Ravenous (The Ravening #1)(52)
Author: Erica Stevens

Bret and Aiden lurched forward to help Cade tear the equipment from the walls. I seized hold of one of the boxes containing an assortment of floaties and tubes. The contents scattered across the floor as I hurriedly dumped them out. I tossed the box to Aiden and searched for another one as they began to fill it.

Another explosion shook the earth; my ears were ringing from the continuous onslaught of noise. The ground beneath my feet began to vibrate. I jumped as a hand wrapped around my arm, Bret pulled me against his side. “This way Bethany!” he shouted above the noise.

I searched for Aiden and Cade, but they were struggling to carry the equipment and the box. “We have to help them!” I cried.

“We have to get out of here!” he snapped back.

“Wait…” I strained to break free of him, but he wouldn’t let me go. “Cade.”

Cade’s head whipped around, his eyes narrowed upon us. “Get her out of here!” he growled with such ferocity that even I was taken aback. “Now! Get her out now!”

Bret tugged on my arm, and this time I relented to him. Abby was already by the back door, holding it open for us. Bret pulled me rapidly forward; I nearly tripped over my own feet as I hurried to keep up with him. I staggered out the door, inhaling giant gulps of air that was nowhere near as fresh as I had hoped it would be. It smelled rancid and there was a bitterness to its taste that caused me to recoil. My lungs burned from the tainted air, my nose hairs were singed by the intense heat.

For a brief, entirely disorienting minute, I thought that it was snowing. But it couldn’t be snowing, not in August anyway, could it? Then again, far stranger things had happened over the past few days, snow in August didn’t seem entirely impossible right now. I stretched my hand up and blinked against the fine particles coating my eyelashes, falling across my face, and turning the night sky completely black as they blocked out the stars and moon. The fine particles were pungent against my lips. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t in fact snow, but fine, flowing ash.

I turned to the right, the building blocked some of my view but the sky behind the building was a vivid red orange hue. Whereas the night around us was as dark as midnight, it was as bright as the sun over there. And it looked angry, malevolent, and deadly. We all stood, staring in awe at the glowing, malicious sky. We had been so eager to flee the building, but now I found that my feet wouldn’t move. I didn’t want to see what the building hid, what was sheltered from our view.

“Awful,” Abby breathed.

“What is that?” Molly croaked out.

“Flames from the bridge must have spread,” Bret muttered.

“The gas station,” I whispered.

“And the other buildings close to it. Those were the explosions. The fire is going to keep spreading. It will reach other propane tanks, gas tanks, oil tanks. We have to go before it gets to us.” I dropped my hands, dismayed by the coating of soot that clung to them. “We have no choice but to swim now.”

He tugged me back a few steps. For a second I remained frozen, and then self preservation kicked in. Bret’s hand slipped away as we hurried down the hill, struggling to stay on our feet on the uneven, gloomy terrain. I had to keep wiping the ashes from my eyes as they stuck heavily to my lashes and made it even more difficult to see. The hill became slick with the material coating it, I slipped and slid, waiting for the inevitable moment when I lost my balance.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t the first one to go down. Instead, Molly let out a small cry as she lost her footing. Her arms pin wheeled in a useless attempt to keep her balance as her feet flew out from beneath her. I winced for her as she landed on her butt, bounced a few times before doing a complete ass over teakettle somersault.

Bret and Abby made an attempt to grab hold of her, but she quickly catapulted out of their reach. Molly let out a muffled cry of pain, but she remained terrifyingly quiet as she plummeted out of view. “Molly!” Abby cried.

“Hush!” Bret commanded briskly.

“But…”

“Shut up Abby, Molly did.”

Abby became silent but I could almost hear her tears. My heart hammered, was Molly ok? Had she been injured in the fall? I had no way of knowing what was at the bottom of the hill; I could barely see a foot in front of me due to the inescapable blackness. Were there rocks down there? Was the ocean down there?

I chanced a glance over my shoulder; I could barely make out Cade and Aiden struggling down the hill behind us. Their breathing was loud in the oppressive air, but then, so was mine. My lungs labored, my throat burned. It couldn’t be good to be inhaling this crap, but there was little that any of us could do about that now.

A loud pop sizzled through the air. A burst of fire leapt into the air over the burning glow behind the store. A propane tank perhaps? I tried to recall the buildings in the area of the bridge. There was the IHOP, a hotel; no there were two hotels, a laundry mat, convenience store, gas station, funeral home, tourist traps, woods, and plenty of homes. There were so many things to spread the growing flames, things that would rapidly catch fire without anyone to stop the inferno.

The aliens certainly wouldn’t stop it. Not when they knew it would flush out the remaining people like rats fleeing a flood. That’s exactly what we were now, trapped rats that they would hone in on quickly, especially if we continued to head toward the water.

My heart flip flopped; I tore my attention away from the abhorrent flames. Was that the real reason the bridge had been destroyed? Had the aliens decided to ruin any chance of escape, and set fire to the land in order to draw us out?

I was so fixed on my thoughts that I didn’t realize the ground had begun to level out. Molly came into view at the bottom of the hill. She was dirty, disheveled, and her bottom lip was bleeding but she appeared otherwise unharmed. We raced across the street, fleeing into the backyards of residential homes, staying parallel with the railroad tracks that ran near the beach. The tracks followed the water and roads, yet the trees surrounding them offered us enough protection to stay hidden from anything above.

Our breathing grew labored, my lungs were burning from the acrid air, but no one asked to stop. It simply wasn’t an option right now. I don’t know how long we ran for, pounding over unseen ground, trying to escape the ash and deadly flames. I didn’t dare look back to see how close the fire was, I didn’t want to know how much time we had left.

“This way,” Aiden panted.

We followed as he took a right and dashed through someone’s yard before stopping at the edge of the woods. I stared out at the shadowed parking lot before us. A chill cooled the sweat on my body at the thought of running out there. We would be exposed, vulnerable.