THE LIQUID ON Kendrick’s clothes stung his pores and made him shiver in the night air.
It also rose up and burned the skin around the small hairs inside his nose.
It took him a minute to place the smell.
Kerosene.
Kendrick saw sky then. He was outside on his back on wet ground.
His fingers reached at strands of scrub brush, but pain came from everywhere, so he stopped moving. “God, please God,” he mumbled.
He saw the moon. He’d just learned about waxing and waning moons in science, and this was a waxing gibbous. A few days before a full moon.
“Dad,” he said aloud, looking around. Purple was filling the sky. The sun coming up soon.
“He’s awake,” a voice said. Thick and nasal-like. A man stood there, and Kendrick felt so small next to him.
Kendrick tried to lift his head, but something thick was around his neck.
“No,” he yelled.
Spears of orange sunlight came alive at the corners of his eyes.
“Why?” he said to the man.
“You’re chosen. And today you go free.”
Free?
Hope sprang in Kendrick’s chest, but it lasted only a few seconds.
He felt his body getting pulled—not by the rope that was tied behind his back earlier, but by something around his neck.
A quick tug and his body flew up into the air. A tightening as the rope gripped his throat.
And then he could feel the heat. He recognized what the spears of orange were.
Fire was burning the ground below him.