Grinning with anticipation, the Eraser drew closer.
“On three.”
Once again, the Gasman wasn’t sure if he’d heard Iggy or if he was imagining it.
“One.”
The Gasman’s toes clenched inside his sneakers.
“Two.”
When Iggy shouted, “Three!” the Gasman leaped straight into the air, unfurling his wings with a huge whoosh. With a roar of anger, one Eraser grabbed the Gasman’s foot and yanked. Above him, Iggy burst through the rotting roof of the cabin, out into the sky. The Gasman broke free of the Eraser’s grip.
Then he was pushing through the shattered roof, tucking his wings in tight to get through the hole. Outside, he lost altitude too fast and landed clumsily on a rickety roof beam. He slid sideways, grabbing roof shingles that came off in his hands.
Iggy yelled from twenty feet above him, “Gasser! Move!”
Just as he slid over the edge of the roof, the Gasman spread his wings. He pushed down hard with all his strength, then pulled his wings up and pushed them down again. As he surged up to meet Iggy, Iggy threw a package down into the cabin.
“Move, move, move!” Iggy yelled, flapping like crazy. Within seconds, they were a hundred yards away.
Boom! Only it was more like ba-ba-boooooom!
The two boys recoiled from the blast, tumbling backward in the air from the shock wave. The Gasman righted himself, eyes wide, as a fireball ten yards in diameter rose from where the cabin had been.
He was sp
eechless.
After the fireball from Big Boy disintegrated, the cabin burned brightly, its old, rotted wood consumed as instantly as kindling. Flames reached for the sky, licking at the green trees nearby, snaking along the ground as brittle brown pine needles caught fire.
God, it was beautiful.
“Well,” Iggy said after a long while, “that takes care of them.”
The Gasman nodded, feeling sick. One dark body had flown upward in the blast, falling back to earth as a glowing coal. The other Eraser had crawled a few feet away from the cabin, a burning silhouette that had collapsed, its outlines blurred by flame.
“Unless they escaped,” Iggy added.
Of course Iggy hadn’t seen anything. The Gasman cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “They’re dead.” He felt slightly queasy, guilty, and dirty. Then he remembered Angel, how she’d shared the last of the ice cream with him three nights ago. She was so small, and God only knew what horrible things they were doing to her. His jaw hardened.
“Take that,” he muttered. “That was for my sister, for Angel, you scum-sucking jerks.”
Then he saw the black Hummer, its hood crumpled, driving fast toward the burning cabin. An Eraser was leaning out the passenger window, looking through binoculars.
“Come on, Iggy,” said the Gasman. “Let’s get out of here.”
37
The bell clanged jarringly, and rough hands pushed Angel forward. She stumbled, catching herself at the last second before falling onto coils of razor wire.
Angel wanted to cry. She’d been doing this all day—it was late afternoon by now.
She was starving and light-headed and every muscle ached—and still they made her run.
It was a maze, Angel knew that.
They had made it in a huge gymlike room in the School’s main building. They rang a bell and pushed her forward, and then she had to run as fast as she could to find the exit. Each time, the maze was different, the exit in a different place. If she slowed down, she got an electric shock so strong it scrambled her brain, or red-hot wires under her feet burned her. So, eyes blurry with tears, Angel ran forward blindly, taking this turn and that until she finally stumbled out the exit.