I glanced at Tiny once during the drive back to my house. His eyes were scrunched shut, and he was muttering some kind of prayer under his breath. The firefighter at the wheel laughed maniacally as she hurled the huge truck back and forth across the lanes, into oncoming traffic, and even halfway onto a sidewalk once. She swiveled in her seat to look at me, taking her eyes off the road completely. “Anyone else at home, kid?”
“No,” I answered, hoping to keep the conversation short.
“Any pets?”
“No.”
The ride couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, but it felt longer. Between the crazy driving and Tiny’s muttered prayer, I wished I’d run back home instead. The truck slammed to a stop in front of my house, and before I could get my stomach settled and even think about moving, the cab was empty. Both doors hung open. I groaned and slid toward the driver’s side. Everything hurt: both knees, my right shoulder, the muscles in my calves and thighs: my eyes stung, my throat felt raw and, to top it all off, my head had started to ache.
Two huge steps led down from the cab. I stumbled on the first one and almost fell out of the truck backward. I caught myself on the grab bar mounted to the side of the truck. When I reached the ground, I kept one hand on the bar, holding myself upright.
The house was wrecked. It looked like a giant fist had descended from the heavens, punching a round hole in the roof above my sister’s room and collapsing the front of the house. Flames shot into the sky above the hole and licked up the roof. Ugly brown smoke billowed out everywhere.
Thank God my sister wasn’t home. If she’d been in her room, she’d be dead now. An hour ago I’d been looking forward to an entire weekend without her. Now I wanted nothing more than to see her again-soon, I hoped. Mom would burn rubber all the way back from my uncle’s place in Illinois as soon as she heard about the fire. It was only a two-hour drive. I gripped the bar on the fire truck more tightly and tried to swallow, but my mouth was parched.
The firefighter wrestled a hose toward the front of the house. Tiny hunched over the hydrant across the street, using a huge wrench to connect another hose to it. Darren and Joe were standing in our next-door neighbor’s yard, so I stumbled over to them. From there I could see the side of my house. One of the firefighters opened the dining room window from the inside and smoke surged out.
“You okay?” Darren asked.
“Not really.” I collapsed into the cool grass and watched my house burn.
“We should take you to the hospital.”
“No, I’m okay. Can I borrow your cell? Mine’s in there. Melted, I guess.” I wanted, needed, to call Mom. To know she was on her way back and would soon be here taking care of things. Taking care of me.
“Still no service on mine, sorry.”
“Maybe it’s only our carrier,” Joe said. “I’ll see if anyone else has service.” He walked across the street toward a knot of people who’d gathered there, rubbernecking.
I lay back in the grass and closed my eyes. Even from the neighbor’s yard, I felt the heat of the fire washing over my body in waves. I smelled smoke, too, but that might have been from my clothing.
A few minutes later, I heard Joe’s voice again. “Nobody’s got cell service. Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT amp;T-all down. Nobody’s got power or landlines, either.”
I opened my eyes. “I thought landlines weren’t supposed to go down. I mean, when our power’s out, the old house phone still works. Just not the cordless phones.”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But nobody’s telephones work.”
“Huh.”
“You know what happened to your house? Looks like something fell on the roof.”
“I dunno. Power went out, and then wham, the whole house fell on me.”
“Meteor, you think? Or a piece of an airplane, maybe?”
“Would that make the power and phones go down?”
“No… shouldn’t.”
“And there are other fires. At least four, judging by the smoke.”
Joe peered at the sky. “Yeah. Looks like they’re a ways off. In Waterloo, maybe.”
I tried to sit up. The motion triggered a coughing spasm-dry, hacking coughs, every one of them setting off a sharp pain in my head. By the time my coughing fit passed, the headache was threatening to blow off the top of my head.
“You want some water?” Joe asked.
“Yeah,” I wheezed.
“We should take you to the hospital,” Darren said again, as Joe trotted back across the street toward their house.
I closed my eyes again, which helped the headache some. The water Joe brought me helped more. I chugged the first bottle and sipped the second. Joe left again-said he was going to find batteries for their radio. Darren stood beside me, and we watched the firefighters work.
They’d strung two hoses through a window at the side of the house. All four of the firefighters were inside now, doing who-knew-what. The hoses twitched and jumped as water blasted through them. Pretty soon the flames shooting out the roof died down. I heard sizzling noises, and the smoke pouring out the windows turned from an angry brown to white as the fire surrendered.
Two firefighters climbed out a window. One jogged to the truck and got two long, T-shaped metal pry-bars. The other guy walked over to me.
“Are you okay? Having any trouble breathing?” he asked.
“I’m okay.”
“Good. Look, normally we’d call a paramedic and the Red Cross truck to get you some help, but we can’t even raise dispatch. You got anyone you can stay with?”
“He can stay with us,” Darren said. “Till we can get hold of his family, anyway.”
“That okay with you, kid?”
“Yeah, fine.” I’d have preferred to see Mom’s minivan roaring up the street, but Joe and Darren were okay. They’d lived across the street from us forever.
“The fire’s pretty much dead. We’re going to aerate some walls and do a little salvage work. Make sure you stay out of the house-it’s not stable.”
“Okay. What started it?”
“I don’t know. Dispatch will send an investigator out when we reach them.”
“Thanks.” I wished he knew more about what was happening, but it didn’t seem polite to say so.
“Come on,” Darren said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
I struggled to my feet and plodded across the street alongside Darren. The sun had gone down; there was a hint of orange in the west, but otherwise the sky was a gloomy gray. No lights had come on. About halfway across Darren’s yard, I stopped and stared at the white steam still spewing from my partly collapsed home. I put my hands on my knees and looked at the grass. A numb exhaustion had seeped into every pore of my body, turning my muscles liquid, attacking my bones with random aches. I felt like I’d been sparring with a guy twice my size for an hour.
Darren rested his hand on my shoulder. “It’ll be all right, Alex. The phones will probably be back up tomorrow, and we’ll get your folks and the insurance company on the line. A year from now, the house will be as good as new, and you’ll be cracking jokes about this.”
I nodded wearily and straightened up, Darren’s hand still a comfortable weight on my shoulder.
Then the explosions started.
Chapter 3
The sound hit me physically, like an unexpected gust of wind trying to throw me off my feet. Two windows in the house next door bowed inward under the pressure and shattered. Darren stumbled from the force, and I caught him with my left hand.
I used to watch lightning storms with my sister. We’d see the lightning and start counting: one Mississippi, two Mississippi… If we got to five, the lightning was a mile away. Ten, two miles. This noise was like when we’d see the lightning, count one-and wham, the thunder would roll over us-the kind of thunder that would make my sister run inside screaming.