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She slowed and narrated. “I’m at Triunfo. There’s a big crowd, like maybe a thousand people. The front doors are smashed in. A Chevron truck is blocking the driveway. I see people up on the overhang, you know the thing that sticks out over the driveway? The windows up there are broken out.”
Cruz reached the edge of the mob and stopped talking. She searched for, then found, Dillon Poe. He was atop the overhang, walking back and forth and seeming to talk to himself. As she watched, Dillon grinned, pulled out a notebook, and scribbled.
The gesture was so like herself when she would have an idea and pull out her Moleskine. She pushed the thought away: she had nothing in common with this monster.
Then she saw the the cheerleader awkwardly unlimbering a hose on the Chevron truck.
Behind her, the army tanks clank-clank-clanked their way along, closing the distance.
Cruz looked up at Dillon. Objectively he was terrifying, bizarre, a green-scaled reptile in a tattered tuxedo. But for some reason people did not see him that way. And, Cruz supposed, if she was de-morphed, she might see him the way they apparently did. But she was in morph, so his charm did not touch her.
Suddenly a bullhorn crackled and screeched to life. Dillon said, “Okay, show ’em the first sign!”
Two people peeled off from the crowd and ran toward the lead tank holding a piece of poster board, on which was written, Stop right there: I am ready to negotiate.
The tanks did not stop.
“Kate!” Dillon yelled. “Time to spray!”
To Cruz’s utter horror, the cheerleader on the truck turned a valve and liquid first spit and sputtered and then flowed. The smell was instantly recognizable as gasoline. The cheerleader played the hose over the mob like a suburban mom playing with her kids in the backyard. Tears ran down her face; she was sobbing like a heartbroken child, but she did not stop.
“Hey, what’s going on?” people asked. But did not move.
“That’s gas!” another said. And likewise did not move.
Then Dillon called to another cheerleader, who ran from the second-story window that had been broken out to allow access to the overhang. And she carried something small in her hands.
“Careful with that,” Dillon ordered. “That’s a collector’s item!”
Dillon took the object in his hands, held it up as if for inspection, then began earnestly winding a key. Only then did Cruz recognize the object as a wind-up toy. A little car or truck, a piece of junk from a souvenir shop.
What? Why?
But then, as the Charmer walked to the edge of his platform and held out his hand, she understood. The gas fumes were overpowering. If the Charmer held a lit match up above in the rising fumes it might ignite the fuel. But a sparking wind-up toy? If he dropped it, it would fall to the ground below, crisscrossed by rivulets of gas. He would have perhaps a second or two . . .
“Second sign, go!” Dillon ordered.
Two more of his mob, hair limp from gasoline, ran with a piece of poster board whose ink was smearing.
All it takes is a spark. If I drop it, they all burn.
“No,” Cruz whispered. Then, forgetting about concealment, she yelled into the phone. “Shade! Now! NOW!”
Dillon, hearing Cruz’s voice looked sharply at . . . at nothing. And at that moment a shot rang out from an army sniper on the roof of the mall.
Crack!
It was night. It was a long shot to make. And rising gas fumes distorted the light.
“Aaaarrrgh!”
The bullet meant for Dillon’s heart flew and hit his left collarbone. He twisted as if punched by a strong man. He dropped to one knee. His wind-up toy dropped to the overhang and fired off multicolored sparks as it scurried around.
For a moment the toy was lost to view. And then, suddenly, it flew over the edge of the overhang and spiraled down, still sparking.
The mob, unable to move, screamed.
The word “now” seemed to take a long time to Shade.
