Lies (Gone 3)

Zil felt as if he was standing at the edge of a cliff.

One step at a time. First, the gas station.

It had to be tonight.

Now.

And the whole town had to burn.

Out of that fire the Human Crew would gather the survivors under Zil’s leadership. Then he’d be the Leader, not just of this little crew of losers, but of everyone.

Brittney did not know where she’d been. Or what she’d done since leaving Brianna’s house. She had flashes, like single frames pulled out of a movie. A flash of a crawl space under a house. Of lying in the dirt again, of feeling it cold on her back. Of spiderwebbed wooden beams above her, a comforting coffin lid.

Other flashes showed rocks at the beach. Sand that made it hard to walk.

She remembered seeing kids. Two, at a distance. They ran away when they saw her. But maybe they weren’t real. Maybe they were just ghosts because Brittney wasn’t totally sure that anyone she saw was real. They looked real on the surface—their eyes and hair and lips were all familiar to her. But at times they seemed to have lights coming out of them in wrong places.

It was hard to know what was real and what was not. All she could know was that Tanner appeared sometimes, just beside her. And he was real.

The voice in her head was real, too, the voice that told her to serve him, to obey, to follow the path of truth and goodness.

Then Brittney remembered feeling that the evil one was close. Very close. She could feel his presence.

Oh, yes: he had been here.

But where had she been? She asked her brother, Tanner. Tanner was looking a bit messy, his wounds all too visible.

“Where am I, Tanner? How did I get here?”

“You rose, an avenging angel,” Tanner said.

“Yes,” Brittney said. “But where was I? Just now? Just before. Where was I?”

There was a noise at the end of the block. Two people walking. Sam and Taylor.

Sam was good. Taylor was good. Neither was allied with the evil one. They didn’t seem to see her. They trailed blurs of ultraviolet light behind them, like a slime trail.

“Did you see him, Tanner?”

“Who?”

“The evil one. Did you see the demon?”

Tanner didn’t answer. He was bleeding from the awful wounds that had killed him.

Brittney let it go. Indeed she’d already forgotten that she’d asked a question.

“I have to find the Prophet,” she said. “I must save her from the evil one.”

“Yes.” Tanner had assumed his other guise, his angelic raiment. He glowed beautifully, like a golden star. “Follow me, sister. We have good works to perform.”

“Praise Jesus,” Brittney said.

Her brother stared at her, and for just a moment it seemed he was smiling. His teeth were bare, his eyes red with an inner fire. “Yes,” Tanner said. “Praise.”

TWENTY

15 HOURS, 12 MINUTES