Sky on Fire (24 page)

Niko's the one who's doing the worst out of all of us. He wanders around, not really engaging with anyone. He's not been able to find any word of anyone from his family.

And he's still mourning Josie.

He sketches sometimes, but he won't show anyone the drawings.

“Gather around, please,” Mrs. McKinley calls to us.

Mrs. McKinley has put two birthday candles in the center of two of the tiny doughnuts. They share one thin paper plate.

Before she lights them, Mrs. McKinley pushes her long auburn hair out of her eyes. She looks just like the twins—wall-to-wall freckles, light blue-green eyes. She especially looks like them when she smiles and her eyes crinkle up in the corners.

“I just want to say thank you, for taking care of my babies. I will never stop being grateful to you kids. I owe you … I owe you everything,” and she stops because she's so choked up.

I don't know how we did it, actually. I don't know how we managed to save them.

Alex and I take long walks during the outdoor period for Tent J. We do laps and we recount what happened to us in each other's absence. There's no older/younger between us anymore—we're equals now.

We talk about the future.

We can't believe we even have one.

Looking around our little circle, I wish that Niko was with us and I worry about him. I wish Brayden had made it. I will always regret the way that he died. And poor lost Josie—her last hours must have been horrible beyond what any of us could imagine.

I look at Mrs. McKinley and her grinning twins.

I look at Sahalia, who is still, somehow, cooler than the rest of us, and Chloe, who is still, somehow, a brat.

And at the brothers, Ulysses and Max, standing with the rest of the Dominguez family. I wish Batiste could be here to stand with them, for he's also our family, but he's in Calgary, we think. I bet Batiste thinks about us all the time.

I look at Jake and his dad, who are going to be okay in the end, I think.

And at my brother, Alex, who I will never, ever leave again.

And the beautiful Astrid, who I would kill for, and already have.

The gratitude I feel swells up and tears come into my eyes. But that's okay, because as Henry and Caroline blow out their candles, everyone else is crying, too.

*   *   *

A figure is approaching over the hills and grass. It's Niko and he's running.

“Guys, guys!” he shouts, breathless. “Look!”

He holds up the front section of a printed newspaper. Printed papers have made a comeback with the interruption of the Network. We all pull in close to see.

A headline reads:
CLOUDS OF WARFARE COMPOUNDS RUMORED ADRIFT

Reading that gives me a pit of cold dread in my stomach.

But that's not what Niko's so excited about.

He points to another, smaller headline:
RIOTS AT UMO!

The slugline reads,
Refugees rise in rebellion at the University of Missouri containment camp

Niko puts his finger on a full-color picture.

It's an old guy being protected from a guard wielding a nightstick.

“It's Mr. Scietto!” Alex yells.

And next to him, shielding Mario Scietto from the blow, is a girl with her hair up in two giraffe bumps.

It's Josie.

The girl in the picture is Josie!

“I'm going for her,” Niko says, eyes flashing between me and Jake and Alex.

“Who's coming?”

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

 

I would like to thank my editor and publisher, Jean Feiwel, for her guidance and encouragement. Holly West, thank you for knowing this manuscript backward and forward and for all your wonderful ideas. I am so glad I have the two of you on my side. I must also thank Dave Barrett, the Executive Managing Editor, for his patience, and the fantastic copyeditor, Anne Heausler, for her work on this novel.

Thanks to my agent, Susanna Einstein, for her support and excellent advice. I also feel lucky to have Stephen Moore, Kim Stenton, and Sandy Hodgman on my team.

Rich Deas, you have a great vision for the art of this series. Thank you. And thanks to KB, April, and Katie, for designing the jackets and interior elements of the books. Karen Frangipane and Ksenia Winnicki, thank you for helping to keep
Monument 14
at play in the digital realm.

The series owes much of its success to the efforts of Angus Killick, Elizabeth Fithian, Allison Verost, Kate Lied, Kathryn Little, and the rest of the excellent Macmillan Children's Group marketing and publicity departments. I have to say that touring with Allison, Kate, Elizabeth Mason, and Courtney Griffin was so outrageously fun, it's hard to believe it was legal.
Was it all legal?
I'm not entirely sure. That stuff in Pensacola was pretty dodgy.

I'd like to thank composer Paul Libman for writing music for the songs “Get Up” and “Leave Me Be,” both of which you can hear at
emmylaybourne.com
. Thanks to Ava Anderson for rocking the vocals and to Uri Djemal at MadPan studios for recording and engineering these songs so beautifully.

Mother/son critical feedback team Kristin and Andrew Bair worked their magic on
Sky on Fire
. Thank you both. I owe Elizabeth Harriman big-time for her help with the scene where Batiste and his mother are reunited. And thanks to Rita Arens and Scott Taylor for being excellent beta readers.

To Jen Pattap and Jeanette and Anthony LoPinto of the Threefold café—you guys have fed me, heart and soul, since I started on this series. Thank you.

My gratitude to my parents goes so far beyond what I could ever fit on this page. The same thing goes for how I feel about my husband, Greg, and our two children, Elinor and Rex. A writer should be able to express these things, but I find myself overcome when I think about how fortunate I am to have you fine people to love.

 

The survivors of MONUMENT 14 have finally made it to safety … or have they?

Find out in the stunning conclusion,

MONUMENT 14: SAVAGE DRIFT

 

JOSIE

 

DAY 31

I KEEP TO MYSELF.

The Josie who took care of everyone—that girl's dead.

She was killed in an aspen grove off the highway somewhere between Monument and Denver.

She was killed along with a deranged soldier.

(I killed her when I killed the solider.)

*   *   *

I am a girl with a rage inside that threatens to boil over every minute of the day.

All of us here are O types who were exposed. Some of us have been tipped into madness by the compounds.

It depends on how long you were exposed.

I was out there for more than two days, best we can piece together.

*   *   *

Myself, I work on self-control every moment of the waking day. I have to be on guard against my own blood.

I see others allow it to take over. Fights erupt. Tempers flare over an unfriendly glance, a stubbed toe, a bad dream.

If someone gets really out of control, the guards lock them in the study rooms at Hawthorn.

If someone really, really loses it, sometimes the guards take them and they don't come back.

It makes it worse that we're just a little stronger than we were before. Tougher. The cycle of healing, a bit speeded-up. Not so much you notice, but old ladies not using their canes. Piercedear holes closing up.

More energy in the cells, is what the inmates say.

They call it the O advantage.

It's our only one.

*   *   *

The Type O Containment Camp at Old Mizzou is a prison, not a shelter.

The blisterers (type A), the paranoid freaks (type AB), and the people who've been made sterile (type B) are at refugee camps where there's more freedom. More food. Clean clothes. TV.

But all of the people here at Mizzou have type O blood and were exposed to the compounds. So the authorities decided we are all murderers (probably true—certainly is for me) and penned us in together. Even the little kids.

“Yes, Mario,” I say when he starts to grumble about how wrong it all is. “It's unjust. Goes against our rights.”

But every time my fingers itch to bash some idiot's nose in, I suspect they were right to do it.

*   *   *

I remember my Gram talking about fevers. I remember her sitting on the edge of my bed, putting a clammy washcloth on my forehead.

“Gram,” I cried. “My head hurts.”

I didn't say it aloud, but I was begging for Tylenol and she knew it.

“I could give you something, my baby girl, but then your fever would die, and fever's what makes you strong.”

I would cry, and the tears themselves seemed boiling hot.

“A fever comes in and burns up your baby fat. It burns up the waste in your tissue. It moves you along in your development. Fevers are very good, darlin'. They make you invincible.”

Did I feel stronger, afterward? I did. I felt clean. I felt tough.

Gram made me feel like I was good through and through and I would never do wrong.

*   *   *

I'm glad Gram is long dead. I wouldn't want her to know me now. Because the O rage comes on like a fever but it burns your soul up. Your body it makes strong and your mind it lulls to sleep with bloodlust and you can recover from that. But after you kill, your soul buckles. It won't lie flat; like a warped frying pan, it sits on the burner and rattles, uneven.

*   *   *

You can never breathe the same way again because every breath is one you stole from corpses rotting, unburied, where you left them to bleed out.

*   *   *

It's my fault that Mario is here in “the Virtues” with me. The Virtues are a quad of buildings with inspiring names: Excellence, Responsibility, Discovery, and Respect, as well as a dining hall and two other dorms, all contained by not one but two chain-link fences, each topped with razor wire. Welcome to the University of Missouri at Columbia, post-apocalypse edition.

I remember when Mario and I first passed through the gates. I wondered what the gates were protecting us
from
. Stupid.

At the screening and sorting, we had placidly submitted to the mandatory blood typing. We had told our story. Mario could have gone to a different camp—he's AB. But he wouldn't leave me.

A tall guard with bright blue eyes and not much hair signed off on us.

He looked at Mario's paperwork.

“You're in the wrong place, old-timer,” he told Mario.

“This girl here is my responsibility. We prefer to stay together.”

The guard looked us over, nodding his head in a way I did not like.

“You ‘prefer,' do you?” he said, pronouncing the words slowly. “Little girl found herself a ‘sugar daddy'?”

“Come on now, there's no need to be crass,” Mario grouched in his way. “She's fifteen years old. She's a child.”

The smile slipped off the guard's face.

“Not in here,” he said. “In here she's a threat. I'm going to give you one last chance—you need to go. You think you're being high and mighty, protecting the girl. But this camp ain't place for an old man like you. You should go.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I'll stay with my friend.”

I didn't like this. A six-foot-tall bully looking down on frail, elderly Mario like he meant to flatten him, and Mario looking back with undisguised contempt.

I got antsy, started making fists and releasing them. Maybe I shifted from foot to foot.

The guard took hold of my jaw and forced me to look up into his face.

“How long were you out there?” he asked.

“She was out for just a short while,” Mario said.

“I DIDN'T ASK YOU, OLD MAN!” the guard shouted.

He tightened his grip on my jaw, gave my head a shake.

“My name's Ezekiel Venger, and I'm one of the head guards here. Now, how long?”

“I don't remember,” I said.

He let me go.

“I know you're trouble, Miss Fifteen. I can tell which ones are dangerous. That's why they put me in charge. You better watch yourself. I'm not gonna give you an inch of wiggle room. Not one sorry inch.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I know when to call someone sir.

You call someone sir if you respect him. If he's older than you. If he's in a position of authority. Or if he's got a nightstick and a chip on his shoulder.

*   *   *

Mario is my only friend.

He thinks I am a good person. He's wrong, but I don't argue with him. He tells me he believes in me.

We share a two-person suite with four others. I am not the only one Mario is protecting. He volunteered to sponsor four kids, and this is why they allowed him to be with us up on the second floor of Excellence. All the other suites on the second floor are just women and children.

It's only men on the first floor and it's rough down there.