Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
HUNTER
“What the hell are you burning, Slade?” I called from the dark of my room. I shook off the sleep and sat up.
“Holy shit!” Slade yelled. “Amy’s house is on fire.”
I shot out of bed and pulled on my jeans.
I grabbed my shoes on the way out the door and hopped into them as I raced across the front yard.
Several of the neighbors had stumbled out of their houses.
Mr. Ames, who lived across the street, was on the phone calling the fire department.
Flames were already shooting up from the roof, and the whole house was surrounded by smoke.
Slade reached the front porch just ahead of me.
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Slade reached for the doorknob, but his hand flew off. “Fuck! It’s too hot.”
“Get out of the way,” I yelled. Slade moved aside, and I ran at the door and kicked it in. It was half melted by the heat and peeled away from its hinges. Blinding smoke billowed out.
“They’re on their way,” Mr. Ames called from the front yard. “You boys can’t go in there.”
I hadn’t had time to pull on a shirt, so I covered my nose and mouth with my forearm and forged through the smoke and fire. It was hard to see anything, but I heard Slade’s footsteps right behind me. The front room was engulfed in flames. The heat seared my shoulders and arms.
“You with me, Slade?” I called, no longer able to see more than a foot in front of me.
“I’m with you. Fuck, I can’t breathe. Where is she?”
“Amy!” I yelled. There was no response. All I could think was— if she was dead then I’d just follow her right into the flames. I wasn’t going to make it without her. No way to live without her.
Slade had broken into a coughing fit behind me.
“You all right?” My voice was being choked off by the bitter ashes in my throat.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I can see the white edge of the hallway door.” He turned my shoulder in the right direction, and we pushed through the blistering heat. The entire house was a furnace, and somewhere inside the raging hell was my angel.
“Amy!” I called.
Then, somehow, through the clamor of wood and rafters falling in on each other, I heard a small cry.
I waved my arms around to clear the smoke.
There, curled up in a corner of the hallway was the girl I loved.
“Amy, fucking hell, baby.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried.
I’d learned to turn off tears when I was a kid because they only made my dad swing his belt harder.
I grabbed her up in my arms, and she clung to me.
“Where’s your mom?”
She wriggled to free herself from my arms. “My mom, she’s still in her room. She blocked the door.” Her sobs were strangled by a coughing fit. I handed her off to Slade. “Take her outside now.”
“No, man.” Slade’s voice wavered. “You need to get out too.”
“I’ll be right out.” A large slice of the family room ceiling lost its tenuous grip on the beams. It fell to the floor right next to us. Sparks flicked off of Slade’s arms as he held tightly to Amy.
“Get her out of here!” I yelled.
Slade dashed through the ashes and flames and out of the house.
I forged a path through the smoke back to the hallway.
I reached her mom’s bedroom door. It was too hot to touch.
I braced myself against the opposite wall, the searing plaster was blistering the skin on my back as I shoved the door with both feet.
The heat and smoke and lack of air in my lungs made it take several good pushes.
More smoke billowed out from her room. I lowered my face and squeezed inside.
I shoved the dresser away from the door.
The bed was completely engulfed in flames.
I stumbled back to avoid being caught by them and tripped hard over something.
My tailbone smacked the dresser. I swept the smoke from in front of my face, and through the hazy clearing, I saw Amy’s mom stretched out on the floor.
Her robe was singed and her face was still as death.
I jumped up and swept her up into my arms. She felt like a ragdoll, lifeless and filled with cotton.
I could hear sirens growing louder. Red spinning lights lit up the curtain of smoke, making it glow red like the surrounding flames.
My chest, throat and eyes burned as if someone was taking a blowtorch to them.
I crossed the front room in four big steps.
The outside air, even clouded with smoke, felt like cool water rushing over my singed skin.
Fire trucks and the flashing lights of police lit up the street making the whole damn scene like a clip from a movie.
The top two steps were glowing with heat.
I stepped over them and busted through the shield of ash and smoke that circled the house.
Dozens of people had gathered on the sidewalk and street to watch.
There was yelling and the firemen were calling orders to each other.
A loud cheer went up as I stepped onto the front lawn.
I could hear Amy’s small cry as it squeaked through the chaos.
My eyes followed the direction of the sound.
She was yanking off her oxygen mask. She pushed away the restraining hand of the medic and came racing toward me.
Her mom hadn’t moved one muscle since I’d picked her up from the floor.
When my mom died of an overdose in her bed, I had grabbed her and tried to make her sit up.
I was a kid, and in my shock I’d convinced myself that if I sat her up, she’d start breathing again.
But as I held her, I knew I was holding death.
I looked down at the woman in my arms. I was holding death again.
Amy leaned down over her mom’s face and kissed her. “Mom, wake up.” She patted her ash covered face. “Mom.”
A medic took her from my arms. He was a big guy, maybe thirty and the look he shot me as he took Amy’s mom from me assured me he knew what holding death felt like. He carried her to the waiting gurney.
“I was so scared—” she sobbed as she fell into my arms. “Hunter—” her words broke off.
I led her down to the ambulances. Slade was sitting on the back of one getting some burns treated and wearing an oxygen mask.
He looked at me over the mask. I shook my head just slightly, not wanting to let Amy see. She held tightly to my arm but was in too much shock to notice. But Slade saw. He dropped his face and his shoulders sank down.
Mr. Ames walked up to us. We hadn’t spoken in a long time. He was one of the neighbors who liked to look the other way when one of us drove up.
He stood in front of me and looked me right in the eye for the first time.
He looked pretty shaken. “It’s funny, you form an opinion of someone and then something, ignorance, I suppose, makes it stick as if it is written in stone.
I’m sorry, boys. I had it all wrong.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake.
I took it. “We should have done more—” he said with a crack in his voice.
“Back when you boys were young—” He turned his face for a second.
I patted his shoulder.
The medic walked up. “We need to look at these burns, Mr. Stone.”
Amy patted my arm. “I’m going to watch them work on my mom. I need to be there when she wakes up.” A nervous laugh rolled from her mouth. “She’ll be convinced the aliens did this, and I don’t want her to freak out.”
I glanced at the medic with a questioning look. Just as I had done, he shook his head slightly to let me know what I already knew. “I just need a minute,” I told him. He nodded.
Amy turned to walk away. I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her back against my chest.
“What are you doing, Hunter? I need to be there. She’ll be scared to death when she comes to.”
I picked her up into my arms and carried her past all the spectators and to Mr. Ames’s front yard, away from the chaos.
She wriggled in my arms. “What are you doing?” she asked, sounding more frantic.
“Hunter?” Tears fell from her eyes. She kicked out and pushed free of my arms. I grabbed her before she ran.
Again, I pulled her back against my chest and wrapped my arms around her.
“No,” she cried. “No!” She dropped to her knees and I knelt down behind her. “No. You’re wrong.” She pounded my arm with her fist, but I held her. She crumpled in front of me and I spun her around and pulled her against me.
“She was humming this morning,” she sobbed. Her tears ran down my chest as she pushed her face against me. “She was humming show tunes.”
I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight.