Lies (Gone #3)(67)

Hunter thought about it, but then the idea slipped out of his brain. And he realized he’d forgotten what Sam was talking about.

“If I go back I’m going to do things,” Sam said. He looked down at the ashes of the near-dead fire.

“You’re good at doing things,” Hunter said.

Sam looked angry. Then his face softened until he looked sad. “Yeah. Only I don’t always want to do those things.”

“I’m Hunter. So I hunt.”

“My real name is Samuel. He was this prophet in the Bible.”

Hunter didn’t know what “prophet” meant. Or “Bible.”

“He was the guy who picked out the first king of Israel.”

Hunter nodded, mystified.

“You believe in God, Hunter?” Sam asked.

Hunter felt a sudden stab of guilt. He hung his head. “I almost killed those boys.”

“What boys?”

“Zil. And his friends. The ones who hurt me. I was hunting a doe, and I saw them. And I could have.”

“Could have killed them.”

Hunter nodded.

“To tell you the truth, Hunter, I wish you had.”

“I’m Hunter,” he said, and grinned because it struck him as funny. “I’m not Boy Killer.” He laughed. It was a joke.

Sam didn’t laugh. In fact, it looked like he wanted to cry.

“You know Drake, Hunter?”

“No.”

“He’s a boy with a kind of snake for an arm. A snake. Or a whip. So he’s not really a boy. So if you ever saw him, you could hunt him.”

“Okay,” Hunter said doubtfully.

Sam bit his lip. He looked like he wanted to say something else. He stood up, knees popping after sitting so long. “Thanks for the meat, Hunter.”

Hunter watched him go. A boy with a snake arm? No. He’d never seen anything like that. That would be something. That would be even weirder than the snakes he’d seen in the caves. The ones with wings.

That reminded Hunter. He pushed up his sleeve to examine the spot where the snake had spit on him. It hurt. There was a little sore, a sort of hole. The hole had scabbed over, like any of the endless number of scrapes Hunter had suffered tearing through brush.

But as he looked at the scab Hunter was disturbed to see that it was a strange color. Not reddish like most scabs. This was green.

He rolled his sleeve back down. And forgot about it again.



Sanjit stood at the edge of the cliff. The binoculars didn’t show much detail. But it wasn’t hard to see the plume of smoke. It was like a massive, twisted exclamation point over Perdido Beach.

He tilted the glasses upward. Far up in the sky the smoke seemed to spread out horizontally. Like it was running into a glass ceiling. But that had to be an illusion.

He turned to his right and focused on the yacht. His view traveled from the bow to the stern. The helicopter.

Choo was trying to fly a kite for Pixie. The kite wasn’t really taking off. It never did, but Pixie kept hoping and Choo kept trying. Because, Sanjit reflected, as grumpy as Virtue was, he was a good person. Something Sanjit wasn’t sure he could say about himself.

Peace was inside, keeping watch over Bowie. His fever had stopped spiking. But Sanjit knew better than to think this was a permanent improvement. They’d been up and down like this for a long time.

He stared at the helicopter. Not a chance he could fly it. He was going to have to convince Choo of that. Because if Sanjit tried to fly the chopper he’d get all of them killed.

And if he didn’t then Bowie might die.

He was too lost in his dark thoughts to notice that Virtue was running toward him.

“Hey, there’s a boat coming.”

“What?”

Virtue pointed at the sea. “Right there.”

“What? I don’t see anything.”

Virtue rolled his eyes. “You really can’t see that?”

“Hey, I didn’t grow up searching the savannah for lions.”

“Lions. That’s right. That’s what I spent most of my time doing: looking for lions.”

Sanjit thought he could almost make out a spot that might be a boat. He aimed the binoculars. It took a while to pick out the boat and he found it by first locating its wake.

“It is a boat!”

“They don’t call you Wisdom for nothing,” Virtue said dryly.

“There’s people in it,” Sanjit said. He handed the binoculars to Virtue.

“It looks like maybe a half dozen people,” Virtue said. “I can’t see them very well. I can’t even tell for sure if they’re heading this direction. They might be aiming for one of the other islands. Or they might just be fishing.”

“The town burns up and suddenly we have a boatload of people on their way here?” Sanjit said skeptically. “I’m going to guess they aren’t fishing.”

“They’re escaping from Perdido Beach,” Virtue agreed. “Running from something.”

“The fire.”

But Virtue shook his head dolefully. “No, brother. Think about it. There’s a fire, so do you jump in a boat and head for an island? No. You just go where there’s no fire. Like to the next town.”

Sanjit fell silent. He was a little embarrassed. Now that he thought of it, it was obvious. Choo was right. Whatever they were doing in that boat it wasn’t about getting away from a fire.