I searched for Aiden and Cade, but they were struggling to carry the equipment and the box. “We have to help them!” I gasped, struggling against his hold on me.
“We have to get out of here!” he snapped back.
“Wait…” I struggled to break free of him, but he would not let me go. “Cade.”
Cade’s head whipped around, his eyes narrowed upon us as his lips clamped tight. “Get her out of here!” he snarled with such ferocity that even I was stunned. “Now! Get her out now!”
Bret tugged on my arm, and this time I relented to him. Abby was already by the back door, holding it open for us. Bret pulled me rapidly forward; I nearly tripped over my own feet as I struggled to keep up with him. I was stiff, braced for further explosions, but no more rent the air. I staggered out the door, inhaling giant gulps of air that was nowhere near as fresh as I had hoped it would be. It smelled rancid, it tasted foul. There was a bitterness to it that caused me to recoil. My lungs burned from the tainted air, my nose hairs were singed as the horrendous smell and intense heat burned into my nostrils.
For a brief, entirely disorienting moment, I thought that it was snowing. But it couldn’t be snowing, not in August anyway, could it? Then again, far stranger things had happened over the past few days, snow in August didn’t seem entirely impossible at the moment. I reached my hand up, blinking against the fine particles coating my eyelashes, falling across my face, and turning the night sky completely black as they blocked out the stars and moon. The fine particles were pungent against my lips, bitter on my tongue. It took me a long moment to realize that it was not in fact snow, but fine, flowing ash.
I turned to the right, the building blocked some of my view but the sky behind the building was a vivid red orange hue. Whereas the night around us was as dark as midnight, it was as bright as the sun over there. And it looked angry, malevolent, and deadly. We all stood, staring in silent awe at the glowing, malicious sky. We had been so eager to flee the building, but now I found that my feet would not move. I didn’t want to see what the building hid, what was sheltered from our view.
“Awful,” Abby breathed.
“What isthat?” Molly croaked out.
“Flames from the bridge must have spread,” Bret said softly.
“The gas station,” I whispered.
“And the other buildings close to it. Those were the explosions. The fire is going to keep spreading. It will reach other propane tanks, gas tanks, oil tanks. We need to go before it reaches us.” I dropped my hands, dismayed by the coating of soot that clung to them. “We have no choice but to swim now.”
He tugged me back a few steps. For a moment I was frozen, and then self preservation kicked in. Bret’s hand slipped away as we hurried down the hill, struggling to stay on our feet in the rough, dark terrain. I had to keep wiping the ashes from my eyes; they stuck heavily to my lashes making it even more difficult to see. The hill became slick with the material coating it, I slipped and slid, waiting for the inevitable moment when I lost my balance.
Surprisingly, I was not the first one to go down. Instead, Molly let out a small cry as she lost her footing. Her arms pin wheeled in a useless attempt to keep her balance as her feet flew out from beneath her. I winced for her as she landed hard on her butt, bounced a few times before doing a complete ass over teakettle somersault.
Bret and Abby made an attempt to grab hold of her, but she quickly catapulted out of their reach. Molly let out a soft cry of pain, but remained terrifyingly quiet as she plummeted out of view. “Molly!” Abby cried.
“Hush!” Bret hissed sharply.
“But…”
“Shut up Abby, Molly did.”
Abby grew quiet but I could almost hear her tears. My heart hammered in true panic. Was Molly ok? Had she been hurt in the fall? I had no way of knowing what the hell was at the bottom of the damn hill; I could barely see a foot in front of me due to the inescapable blackness. Were there rocks down there? Was the damn ocean down there?
I chanced a glance over my shoulder; I could barely make out Cade and Aiden struggling down the hill behind us. Their breathing was loud in the oppressive air, but then, so was mine. My lungs labored, my throat burned. It could not be good to be inhaling this crap, but there was little I could do about that now. Little that any of us could do.
A loud pop sizzled through the air. A bright burst of light and fire leapt high into the air over the burning glow behind the store. A propane tank perhaps? I tried to recall the buildings in the area of the bridge. There was the IHOP, a hotel; no there were twohotels, a laundry mat, convenience store, gas station, funeral home, tourist traps, woods, and plenty of homes. There were so many things to spread the growing flames, things that would rapidly catch fire without anyone to stop the flow of the fire.
And the aliens would not stop it. Not when they knew it would flush out the remaining people like rats fleeing a flood. And that’s exactly what we were now, trapped rats that they would narrow in on quickly. Especially if we continued to head toward the water.
My heart flip flopped; I tore my attention away from the hated flames. Was that the real reason the aliens had destroyed the bridge? Had they wanted to ruin any chance of escape, and set fire to the land in order to draw us out?
I wanted to cry, I didn’t dare. We still had some hope, some time, no matter how small it was. We just had to get away from here before the flames reached us.
I was so intent on my thoughts that I didn’t realize the ground had begun to level out. Molly came into view, standing at the bottom of the hill. She was dirty, disheveled, and her bottom lip was bleeding but she appeared otherwise unharmed. We raced across the street, fleeing into the backyards of residential homes, staying parallel with the railroad tracks that ran near the beach. The tracks followed the water and the roads, yet the trees surrounding them offered us enough protection to stay hidden from anything above.
Our breathing grew labored, my lungs were burning from the arid air, but no one asked to stop. No one said they couldn’t go on. It simply wasn’t an option right now. I don’t know how long we ran for, pounding over unseen ground, trying to escape the dark ash and deadly flames. I didn’t dare look back, I didn’t want to know how close the fire was, didn’t want to know how much time we had left.
“This way,” Aiden gasped.
We followed silently as he took a sharp right; he darted through someone’s yard before stopping at the edge of the woods. I stared out at the dark parking lot before us. Dread filled me at the thought of running out there. We would be exposed, vulnerable.
Aiden and Cade dropped the equipment they had been carrying. They shuffled between each other, muttering softly, and then a small flashlight clicked on. “Aiden!” I hissed.
His mahogany eyes were dark, piercing as he gazed at me over the beam. I was pinned by that stare, frozen within its desperate depths. “Do you want to use this crap or not!?” he demanded.
I bit my bottom lip as I finally turned back to the hungry fire. Above the tree line I could make out the angry glow of the flames. We had gained some time, but there was too much kindling and fuel in between the fire, and us, to think that it had been much. We had an hour, maybe two, before those flames came far too close for my liking.
“Why are there only four tanks?”
My head snapped around at Jenna’s question. I strained to see into the box that Cade had been carrying, hoping that I had missed something, hoping that fear had caused me to lose my ability to count right. One, two, three, four… No, no, there had to be more. One, two, three, four…