Chapter 4: On the run
I have always been a fast runner, but now I was getting tired because of the adrenaline, not because of the running. I pushed myself anyway. Something was not right. It was like a bad dream, or a vid feed. Up ahead I could still see the smoke, perhaps a mile and a half away. That would be a long run. I looked back and no one was following me. Still, I figured I should go at least a couple of streets over so if the guy chasing me came out of the store, he wouldn’t see me. I took a right, jogged to the end of the block and then across the street. At the end of the next block I made another right and did the same thing, finally going left toward my house.
I ran for a few minutes, then jogged, and then walked. I was getting really tired, but I was only a few blocks away from my house. Whoever that was back there hadn’t caught up, so I was feeling a little better now. What was that all about? Who would try to kidnap me? My parents weren’t famous or rich. These are the things I thought as I walked.
I thought about that man and how I gave him the hot hand. I had avoided using my talent for almost two months now, afraid of what would happen if I let it get out of control. I remembered my sister and how terrified she had been when she first saw me set fire to something. That look in her eyes of fear made me feel like a monster.
While I was thinking about this, I looked at the pavement at me feet. Now I looked up ahead where my house stood only a couple of blocks away. Thick black smoke poured out ahead of me, and there was no doubt now that it was my house.
I ran again, all tiredness lost, until I rounded the corner and came to my house. Three fire trucks were parked in front along with a wall of police cars, and the house was consumed by a raging fire. The trucks had their hoses on, but it did little good. All the neighbors who we never hardly talked to were gathered outside too, watching in shock.
The fire had hit only our house, no one else was affected. How could that even be? What would cause it?
When I looked around at the people, I saw three men on the other side of the fire trucks staring straight at me. One was talking to another as they looked my way. They were dressed in jeans and t-shirts. I got a bad feeling about them. I turned around to get away when I ran into a big man with hairy arms. He smelled like sweat and he grabbed me and said, “Let me guess. You’re Tracy, right?” He did not smile as he said this.
I kneed him in the groin like I had been taught at school and ran for it. I heard him swear and then fall to the ground. That must be the worst part about being a boy, I thought.
I was still tired, but I ignored it as best I could since I figured these men were there to either kidnap me or kill me. I ran halfway down the street I had taken earlier when I heard a shout behind me. “Get her!” yelled one of the men. We were too far away from the police or firefighters for anyone else to hear them now.
When I got to the end of the street, the first guy from the bus came to meet me from the side. His right hand looked blistered, but the other hand clenched in a fist. He was reaching for his gun when I ran wildly past him.
“We have to capture her,” yelled a man behind me. “Don’t shoot except to wound. Unlike her family, she has to survive.”
I ran down an alley between an ice-cream shop and an electronics store, a very familiar area. Soon I was at what looked like a dead end, but I knew better. Behind a dumpster a section of wall had one loose board. It was just wide enough that when I removed it, I could squeeze through. I had been here before, when my sister was driving me crazy or I just wanted to think. I squeezed behind the dumpster and loosened the board, climbing into the opening in the wall. Then, before I put the board back, I yanked on the dumpster several times until it hid the boards. I put the boards back again and crawled further in.
I found the square of carpet I had put there about a month ago. The floor of the house was just above my head and it was low and covered in cobwebs. I sat, huddled on the carpet in the dark and waited. Outside it was quiet except for the sound of a car going by the alley from time to time. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest. I took a few deep breaths. My legs felt shaky.
I could faintly hear the sound of two people talking. Then as they got closer: “Are you sure she’s the girl?” asked one man.
“She looks like the one in the picture,” said another man. It sounded like the man from the bus.
Now they were getting much closer. “But I thought they said she’d be home.”
“Yeah, so maybe burning the house down wasn’t such a bright idea after all.”
“Well, if she was home, she would have come running out and we could have grabbed her.”
“Sure. If the fire didn’t get her first.”
The voices were getting more faint again. “Did you ever see a house burn like that?”
“I didn’t even know it was possible. I thought it’d be a lot slower. I started it in the basement like you said, and the whole thing practically blew up.”
Now I could just barely hear them. “The general said we need her alive.”
After that I could no longer tell what they were saying, but I was glad they were walking away.
It was quiet for a while, so I thought about what they had said about our house. Why would our house burn so fast?
The obvious hit me: paint. My parents had bought a fixer upper and we were getting ready to paint it ourselves. We must have had at least fifty gallons in the basement, and paint was very flammable. Even explosive.
Explosive! A thought hit me for the first time. Then what about the gasoline! Dad had a hobby of toying with old gas powered cars, and the large gas tank was just behind the house.
I realized I was in danger. Maybe I wasn’t far enough from the house if the thing blew. I needed to get out of here!
I began crawling toward the entrance again. When I reached out for the loose boards, the earth shook so hard I was knocked backwards. The sound of the explosion was loud, even down here. Before I could sit back up, I heard a deafening “crack!” I began backing away from the front toward the other wall when a huge flaming chunk of metal crashed through the floor of the house above me. It must have gone through the roof and floor. It landed just a few feet in front of me with a crash of boards and splintering wood. It was a piece of the gas tank. The fire was so intense that I scrambled away like a crab; my knees burned with the heat of it.
The building was catching fire in front of me and it was spreading quickly. I turned over and thudded on my knees toward the back wall, feeling hot air behind me. The heat at the back of my head was so intense, I hoped my hair did not catch on fire. I searched for a way out through the back wall. I faintly heard the sound of fire trucks far away. I hit the cinder block wall with my head. “Ouch!” I yelled. I fell back on my rear and turned around. Smoke was filling up the crawlspace. I searched from side to side for some way out and saw a dim light to my far left. I scurried off in that direction and started choking and coughing on the smoke. I tried to hold my breath but I was too scared to hold it for long. I needed air! I would take a deep gulp of air and then cough uncontrollably. I had to keep moving.
When I neared the light, I felt a slight breeze through a hole in the wall. It looked like a wire grid to keep the rats out. I pulled at it with my hands, but it was too tight to get out. I turned around, coughing harder now, and kicked at it with both feet. I began to cough uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop coughing, but I held my breath and kicked as if my life depended on it and felt one side break loose. I kicked again and again, my lungs burning, and it tore open further. I turned around, coughing like mad now and squeezed my body through the open end of the grid. My eyes were blinded by the smoke, so I had them shut as I crawled and coughed. It scraped my side the whole way through, but I didn’t care anymore. Once I got through, I collapsed on the ground and coughed some more.
When I opened my eyes, two policemen and a woman firefighter stood above me. One of the men was talking into his radio. They looked worried. “Why don’t you come with us,” sai
d a policeman. But I didn’t want to go with them. I wanted to find my family and figure out what was happening. I stood up and as the woman reached out a hand to me, I ran past them and kept on going.