She must have fallen on that foot and hurt it even more; she’s probably lying on the ground somewhere, tears in her eyes, teeth clenched.
As soon as we find her we’re getting the hell out of here. Getting her to a hospital. Leaving this damn place behind.
The buildings rise up on either side of us, deceitfully idyllic. I scamper across the road, ruthlessly trampling down the shoots of blue scilla and crocuses that have painstakingly set their roots in the dusty, compressed earth. The rusty mailboxes stand crooked and warped on thin wooden posts, like speared shrunken heads with metal numbers for faces. 16. 17. 18.
“Tone!”
My voice has started to falter. Do I really think she’s going to respond?
Where could she be?
Against my will, I hear that strange laugh from the video echoing softly in my head; see the figure in the rain in my mind. And there it is—the thought I don’t want to acknowledge.
We’re not alone here.
I can’t even approach the idea that Silvertjärn, my desolate, deserted Silvertjärn, may not be so deserted after all. That something has been lying in wait here. That that something—or someone—has taken Tone and is lurking in the shadows, perhaps even watching us right now.
The exposed skin on my arms starts to prickle.
Robert catches up with me, and I stop outside a grayish white cottage. The white plastic window box that once hung from the windowsill is cracked and lopsided.
When I close my eyes, the frenzied April sun shines straight through my eyelids.
Robert puts his hand on my shoulder. I flit it off and shake my head.
“No,” I say.
“She didn’t mean any harm,” says Robert, and I open my eyes.
“What?”
“Emmy and I did talk about it before,” he says, quietly. There’s a hesitancy in his voice.
“I knew what she was going to do. She was worried. She said she didn’t know if you’d listen to her, so … She was just worried about Tone, I swear.”
He looks so sincere, so nakedly honest. I don’t know if I believe him, but he has the sort of face that makes you want to trust him, want to believe him.
I don’t reply. Instead I look up at the street, take a deep breath, and shout:
“Tone! Tone, can you hear me? It’s Alice! TONE!”
Not a sound; nothing but the wheeze of my breaths and the whistle of the wind through the broken windowpanes.
I can’t keep still. I look up and down the street, and then start heading back toward the crossing. When the sun hits my eyes I shield them with my hand, then stop and squint down the other street.
That’s when it happens. Right then, in that saturated silence.
For one instant, reality freezes. Time shatters into milliseconds. One frame where I stop. One where I raise my hands to my ears. One where I crouch down low, hunch my back. One where I screw up my eyes, trying to close off my senses to the overwhelming noise. A bellow resounding through the village.
It’s an explosion. And it’s in the square.
NOW
I smell the smoke before I see it.
The harsh, piercing odor makes me cough as we run. I’m pretty fit, but I’m soon left breathless and lagging behind, and Robert isn’t waiting for me.
Up ahead of us the thick, black smoke is soaring up over the square.
Robert doesn’t care about me, or Tone, or himself. He’s running to Emmy.
I take a few deep breaths, cough into my hand as the smoke sinks deep into my lungs, then try to catch up.
The square looks like something out of a war film. The sooty, black remains of one of the vans lie strewn across the square.
Our things are still burning; it’s from them that the puffs of smoke are surging up into the sky. The second van has flipped onto its side. Its white body is flecked with black soot, and the wheels appear to have melted in the heat.
The shock waves have thrust Max’s Volvo into the side of the village hall. Its crumpled blue body looks like it’s been squeezed by a giant’s hand.
Most of the heather has caught fire, and it burns in shifty, slight flames that seem to be gasping for air.
My ears are still ringing.
Across the square, I see Emmy and Max run up and then stop in their tracks. Emmy’s hair has fallen out of its ponytail and sprawls, red and ruffled, around her head. Even from across the chaos, I can tell when her eyes meet mine.
Our things are still burning steadily, but by now they have started to blacken and shrivel in the flames. I can barely make out what’s what.
“Emmy!” Robert cries, her name tearing out of his throat.
Emmy takes Max’s arm and says something to him. Then they cautiously start edging around the square toward us, keeping their distance from the flames still licking the cobblestones.
When they near us, Robert runs forward. He hugs Emmy so hard that it looks like she’s about to snap. Emmy hugs him back, her eyes closed. Neither of them says a word.
I feel a strange ache inside me, made only worse when Max gives me a hug. It feels weird, and wrong, and I pull back.
Emmy lets go of Robert and locks her eyes on me.
“We can’t stay here,” she says. “The other van could blow.”
“What the fuck is happening?” I ask. I don’t know if I’m directing this at Emmy, one of the others, or at Silvertjärn itself.
“I don’t know,” says Emmy. “But we’ve got to get to safety first. Then we can try to figure it out.”
She sweeps her hair behind her ears and looks at Robert, who nods.
There’s a sound of metal cracking as something in the burning van gives out.
I don’t know how explosions work. All I know is I that want away from that van. I’ve heard
