Kids on the beach stumbled in the sand. Some ran screaming into the water.
Drake, alive. Drake with his whip hand lashing at them, like he was driving cattle into the sea.
More kids sticking to the road, running parallel to the beach. Zil was with them, running with Turk beside him, looking for the freaks, seeing a kid whose only mutant power was the ability to glow brightly, harmless, but a freak and like all freaks he had to be dealt with.
Turk pulled up, raised his shotgun, aimed and fired. He missed, but the kid panicked and smashed facedown against the curb. Zil kicked him and kept running. He shouted in wild glee as he ran.
“Run, freaks! Run!”
But there were very few freaks in the mass of kids on the road. Too few real targets. But that was okay because the point right now was fear, fear and chaos.
Nerezza had told him it was coming. A freak herself? Zil wondered. He would hate to have to kill her, she was hot and mysterious and so much better than boring, pasty Lisa.
He spotted Lance ahead. Good old Lance, but he had lost his gun and his bat.
“I need a weapon!” Lance cried. “Give me something!”
Turk had a nail-studded stick. He tossed it to Lance. They took off again, a pack of wolves chasing down a terrified herd of cattle.
The older kids were pulling away. But the fat ones, the young ones, they were falling behind, worn out or simply unable to keep up on shorter legs.
They were all crammed onto the curved road that led to Clifftop.
Zil pointed. “That kid there. There! He’s a freak lover!”
Lance got there first and swung the nailed stick. The kid evaded it and hared off the road, tumbling down the slope into bushes and coming to rest against a cactus.
Zil laughed and pointed. “He’s yours, Turk!”
And Zil was off again, with Lance at his side, Lance like a blond warrior god, like Thor, slashing away at everyone now, no longer differentiating between freak or non-freak, they could all die, all of them who had refused to join Zil. “Run!” Zil screamed. “Run, you cowards! Join me, or run for your lives!”
He paused for a minute, winded from running uphill. Lance stopped beside him. Others, half a dozen of them, the Human Crew faithful, each of them a human hero, Zil thought fiercely.
Then Lance’s grin fell. He pointed. Back down the road they had just climbed.
Dekka, walking, but fast just the same.
Relentless.
Someone was beside Zil. He could sense her. Nerezza. He looked at her. Her throat was red, like the first stage of serious bruising. There was a cut on her forehead. Her eyes were bloodshot and her hair was all astray.
“Who did that to you?” Zil demanded, outraged.
Nerezza ignored him. “She has to be stopped.”
“Who?” Zil jerked his chin toward Dekka. “Her? How am I supposed to stop her?”
“Her powers don’t reach as far as your gun, Zil,” Nerezza said.
Zil frowned. “Are you sure?”
“I am.”
“How do you know? Are you a freak?”
Nerezza laughed. “What am I? What are you, Zil? Are you the Leader? Or are you a coward who hides from some fat, black lesbian freak? Because right now you choose which to be.”
Lance glanced nervously at Zil. Turk started to say something but couldn’t seem to find the right words.
“She has to be stopped,” Nerezza said.
“Why?” Zil asked.
“Because we’re going to need gravity, Leader.”
Mary reached the top of the road, up to Clifftop. A series of smaller pathways led down to the cliff itself.
She looked back to check on her charges and saw the whole population of Perdido Beach seemingly following her.
Kids were spread all down the road, some running, some wheezing and gasping for breath. At the back of the crowd Zil and a handful of gun-toting thugs.
Farther off, kids who had fled to the beach were being herded back onto the road.
This second group fled from a different terror. From where she stood Mary could too clearly see Drake, driving terrified kids before him. Some were in the water. Others tried to climb over the breakwater and the rocks that separated Perdido’s main beach from the smaller beach beneath Clifftop.
As the Prophetess had said. The tribulation of fire. The demon. And the red sunset in which Mary would lay down her burden.
Mary cried, “Come with me, children, stay with me!”
And they did.
They followed her across the overgrown, formerly manicured grounds of Clifftop. To the cliff. To the very edge of the cliff, with the blank, inscrutable FAYZ wall just to their left, the end of their particular world.
Down below on the beach, Orsay sat cross-legged on the rock that had become her pulpit. Some kids had already reached her and gathered, terrified, around her. Others were scrambling down the cliff to her.
The sun set in a blaze of red.
Orsay sat very still on her rock. She seemed not to be moving a muscle. Her eyes were closed.
Below her stood Jill, the Siren, seeming lost, scared, a wobbly silhouette against the light show in the west.
“Are we going down to the beach, Mother Mary?” a little girl asked.
“I didn’t bring my baving suit,” another said.
It was just minutes away now, Mary knew. Her fifteenth birthday. Her Mother’s Day birthday.
She glanced at her watch.
She should be troubled, she knew, afraid. But for the first time in so very, very long Mary was at peace. The children’s questions didn’t reach her. The concerned, anxious, upturned faces were far away. Everything was finally going to be okay.
The Prophetess did not stir. She sat so calmly, unmoved by the madness around her, indifferent to cries and pleas and demands.
The Prophetess has seen that we will all suffer a time of terrible tribulation. This will come very soon. And then, Mary, then will come the demon and the angel. And in a red sunset we will be delivered.
Orsay’s prophecy, as told to Mary by Nerezza.
Yes, Mary thought. She truly is the Prophetess.
“I can climb down to the beach,” Justin said bravely. “I’m not scared.”
“No need,” Mary said. She ruffled his head affectionately. “We’ll fly down.”
FORTY
THE CLIMB DOWN to the yacht, the Fly Boy Too, had been enough to take a year off Sanjit’s life. Twice he’d almost dropped Bowie. Pixie had banged her head and started crying. And Pixie could do some serious howling.
Peace had been peaceful, but fretful. Which was normal enough under the circumstances.
And then had come the part about getting them up onto the yacht. Easier than getting down the cliff, but still not a day at the beach.
Man, wouldn’t a day at the beach be great? Sanjit wondered as he and Virtue shepherded the kids aft toward the helicopter.
A day at the beach. That would be so much better than glancing up at that looming cliff and knowing he was getting ready to fly them all straight into it. Assuming he even got the helicopter up off the helipad.
Most likely he wouldn’t make it far enough to worry about killing everyone on the cliff. More likely he’d get just enough altitude to plunge into the sea.
No point thinking about it. There was no staying here now. Not even if he set aside his worries about Bowie. He’d seen what Caine could do.
He had to get the kids off the island. Away from Caine. Virtue said there was something deep-down evil about Caine. Sanjit had seen Caine’s eyes when he had talked back to him.
Sanjit wondered if Diana was right, that Virtue had some kind of mutant power to judge people. More likely he was just judgmental.
But Virtue had been right talking about evil coming. Caine had been within a heartbeat of smashing Sanjit against a wall. No way a creature like Caine was going to tolerate Pixie and Bowie and Peace, let alone Choo. He wasn’t going to share a dwindling food supply with them.