Where’s Dekka?” Astrid asked.
“In the basement,” Edilio said. “She kept going for a long time. Her and Orc and Jack. But she’s sick. Tired and sick. And she got a bad burn on one hand. That was it for her. I made her go to Dahra. Lana will…you know, when she’s done with…Man, I’m sorry,” he said as he began crying again. “I can’t be digging graves. Someone else has to do that, okay? I can’t do that anymore.

Lana leveled the gun at Penny. “Stop,” Lana said.
Penny’s reddened face grew pale. Whatever visions she was inflicting on the people below her stopped. Kids cried in pain, sobbed from the memories.
“Oh, everyone has to kiss your butt, don’t they, Healer.” Penny spit that last word. She made her hands into claws and pawed at the air. Her lips were drawn back in a teeth-baring animal snarl.
“If I shoot you, I won’t heal you,” Lana said calmly.
That caught Penny off guard. But she recovered quickly. She put her head down and started to laugh. It began low and rose a few decibels at a time.
Lana’s arm burst into flame.
A noose was flung from the ruined church wall. The rope dropped over her head, landed on her shoulders, and tightened around her throat.
The limestone beneath her feet was suddenly a forest of knives all stabbing up at her.
“Yeah,” Lana said. “That won’t work on me. I’ve gone one-on-one with the gaiaphage. He could teach you a few things. Stop it. Now. Or bang.”
Penny’s laugh choked off. She looked hurt. As if someone had said something cruel to her. The visions ceased as suddenly as if someone had switched off a TV.
“I’m kind of opposed to murder,” Lana said. “But if you don’t turn and walk away, I’ll blow a hole right where your heart is supposed to be.”
“You can’t…” Penny said. “You… No.”
“I missed killing a monster once. I’ve always regretted it,” Lana said. “But you’re a human. Sort of. So you get this chance: walk. Keep walking.”
For what felt like a very long time Penny stood staring at Lana. Not with hatred, but with disbelief. Lana saw her very, very clearly: a head resting atop the sights of her pistol.
Penny took a step back. Then another. There was a wild look of defiance, but then it died.
Penny spun on her heel and walked quickly away.

Astrid felt a towering wave of disgust. She was furious with Sam. Furious with Little Pete. Mad at the whole world around her. Sickened by everyone and everything.
And mostly, she admitted, sick of herself.
So desperately sick of being Astrid the Genius.
“Some genius,” she muttered. The town council, headed by that blond girl, what was her name? Oh right: Astrid. Astrid the Genius. Head of the town council that had let half the town burn to the ground.
Down in the basement of town hall Dahra Baidoo handed out scarce ibuprofen and expired Tylenol to kids with burns, like that would pretty much fix anything, as they waited for Lana to go one by one, healing with her touch.
Astrid could hear the cries of pain. There were several floors between her and the makeshift hospital. Not enough floors.
Edilio staggered in. He was barely recognizable. He was black with soot, dirty, dusty, with ragged scratches and scrapes and clothing hanging in shreds.
“I think we got it,” he said, and lay straight down on the floor.
Astrid knelt by his head. “You have it contained?”
But Edilio was beyond answering. He was unconscious. Done in.
Howard appeared next, in only slightly better shape. Some time during the night and morning he’d lost his smirk. He glanced at Edilio, nodded like it made perfect sense, and sank heavily into a chair.
“I don’t know what you pay that boy, but it’s not enough,” Howard said, jerking his chin at Edilio.
“He doesn’t do it for pay,” Astrid said.
“Yeah, well, he’s the reason the whole town didn’t burn. Him and Dekka and Orc and Jack. And Ellen, it was her idea.

Don’t want no more rock,” Orc repeated.
The bleeding stopped almost immediately.
“Does it hurt?” Lana asked. “I mean the rock. I know the hole hurts.”
“No. It don’t hurt.” Orc slammed his fist against his opposite arm, hard enough that any human arm would have been shattered. “I barely feel it. Even Drake’s whip, when we was fighting, I barely felt it.”
Suddenly he was weeping. Tears rolled from human eyes onto cheeks of flesh and pebbles.
“I don’t feel nothing except…” He pointed a thick stone finger at the flesh of his face.
“Yeah,” Lana said. Her irritation was gone. Her burden was smaller, maybe, than Orc’s.

And he thought of the two people who had held his job before him: Sam and Astrid. Both beaten into despair by trying to hold this group of kids together in the face of one disaster after another. Both of them now happy to let Edilio handle it.
“No wonder,” Edilio muttered.
“Stay inside unless absolutely necessary,” Edilio shouted, and not for the first or last time wished he was still just Sam’s faithful sidekick.

Sam,” Astrid yelled. “Quick.”
Sam thought he was too far gone to respond, but he somehow started his feet moving again and went up to where Little Pete was standing and Astrid kneeling.
There was a girl lying in the dirt. Her clothing was a mess, her black hair ratty. She was Asian, pretty without being beautiful, and little more than skin and bones. But the first thing they noticed was that her forearms ended in a solid concrete block.
Astrid made a quick sign of the cross and pressed two fingers against the girl’s neck. “Lana,” Astrid cried.
Lana sized up the situation quickly. “I don’t see any injuries. I think maybe she’s starving or else sick in some other way.”
“What’s she doing out here?” Edilio wondered. “Oh, man, what did someone do to her hands?”
“I can’t heal hunger,” Lana said. “I tried it on myself when I was with the pack. Didn’t work.”
Edilio untwisted the cap from his water bottle, knelt, and carefully drizzled water across the girl’s cheek so that a few drops curled into her mouth.
“Look, she’s swallowing.”
Edilio broke a tiny bite from one of the PowerBars and placed it gently into the girl’s mouth. After a second the girl’s mouth began to move, to chew.
“There’s a road over there,” Sam said. “I think so, anyway. A dirt road, I think.”
“Someone drove by and dumped her here,” Astrid agreed.
Sam pointed at the dirt. “You can see how she dragged that block.”
“Some sick stuff going on,” Edilio muttered angrily. “Who would do something like this?