Page 117 of Combust (Everyday Heroes 2)
“Brody and Shelby.”
God, please let him be fine.
“Oh.” I try to think of another excuse for me to be there but can’t find one other than I didn’t tell him I loved him.
Because I do.
Five minutes.
This blanket will only protect me for that long.
Drew’s screams echo in my ears. The fear. The pain. The desperation.
It’s not real, Grady.
The fire snaps around us. I concentrate on its crackle. On the sound of it marching through the grove surrounding us. I use its roar as my anchor to reality. To remind me that this isn’t the warehouse. This isn’t a repeat of before.
Three hundred seconds.
The heat.
It’s so fucking intense.
PASS alarms go off. One after another. They sound off around me. Sirens of immobility. I squeeze my eyes shut as I battle the memories. As I will the nightmare away.
It’s not real, Grady.
But it is. This is real. Seven of us are trapped in the fire’s vortex. Taking cover in this clearing as the world around us burns.
But it’s not just Drew this time.
It’s all of us.
Two hundred forty seconds. That’s all the time we have left.
It’s like the inside of hell, like the nightmare has been brought back into reality.
All the air I’ll have.
“Grady?” It’s Bowie’s muffled voice. I can barely hear him above the roar of the fucking fire. Not Drew screaming for help. Just Bowie asking me to check in. To let him know I’m hanging in there.
“Good,” I shout when in reality I feel as if I’m suffocating.
“Dixon?”
“Good,” he sounds off.
“Veego?”
“Ten-four.” I can barely hear him.
And he continues on through the crew. One by one.
I wait for one of them not to answer. I wait to hear silence.
But there isn’t any.
One hundred eighty seconds and counting until the blanket will give way to the extreme heat.
