Chapter 9 - The Bell Jar
The gas hissed like a nest of angry vipers.
"Cover your mouths!" I barked, scooping Clara into my right arm and turning back toward Maya’s bed. "Lily, pull your shirt over your nose! Don't breathe through your mouth!"
The gas was heavier than air, already pooling across the cold concrete floor in a rolling, sickly yellow fog. If it hit our lungs in full concentration, we’d be convulsing on the floor in under ninety seconds.
I ripped the IV line out of Maya’s arm. She gasped in pain, but the sudden adrenaline seemed to cut through the heavy sedative fog in her brain.
"Can you stand?" I asked, hooking my arm under her shoulders.
"My... my legs are numb," she groaned, her voice slurred. "They keep me dosed... with paralytics..."
"I've got you," I grunted.
I hauled Maya onto my back, her arms hanging weakly over my shoulders, Clara clutched against my hip. Lily gripped my belt again, her face buried inside her cotton collar. We moved out into the hallway, coughing as the pungent fumes began to tickle the backs of our throats.
The main stairwell back to the kitchen was completely blocked.
Caroline had hit an emergency release. A heavy, two-inch steel fire door had dropped flush against the concrete floor at the base of the stairs, sealing off the entrance to the pantry.
We were locked in the tomb.
"Daddy! The vent!" Clara pointed toward an open maintenance shaft near the ceiling of the server room. "That's how I got up to Lily's room! There’s a ladder!"
I sprinted into the server room. The shaft was five feet off the ground, an old rectangular sheet-metal duct that led upward into the false walls of the house.
"Lily, go first," I ordered, lifting the four-year-old up to the opening. "Climb the rungs. Don't look down. Wait for me at the bedroom vent."
Lily scrambled up into the dark like a spider, completely fearless.
"Clara, you're next," I said, hoisting my biological daughter up. She grabbed the rusted iron rungs mounted inside the duct and hauled herself up behind Lily.
Now it was Maya.
The yellow gas was rising to my waist. My vision was blurring again, my lungs burning with every half-breath I took. Maya was dead weight. I could feel her slipping in and out of consciousness.
"Maya, you have to help me," I coughed, lifting her toward the duct opening. "Grab the rungs! Pull yourself up!"
She reached out with trembling hands, catching the edge of the sheet metal. "I can't... Ryan, I don't have the strength... just take the girls... leave me—"
"Shut up!" I roared, coughing violently. "I lost you ten years ago! I am not leaving you in this hole!"
I shoved her upward with everything I had left in my quads and shoulders, pushing her torso through the duct until she rolled onto the flat sheet metal above.
I grabbed the lip of the duct and hauled myself up just as the yellow gas engulfed the concrete floor beneath my boots.
I pulled the shotgun up behind me and began crawling through the cramped, freezing metal tunnel.
Above us, the sounds of the house were changing.
A deep, rhythmic shudder vibrated through the floorboards. Then, the smell of burning wood and accelerant.
May you like
Caroline hadn't just released the gas.
She had set fire to the first floor.
