Chapter 5: A sad discovery
“Hey!” the woman yelled, “Where are you going?”
I ignored her and raced to the end of the street, taking a left at the intersection. As soon as I turned the corner, an old, rusty white van skidded to a halt in front of me and two men got out.
“There she is!” yelled one. Both took three huge steps and reached out for me and grabbed each arm. As I was being dragged toward their van I screamed, hoping the police around the corner would hear me, but the sound of more approaching firetruck sirens were too loud.
“Come with us, kid,” said a big man with a thick neck. Someone opened up the van door, and I saw that it was the man with the scratched up face. As they dragged me to the van, I closed my eyes again, afraid of what might happen if I succeeded, but also afraid of what they might do to me. I thought about the old electric batteries, how they could explode before the newest cars came out. I focused on the van in front of me and thought about the electric battery, imagining it heating up. Imagining it on fire. Suddenly an explosion erupted and the men covered their faces from the blast. The man with the scars was thrown to the ground away from the van.
“What happened?” yelled one of the men.
That was the last thing I heard, because I was already tearing down the street. Smoke was getting thick and I had the feeling that when my house burned, the gas explosion might have started other fires. It was spreading fast.
Further down the road I looked back, but they weren’t following me. Maybe they were distracted with what I did to their van. I kept going, away from the fire, trying to think of a place to hide since my best hiding place was now on fire.
I didn’t have any friends or family that lived close to me, so I was on my own. I got off the main street down an alley so I wouldn’t be so easy to find again. This led to a field of tall grass. There were no trees to hide behind, so I kept going until I saw a wire fence up ahead next to an overpass.
I looked behind me and still no one was following me, but I thought I could fall to the ground and hide in the grass for a while if one of them showed up. When I got to the fence, a sign just out of view stuck out on the left. I ran around and looked up: “Sammy’s Pick and Pull—Used Car Parts.” It looked like they were closed. A lock and chain wrapped twice around the opening of the gate, but when I shook the gate, I could see a gap about a foot wide. I knew most adults would not be able to get through, but for a ten year old like me, it was no problem. I squeezed sideways until I got myself most of the way in. But when it came to my head, I thought I was going to tear my ears off. I almost screamed as I finally forced myself through, but I finally made it.
Once in, I didn’t know what to do. I looked around the yard. Old rusted cars were everywhere. A stack of three were on top of each other on my left and to my right a red, rusted car was missing all its doors. Probably some of these were gas cars at some point. My dad would probably love checking them out.
The thought almost hit me like a fist. My dad, my mom, where were they? What about my sister? Did they get out of the house? Were they even alive? I pulled out my phone again and tried to call the direct link to my mother, but my phone blinked three times with the message, “No longer in service.”
That didn’t make sense. If it said, “Busy,” or “Not available,” that would mean that she was using the phone at the time or that she did not get it when I called. But “No longer in service” meant that the phone had been destroyed. I tried my father, and then my sister, but got the same message. That worried me a lot more. I didn’t want to think of what it might mean so I tried to think of something else.
I could see the smoke across the field and it looked like the fire had spread. Probably a number of houses had gone up. That was too bad. We didn’t really know our neighbors very well, but I didn’t want their houses to burn down.
Just then a car came around the corner with its lights shining just past me. I ducked down as it drove on down the street past me. I had to find a better hiding place. Plus, being November, it got dark and cold pretty early, so what would I do to stay warm?
I walked around the yard, seeing broken up cars all over the place. Toward the back I saw a semi-truck. It still had its doors, so I climbed up and tried the handle. It didn’t open. I tried again and pulled hard and heard a creak, but it still didn’t open. I tried again and yanked really hard. This time it flew open and I launched off the truck where I landed hard on the dirt on my rear.
I just sat there for a moment in the dirt, but rather than cry, I laughed. The picture of me sitting there was so hilarious. I couldn’t control myself. I laughed until my throat hurt and my side ached. And then, at the end of the laughter came the tears. At first I didn’t know why I was crying, but then I realized my family: my mom, dad, and sister, might be dead. And so there was also a good chance that for the rest of my life, I would be on my own. I didn’t really have any close relatives or even close friends for that matter. Nobody. All I had in the world was me. But I didn’t know that for sure. Not yet.
I climbed into the truck and sat in the front seat while I closed the door and stared out the window. From up here I could see across the field I had crossed earlier and I could see the fire on the other side of it. In fact, I could see the corner of where our house was burning and there wasn’t much left before it would burn out. It was already black and the roof had collapsed. I could smell the smoke but the wind was blowing most of it in the other direction.
I felt alone and I had nowhere to turn.
A few minutes later I looked around inside of the truck. This was a regular electric semi, but it must have been one of the early ones since it was rusted inside and out. I was tired and it was getting dark outside. I could feel the tiredness dragging at me. I had been running and hiding for hours and I hadn’t even eaten. It looked like I would have to wait on food, but at least for now, I was safe.
A blanket was draped behind the seats so I pushed on it and when it parted, I saw a little sleeping area back there. There was a mattress and a pillow. The pillow smelled bad, but a couple of the blankets seemed fine, so I put them on.
Finally, I was warm. I was still too wound up to sleep and a thought came to me. I still had my phone and I could connect to local vid feeds. Maybe they would have something about the fire. I got the phone out of my pocket and tuned it to a local vid feed. The first one had a game of enhanced football. Impossibly huge men were tackling each other and I could hear the crunch of bones. I turned it to another vid feed and here was a news broadcast. They were already showing the fire as it burned down. I turned up the volume.
“Fortunately only one family died in the fire,” said a highly made-up blond, “which is surprising considering the damage. Police and fire trucks arrived on the scene shortly after it all began, however due to an explosion in the first house, the fire spread to another house across the street. They are still unsure how the fire spread to the rest of the block. Nothing seems to explain this part of the mystery.”
“Just to recap, the only victims of the fire so far are John and Judy Brackman along with their two daughters, Lisa and Tracy from the first house that caught fire.”
I must have turned off the phone then because I didn’t see anything more. I felt like someone had slapped me across the face. I felt numb and disconnected from my body. Then I began to cry again. But this was unlike any tears I had ever cried before. They were bitter, hurtful tears. I cried until I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I cried until nothing existed except my pain, and sometime in the middle of all this crying, I must have fallen asleep because I began to dream.