Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [57]
I took the master key from the belt of one of the frozen guards and moved down to the adjacent cell.
“You guys want to get out of here or what?” I yelled down the cell block.
My question was rewarded with hundreds of heart-breakingly hopeful cheers. I quickly made my way along the balcony, unlocking each cell as I went.
Then a siren began to wail, and about twenty guards stormed into the cell block.
Chapter 92
Wisty
THE JACKBOOTED BULLIES forged into the crowd of children I’d released from their cells, swinging clubs and firing stun guns with unfathomable cruelty.
The sight of two-hundred-pound-plus guards manhandling, beating, and hurting children, some of them a quarter their size, is something I will have nightmares about for the rest of my life.
At the time, it sickened me almost past the point of out-rage. Every cell in my body seemed to boil with anger. And then… whoosh!
And I mean, WHOOSH! Familiar two-, three-, and four-feet flames once again swirled around me.
The Flame Girl Strikes Back.
Still, it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference had I not had a massive stroke of luck right then.
The lucky strike was that I was right under a smoke alarm. And, time was, the people in charge of the world actually put a value on human life and put in a safety precaution so that not everybody in the prison would die in a massive fire. The New Order, in taking over a jail that had been created by a society based on fairness and justice, had neglected to realize that the fire alarms in the prison automatically opened all the interior doors, including the doors to the cells themselves.
And so, as the smoke alarm added its siren wail to the cacophony all around us, I charged the guards, leaving fiery footprints everywhere I stepped. I had to lead these kids out of here, and that meant I had to clear a path.
The guards didn’t put up much resistance. I charged down the hallway after them all the way to the next cell block before they met reinforcements and tried to stand their ground. One guard was shouting orders into a walkie-talkie; the others had stun guns and nightsticks at the ready.
I took a deep breath and remembered what the kid had said: They’re afraid of all of us.
Well, they clearly were at least a little afraid of a furious fifteen-year-old firebrand flying toward them with her arms spread wide, screeching like a total maniac, “Fire really, really hurts!” and “I’m a bad, scary witch!”
I burst right through their ranks, not even a little upset by the shouting as their clothes caught on fire. Yelling “Stop, drop, and roll, you idiots,” I dashed into the next cell block.
“Everybody out!” I screamed at the kids there as well as those from the last block, who had been following me—sensibly—at a safe distance. “Fire! Everyone get out. Right now! See that stairwell there? That’s the way out!”
I was actually starting to feel a little scared myself. This was the longest I’d ever stayed on fire. Was there a point of no return from being charbroiled?
I couldn’t think about it now, because suddenly hundreds of skinny, dirty, terrified kids were pouring past me. And them, I didn’t want to catch on fire.
Chapter 93
Whit
AFTER WE DROPPED the kids off at Garfunkel’s, we decided to bypass Death by Subway and take a different route back to the prison. True to my word, I avoided directions from Emmet at all costs.
This time Margo was my copilot. We were in the van alone; the others would meet us close to the prison gates.
I’d done a pretty successful “abracadabra” on the van before we left, turning it an uneven shade of dark blue, with Idaho license plates.
But that wasn’t the only big change.
A short time ago I’d looked like I was about thirty years old. Then I’d changed back to a teenager—with no warning—right as I was going up the stalled escalator at Garfunkel’s. It