Chapter 10 - Up from the Ashes
The sheet metal of the duct grew hot to the touch.
Black, oily smoke began seeping through the seams where the metal was screwed together. The fire was spreading through the kitchen and living room above us, feeding on the dry, century-old timber of the Victorian frame.
"Keep moving!" I shouted up the shaft, coughing into the crook of my elbow. "Clara, keep climbing! Push the vent grate open!"
"It's already open, Daddy!" Clara yelled back down.
We scrambled out of the vertical duct, tumbling back into the hidden corridor between the drywall on the second floor. The air up here was cooler, but thick with gray pine smoke drifting up from the floorboards below. The roar of the fire downstairs sounded like an approaching freight train.
Maya lay on the blankets, wheezing, clutching her bruised ribs. Lily and Clara stood over her, holding each other's hands, their faces streaked with black soot. Two little girls who should have been strangers, bonded by survival in the dark.
"The window," Maya gasped, pointing down the narrow corridor toward the front gable of the house. "There's a decorative window... behind the cedar closet..."
I crawled toward the front of the house, pushing past stacks of old storage bins. At the very end of the hidden corridor was an arched, decorative stained-glass window overlooking the front lawn.
Below, the yard was blanketed in eight inches of fresh, pristine snow.
And idling in the driveway was a black SUV.
Two men in tactical gear, wearing helmets and carrying automatic rifles, were stepping out of the vehicle, speaking into shoulder radios. The Aegis cleanup crew had arrived.
Suddenly, from behind me, the floorboards of the bedroom groaned.
A silhouette stepped through the thick smoke drifting down the hidden hallway.
It was Thorne.
His right arm was hanging uselessly at his side, his face covered in congealed blood where the pry bar had smashed his temple. His tracheostomy tube was whistling like a cracked tea kettle, and his eyes burned with a psychotic, single-minded focus.
In his left hand, he held a heavy steel wrench.
"End of the line, Ryan," his mechanical voice buzzed through the amplifier. "Nobody leaves this perimeter alive. Those are Aegis orders."
"Get behind me," I whispered to Maya, stepping in front of the girls.
I raised the 12-gauge shotgun with both hands, aiming directly at Thorne’s forehead.
"I already told you once, Uncle Aris," I said, my voice ice-cold despite the blistering heat radiating through the walls. "It's over."
Thorne lunged forward, swinging the wrench with terrifying speed.
I pulled the trigger.
CLICK.
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A dry, hollow firing pin drop.
The chamber was empty. In the chaos of the bunker, I had forgotten to reload.
