Ryan Westfield - Final Panic

But it didn’t matter what they were. She knew what she had to do.

With long, purposeful strides, Jessica reached him.

In a single motion, she grabbed his head by the hair, pulled it back, and, with her other hand, ran the knife across his neck.

There was a gurgling noise. Blood came from his mouth.

And that was it. Thirty seconds later, he was dead, his body lying unmoving in blood that was pooling up around him on the dirt.

Jessica gazed down at him, expecting to feel something. But she felt nothing. Nothing except satisfaction that she had lived through another dangerous encounter, that at the end of it, she’d been the one who’d lived.

She leaned down and ran her hands across his pockets and his belt, looking for anything that might be useful. On a carabiner attached to his belt loop, there was a ring of keys. She took it and pocketed it. In another pocket, she found her own knife, plus another, one that she recognized as a Buck 110.

Jessica left him there, and, picking the shotgun up from the ground, she went back to the Subaru to check on Rob.

He was awake, but he still seemed dazed. His hands were vaguely fumbling with his seatbelt.

“It’s a good thing the airbags didn’t go off,” said Jessica, surveying the situation. “You OK, Rob?”

“Yeah, I think so,” said Rob, seeming a little more ‘with it’ now that Jessica addressed him directly again.

“Come on,” she said, using her bloody knife to slice through Rob’s seatbelt. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“The car?” said Rob.

“We’re leaving it here.”

“Leaving it here?”

“It doesn’t work. Remember? The power cut off as we were driving.”

“Oh, yeah…”

“Come on. We’ve got to go.”

Jessica had to actually grab Rob under his armpits and pull on him until he started to use his own muscles to actually get out of the seat.

She helped him pull himself upright, and he leaned against the side of the Subaru, swaying slightly. He gazed off towards the dead biker with the blood around him.

“Shit,” said Rob.

“Don’t worry about him. I took care of him. Come on.”

“What are we going to do with the car?”

“Leave it,” said Jessica. “We’re not going to be able to fix it.”

Jessica’s mind was rushing through the possibilities. Rob wasn’t really cognizant enough to discuss it with him. She had to figure it out herself, and simply tell him what they needed to do.

There was the possibility that they could fix the Subaru, even though Jessica didn’t know how to do it herself. And she guessed that repairing it was beyond the capabilities of even Jim, who was the handiest of all them.

It’d be a huge blow to lose the Subaru.

But at least it wasn’t loaded down with their gear, which was safely at the lake house.

They might be able to get another vehicle. After all, people would be dying off like flies in the coming days and weeks, leaving their vehicles behind them to be scavenged by people like Jessica.

Trying to hang onto the Subaru meant hiding it somewhere on the side of the road. Or just leaving it in the road.

Hiding it meant expending a lot of energy and time. Energy that they didn’t have. Rob was in a daze. And she wasn’t doing much better. Her head ached and her muscles were burning from struggling against the cords that had bound her.

It was better to just leave the Subaru there.

“Come on,” said Jessica. “Help me get this bike upright. Maybe there’s a chance we can start it.”

She was surveying the motorcycle, and it didn’t look promising. She doubted it would run.

But it didn’t hurt to try.

“What’s that?” said Rob.

“Did you hit your head or something?”

“I think so. The crash or something.”

“Great, now we’ve both been hit in the head. Let’s hope you snap out of it soon.”

“Jordan! Come on. Wake up!”

She was screaming into his ear. She was shaking him as best she could.

But his eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow. He wasn’t dead, but he was dead to the world. And dead to the flames that had already overtaken the living room.

She couldn’t believe how fast the flames had spread. The room had lit up like a pile of tinder.

She knew she was going to have to make a decision. And she knew that time was running out.

Jordan wasn’t waking up. Not anytime soon.

Aly could feel the intense heat of the flames. If Jordan could sleep through the heat and the growing roar of the flames, he’d sleep through any attempt of hers to wake him from his drunken slumber.

Aly wasn’t about to let herself get burned alive. In just a few seconds, she’d have to decide whether to leave Jordan there to be burned alive, or to try to drag him out through the flames. If she tried to save him, she’d be risking her own life. After all, her own ability to save herself was already severely diminished by her injuries.

Well, she’d test it out first. See how hard it was to drag him.

She seized him under the armpits and started to pull. She pulled as hard as she could.

It wasn’t any good. He moved about an inch, his body sliding just a little against the wall.

The flames were closer. It felt like they were closing in around her.

She needed to get out of there.

It was one of the most difficult decisions she’d ever made, but there were no tears in her eyes when she let go of her uncle and turned her back to his unconscious body, ready to face the flames herself, ready to escape with her own life intact.

The smoke was filling the room now, plumes and clouds of dense gray stuff that she could barely see through.

Aly’s mind didn’t dwell on her uncle. Instead, now that she directly faced the flames, her body kicked into survival mode. Her body was flooded with adrenaline.

She barely remembered that she was injured. She pushed her way through the flames, coughing intensely, trying to ignore the intense heat that her body was desperately telling her to avoid.

She knew that she needed to get out quickly. The smoke was too thick now.

She had to keep pushing. She had to ignore the coughing. Her lungs were burning. The air was intensely hot. She felt like she couldn’t breathe at all.

She couldn’t see. The air was nothing but red and gray. Nothing but smoke and flames. But she kept going.

It felt like an eternity, but finally, her hands found the door.

The door handle was as hot as a burning coal. But she had no choice. She grasped it and turned it, yelling involuntarily in pain as she did so.

She was halfway out the door when she took one last look inside, thinking, hope against hope, that her uncle was somehow behind her.

But he wasn’t. She could see nothing but the smoke and the flames.

That last look only took a second. But it felt like a long time. But he wasn’t. She could see nothing but the smoke and the flames.

She burst into the fresh open air, doubling over as she coughed instinctively.

Aly saw stars as she started to vomit, the entire contents of her stomach coming up and spewing onto the ground. And she kept coughing.

She felt weak, and the burning in her lungs wouldn’t let up.

She was a safe distance from the house now, and she collapsed to the ground. She simply lay there on her side, gasping for breath, too weak to move or stand up.

She was gazing back at the house, which was quickly becoming engulfed in flames.

Those flames were engulfing not just her uncle, but all of their possessions. All that food. All those supplies. Everything that they’d worked so hard to obtain and hang on to.

It wasn’t just terrible. It might mean the line between life and death.