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Drake climbed out, gun in hand, and advanced to the gate. He swung it open and stepped through to the stone guardhouse. He emerged a few seconds later and climbed back into the car.
“No one in the guardhouse.”
Caine frowned in the rearview mirror. “That’s not like Benno. Benno follows orders.”
Benno was the thug Caine had left in charge at Coates. Jack had never liked the boy—no one did—but Caine was right: Benno was the kind of bully who did what the bigger bullies told him to do. He didn’t make his own judgments. And he wasn’t stupid enough to think he could override Caine’s orders.
“Something isn’t right,” Panda said.
“Everything isn’t right, Panda,” Diana said.
Panda pulled through the gate. It was another quarter mile to the school. They drove in silence. Panda pulled the car up to the end of the driveway, to the turnaround in front of the main building.
Lights were on in every window. One of the second-floor windows had been blown out so that an entire classroom could be clearly seen.
Desks were piled against one wall. The chalkboard was cracked and scarred. All the drawings and posters and exhortations that had once adorned the classroom walls were charred, curled by heat. A massive slab of brick and lathe wall lay on the lawn.
“Well, that’s not good,” Diana drawled.
“Who has the power to do that?” Caine demanded angrily.
“The kid we’re here to see,” Diana said. “Although that’s a lot of damage for a three bar.”
“Benno’s lost control up here,” Drake commented. “I told you Benno was a wimp.”
“Come on,” Caine said and stepped out onto gravel, followed by the rest of them. “Go up the stairs, Panda, open the door. Let’s see what’s waiting for us.”
“No way,” Panda said, his voice shaky.
“Coward,” Caine said. He raised his hands, palms out, and suddenly Panda was flying through the air. He slammed into the door and fell in a heap. Panda rose slowly, then he fell down again. “My leg is hurt. I can’t move it.”
At that moment the front door opened, smacking Panda where he lay. Light spilled out from inside and Jack saw half a dozen shapes, shapes like apes walking on all fours, pushing their way out, crying, howling, terrified.
They tumbled down the steps. Each carrying a rough-hewn cement block that they dragged as they ran. But of course Jack knew they weren’t carrying the blocks. Their hands were encased in cement.
Jack had tried not to think about it. He had tried to put it out of his mind, this crude, cruel solution to the problem of disloyal kids with powers. But since discovering his own power he had thought of little else.
They had discovered early on that the supernatural powers seemed to be focused through the hands.
No, Jack corrected himself harshly, they hadn’t discovered it, he had discovered it. He had observed it. And he had told Caine about it. And Caine had ordered Drake to do this horrible thing.
“Remember who owns you,” Diana whispered in Jack’s ear.
“Feed us! Feed us! We need food!” the concrete-blocked victims cried.
It was a chorus of weak, desperate voices, so raw with need that Jack panicked. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t be with these people. He turned away, but Drake grabbed his shoulder and yanked him forward.
No escape.
The freaks cried for food.
A girl named Taylor, her arms red and raw above the block, face streaked with filth, stinking of her own bodily fluids, collapsed at Jack’s feet. “Jack,” she croaked. “They’re starving us. Benno was feeding us, but he disappeared. We haven’t eaten…. Please, Jack.”
Jack doubled over and threw up in the gravel.
“Rather overdramatic, Jack,” Diana remarked.
Caine was walking up the steps now and Drake rushed to catch up.
