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A wild cheer went up.
More bottles were lit. More wild arcs of twirling fire.
A second house. A garage. A parked car sitting on deflated tires.
Cries of shock and horror came from inside the first house.
Zil didn’t let himself hear them.
“Onward!” he cried. “Burn it all down!”
Down through the dark they shuffled and stumbled, Caine’s starved and starving remnants.
“Look!” Bug cried. No one could see him, of course, or his outstretched pointing hand. But they looked, anyway.
An orange glow lit the horizon.
“Huh. The stupid punk actually did it,” Caine said. “We have to hurry. Anyone falls out, they are on their own.”
Orsay climbed to the top of the cliff, weary but propelled by Nerezza’s helping hand.
“Come on, Prophetess, we’re almost there.”
“Don’t call me that,” Orsay said.
“It’s what you are,” Nerezza said softly but insistently.
The others had all gone ahead. Nerezza always insisted that the supplicants leave the beach first. Orsay suspected it had to do with Nerezza not wanting anyone to see Orsay struggling and scraping her knees on rocks. Nerezza seemed to think it was important for kids to see Orsay as above all that normal stuff.
A prophet.
“I’m not a prophet,” Orsay said. “I’m just a person who hears dreams.”
“You are helping people,” Nerezza said as they rounded a buried boulder that always gave Orsay trouble. “You are telling them the truth. Showing them a path.”
“I can’t even find my own path,” Orsay said as she slipped and landed on her palms. They were scraped, but not too badly.
“You show them the way,” Nerezza said. “They need to be shown a way out of this place.”
Orsay stopped, panting from exertion. She turned to Nerezza, whose face was just two faintly glowing eyes, like a cat’s eyes. “You know, I’m not totally sure. You know that. Maybe I’m…maybe it’s…” She didn’t have the word for what she felt at times like this, times of doubt. Times when a small voice down deep inside her seemed to be whispering warnings in her ear.
“You need to trust me,” Nerezza said firmly. “You are the Prophetess.”
Orsay topped the cliff. She stared. “I must not be much of a prophet. I didn’t foresee this.”
“What?” Nerezza called up from just below.
“The town is burning.”
“Look, Tanner,” Brittney said. She raised one arm and pointed.
Her brother, now glowing a dark green, like a billion little nodules of radioactivity, but still Tanner, said, “Yes. It is time.”
Brittney hesitated. “Why, Tanner?”
He gave no answer.
“Are we doing the Lord’s will, Tanner?”
