I felt Alex land on top of me. I rolled back, under his arm, seeing shadows seething at the mouth of the trailer through blurred vision. I clutched his arm, struggling to breathe.
Ginger stood before the opening of the trailer. In each hand, she held a bottle of lighter fluid. She twisted open the cap of one bottle and hurled it into the conflagration.
Squeals and screams echoed from inside. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears. It sounded like the screaming of pigs. The neighborsas' barn that had burned when I was a child held two dozen pigs inside. It was not a sound Ias'd ever forgotten.
Burn!
Gingeras's glasses reflected the fire inside the truck. Her face was twisted into something I didnas't recognize. I had always known her to be motherly, passive. Sheas'd faced the end of the world with a soft shock, hesitating and confused.
But now . . . now, she was wrathful.
She hurled the second bottle into the truck. The open neck of it arced into the air. Flame licked from the interior of the trailer, igniting those clear drops. They splashed on the pavement, burning in a puddle.
Ginger turned her back on the truck, her gait stiff as she approached us. She seemed a different woman now, full of the power of anger that sang through her.
Ginger,as I wheezed. I could barely squeak, so I pointed behind her.
Something was crawling out of the trailer.
She turned, her skirt swirling in the backdraft. A flaming creature clawed beyond the lip of the truck, slipped to the blacktop like a bat startled during daytime. It scuttled right and left, flopping, as fire crackled along its spine.
But it was daylight. And daylight was just as deadly to these creatures as fire.
Ginger stared at it as its blackened jaws opened and closed, as its fingers spasmed and curled in on themselves like burning paper.
Burn!
I saw then that her eyes were damp beneath her glasses. Of all of us, Ginger may have lost the most. And I could see that she wanted these creatures of night to suffer.
My eyes fell to the trickle of lighter fluid on the pavement. The burning creature scuttled to the nearest shadowas"the underbelly of the next truck.
The one with fire on the placard.
I drew half a breath to scream at her. Alex pulled me to my feet. I saw understanding cross Gingeras's face, and she began to run.
We ran to Horace. The horse had begun to retreat, cantering along the shoulder of the road, away from us. Away from the evil. And away from what he could smell coming.
Thunder roared behind us. I skidded to my knees and covered my head. Gravel rattled along the side of the road. Behind the ringing in my ears, I could hear bits of metal striking the blacktop parking lot.
I turned, gripping my bonnet strings.
The tanker truck was an open shell, burning. The fire soared beyond the roof of the truck stop. I heard a thin, high whistling in the wreckage. I didnas't know if that was the sound of something flammable under pressure or the keening of something dying. For good this time, hopefully.
And more black smoke poured up into the sky, darkening heaven.
***
Ias'm all right.
I reached for Alex, placing my hand on his cheek. I felt stubble growing there and a worrisome smudge of blood on his lip. A bruise was darkening over his right eye, and I could see a piece of metal jutting out from the top of his thigh.
Ias'm all right,as he repeated.
We were relatively unscathed. Ginger had cracked her glasses, but no one had been bitten, and there were no broken bones. Ginger plucked the piece of metal out of Alexas's leg without warning him, and he swore at her.
Nonetheless, we truly had Godas's favor.
Except the horse was gone, with all our gear. Horace was understandably spooked, and had run off with all our scavenged supplies. I was the fastest runner and took off after him. Alex and Ginger followed, but fell behind. Alex limped along, pressing his hand to his leg.
I chased Horace, a receding white speck in the distance. He raced away from the city, away from the fire and the smoke. I chased him past the road weas'd come in on, through a field pocked with drainage ditches, across an empty freeway. My snakebitten hand still throbbed with every step. I whistled and called for him, but he galloped as if the Devil himself was after him. I lost sight of him once or twice, beyond the edge of the horizon that kept falling farther and farther away.
Outside was much larger than Ias'd ever dreamed. Endless.
I knew that Horaceas's panic would drain away, that he would stop at some point. He had to. It happened to all of us. The poor horse was without any logical explanation for what was happening to him, to us. He knew only fear.
But even fear gave way to exhaustion.
I found him, at last, in a soybean field. The yellow leaves curled against each other like closed fists. I could see his white figure standing beneath a hickory tree at the edge of the field. His pack was askew, and there were leaves tangled in his mane and tail.
I approached him slowly, well within his sight. He was breathing hard, his nostrils flaring as he watched me.
I sat down on a grassy spot beneath the hickory tree, opposite the horse. I pressed my back against the trunk. Shade made me nervous, but the early November wind had stripped almost all the orange leaves from the tree.
I picked up a hickory nut and thumbed the ridges of its shell, found the sweet spot that would release the meat when struck. I took off my shoe and crushed the nut against a root.
Horace flinched, but his ears pressed forward.
I tossed him a piece of the nut meat. He lipped it up from the ground, blew out his breath. I threw another piece, closer this time.
I continued to crack the nuts, feeding him the pieces. I took a few too. When a raven fluttered down from the na**d tree, I tossed it a piece as well.
I regarded the raven as it grasped the piece of nut and wolfed it down. The ravens had been the first to sense something was wrong, to flee the apocalypse. They had left in great masses, blotting out the light in the sky one morning. My father had told me that the correct term for a group of ravens was an unkindness. It sounded strange to me, imputing an impure motive to an animal.
But this one seemed all alone. A straggler. When I looked closer, I saw why he had not fledas"the feathers of his left wing were bent back. He was injured and could not fly far.
I tossed him more food. He was one of Godas's creatures, after all. And I knew that for all his intelligence, he was unable to crack hickory nuts. I had seen some very clever ones back home who would drop nuts on the stone lid of our well at great heights to break them open. But I saw no such stones here.