice,’ I said. ‘That kind Chloe liked.’ I was trying to tell him somehow that, I don’t know, the juice had the sleeping pills Niko had given Chloe and then I realized he wasn’t even there when that happened. He had been out on the road.

Jake picked up the container and chugged.

‘Jake!’ I shouted, before I could stop myself.

And the cadets all looked at me.

I tried to play it cool.

‘He’s gonna puke, he chugs it like that…’

And somehow I was right. Jake set the bottle down (now only half-full) and took two steps away and vomited all over the floor.

The cadets laughed and clapped one another on the back.

I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.

Payton came back hauling two gallon jugs of water.

‘You idiots,’ he scolded good-naturedly, ‘I told you to hydrate with water.’

Payton set the water down next to Jake.

‘Welcome to the Air Force, son! You earned your first curl hurl!’

Laughing, Payton picked up the bottle of juice from the counter and smelled it.

‘Smells off,’ he said.

Payton hadn’t drunk any and neither had the tall, gangly cadet, Jimmy Doll Hands.

Then Anna came back.

‘There’s a room,’ she announced, sounding as bored as she could possibly sound. ‘There’s a camp stove and bunks in the back. It was all hidden away.’

‘What?’ Payton asked.

‘They hid it from us,’ Anna said. ‘And there’s lots of clothes there and stuff.’

Payton strode across the Kitchen, to where I was stirring the soup.

He grabbed me by the hurt shoulder.

The pain seared through me and I cried out.

‘A secret? We take you in, we hook you up, make you part of our squadron, and you’re keeping secrets from us?’

He threw me down to the ground and my head hit the side of the fire pit. Sparks flew up in the air.

Payton marched over to Jake.

Just then, Kildow sat down, heavily, into a bench.

Payton grabbed Jake by the hair and dragged him to his feet.

‘WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO TELL ME, JAKEY?’ he screamed.

‘Payton, please!’ Jake pleaded. ‘I’m sorry!’

‘You’re sorry?’

‘We meant to tell you but then it was too late!’

‘Yeah it’s too late!’ Payton shouted. He punched Jake in the face. ‘Hit me back! Hit me back, you lying sack, and then we’ll see what happens!’

Jake was bleeding from the nose. His head hung down. He looked defeated.

‘You won’t hit me back because you know I will destroy you!’

Payton kicked Jake in the side and he fell to the ground. Jake didn’t move. He was out.

Then there was a heavy THWOMP kind of a sound and Greasy had passed out.

Zarember groaned and fell to his knees and then face forward onto the floor.

‘What the hell?’ Payton hollered. ‘What did you do to my men?’

He looked up, and looked at me.

‘It-it-it must be the juice,’ Jimmy stammered. ‘You and me didn’t have any!’

‘Grab him!’ Payton shouted.

I tried to get away, but Jimmy caught my leg and tripped me.

Payton snatched a handgun from a pile of the cadets’ gear.

Then he grabbed me and slammed me down onto the top of one of the tables in the Pizza Shack.

It was the same table I’d hidden under with Astrid during the earthquake, one million years ago.

Payton pressed the gun into my eye socket.

‘I should never have trusted you, Deano. You got the look of a freakin’ intellectual about you, you know that? What’d you do to my boys and why’d you keep secrets from me?’

Then there came two delicious sounds.

First a scream – ‘Uncle Payton!’ – from Anna.

And then the ROAR of a battery-powered chainsaw.

Astrid stood in the middle of the fallen cadets out on the gym space. She held the chainsaw in one hand and in the other she had Anna by the hair. In the darkness behind her, I could see the little kids.

‘You get away from Dean,’ she commanded.

23 ALEX

‘WHERE WERE YOU GUYS?!’ Sahalia shouted. ‘I’ve been waiting for an hour! I thought I’d lost you.’

She looked small and scared. I always thought of her as being so mature. But now she looked her age. The same age as me, that is. Thirteen.

She was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a large sweater. Her hair pulled out of her face. She looked squeaky clean.

She only forgave us when we explained about Batiste and how happy he looked going off with his mom.

After we got clothes, we were each given a backpack.

The backpacks were white, with no logo at all. They had inside them a little Dopp kit, with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor, and soap. Also some basic first aid stuff – wound wash, Band-Aids, antibiotic ointment, a foil pack of pain pills.

All the food vendors: Wolfgang’s, Burger King, Pizza Shack, etc. had been turned into mess halls. The food was the same (from what I’ve been told) for every meal. Oatmeal for breakfast, with fruit, if you got there early enough. Beef stew for lunch (no one there was a vegetarian, I guess). Chicken stew for dinner. Rice on the side. Oranges for dessert. Sometimes apples.