Page 126 of Chaos

Duane must have attacked him.

That’s two people he’s left for dead, not to mention Ephie abandoned in her cell with a fire ripping through the building. Where are he and Ben now? “We need to get Church outside as fast as we can. Come on. Just … don’t look at it.” I take an unsteady step, Church drooping heavily beside me, losing consciousness again. “Church, you need to wake up. Wake up!”

He lurches at the same time my foot hits a puddle of dark blood. My boot, my new boot, my Christmas boots with skid-proof soles, slides in what feels like oil, and my flashlight beam glistens off something wet and shiny and chunky, dark as blood, but other colors too. Colors my brain recognizes as human even if it’s never seen the inside of someone’s brains before, yellow and gray.

My stomach heaves. “Oh, god, don’t look.”

We manage to stay upright, stepping through it, dragging Church. He’s so heavy it feels like we’re all going to fall. “Church! Wake up. You need to help us. Come on, Church! Please.”

Shane gags.

Ephie coughs.

“Don’t even breathe. Don’t look. Don’t think about it. It’s just a thing. It’s just a thing.”

We trip twice, narrowly managing to avoid dropping Church in the center of the mess, all of us breathing in sharp, panicky spurts through open mouths, fighting against nausea, until finally we hit the emergency exit, out onto the rear lawn.

We throw open the door to the cold air, lower Church to the grass.

Ephie pushes the towel back behind his head.

“Stay with me, Church!” I shout. “Sheila’s coming. Just hang on.”

His eyes drift closed.

“Run to the pool house, Shane.” When he stares at me like he’s unsure if he should follow the order or insist on staying close, I say it louder. “Go! Get Colleen to send people to help. We got him.”

As he runs away, Ephie watches me closely.

I look back up, up, up.

We're almost at the base of the clocktower here, only ten or fifteen yards away, so I’m forced to crane my neck back.

Thick black smoke is funneling upward like something out of … the apocalypse.

It looks exactly like the end of days.

Auden is right. If Mr. Oink-Oink isn’t already on fire, he will be soon. That’s everything we own up there. Everything I’ve collected since the day I buried Jimmy and the day I found Auden. Everything Yorke and Auden and Shane have found. Shasta too. And Wendell and Gus. We all live up there. All our closest people.

But the people are all out.

That’s what matters.

No one I love is dead in that fire. Anything less than death is still a chance. And a chance can be good or it can be bad.

And sometimes one event can tip the scales forward.

“You’re sure they go to Charleston? The pigeons.” I ask Ephie.

If it’s DC, maybe there’s no point trying to stop it. Renata will have gone there. She said she had a plan—that must be it.

“Pretty sure,” Ephie says anxiously. “Ben and Renata started fighting after they showed up. Where else would they go?”

An onslaught of awful possibilities trickle through me. Is this Renata’s plan? Or Duane’s? Were they working together? Did he arrange to have Ephie arrested on purpose? For just this reason? So she’d tell me this, and I’d go in after him?

Will I be playing right into his hand?

He smirked. I saw it. It was his idea to put her down there in the basement. Was he hoping Shane or I would pursue them to the birds? Why would they want that? Or is Ephie playing a role in all of it, too?

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