Disclaimer: I do not own the Gone series or the characters, but I do love them.
Light penetrated my eyes like a scalding flame, and I automatically jerked to one side and mumbled that Edilio needed to shut the curtains.
Two things became very apparent. Number one was the pain!
The fire was eating me alive, and the scream that ripped from my throat relieved nothing. Twisting away seemed to have tossed me into the pits of hell. Hehe, hell, that's where I already was, his mind happily supplied.
Shut up, he told his mind right back.
Trying to force himself past the pain, rolling onto his back again seemed to semi help with that, the second thing he realized was that it hadn't been Edilio that had turned on the lights, or if it had then he was oddly not hovering over me to demand what was wrong, which of course, wasn't right.
Panting at what I knew was going to increase the pain ten fold, I cracked one eye open, ignoring the watering this immediately caused and strained to see. Once I was sure that one eye wasn't going to fall out, I quickly opened the other as well, then began blinking like crazy.
Despite the brightness around me, my vision was a hazy mess. Fear clutched up my stomach at once, like I was right back in that burning house, searching for Justin. He wasn't in his room, but I couldn't just leave this house without him! I cried out for him, and I thought I heard him moving around, maybe downstairs? Then I was tripping, the world spinning like a top, and before I even realized it Justin was there, pulling on me and insisting we had to go, get out, it was burning everything was burning...
I had passed out again, or maybe I'd just never fully awoken. This time, though, when consciousness possessed me again, I came to my conclusions much faster than last time. I was on land when I had last been in a boat. I had cried out, and no one had come. I was on fire, but this time there was no Justin to lead me out. Something was happening to my throat, like I couldn't breath but I was still trying to all at the same time, that same thing flashing over and over again until I wrenched myself into an upright position, causing myself that physical harm just to force the image away.
Justin, surrounded by fire and smoke, looking to me. Pleading for me to get him out, just like he had for me those months ago.
I hadn't done it.
I'd stood there and watched him, the boy I'd adopted as my own little brother, be torn apart and for what? So I could die like this, still on fire?
The black haze was still in me, all around me. My gasping breath hadn't just been because of the force of that image that would forever haunt me. No, there really was a fire here, and the smoke was still trying to choke away any victims the flames missed.
My pain didn't matter. Hauling myself up, I knew in that moment that I wouldn't let it win. The fire may have taken away my brother, but there was still someone. Someone I had to fight for, and someone I would soon have to console.
Edilio had not been at the lake when, well I didn't even know what had happened. Green fire, as if Sam himself had gone mad and decided to attack us. Had he? I didn't know, and I didn't care. Justin was gone, and I would be too if I didn't get away from here.
Every staggering step was a new level of hell, but two faces kept me going. Justin's, who wouldn't have wanted me to die, and Edilio who still needed someone to look out for him. God know's he looks out for everyone else enough.
The smoke was still everywhere, despite that the sun was now in the sky, and I tripped over something. The fire doubled up at once. It was still on me, in me, anywhere and everywhere. I scrambled and my hand reached for what I had fallen on, and I used it to force myself back to my feet. Then I ran.
More like staggered, my mind offered, past bodies. The lake town had been small, so I knew everyone who had been here. I passed familiar faces, no bodies I was once again corrected. The one that just so happened to me could never be looked upon, or I knew without a doubt I would never get up again. There were others too, Toto, Jezzie, Atria, was that Dhara? Had she even been here?
Roger took no notice of the camera that tried to track him into the shades of the forest. He didn't notice the blonde hair's tied to the pole with a bit of shirt that signaled other's had survived. Roger had one goal left in this messed up world, get to Perdido Beach, get to Edilio.
So he traveled. How long our how far he would never know. He came to a staggering halt outside of the fields.
The zekes, he reminded himself. Hunger made him quiver like an animal as he stared at a rotting vegetable. Here were the fields, which meant Edilio was surely not too far away. Maybe there was even some workers out here, then his eyes kept traveling, landing on the strewn bodies.
Some of the plants still glowed with the dying embers of the green lights.
He fled.
Roger didn't take notice that the zekes had failed to feed. Roger also didn't seem to notice a normal sized coyote with a perfectly normal muzzle cautiously coming onto the scene. It had been following him, hoping for its prey to succumb to death soon, but instead relishing on the cooked human remains. One innocent black worm could be seen popping quickly above the ground, then shriveling up and losing its life before it even reached the fur.
He ran and ran because the fire was still on him, around him, after him. It had clearly made its way faster then him, if it had reached the fields then it had reached town. There would be more bodies there, more dead, Edilio.
Justin and Edilio, Edilio and Justin. One dead, the other surely being cooked alive even as he continued to run for him.
I kept moving, sometimes my body gave out on me and I was forced to scrounge about and eat whatever was nearest. Which wasn't much, but as soon as I regained my whereabouts I was moving again. I had to find him, he had to be here somewhere! At one point he came across something. It was gold, but it had a human shape. It spoke to him, but he didn't take in any words.
He asked where Edilio and Justin were, she pointed. He asked if they were alive, and she nodded her head, then she disappeared again. He knew her once, knew a name that should have gone with her reappearance and just as sudden disappearance, but they wouldn't come and he didn't care. They were alive, that's all he knew now.
The fire had dulled now, keeping pace with him rather than trying to consume him. Then it came. A great roaring, creatures jumping out of ... something. He did not stop to think, only recognized who they weren't and ran.
He kept calling out for them, he knew they were alive, they had to be! Yet he was being restrained, and there was no gunfire to signal his rescue, just the loud roaring and the fire was back, and then nothing.
Roger woke up and demanded to know where two boys were. The authorities tried to answer his questions, but as soon as they did he simply repeated them.
Justin Kiips, one of the bodies that had been discovered at the lake identified by his sobbing mother. Five years old and blown up at the Lake Massacre.
The other, Edilio Escobar, was confirmed alive. Officially he had been deported, but no one knew for sure because everyone knew he hadn't really left. So they had no way to contact.
Roger's parents had been contacted, but once they had come and realized the state their boy was in, they instead paid to have him sent off to a 'rubber room' as his father said.
He was already sedated and preparing to be loaded up when Edilio arrived. Unlike the boys own parents, the little boy (no man the guard was later corrected) marched right in and calmly asked where his boyfriend was. The Honduran looked through the window, escorted himself inside, and didn't come out again for a long time.
The two were never really apart again.
I love the GONE series, it literally has everything I love in a book. Character's of different backgrounds and personalities, character development, different running plot lines that all interconnect, and humor out the wazoo but still keeping a serious tone and making sense in its own world. But of course with all books, it had to end, which left me with questions. As always I turned to my own mind and answered those questions, hope you enjoyed.