CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CASS ON FIRE

I FELT THE impact on my left shoulder. A low whoooomp echoed through the chamber.

A gust of warm wind shot toward me—a compression of air from the falling mass. I hurtled away from the platform, rolling myself into a ball to cushion the fall.

I hit the floor hard. And I slid.

I was covered with something dense and grainy. It seemed pelletlike but also fine and slippery. Its stink was intense. I crashed against a wall, but I barely felt it. Everything stung—my eyes, nose, and mouth. It was as if someone had squirted ammonia in my face.

I pulled my pack around and reached frantically inside for my water bottle. With shaky fingers, I uncapped it and squirted water into my face. I tried to blink, but it was like opening my eyes in acid. I squirted again and again.

To my right Aly was writhing on the ground, clawing at her face, screaming. “Ew, ew, ew—I know that smell! It’s bat guano, Jack! Like, five thousand years of it!”

“Look my way!” I shouted, scrabbling over the grime-soaked floor.

As she turned toward me, I shot streams of water into her eye sockets. The goop oozed downward in thin black fingers. “Enough…save the water for later…I can see…” she sputtered.

“Where’s Cass?” I said.

I scanned the edge of the reeking mound. The cavern walls were glowing orange. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the right side of the tapestry, bright as day now.

“Jack, I can see,” Aly repeated, still rubbing her eyes.

“I heard you,” I said. “That’s great. Now let’s find—”

“I shouldn’t be able to see!” Aly said. “Where is the light coming from? It should have been smothered.”

That was when I saw the flames. They danced up from the back of the mountainous pile, growing, spreading, licking against the back wall. With a loud whooshing sound, the tapestry caught fire.

“This stuff is flammable!” I said.

“It’s dried guano, Jack, of course it’s flammable!” Aly shouted.

Cass.

In the growing brightness, I spotted a slight movement. A hand. Sticking out from the edge of the mound.

I raced toward him.

The fire skittered over the top of the guano, gaining ferocity. Aly dug into the pile, scooping the foul stuff from atop Cass. I pulled hard. His shoulders emerged. His face. He was barely breathing.

The flames were descending the slope of the mound now. Coming closer to Cass. I grabbed under his shoulders and yanked as hard as I could.

Aly took his arm, but Cass was pinned by the dense mass. The flames spat sparks all around us. “Pull!” I yelled.

I planted my feet. I leaned hard. Aly’s face was red.

With a sudden jerk, Cass slid loose. I flew backward. The mound shifted, collapsing around the area Cass had vacated. A ball of flame arched through the air.

It landed on Cass’s body. His guano-covered shirt instantly went up in flames.

“He’s on fire!” Aly shouted.

I whipped off my still-wet pack and began battering the fire with it. Aly had found a bottle of water in her own pack and was pouring it on him. Finally I threw myself on top of Cass, the wet backpack between us, and held tight.

I could feel the heat radiating upward. I stayed there until I was sure the fire was out, and then rolled off.

“Is he alive?” Aly asked.

His chest wasn’t moving. He was limp, motionless. I knelt and slapped his face. I’d taken a CPR class and tried to recall what we’d learned—compressions above the lungs. I pressed hard, in bursts of three. Cass’s skin was red, and some of it looked papery.

“Geaaaahhh!” As Cass’s face came to life, he spat out a hunk of guano. He began to convulse, spitting and coughing. I sat him up and doused his face with water.

He was screaming like a wounded animal. I could barely recognize his voice.

“Come on, let’s get him out of here!” I shouted. “Quick.”

With one of Cass’s arms over draped my good shoulder, the other over Aly’s, we dragged him away from the flaming guano. The fire’s light showed that there were two passageways branching off ahead—one to the left and one farther ahead to the right.

“My eyes!” Cass screamed.

With my free hand, I squeezed the remaining contents of my water bottle into his face. Aly was coughing now—wracking, rattling explosions that made her body heave. Her eyes were red and swollen. We staggered forward, our lungs filling with toxic fumes.

We passed through the archway on the other side, into a narrow tunnel. Smoke was billowing from behind us.

“Where do we go?” Aly said. “There’s another fork ahead.”

“Guh…go…” Cass moaned. “Rrrahh…”

“What’s he saying?” Aly asked.

“Go right?” I repeated. “Is that what you said, Cass—go right?”

“Ssss…” he said, his eyes flickering shut. I took that for a yes.

We limped into the increasing darkness. The stench was lessening, but Aly could barely walk for her coughing. My heart was beating too fast. My breaths were quick and ragged, my eyes near swollen shut. “I feel…weak…” I said, gasping for breath.

“The fire…” Aly paused to cough. “Toxic fumes…”

The fork seemed twice as far as it looked. When we finally made the turn, we collapsed onto the floor.

The air was clearer here, the fire a dull, distant glow.

“Light…” Cass said. “Dropped into…pack.”

Aly eyed his backpack, which was now nearly solid black with fire-cured guano. I could tell she was not going to touch it.

Cass had zipped up the pack. I hoped the interior would be intact. I unzipped it and reached in, holding back my own revulsion.

Incredibly, the flashlight was fine. I shone the beam to the left. “Ready?”

Cass grimaced. “I hurt,” he said.

His face was matted with blood. Welts bubbled up on his arms. His shirt was charred and tattered, the shreds saturated with sweat and blood. Under them was an angry cross-hatching of burn marks. “We…we’re going to have to clean you up,” I said.

“Like, now.” Aly pulled a water bottle out of her own pack and poured it on Cass’s chest.

“Yeeeeaaaagh!” His scream was like a body blow.

Aly fell back in shock. “Sorry!”

Cass convulsed. “You’re going to be fine,” I said.

He grabbed my hand and Aly’s. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. “I’m dying. Leave me. Go.”

“We can’t do that!” Aly said.

Cass flinched. “When you get out…send help. Go!”

I looked at Aly. We couldn’t let him die. I put my arm around his shoulders and tried to hoist him up. “We’ll get through. Return home to our families. All three of us.”

“Stop!” Cass said, his face twisted with pain. “That newspaper…Chronicle…”

He was hallucinating. “Cass, the newspaper is gone!” I said.

“My family…” Cass said. “Gone, too. Not dead…gone.”

As I struggled to my feet I remembered the headline, going up in flames. “Cass, that article…the crime-spree couple…?”

“What are you talking about?” Aly demanded.

“Mom…Dad…” Cass’s eyes were wild, desperate. “Never met them…but I found out. Life sentence…gave me up. At birth. Four foster families. Five? I don’t know. Bad…son. So bad. Ran away…”

The words hit hard.

My family isn’t close…I remembered what Cass had said when we’d talked about our families. “Cass, we don’t care who your parents are,” I said. “You’re coming with us.”

“You have families,” Cass insisted. “I have nothing. Go!”

Aly’s eyes were full of tears. “Cass, we’re all the same now. We’re all each other has—”

“Left…” Cass said, his voice a raspy whisper.

“Exactly,” Aly agreed.

“No…go left…” he said. “About…fifteen degrees. Not straight. Not too sharp either…fifteen degrees or so…”

His voice drifted off.

“Cass!” I shouted, shaking him.

Aly felt his neck for a pulse. “He’s alive. Maybe we should turn back…get him help.”

“But Marco—” I said.

“We can’t save Marco,” Aly said. “We may not ever find him now. But if we retrace our steps and return, we can save Cass.”

I set Cass down on the floor. I couldn’t go another inch with him. I was on the verge of collapse myself. His weight was killing my sore left shoulder. Aly looked half dead. “We can’t go back the way we came. We’ll burn alive, Aly.”

“Right, you’re right.” She squinted ahead. “Okay. He said fifteen degrees.”

“You’re at a street corner…” I gasped. “You turn clockwise. Right turn is ninety degrees, backward one-eighty. Left turn two-seventy.”

As I lifted Cass again, I slid the flashlight toward Aly with my foot. “Take this.”

As Aly bent to pick it up, she coughed violently. Dark brown fluid dripped from her mouth.

She flicked on the light and shone it ahead. Its beam shook with the rhythm of her coughing. A bat chittered overhead, zigzagging among the stalactites. The light was nearly gone now, but it revealed a turn ahead. At about fifteen degrees.

“Go left,” Aly said. “And pray.”

Moving with Cass sent a stab of intense pain down my left side, but I held tight. Collapsing would do neither of us any good. “Okay. Ready.”

“Are you sure you can do this?” Aly asked.

I nodded firmly. “For a brother, I can.”

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. Bats squeaked overhead, scolding us. I could barely walk. My shoulder was completely numb.

We used the flashlight only sparingly. I was banging poor Cass into the wall. Finally I stepped into a hole and we both nearly went flying. I screamed. My body was pure agony now, shoulder to foot. “Setting him…down,” I said through gritted teeth. “My ankle feels broken…”

I sank against the wall and set Cass in my lap. He needed a cushion. Holding him in a kind of modified bear hug, I felt my eyes close.

A little sleep couldn’t hurt. Just a minute.

“Jack?” Aly said. “You don’t look good.”

I could see them in my mind now. The king and queen. They were expecting me. But they looked sad.

“I did…the best I could,” I said. A soft, slightly cool breeze caressed my right side, sending me deeper into dreamland. Closer to Uhla’ar and Qalani.

Now the queen’s face was changing. Her regal features softened, reshaping into a smile so familiar that I felt I’d been seeing every day.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. I wanted to let go. I wanted to join her. It had been so long, and I had lost her so quickly. I missed her so much.

“Jack, don’t go to sleep!” Aly was screaming.

I could sense a dim glow under my lids, but I wanted darkness. I was ready for it. “Please turn off…the light…”