Page 30 of Crown of Tides and Fury

We moved to the kitchen. No one there. No one in the bedrooms, so I called out. “Hello? Anyone here?” I couldn’t help but think of Fallon and remembered how she refused to speak if she didn’t feel like it. “Can you say hello, just once, so we can help you?”

Nothing.

I called louder. “If you’re here, can you knock on the wall, like this?” I slapped the nearest wall twice.

Nothing.

Persi cursed. Everly and I hurried to look past her, through the screen door, into the backyard. Two bodies. Little ones, with the soles of their bare feet facing the house.

I turned away too late and felt my rational mind go out, like the flame of a lit candle dropped into a deep, dark pool of water. Gone.

Keys hung on little hooks on the wall. One ring included a whistle. I lifted the set free and headed for the front door. “You know what I need?”

“A drink?”

“No. I need something to kill.”

12

Lollipops And Serotonin

Iwas surprised. Losing my mind hadn’t taken any time at all. When I stepped out of that house, I wasn’t the same person that had gone in.

The men stepped into the street, ready to move on. I shook my head and pointed to the house behind me. “Two more in the backyard!” I walked into the center of the road and turned right. My friends could go on searching and piling and burning, but they didn’t need me for that.

“Lennon?” Wickham liked to warn with just a person’s name.

I kept walking. Three houses down, I lifted the keyring, stuck the whistle between my teeth, and blew as hard as I could. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! Children! Monsters! I have some lovely surprises for you! Lollipops! Ice Cream. And all free today!”

A block further on, I was out of breath and took a break from blowing. The whistle’s pitch and my own voice rang in my ears, but I had no intention of stopping.

I passed a structure that was now more ashes than house. It was one of many burning along that side of the street. Someone knocked on a window to my right and I jumped. An old woman stood in a doorway and waved her arms. She put her finger to her lips, shushing me, warning me.

I kept moving, but I turned and walked backward, found my friends in a mob fifty yards behind me, alert, scanning, weapons at the ready.

“Wickham!” I pointed at the old woman still standing at her door, then faced forward again. “That’s four. Four is good.”

I lifted the whistle, stuck it between my teeth, but held back when I heard someone cough. I stopped, listened close. It might have been the crackle of burning wood.

I stared at a smoldering fire eating its way up a trellis on my left, The house’s front door was blackened, but intact. Nothing but smoke moved behind the windows.

A muffled cough from inside sent me flying. My name was shouted a half-dozen times, but all that mattered was getting inside that house. At the front door, I pulled my bandana back over my nose and made the first move Everly taught me, kicking the burnt wood open with one try. I jumped to the side, in case the fire had been waiting for oxygen, but like the monsters, the fire had already done its worst and moved on.

The entry was blackened so completely, it ate up what light tried to filter in around me. Ten feet in, a staircase led up to my right. The lower half of the stairs were little more than charcoal. I moved deeper to see all the way to the top. The fire hadn’t moved on with the monsters after all. It still licked up the sides of both walls and created a living, orange and red tunnel.

The next cough came from the other end of that tunnel, from behind a closed door. Then a sob.

“I’m here!” I cupped my hands around my mouth, shouted again.

“Help me!” A young voice.

“Stay where you are! Don’t open your door!”

I looked for a path to the back yard, but the kitchen floor was gone. The basement was a black abyss below. I would have to go out and around to the side of the house and hope to catch them from a window. But if it was a bathroom?

No time. Go!

As if outside my body, I watched myself step to the living room, heft the coffee table, and take it back to the stairs. I pitched it onto the blackened steps, which crumbled beneath the pressure. But the wood caught at the top and bottom and held—a steep bridge.

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