Heroes 'Til Curfew

  “Wait! Just, wait, okay? I’m not going to try to talk you down. I just need to know: what happened to Dylan?” She was about to burn a house down with me in it. Not like I had to worry about pissing her off anymore.

  “What would be better, telling you or letting you wonder about it?” She tapped the lighter against her cheek and shrugged. “It’s all the same, I guess. Corey said Curtis knocked him out and they took him back to Marco’s new place. Marco planned to kill him when he came around. Dylan’s way out-numbered. Without you there to protect him, there’s just no way, is there? Your boyfriend’s dead too, Joss. But it won’t be long before you see him in Hell.”

  That’s not true. Calm down, you know that’s not true. If Dylan were dead you would know it. He’s quick, he’s smart, and he knows how to use his Talent.

  He’s already taken a few beatings tonight, he’s exhausted, he’s out-numbered, and he’s probably out of his mind over what happened to you and not knowing where you are. He’ll never be able to think straight.

  Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up.

  I focused on the doorway again. Trina was gone. I was so wrapped up in angst over Dylan that I didn’t even see her leave. Now I heard the door open downstairs. I imagined I even heard the flick of the lighter and the thud of it on a carpet in the entry, even though that was probably impossible. I tried to see it in my mind, a door, a lighter, a carpet. I tried to grasp the lighter, to move the carpet. But I’d never been in the house before. My mind had no proper path to take. My Talent couldn’t work like that.

  Okay, okay. Calm down. Try something else. Think back to the roof. What you did on the roof. If you can make this floor ripple like that roof, it’s not gonna matter what’s nailed down to it, right?

  I tried to reach down inside me, tried to recreate that kind of rage and let it flow outward. But I couldn’t hold it. Couldn’t focus. I let it go, panting with exhaustion and a pain that almost blinded me.

  And smelled smoke.

  Chapter 19

  Dylan

  Eric’s car bounced up onto the curb and I was out of it before it stopped. When I called him, he picked me up before I’d covered less than half the distance from Marco’s lair, so I’d had a few minutes to catch my breath before we arrived at the subdivision near the church, at the house from my nightmares. Smoke was already rising into the sky.

  “Dylan, slow down, man! You can’t just go charging in there. Look at that door.” Flames were coming out underneath the door, licking upward, leaving black streaks of bubbled paint on the surface. We could see flames beyond the windows. “We gotta try the back.”

  We raced around the back of the house, but it was the same story. I jumped up on the back porch and went for one of the windows. The glass burned my hand when I touched it. I was about to yank off my jacket to wrap around my hand when Eric grabbed me from behind.

  I struggled against him, but he was stronger than I thought. We staggered back and went over porch rail, rolling in the grass.

  “Let me go, you son of a bitch! I have to get in that house!”

  “Dylan, calm down. You gotta think, okay? You break out that window, it’s gonna be backdraft, right? The fire’s gonna rush for the air, blow up right in your face. Come on, stop acting like an idiot and think for a minute!”

  “I don’t have a minute! Joss is in there!” He pressed my chest into the lawn, lying on my back with my arms pinned between us. I looked back up at the house and saw the porch as a possibility. “Okay, what if you boost me up onto the porch roof? I’ll go in through one of the windows up there.”

  He looked up. “Come back here a second.” He let me up, but kept hold of me while we stepped back for a better look at the house. “I don’t see anything through those windows, but that doesn’t mean there’s no fire on the second floor. If I boost you up there, how am I supposed to get up?”

  “You’re not. You’re going to call for help. Then I need you to get over to Joss’s house to check on her family.”

  “Fuck you, I’m not letting you go in there by yourself. You’re in full-on idiot mode.”

  I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Eric, please, just do what I’m asking you.”

  He groaned and made for the porch. I climbed up on to the railing, then onto his shoulders, got a handhold as he took my boot and helped lever me up over the edge.

  “I’m up. Get going!” I yelled down, without even looking to see if he complied. I didn’t really think he’d be stupid enough to try to find a way into the house. He was a good friend but not suicidal. And I wasn’t really worried about Joss’s family either. They were never really the targets.

  Below me, something sounded like an explosion. “What was that?”

  “That window just blew out. Maybe she left a can of gas near it or something. The porch is going up, dude. Find a way in or come back down, just get the hell off that roof!”

  “You okay?” I called down. The windows were locked, so I had to break one out to climb in.

  “When I finish picking this glass out of my hair. Worry about yourself.”

  I was in a bedroom. It was barely furnished and didn’t look lived in, hazy with the smoke that was coming in from vent on the floor.

  I started yelling for Joss, thought maybe I heard an answer, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. The closed door wasn’t hot, so I threw it open and was immediately choking on thick, black smoke. I fell to my knees and gasped for air. A hallway ran around the top of the stairs which opened out directly across from me. That whole area was in flames. Probably a good bet she was in one of those rooms.

  “Joss?!”

  “Dylan, get the hell out of this house!” There was a fit of coughing. “Go back the way you came.”

  I was grinning like an idiot, glad I was already on my knees because I think I would have fallen over with relief at that point. “Not the boss of me, Marshall! Anyway, no can do. I think the back porch is about to collapse.” I called out, coughing some as I crawled along the hallway toward the fire.

  “Dylan, please, just get out.” Now that I was closer I could hear tears in her voice, the break of a sob. I wiped my sleeve across my face. I’d never felt such intense heat. Every breath I took felt like it was burning me from the inside. But I knew where she was now. If I just ran it, was there any chance I’d get through all that without my clothes catching? Without bringing more danger into the room where she was trapped?

  There was a door to my left. I opened it and fell inside, closing it behind me and trying to catch my breath on air that wasn’t so hot or full of smoke. I crawled over to a bookcase, stood and pushed it over, dumping books and stuff, adjustable shelves and all, onto the floor. It was made of that particle board crap that weighs more than wood because it’s half glue. I opened the door and dragged it out into the hallway, shoving it facedown onto the floor, over the flames.

  I used the bookcase like a bridge, raced across it and jumped through the doorway, throwing myself onto the floor and rolling, just in case. When I came up, I found Joss sitting up, a chain wrapped around her upper body binding her to the thick stiles of a mission style headboard. The random thought chased through my head that I should not know that much about furniture. I kicked away a fabric-covered brick doorstop and slammed the door on the flames.

  “Stop trying to talk,” I snapped as I made for the bed and started examining the chain. “Do you really think I’m just going to agree with you? Up and leave you here? Did you hit your head or something?”

  “Actually, yeah. I think I have a concussion.” Her voice was way hoarse and she couldn’t go two words without coughing. “I didn’t have enough Talent to move that brick to shut the door.”

  Awesome. “I said no talking. There’s not enough air.” I swiped up a piece of cloth from the bed. It was already tied. A blindfold, maybe. “I’m going to tie this around your mouth and nose, maybe it’ll help you breathe while we figure out this chain problem.”

  “’Kay.”

&
nbsp; “There’s a padlock down here. That’s what’s holding the chain tight. We just have to break it.” I grabbed up the brick off the floor, brought it back to the bed and smashed at the lock, wincing at the fact that I was hitting Joss through the chain, even though she didn’t complain. But it wasn’t doing any good.

  “Maybe you’re not hitting it hard enough. Don’t worry about hurting me.”

  “I’m not. I mean, maybe I’m not getting a good angle at it. Or maybe it’s just too good a lock. I think I should turn the bed on its side, get us closer the floor while I work on this.”

  “It’s nailed down. Trina said everything in the room is nailed down to make it harder for me to use my Talent.”

  I stroked her hair, just to touch her while I tried to think what to do. Normally, nailing down the furniture wouldn’t even matter. It was a stupid mistake on Trina’s part, or would have been, if Joss hadn’t been injured. Did Trina do that to her on purpose?

  This is not what you need to be thinking about.

  “Is there a hammer?” Joss asked.

  “Huh?”

  “From when she nailed down the furniture, is there a hammer in the room?”

  I went to go look through the drawers. “I’m not going to get bent out of shape that even with a head injury you’re still smarter than I am.”

  “You’re still better looking.”

  “If I have to talk to you about talking again, there’s gonna be trouble.” I couldn’t talk without a coughing fit now.

  “Oh, well, if there’s gonna be trouble...”

  I abandoned the desk and went for the dresser wondering if her sense of humor was from the head injury, lack of oxygen, or stress. A big, old wooden hammer with a manly heft to it lay in the top drawer next to a smelly lace pillow.

  If I couldn’t break the lock, maybe I could smash up the headboard with hammer. I held the brick between the chains and the lock. and went at the lock with a vengeance.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” Joss rasped when the lock finally broke. “I’m surprised it didn’t give out of sheer terror.”

  “You are seriously worrying me,” I told her as I pulled the lock free of the chains and then gave in to a fit of coughing that took me to my knees next to the bed.

  Joss was beside me a few moments later, pulling the neck of my shirt up over my nose. “You need to hold this up here, okay? If you pass out from the smoke we’re done for ’cause I can’t carry you out of here.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  The lamp in the corner flickered and went out.

  “I’m surprised it stayed on that long,” Joss said. We were totally in the dark. “Listen, I’m dizzy. Kind of disoriented. Do you know where the exits are?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Okay, going into the house is probably a last resort, right? Can you use the hammer to get at the windows?”

  “I’ll try. Wait here.” I felt my way along the wall until I felt the curtains under my hand. They reeked of gasoline. That bitch. But I didn’t have time to curse Trina for being evil right now. I wedged the claw of the hammer between the plywood and the wall and shoved, felt it start to give way. This is gonna work!

  Suddenly the handle plunged forward and I fell against the wall as something heavy landed on my foot.

  “Ow! Fuck!”

  “What happened?”

  “I just pried the head right off the piece of shit hammer!” I yelled, hurling the handle across the room in frustration. We were so close.

  “It’s okay, we’ll figure something else out. What’s outside the door?”

  “Great balls of fire,” I said, crawling across to the door and putting my hand against it. “It’s pretty hot. When I came through before there were flames all around this end of the hallway. I had to put down a bookcase to use as a bridge to get across.”

  “We’re gonna talk about that later. Maybe there’s a pamphlet: Idiocy and You.”

  “Joss…”

  “When you broke your head it was all ‘tennis balls in the soup.’ Payback’s a bitch.”

  Yeah, okay. Or you’re just kind of hysterical because you don’t really think we’ll get out of here. And that sucks.

  I crawled back across the room to the window. Having to pause to cough wasn’t helping and I was getting disoriented in the dark. It took me a few moments to find the top of hammer and make my way back to the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m gonna use what’s left of the hammer to pry the hinges out of this cheap-ass hollow door. Because if I try to kick it free, it’s probably just going to break in half.”

  “That would be hot.”

  “Marshall, would you please stop speaking?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. This is so not appropriate.”

  The hinges came out of the door too easily. Not good. The door being even lower quality than I thought meant that it wasn’t going to give us much protection at all when tried to use it to smother the flames outside the room. But I couldn’t think of anything else. The other pieces of furniture weren’t that big, and I didn’t know how hard it would be work them out of place since Trina had nailed them down. I made my way back over to Joss.

  “The door’s free. I’m going to pull it out and put it down over the bookcase which is probably burned through by now. If we go quickly, we should be able to make it to the other end of the hall, to one of the bedrooms that’s not burning yet. We’ll find a way down from there. The rest of the windows aren’t boarded up. If worse comes to worst, we’ll jump. Okay?”

  “Yeah, sounds great.”

  I didn’t know if that was real Joss or slightly crazy, not at all herself Joss, and that didn’t give me a lot of confidence in my plan. But we were both coughing like crazy and it was all we had.

  I wrapped my hands up in my jacket sleeves and pulled the door in slowly, keeping Joss behind me. The new source of air pulled a burst of flame through the opening, igniting the outside of the door and my jacket. Panicked, I pressed forward with the plan, angling the door through and throwing it blindly out into the hall, along with my jacket.

  I reached back and grabbed Joss who was backing away from the flames. She protested, but I yanked her along with me into the hall. It was so much worse than I had imagined. The fire was burning along the skinny carpets that lined the hallway. It had jumped from one to another so that most floor and walls were now covered in flame. The heat was like nothing I had ever imagined. There was only one spot it hadn’t reached, but there was flame between our perch on the door and that spot of relative safety.

  Even if what I have to do is completely impossible.

  I didn’t say anything. I just grabbed Joss and swung her, hurling her body at that spot, and then I jumped after her, rolling when I hit the ground. When I stopped rolling, she was still hitting me.

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”

  “You moron, your pants were on fire. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, think so.” I lay on my back and squinted up. I couldn’t see anything through the smoke, but it was there, in my mind’s eye from when I’d come through here before. I stood up and Joss grabbed at me.

  “Stay down!”

  “Hang on.” I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut as I felt around over my head with both hands. Just as I thought I was going to pass out from the heat and smoke, one of my hands caught the rope. I yanked down, pulling down the trap door for the attic access, feeling for the ladder and unfolding it. I dropped back to the floor to catch my breath. “Attic,” I wheezed. “Let’s get up there before all the smoke does.”

  From the way she choked, I think Joss wanted to make another wise crack and couldn’t do it. I boosted her up onto the ladder and went up after her, pulling the door closed behind us.

  The attic was really just a crawl space. And of course it had no windows. That would have been too easy. “Make for the side there.” We belly-crawled it to the side, over sheets of plywood that weren’t even screwed in pl
ace. Where the roof met the floor I reached in and pulled out insulation until I felt fresh, cold air from outside. We lay there on the floor and just breathed.

  “Air is good,” Joss croaked.

  I just nodded. Right now we had fresh, cold air on our faces, but it had to be over one hundred degrees up here. Below us were two floors of burning house. No windows, no exit except the way we came in, no way out. Basically, we were screwed and we’d just found a source of fresh air such that we could probably stay conscious until the house collapsed and we were burned alive.

  * * *

  Joss

  We were quiet. It was hard to talk, but I knew it was really because we didn’t want to acknowledge the truth of it. That there was no way out. That we had given up. I reached up and touched Dylan’s cheek, enjoying the prickle under my fingertips.

  “What are you thinking?” His voice was wary. Like maybe he didn’t want me to answer.

  “I was thinking how it would be nice to see your face when someone hasn’t been pummeling it.”

  “Picky.”

  “I love you.” I don’t know why it was so hard to say it. It was always hard. But here, looking right at him, when it was so important, it was still really hard. “I should tell you more.”

  He caught my hand, brought it to his lips. “You don’t have to tell me anything.” He lowered his head, brushed his mouth lightly over mine. It was about all the kiss we could manage anymore. He pulled me against him, tucked my head into his shoulder in that way we just fit together. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried not to cry. “I love you, you love me. We know what we know, right? We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “We know what we know.” Was he just talking about our relationship, or did he mean we didn’t need to talk about how we were going to die?

  “Joss.”

  “What?”

  “What?” Dylan asked back.

  “You just said my name.”