August Ansel - The Attic

“Whoa, Curran,” Mikey managed, but Curran had grabbed the front of his jacket and yanked him forward. The bag slipped off his shoulder and into the weeds with a musical rattle.

“You sick fuck,” Curran panted, and backhanded him a tremendous blow that sent Mikey sprawling. Russell thrashed frantically, trying to crawl out from beneath Talus, but she was seventy pounds of muscle and snarling fury. She battened on one hand, and he howled, hitting at her head with his other. The dog went for his face, and his cries turned into a terrified scream. Mr. Lead Pipe was now Mr. Broken Wing, face agog with an expression of yellow-gray retreat, tripping haphazardly into the trees. In the growing billows of black smoke, Arie clutched the slingshot and tried desperately to see everywhere at once, looking for a place to aim.

A flaming bottle arced overhead like a great burning bird and exploded behind her. Detonated fuel spread in brilliant gouts across the shingles. The light and heat of it was immediate and stupefying. Arie gagged on the stench of burning asphalt and wiped her streaming eyes with one hand. The man with the crossbow was holding a Zippo to another bomb. She spun the sling over her head and let go just as the rag ignited. The bottle erupted in his hand. He uttered a single shriek and was swallowed in fire. It bloomed around his head and arm, ran down his torso and onto the tall weeds around him. He spun and flailed and staggered, engulfed in a burning shroud of orange and yellow, grotesquely dazzling in the gray morning light. Arie turned away and retched. She clutched the heaped pile of the rope ladder and looked over the edge of the roof. The wall below was clear. She tossed the ladder down and was already over the side when Renna called for help.

She was still in the house.

Arie hesitated only a moment. Curran still struggled with Mikey. Handy was moving, trying to get to his hands and knees. Her eyes and nose streaming, Arie scrambled back up the rope rungs. The big jerry can sat three feet beyond the spreading flames. Skirting around the fire, she pulled off her coat as she went and threw it down, pulled the top off the jerry can and upended it. The dense fabric was drenched. Water ran between shingles toward the blaze, and the remaining fuel floated narrow runners of fire into the cracks. A little water still sloshed in the overturned jug; Arie splashed her face, drank a palmful, and wet her head with the rest.

“Help, somebody,” Renna yelled. “I can’t get out!” She was somewhere downstairs.

“I’m coming,” Arie called. The soaked wool was so heavy it was hard to lift. She draped it over her head, and cool water poured through her hair, down her face and neck. Thin streams trickled out of the coat all around her feet. Three paces to the sky panel, and she climbed down into the attic.

It was dark and hot inside, getting smoky. Visible wisps rose through the slats of the defunct heating register. Arie held her breath and ran to the inside hatch. Lowering herself into the closet, feeling for the shelves with hands and feet, the smoke was much heavier. She could hear the fire.

“Renna, where are you?”

“In here. We have to get the window open.”

Arie held the sleeve of her wet coat over her nose and mouth and crouched as low as she could. She stumbled down the hallway and into the living room. The smoke was so thick that she had to feel her way to where Renna huddled. The girl was making a terrible bronchial cough, interspersed with panicky whimpers. The burning siding lit the windows on the front of the house in a ghastly orange blare, like the light from some alien sunset. But the real trouble was fire inside. One of the Molotov cocktails had hit the garden window, one of the only ones not reinforced with sheet metal, and it was burning merry hell. Flames poured into the blasted opening and licked up the wall at the ceiling. The cupboards and countertops on that side of the room were catching.

“Help me get it open,” Renna sobbed. Arie could see now that she was trying to tear the boards off with her bare hands. She’d managed to snap the bottom slat in its center. The two pieces dangled askew, and she was pulling on another, making the section of chain-link fastened there ring and clatter. She seemed to have no sense that she’d never get through the window the way it was reinforced.

“Come on,” Arie said. “We have to get out the back door.”

“We can’t,” Renna wheezed. “It’s on fire.” She doubled over in another choking cough.

“The door is still clear, Renna. We can make it.”

There was a deep, concussive thud from the kitchen. Renna grabbed Arie. Her skin was slick with sweat. “It’s them!” she said. “They’re getting in.”

Arie opened her coat and pulled Renna underneath with her. “No matter who it is,” Arie said in her ear, “we have to go.” She pulled her arm, and it was like trying to yank a marble sculpture. The crash came again, someone beating against the back door.

“Arie!” It was Curran.

“We’re here,” Arie shouted. “Renna, if we don’t go now, we’re dead. Move.” This time when she pulled, Renna stumbled forward. They scrambled toward the conflagration, Arie forcing Renna into a stoop. Now they were both coughing. Even through the wet wool of the coat, the air seared her lungs and the taste of burning wood and paint and plastic was a miasma. Curran’s pounding at the back door was now manic. The women, almost crawling, crossed the threshold into the fiery kitchen. One whole wall and part of the ceiling was fully consumed. The skin of Arie’s legs shrank in the heat, and the wet coat felt as though it might begin to boil. The refrigerator was little more than a shadowy bulk ahead of them, made visible by the securing rope around it, now a fiery belt. Arie pulled them behind its far side. It provided only the smallest measure of relief from the agonizing heat. Both of them hacked and gasped in a desperate effort to get some air.

Everything seemed to happen in a single harrowing instant. The back door gave way with an enormous splintered crack. When it did, the fire roared with fresh oxygen. Flames rushed across the ceiling like a river in hell. Curran hit the refrigerator so hard it toppled forward and crashed to the floor. Arie shoved Renna toward the shattered opening. Curran grabbed the girl and pulled, dragging the coat with her. Arie, exposed and on all fours, got a hand over the doorsill when a burning chunk of ceiling fell. Most of it landed on the refrigerator, but one end of a charred timber struck her between the shoulder blades. It felt as though a block of ice had landed on her back, then her mind registered heat and she tried to scream. Suddenly Curran had her. He kicked away the debris and lifted her into his arms as if she weighed no more than a child.

Out in the street, Handy supported Renna, who choked and gagged. “It’s her back,” Curran panted. “Spread your jacket.” Handy did, and Curran lowered Arie onto it, laying her on her uninjured left side. The burned place on her right back and shoulder was an agony of heat and outraged nerve endings. She was coughing, too, and every spasm sent a fresh surge of pain to the spot. “Water, Curran,” she gasped. “Barrel in back, before it burns.” He ran.

He had laid her so that she faced the yard and what had been her home since she was a green girl. Now it was a house-shaped block of flame rising from a wild verge of shoulder-high grass, naked trees, and enormous ragged shrubs. The mass of blackberry tangle that had shielded the rope ladder from view was wholly ablaze, its snarled branches glowing in skeletal fury. Talus paced back and forth at the crumbling edge of the street, alert and nervous, whining high in her throat. The body of the burned man lay curled and blackened on the far side of the yard, partially obscured in the tall weeds. A second body slumped several feet away, orange cap clearly visible. It was Mikey, not moving.