(41) A Time To Clean Up Things We've Burned

The shelter our scouts have found is just another hollow between the hills. I can convince myself it has more grass than the rest. Still, none of us have more than the clothes on our backs, so grass will likely be nicer than sleeping on a hard dirt floor of some shack somewhere, stacked two deep because there's almost a hundred of us here.

Or rather, there would be if everyone was still around. When I get everyone to sit still long enough to run a headcount, me and Exie both come up with a number in the seventies range. I try not to think too hard about what might have happened to the rest. Anyone who didn't escape the school in time is either boiled chicken by now, or waiting to dash through a sinking gap in a burning wall if they're exceptionally lucky. I hope the missing students simply took off across the fields already. There were some talking about climbing the school gate last time I was inside.

I run both hands down my face and look up to find Haven and a scout-friend standing expectantly in front of me.

"Should we try and find a town?" Haven volunteers before I need to make words work.

I hesitate. It's mid-September, and the nights out here aren't exactly warm. We also have no water and no food. I have the means to light a fire—anyone willing to run a taper to the burning school and back would—but the barren hills mock us with their lack of fuel. If we stay a night out here, someone's liable to get murdered in a resource battle before we ever reach civilization again.

Still, something in me balks at the prospect of turning up at a town's doorstep. We're a pathetic-looking bunch, and this cohort has more than proven its capacity for trouble. I'm none too keen to assume command of an army that will sooner get itself arrested than look pitiful for long enough to wheedle food and lodging out of townsfolk. Especially given the chances that such people are already aware of this school's reputation. And the fact that I could be tried for arson for having lit the school's fire.

I rub the bridge of my nose and sigh deeply. "How many people here are fit to scout?"

"We've got about five." Haven flags down a couple more students, who join us. "We are at your service."

"Thank you. Circle the school. See if you can round up any students who've escaped in other directions, and bring them back here. If you see townsfolk coming, don't make contact yet; we don't know how they'll react to us. Report back on how they respond to... that."

I gesture broadly towards the church-sized bonfire still blazing merrily away across the fields. Haven nods and begins to divide up their scouts, sending them off in different directions. I'm happy with this sort of delegation, and not inclined to question right now whether any of the scouts might have the flaws of a pathological liar. You never quite know what you're getting with students whose parents sent them to this school.

When the scouts are gone, I leave my post on the hilltop and return to the hollow where the rest of the students are sitting or milling or comparing bruises. It doesn't take long to spot the one I'm looking for.

"Barnabas," I say. "Can I get your help here for a moment?"

Barnabas and Gilbert glance up from their conversation on a nearby hillside. Barnabas still looks shaken.

"Sorry," I say, joining them both. I should really give judged students a break here; they've been through a lot. "Just one thing. You're a local, aren't you? Where are the nearest towns from here? And should we avoid any of them?"

"Don't go south." Barnabas points around. "There's more there, there, and somewhere around there that should be a little friendlier, but I'd go north if anyone's trying to reach a city."

"How far to the first town in that direction?"

"About an hour's walk? Maybe an hour and a half. I normally rode, and never near the school."

"Good enough."

For a given quantity of "good," at least. The sun is sinking like a busted racketeer's stock prices. I can scarcely believe it was only this morning that me and Barnabas woke up in a cell. I I push myself up with a sigh and meet Exie halfway across the hollow.

"We need to do something about the teachers," she says.

"I know."

There's a couple students tying up the teachers with spare blazers whose owners will probably want them back come nightfall. The teachers don't fight back. The demon's passing seems to have hollowed them out. They sit quietly together with gaunt faces and dead eyes, as though they've already accepted their hostage situation and aren't planning an escape. I'm surprised no one's tried to lynch them yet.

More to the point, I'm surprised I myself haven't been tempted to. Cracking a rotten egg or two down their shirts would be cathartic, but my dominant response is a twisted sort of pity. I don't know if they too were taken by the demon, or whether they joined him of their own accord. What is free will, even, to a creature capable of mind control? If I prayed for the peace of the original cultists, I can't exactly wish death upon their modern counterparts.

"They've been disarmed?" I ask the nearest student guard.

"Checked head to shoes," she says with a curled lip. "Two had knives. We took them."

"Good."

"Any ideas?" Exie asks me.

"Not yet. Can we think about this later? I'd like to hear back from the scouts first."

She nods, and we split up again. Exie handles the setup of this makeshift camp with the discipline of a drill sergeant, matching injured students to those with medical capability, judged students with friends or friendly faces who can talk them through their shock, and restless students with productive forms of troublemaking. I keep watch for Haven and the other scouts. Haven is the first to return, jogging back between the hills with the energy of a hound dog. They arrive scarcely out of breath.

"We saw townsfolk," they say. "They stopped by the pit on horseback, then crossed themselves and ran away."

The superstitions of the neighboring townsfolk are confirmed over the rest of the day. The school's fires die down by evening, crumbled to little more than a glow over the hills. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but I've never been known for my sense of self-preservation. Nightfall finds me and Exie at the head of a small group trudging back over the hills to see whatever's left of the school. Almost everyone catches their breath as we crest the last hill.

Melliford Academy is gone. In its place is a pit in the ground, wide enough to swallow the outermost walls, then any tunnels that extended past them. Its bottom bubbles like a witch's stew. Thick mud gravy bristles with pocked blocks of stone and charred fragments of former habitation. A leg of furniture. The twisted metal mesh of what was once a stained-glass window. Small flames still run over the mud and cluster around the stone blocks. Many are still burning. The whole Hell's mouth flickers with a dim orange glow.

Out the corner of my eye, I see another student slip away into the darkness. We've lost another dozen over the course of the day, offset by the few Haven and their scouts have rescued. I'm not about to stop the runaways. At least two have left their uniforms behind, indicating plans to blend in with the townsfolk. With all our belongings seared to ash at the bottom of this pit, I hope they find what they need along the way.

Nobody speaks. Exie stands perfectly still, flames reflected in her eyes. Barnabas hugs himself. I'm surprised he even came, but I guess we're all looking for closure here. Clarice is here, too. She rocks on the balls of her feet, for once not smiling. She's still wearing the little winged cross she stole off a teacher on our third day of school. I'm still wearing the cross she gave me. Part of me wants to rip it off and consign it to the pit, but this hole is only for unholy things. For all the crosses' backstories, they saved us from a fate worse than death. And I'm getting a little attached to mine, I guess.

"Do we just go home now?" says Barnabas at last, breaking the silence.

Nobody replies. I look around. Almost every student's gaze still rests on the pit, or wanders in another direction. One watches the stars, her eyes glossy.

How many students here even have a place they'd call home—one they'd return to after finding out where their parents or guardians sent them? Some guardians might get the benefit of the doubt for being dense enough to think this was a Christian school, but not all can be so easily forgiven.

"How many want to?" I ask. "Go home, I mean. Show of hands."

A couple weak hands go up. Even as I watch, though, one wavers and falls again. I've heard that student talking. He doesn't know where else to go. I glance at Exie for her input, but she doesn't look like she even heard the question. She's shifted, now watching the pit with her head tilted and one finger on her chin. I recognize the look.

"What are you thinking?" I murmur.

She doesn't answer for a long time. I almost think she didn't hear that question, either, but then she taps her chin and says, "No bodies."

Maybe I'm too tired to follow this right now, or maybe some part of me still isn't used to this kind of content from Exie Doesn't-Rebel Quinnell. "What?"

"They don't have to know we're still alive."

"Who?"

"Anyone. With the size of that fire, and how little is left?" She turns to me, eyes still lit by residual flames. I expect mischief, but she's dead serious. "This is it, Des. Get everyone together. We're not going to get a chance like this again."