Read Online Darla's Story by Mike Mullin - Free Book Online Page B

gave then; I felt it shift
and heard the loud thunk of wood striking wood. Debris fell on my
ankles—maybe chunks of plaster and insulation from the ceiling. A
little kicking freed my legs, stirring up more dry, itchy dust.
    I forced my way backward into the new hole.
There were twelve, maybe sixteen inches of space before I hit
something solid again. The air was getting hotter. Sweat trickled
sideways off my face. I couldn’t dislodge the blockage, so I bent
at the waist, contorting my body around the desk into an L
shape.
    I kept shoving my body backward into the gap
between a fallen ceiling joist and my desk, pushing myself upward
along the tilted floor. A lurid orange light flickered downward
into the new space. When I’d wormed my way fully alongside the
joist, I jammed my head and shoulders up through the broken ceiling
into what used to be the unfinished attic above my room.
    A wall of heat slammed into me, like opening
the oven with my face too close. Long tendrils of flame licked into
the attic above my sister’s collapsed bedroom, cat tongues washing
the rafters and underside of the roof decking with fire. Smoke
billowed up and pooled under the peak of the roof. The front part
of the attic had collapsed, joists leaning downward at crazy
angles. What little I could see of the back of the attic looked
okay. An almost perfectly round hole had been punched in the roof
above my sister’s bedroom. I glimpsed a coin of deep blue sky
through the flames eating at the edges of the hole.
    I dragged myself up the steeply angled
joists, trying to reach the back of the attic. My palms were
slippery with sweat, and my right shoulder screamed in pain. But I
got it done, crawling upward with the heat at my back urging me
on.
    The rear of the attic looked normal—aside
from the thick smoke and dust. I crawled across the joists, pushing
through the loose insulation to reach the boxes of holiday
decorations my mother had stored next to the pull-down
staircase.
    I struggled to open the staircase—it was
meant to be pulled open with a cord from the hallway below. I
crawled onto it to see if my weight would force it down. The
springs resisted at first, but then the hatch picked up speed and
popped open with a bang. It was all I could do to hold on and avoid
tumbling into the hallway below. It bruised my knees pretty good,
too. I flipped the folded segments of the stair open so I could
step down to the second floor.
    Keeping my head low to avoid the worst of the
smoke, I scuttled down the hallway to the staircase. This part of
the house seemed undamaged. When I reached the first floor, I heard
banging and shouting from the backyard. I ran to the back door and
glanced through the window. Our neighbor from across the street,
Darren, was outside. I twisted the lock and threw the door
open.
    “Thank God,” Darren said. “Are you okay,
Alex?”
    I took a few steps into the yard and stood
with my hands on my knees, gulping the fresh air. It tasted sweet
after the smoke-drenched dust I’d been breathing.
    “You look like three-day-old dog crap. You
okay?” Darren repeated.
    I looked down at myself. Three-day-old dog
crap was way too kind. Sweat had drenched my T-shirt and jeans,
mixing with plaster dust, insulation, and smoke to form a vile
gray-white sludge that coated my body. Somewhere along the way, I’d
cut my palm without even feeling it. A smear of blood stained the
knee of my jeans where my hand had just rested.
    I glanced around; all the neighbors’ houses
seemed fine. Even the back of my house looked okay. Something
sounded wrong, though. The ringing in my ears had mostly faded, but
it still took a moment to figure it out: It was completely silent.
There were no bird or insect noises. Not even crickets.
    Just then Joe, Darren’s husband, ran up
behind him, carrying a three-foot wrecking bar. “Glad to see you’re
out. I was going to break the door down.”
    “Thanks. You guys call the