myself begin to panic. Where is Sarah? Sam stands at the back of the crowd, which must total a hundred people. I run to him.
“Have you seen Sarah?” I ask.
“No,” he says.
I look back at the house. People are still coming out. The basement windows glow red, flames licking against the panes of glass. One of them is open. Black smoke pours out of it and floats high in the air. I weave through the crowd. Just then an explosion rattles the house. All the basement windows shatter. Some of the people cheer. The flames have reached the first floor, and they’re moving fast. Mark James stands at the front of the crowd, unable to divert his gaze away from it. His face is illuminated by the orange glow. There are tears in his eyes, a look of despair, the same look that I saw in the eyes of the Loric on the day of the invasion. What an odd thing it must be to watch everything you’ve ever known be destroyed. The fire spreads with hostility, with disregard. All Mark can do is watch. Flames are beginning to rise up past the first-floor windows. We can feel the heat on our faces from where we stand.
“Where’s Sarah?” I ask him.
He doesn’t hear me. I shake him by the shoulder. He turns and looks at me with a blankness that suggests he still doesn’t believe what his own eyes are telling him.
“Where’s Sarah?” I ask again.
“I don’t know,” he says.
I start to weave through the crowd looking for her, getting more and more frantic. Everyone is watching the blaze. The vinyl siding has begun to bubble and melt. The curtains in the windows have all burned away. The front door stands open, smoke pouring out of the top of it like an upside-down waterfall. We can see all the way into the kitchen, which is an inferno. On the left side of the house the fire has reached the second floor. And that’s when we all hear it.
A long terrible scream. And dogs barking. My heart drops. Every person there strains to listen while hoping like hell we didn’t hear what we all know we did. And then it comes again. Unmistakable. It comes in a torrent and this time it doesn’t let up. Gasps filter throughout the crowd.
“Oh no,” Emily says. “Oh God no, please no.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
NOBODY SPEAKS. ALL EYES ARE WIDE-OPEN, staring up in shock. Sarah and the dogs must be somewhere in the back. I close my eyes and lower my head. All I can smell is the smoke. “Just remember what’s at stake,” Henri had warned. I know damn well what’s at stake, but still his voice echoes. My life, and now Sarah’s life. There is another scream. Terrified. Severe.
I feel Sam’s eyes on me. He has seen firsthand my resistance to fire. But he also knows how I am hunted. I glance around. Mark is on his knees, rocking himself back and forth. He wants it over with. He wants the dogs to stop barking. But they don’t stop, and he takes each bark as though being stabbed in the gut with a knife.
“Sam,” I say so that only he can hear, “I’m going in.” He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, fixes me with a stare.
“Go get her,” he says.
I hand him my phone and tell him to call Henri if for some reason I don’t make it out. He nods. I begin moving to the back of the crowd, weaving in and out of the mass of bodies. Nobody pays me any attention. When I finally reach the back I make a mad dash for the yard’s perimeter and then sprint to the rear of the house so that I can enter without being seen. The kitchen is completely submerged in flame. I watch it for a brief moment. I can hear Sarah and the dogs. They sound closer now. I take a deep breath and with that breath other things come. Anger. Determination. Hope and fear. I let them in, I feel them all. And then I lunge forward and sweep across the yard and burst into the house. I am swallowed by the inferno immediately, hearing nothing but the crackle and hum of the flames. My clothes catch fire. There is no end to the blaze. I move to the front of the house and half of the stairs have burned away. What is left is on fire, looking brittle, but there isn’t time to test them. I rush up but they collapse under my weight when I reach the halfway point. I tumble down with them, the fire rising as though someone has stoked the flames. Something pierces my back. I grit my teeth, still holding my breath. I stand from the rubble and listen to Sarah screaming. She’s screaming and she’s scared and she’s going to die, die a hideous miserable death if I don’t get to her. Time is short. I’ll have to jump to the second floor.
I jump and grab hold of the edge of the floor and pull myself up. The fire has spread to the other side of the house. She and the dogs are somewhere to my right. I leap down the hallway, checking rooms. The pictures on the walls have burned in their frames, nothing more than blackened silhouettes melted to the wall. Then my foot falls through the floor and my breath catches in surprise and I breathe in. Nothing but smoke and flame enter. I begin coughing. I cover my mouth with my arm but it does little to help. Smoke and fire are burning my lungs. I drop to a knee, coughing, gasping. Then a fury surges through me and I stand back up and I move on, hunched over, gritting my teeth, determined.
And then I find them in the last room on the left. Sarah is screaming, “HELP!” The dogs are whining and crying. The door is closed and I kick it open, send it flying off its hinges. All three of them are huddled as tightly against one another as far into the corner as they can get. Sarah sees me and yells my name and starts to stand. I motion to her to stay where she is, and as I step into the room, a huge flaming support beam falls between us. I raise my hand and send it upwards, crashing through what remains of the roof. Sarah seems confused by what she’s just seen. I leap towards her, covering twenty feet in a single bound, moving straight through the flames without them affecting me at all. The dogs are at her feet. I push the bulldog into her arms and pick up the retriever. With my other arm I help her stand.
“You came,” she says.
“No one, and nothing, will ever hurt you as long as I’m alive,” I say back to her.
Another huge beam falls and takes out part of the floor, landing in the kitchen below us. We need to get out the back of the house so no one sees me, or sees what I think I’m going to need to do. I hold Sarah tight against my side and the dog against my chest. We take two steps, then leap over the flaming chasm created by the fallen beam. As we start to move down the hall, a huge explosion below takes out most of it. The hallway is gone; where it used to be are a wall and a window, quickly being consumed by flames. Our only chance is through the window. Sarah is screaming again, clutching my arm, and I can feel the dog’s claws digging into my chest. I lift my hand towards the window, stare at it, and focus—and it blows out of its frame, leaving us the opening we need. I look at Sarah, pulling her securely against my side.
“Hold on tight,” I say.
I take three steps and dive forward. The flames swallow us whole but we fly through the air like a bullet, heading straight towards the opening. I’m worried we’re not going to make it. We barely clear it, and I feel the edge of the shattered frame scrape against my arms and the tops of my legs. I hold Sarah and the dog as best as I can, and twist my body so that I’ll land on my back and everyone else will be on top of me. We hit the ground with a thud. Dozer goes rolling. Abby yelps. I hear the breath go out of Sarah. We’re about thirty feet behind the house. I feel a cut on the top of my head from the broken glass of the window. Dozer is the first one up. He seems fine. Abby is a little slower. She limps on her front paw, but I don’t think it is anything serious. I lie on my back and hold Sarah. She is starting to cry. I can smell her singed hair. Blood drips down the side of my face and gathers in my ear.
I sit in the grass to catch my breath. Sarah is in my arms. The bottoms of my shoes have melted. My shirt has completely burned away, and so have most of my jeans. Small cuts traverse the length of both arms. But I am not burned at all. Dozer walks over and licks my hand. I pet him.
“You’re a good boy,” I say between Sarah’s sobs. “Go on. Get your sister and go back up front.”
There are sirens in the distance that should be here within the next minute or two. The woods are about a hundred yards from the back of the house. Both dogs sit watching me. I nod to the front of the house and they get up as if they understand and both begin walking that way. Sarah is still in my arms. I turn her so she is cradled in them and I stand and head to the woods, carrying her as she cries on my shoulder. Just as I enter them I hear the whole crowd erupt in cheers. Dozer and Abby must have been seen.
