Darla's Story (8 page)

I’d seen those stupid movies where the hero
gets tossed around like a rag doll and then springs up, unhurt and
ready to fight off the bad guys. If I were the star in one of
those, I suppose I would have jumped up, thrown the desk aside, and
leapt to battle whatever malevolent god had struck my house. I hate
to disappoint, but I just lay there, curled in a ball, shaking in
pure terror. It was too dark under the desk to see anything beyond
my quivering knees. Nor could I hear, as the noise of those few
violent seconds had left my ears ringing loudly enough to drown out
a marching band if one had been passing by. Plaster dust choked the
air, and I fought back a sneeze.

I lay in that triangular cave for a minute,
maybe longer. My body mostly quit shaking, and the ringing in my
ears began to fade. I poked my right shoulder gingerly; it felt
swollen, and touching it hurt. I could move the arm a little, so I
figured it wasn’t broken. I might have lain there longer checking
my injuries, but I smelled something burning.

That whiff of smoke was enough to transform
my sit here-trembling terror into get-the-hell-out-of-here terror.
There was enough room under the desk to unball myself, but I
couldn’t stretch out. Ahead I felt a few hollow spaces amidst a
pile of loose books. I’d landed wedged against my bookcase. I
shoved it experimentally with my good arm—it wasn’t going
anywhere.

The burning smell intensified. I slapped my
left hand against the desk above me and pushed upward. I’d moved
that heavy desk around by myself before, no problem. But now, when
I really needed to move it, nothing . . . it wouldn’t shift even a
fraction of an inch.

That left trying to escape in the direction
my feet pointed. But I couldn’t straighten my legs—they bumped
against something just past the edge of the desk. I planted my feet
on the obstacle and pushed. It shifted a little. Encouraged, I
stretched my good arm through the shelves, placing my hand against
the back of the bookcase. And snatched it away in shock—the wall
behind the bookcase was warm. Not hot enough to burn, but warm
enough to give me an ugly mental picture of my fate if I couldn’t
escape—and soon.

I hadn’t felt particularly claustrophobic at
first. The violence of being thrown across the room left no time to
feel anything but scared. Now, with the air heating up, terror rose
from my gut. Trapped. Burned alive. Imagining my future got me
hyperventilating. I inhaled a lungful of dust and choked,
coughing.

Calm down, Alex, I told myself. I took two
quick breaths in through my nose and puffed them out through my
mouth—recovery breathing, like I’d use after a hard round of
sparring in taekwondo. You can do this.

I slammed my hand back against the wall,
locked my elbow, and shoved with my feet—hard. The obstacle shifted
slightly. I bellowed and bore down on it, trying to snap my knees
straight. There’s a reason martial artists yell when we break
boards—it makes us stronger. Something gave then; I felt it shift
and heard the loud thunk of wood striking wood. Debris fell on my
ankles—maybe chunks of plaster and insulation from the ceiling. A
little kicking freed my legs, stirring up more dry, itchy dust.

I forced my way backward into the new hole.
There were twelve, maybe sixteen inches of space before I hit
something solid again. The air was getting hotter. Sweat trickled
sideways off my face. I couldn’t dislodge the blockage, so I bent
at the waist, contorting my body around the desk into an L
shape.

I kept shoving my body backward into the gap
between a fallen ceiling joist and my desk, pushing myself upward
along the tilted floor. A lurid orange light flickered downward
into the new space. When I’d wormed my way fully alongside the
joist, I jammed my head and shoulders up through the broken ceiling
into what used to be the unfinished attic above my room.

A wall of heat slammed into me, like opening
the oven with my face too close. Long tendrils of flame licked into
the attic above my sister’s collapsed bedroom, cat tongues washing
the rafters and underside of the roof decking with fire. Smoke
billowed up and pooled under the peak of the roof. The front part
of the attic had collapsed, joists leaning downward at crazy
angles. What little I could see of the back of the attic looked
okay. An almost perfectly round hole had been punched in the roof
above my sister’s bedroom. I glimpsed a coin of deep blue sky
through the flames eating at the edges of the hole.

I dragged myself up the steeply angled
joists, trying to reach the back of the attic. My palms were
slippery with sweat, and my right shoulder screamed in pain. But I
got it done, crawling upward with the heat at my back urging me
on.

The rear of the attic looked normal—aside
from the thick smoke and dust. I crawled across the joists, pushing
through the loose insulation to reach the boxes of holiday
decorations my mother had stored next to the pull-down
staircase.

I struggled to open the staircase—it was
meant to be pulled open with a cord from the hallway below. I
crawled onto it to see if my weight would force it down. The
springs resisted at first, but then the hatch picked up speed and
popped open with a bang. It was all I could do to hold on and avoid
tumbling into the hallway below. It bruised my knees pretty good,
too. I flipped the folded segments of the stair open so I could
step down to the second floor.

Keeping my head low to avoid the worst of the
smoke, I scuttled down the hallway to the staircase. This part of
the house seemed undamaged. When I reached the first floor, I heard
banging and shouting from the backyard. I ran to the back door and
glanced through the window. Our neighbor from across the street,
Darren, was outside. I twisted the lock and threw the door
open.

“Thank God,” Darren said. “Are you okay,
Alex?”

I took a few steps into the yard and stood
with my hands on my knees, gulping the fresh air. It tasted sweet
after the smoke-drenched dust I’d been breathing.

“You look like three-day-old dog crap. You
okay?” Darren repeated.

I looked down at myself. Three-day-old dog
crap was way too kind. Sweat had drenched my T-shirt and jeans,
mixing with plaster dust, insulation, and smoke to form a vile
gray-white sludge that coated my body. Somewhere along the way, I’d
cut my palm without even feeling it. A smear of blood stained the
knee of my jeans where my hand had just rested.

I glanced around; all the neighbors’ houses
seemed fine. Even the back of my house looked okay. Something
sounded wrong, though. The ringing in my ears had mostly faded, but
it still took a moment to figure it out: It was completely silent.
There were no bird or insect noises. Not even crickets.

Just then Joe, Darren’s husband, ran up
behind him, carrying a three-foot wrecking bar. “Glad to see you’re
out. I was going to break the door down.”

“Thanks. You guys call the fire
department?”

“No—”

I gave him my best “what the hell?” look and
extended both my palms.

“We tried—our house phone is dead, not even a
dial tone. Cell says ‘no service,’ but that can’t be; it’s usually
five bars here.”

I thought about that for two, maybe three
seconds and took off running.

Darren and Joe yelled something behind me. I
ignored them and made tracks as best I could. My bruised knees
weren’t helping, neither was my right shoulder. I probably looked
kind of funny trying to sprint with my left arm pumping and my
right cradled against my side.

Still, I made good time toward the fire
station. Partway there, I realized I was being stupid. I’d taken
off impulsively, needing to
do
something— anything—instead
of jawing with Darren while my house burned down. I should have
asked Darren and

Joe to drive me or stopped to grab my bike
from the garage. But by the time I’d thought through it, I was
almost at the fire station.

I noticed a couple of weird things along the
way. The traffic light I passed was out. That made the run faster—
cars were stopping at the intersection and inching ahead, so I
could dart through easily. I didn’t see house lights on anywhere;
it was early evening and fairly bright outside, but usually there
were at least a few lights shining from somewhere. And in the
distance to my left, four thin columns of smoke rose against the
deep blue sky.

A generator growled at the side of the fire
station as I ran up. The overhead door was open. I ran through and
dodged around the truck. Three guys in fire pants and light blue
T-shirts with “Cedar Falls Fire Department” on the back huddled
around a radio. A woman dressed the same way sat in the cab of the
ladder truck.

“Piece of crap equipment purchasing sticks us
with,” I heard one of them say as I approached.

“Hey kid, we’re—” The guy broke off
mid-sentence when he got a good look at me. Then he sniffed. “Burnt
chicken on a stick, you’ve been in a fire. Y’ought to be at the
hospital.”

I was gasping, out of breath from the run.
“I’m okay. . . . Neighbors been trying to call . . . ”

“Yeah, piece of junk ain’t working.” The guy
holding the radio mike slammed it down.

“My house is on fire.”

“Where?”

“Six blocks away.” I gave him my address.

A guy only slightly smaller than the fire
truck beside him said, “We’re not supposed to go out without
telling dispatch—how we gonna get backup?”

“Screw that, Tiny. Kid’s house is on fire.
Load it up!” They all grabbed helmets and fire coats off hooks on
the wall. In seconds, I was sandwiched between Tiny and another guy
in the back of the cab. I could just see the firefighter at the
wheel over the mound of equipment separating the two rows of seats.
She flicked a switch overhead, starting the sirens blaring, then
threw the truck into gear. It roared down the short driveway and
narrowly missed a car that failed to stop.

I glanced at Tiny once during the drive back
to my house. His eyes were scrunched shut, and he was muttering
some kind of prayer under his breath. The firefighter at the wheel
laughed maniacally as she hurled the huge truck back and forth
across the lanes, into oncoming traffic and even halfway onto a
sidewalk once. She swiveled in her seat to look at me, taking her
eyes off the road completely. “Anyone else at home, kid?”

“No,” I answered, hoping to keep the
conversation short. “Any pets?”

“No.”

The ride couldn’t have lasted more than a
minute, but it felt longer. Between the crazy driving and Tiny’s
muttered prayer, I wished I’d run back home instead. The
truck slammed to a stop in front of my house, and before I could
get my stomach settled and even think about moving, the cab was
empty. Both doors hung open. I groaned and slid toward the driver’s
side. Everything hurt: both knees, my right shoulder, the muscles
in my calves and thighs: my eyes stung, my throat felt raw and, to
top it all off, my head had started to ache.

Two huge steps led down from the cab. I
stumbled on the first one and almost fell out of the truck
backward. I caught myself on the grab bar mounted to the side of
the truck. When I reached the ground, I kept one hand on the bar,
holding myself upright.

The house was wrecked. It looked like a giant
fist had descended from the heavens, punching a round hole in the
roof above my sister’s room and collapsing the front of the house.
Flames shot into the sky above the hole and licked up the roof.
Ugly brown smoke billowed out everywhere.

Thank God my sister wasn’t home. If she’d
been in her room, she’d be dead now. An hour ago I’d been looking
forward to an entire weekend without her. Now I wanted nothing more
than to see her again—soon, I hoped. Mom would burn rubber all the
way back from my uncle’s place in Illinois as soon as she heard
about the fire. It was only a two-hour drive. I gripped the bar on
the fire truck more tightly and tried to swallow, but my mouth was
parched.

The firefighter wrestled a hose toward the
front of the house. Tiny hunched over the hydrant across the
street, using a huge wrench to connect another hose to it. Darren
and Joe were standing in our next-door neighbor’s yard, so I
stumbled over to them. From there I could see the side of my
house. One of the firefighters opened the dining room window
from the inside and smoke surged out.

“You okay?” Darren asked.

“Not really.” I collapsed into the cool grass
and watched my house burn.

“We should take you to the hospital.”

“No, I’m okay. Can I borrow your cell? Mine’s
in there. Melted, I guess.” I wanted, needed, to call Mom. To know
she was on her way back and would soon be here taking care of
things. Taking care of me.

“Still no service on mine, sorry.”

“Maybe it’s only our carrier,” Joe said.
“I’ll see if anyone else has service.” He walked across the street
toward a knot of people who’d gathered there, rubbernecking.

I lay back in the grass and closed my eyes.
Even from the neighbor’s yard, I felt the heat of the fire washing
over my body in waves. I smelled smoke, too, but that might
have been from my clothing.

A few minutes later, I heard Joe’s voice
again. “Nobody’s got cell service. Verizon,
Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T—all down. Nobody’s got power
or landlines, either.”

I opened my eyes. “I thought landlines
weren’t supposed to go down. I mean, when our power’s out, the old
house phone still works. Just not the cordless phones.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But
nobody’s telephones work.”

“Huh.”

“You know what happened to your house? Looks
like something fell on the roof.”

“I dunno. Power went out, and then,
wham
, the whole house fell on me.”

“Meteor, you think? Or a piece of an
airplane, maybe?”