Edilio stomped away, swinging his machine pistol down into firing position.
For the first time, Sam followed Edilio.
TWENTY-TWO
14 HOURS, 17 MINUTES
DOWN THE ACCESS road they marched, the station lost behind them in the night.
Their numbers had diminished a little. Kids, the weak and scared ones, had peeled off unnoticed, slinking home once they’d had a taste of violence.
Weaklings, Zil thought. Cowards.
Just a dozen of them now, the hard core, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with softly clinking bottles, trailing the smell of gasoline.
Left at the school. Past the gloomy, darkened buildings. So alien now. So long ago, all of that.
Zil couldn’t make out individual windows in the edifice, but he could see approximately where his old home room had been. He imagined himself back then. Imagined himself sitting, bored during morning announcements.
And now here he was at the head of an army. A small army. But dedicated. All together in a great cause. Perdido Beach for humans. Death to freaks. Death to mutants.
On stiff legs he led the march. The march to freedom and power.
Right at Golding. Golding and Sherman, off the northwest corner of the school, that was the target zone, as agreed with Caine. No idea why. Caine had only said that they should start at Golding and Sherman. And move along Sherman toward the water. Burn all they could till they reached Ocean Boulevard. Then, if they still had any left, they could go along Ocean toward town. Not toward the marina.
“If I see you nitwits heading toward the marina, our little agreement is over,” Caine had warned.
Nitwits. Zil seethed at the memory. Caine’s casual arrogance, his contempt for anyone who wasn’t a freak like him. His time would come, Zil vowed.
“We’re here,” Zil said. But that wasn’t a very historic thing to say. And this, make no mistake, was history happening in the FAYZ. The beginning of the end for the freaks. The beginning of Zil being in control.
Zil turned to faces he knew were expectant, giddy, excited. He could hear it in their whispered conversation.
“Tonight we strike a blow for humans,” Zil said. That was the line Turk had come up with. Something everyone would be able to quote. “Tonight we strike a blow for humans!” Zil cried, raising his voice, no longer afraid.
“Death to freaks!” Turk shouted.
“Light up!” Hank cried.
Lighters and matches flicked. Tiny yellow pinpoints in the black night, casting eerie shadows on wild eyes and mouths pulled back in grimaces of fear and rage.
Zil took the first of the bottles—Molotov cocktails, Hank said they were called. The spark of the lighter caught the gasoline-saturated wick.
Zil turned and heaved the bottle toward the closest house.
It arced like a meteor, spinning.
It crashed onto the brick steps and burst. Flames spread over several square feet of porch.
No one moved. All eyes were fixed. Faces fascinated.
The spilled gasoline burned blue. For a while it seemed it would do nothing but burn itself out on the porch.
But then a wicker rocking chair caught fire.
And then the decorative lattice.
And suddenly the flames were licking up the pillars that supported the porch roof.