Chapter 40
I SAGGED in the driver’s seat, exhausted and discouraged, catching my breath through my teeth to minimize the reek of expended fuel. Ceren sat beside me, withdrawn and pale and stinking of flamethrower fuel. Yesterday, she’d seemed a brash and aggressive teenager, but Alice’s disappearance and Doug’s attack had deflated her. A couple people had emerged from homes along the street, but didn’t approach. Nobody wanted to confront a man with a flamethrower, or study the heap of carbonized flesh smoldering in the intersection.
The wind shifted, bringing the column of smoke from Doug’s remains towards us. I coughed at the sticky black haze and turned the cruiser’s ignition. Ceren hadn’t stopped the cruiser well, running the nose into a tree at three miles an hour, but the engine tur
