firemen had begun piping water from a nearby hydrant.
Soldiers arrived, marching in from the northern side of the street. Black, bulletproof vests covered their blue canvas uniforms, and Kevlar helmets shaded their eyes. They carried weapons—guns, nightsticks, and long plastic shields.
No rescue teams entered.
A man stumbled out the front door carrying a woman on his shoulders. They were both black with soot and coughing. No one I recognized. Three soldiers were on them immediately, and they were cuffed and led away.
A loud burst of gunfire elicited screams from the crowd. It sounded like fireworks; shots popping off one after another. My throat tightened, though not from the bitter smoke. I knew that sound was coming from the fourth floor.
“Ammunition caught fire,” Chase said, leaning close to my ear so that no one around us heard him. I searched in vain for Sean, but instead focused on a lone Sister of Salvation, speaking to a soldier near the front of the crowd. He gestured for her to back up with the others, and while he was distracted by another volley of gunfire, she slipped into the crowd, coming our direction.
Fearing she had recognized us, I backpedaled into Chase, and was just about to tell him we had to beat it when she appeared at my right side.
“Where’s everyone else?” I blinked and refocused on her blue eyes and the short, black hair that matched my own.
Cara. I couldn’t make sense of why she’d been talking to a soldier.
“What are you doing here?” A new dread washed over me as my mind flashed to Sarah and Tubman. Something had happened to the convoy.
“Where is Wallace?” Her voice was raw.
“Where is
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t know!”
Her cryptic answers stoked my irritation. Something had happened for them to separate, but there wasn’t time to ask now.
A man I didn’t recognize was shouting from a third floor window. In only his boxer shorts, socks, and a dirty T-shirt, he attempted to climb out using only the moth-eaten curtains as a ladder. The top of them was already on fire.
“Hey! There’s a guy up there!” shouted someone.
“Help him!” begged a woman. None of the soldiers moved to assist.
More gunfire from upstairs. My heart kept time with its tempo.
This time the rear line of soldiers—those closest to the building—turned around and, as one unit, fired at the building. The discharge of weapons was muffled by the roaring spray of the hoses and the sirens; the bullets disappeared into the smoke. The man trying to escape through the window slipped in his surprise, and fell three feet before catching the tearing curtains.
“We need to get out of here.” Cara’s voice wavered. She was backing away, face pale. “Out of town.”
I grabbed her arm. “We don’t know if they’re still alive!”
Her gaze landed on mine. “All units are called in to contain the fire. Every head is turned this direction. This is our chance.”
A chill zipped through me. “How are we supposed to get out?” The highways were still blocked.
It started from the back, a wave of bodies shoving one another into the front line of soldiers. The soldiers pushed them back with their shields. Cara bumped into me, but when I tried to pull back she held on.
“The other truck at the checkpoint. If you’re not there in an hour, I’m leaving without you.”
Before I could respond, she’d disappeared into the crowd.
Chase’s grip tightened around my hand.
“Over there!” He pointed at a man in a singed sweater on his hands and knees at the corner of the building, by the Dumpsters. He’d somehow avoided the main entrance and the fire escapes.
“John!”
We shoved through the crowd toward the motel manager. His eyes were bloodshot and his teeth stained gray, like he’d been eating smoke.
“Guess I… don’t need a cigarette… now,” he huffed as I helped him up.
“Did you see if anyone got out?” I asked urgently.
“Heard ’em leave… through the west exit.”
My mind flashed to the blueprint of the building posted above the couch in Wallace’s room. There were several marked exits. The MM had covered the front, the fire escapes, and the two back doors. The side route was thirty feet behind the Dumpster, tucked within the building’s maintenance area. It was blocked by the looming stone office building Chase and Sean had searched. The alley between them was only wide enough for one person to sneak through at a time.
I ran in that direction, toward the Dumpster, behind which waited the narrow leaf-carpeted alleyway. Leaning against the outside of the entrance, a black cat tucked under his arm, was Billy.
“You’re okay!” I shouted, grateful that he was alive.
He nodded weakly, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve. His face was beet red from the heat. “I think Gypsy’s dead.” He lifted the cat, and I nearly vomited. Her head was indented, as if something had smashed it.
“The others?” asked Chase, helping Billy lay Gypsy on the ground. “Billy!”
The boy shook his head, propping his dead cat against the side of the building, where she wouldn’t be stepped on. “Most are out. Wallace and Riggins went back for Houston and Lincoln. No one could find them.”
“And Sean?”
“He’s… he was right behind me!”
I froze.
For one instant I saw Sean as he had been, in those woods behind the reformatory, hiding my intent to escape from the guards who had caught me, who meant to kill me. I felt the shudder tear through my body when he’d shielded me from the blows that had hit him instead.
There were no more thoughts. I pushed past Billy and ran down the narrow alley. Someone grasped my shirt, but I slipped away.
“Stop!” shouted Chase.
But I didn’t stop. I ran until I passed the broken water heaters and the metallic switchboards, until the alley opened to reveal a cement patio and a side door below an emergency exit sign.
No soldiers. Not yet anyway.
I placed my hand on the handle. Immediately it singed my palm. A putrid smell filled my nostrils—my own charred flesh.
I swore, gripping the hot doorknob with my shirt and turning it. It pulled out, revealing a great tidal wave of smoke that nearly bowled me over.
I sputtered. The poison siphoned down my throat and grasped my lungs. I covered my mouth with my hand and ducked, trying to remember what I’d learned in elementary school about stop, drop, and roll. I had to stay low.
Sure enough, the first onslaught of smoke left a thick cloud grazing over the ceiling. It was a petrifying sight —swirling like the vortex of a building tornado. I kicked a rock into the jamb, kept my body hunched down, and pushed inside.
“Sean!” I shouted. Then coughed. I breathed in through my teeth, as though they might serve as a filter. “SEAN!”
I’d entered into the stairway. Where we’d first been searched by CJ, the guard posing as a homeless man in the lobby just outside the door. I glanced up the metal steps, but the white plumes wound up in a spiral, disappearing into the next floor. It was so hot; sweat immediately began to drip from every pore in my body.
Something broke upstairs. A wooden crack, a faint explosion, and then the building groaned so loudly I was sure it was going to topple down over me.
