The Survivor Chronicles: Book 1, The Upheaval (38 page)

The girls fingers shook but she tied a swift knot and tossed the sheets to the boy that had smashed out the window. He grabbed hold of them as another loud crash echoed throughout the building. Glass rained past their window. No one within the room moved, Mary Ellen didn’t even think they breathed as someone plummeted past.

The man that had shattered the glass grabbed the sheets and tossed them out the window. “Find something to tie the end off to.” The brunette guy jumped over top of the bed and to the side. He tied the end of the sheets to the heavy wooden leg of the bed. “Riley!” the guy that had broken the window barked. The girl was deathly pale as she mutely stared back at him. “Riley come on.”

“Xander,” she whispered.

He thrust the sheets at the surfer looking guy and hurried toward Riley. Grabbing hold of her arm, he propelled her toward the window. “You have to go.”

“The others,” she protested.

“Will all follow soon but you’re going first.”

“But…”

“There isn’t time to argue. Go Riley, just go.”

“Come on Ri.” The brown haired boy held his hand out to her as the surfer looking one kept a firm hold on the sheets.

Xander seized the sheet and thrust it into Riley’s trembling hands. “You’ll be fine, you can do this.”

“Are you going to give me a feather and tell me I can fly too?” Riley inquired.

Mary Ellen frowned at the odd statement but Xander grinned at Riley. “If it will help.”

“Wait!” Al commanded. He turned away, grabbed hold of a blanket and tossed it toward Xander. “There’s probably still glass in the frame.”

“Thanks.” Xander spread the blanket over the frame before helping to adjust Riley onto the windowsill.

“Wait.” Riley grabbed hold of his cheeks and kissed him soundly. The other two guys grinned as they elbowed each other. “I’ll see you soon.”

Xander’s face reddened, he swallowed heavily as he nodded. “You will.”

He kept a hold on Riley until she moved beyond his grasp. Mary Ellen leaned out to watch as she scurried down the side of the building and moved with rapid speed toward the ground. “You’re next.”

She took a startled step back as Xander turned toward her and held out his hand. Amazement filtered through as she gazed at his outstretched hand. She didn’t know this guy; she didn’t know any of them. She most certainly hadn’t expected them to put her life ahead of theirs. No one had ever put her ahead of them before. “Go on Mary Ellen,” Al encouraged.

“Hurry ma’am that stuff was moving fast,” the surfer looking guy told her.

Xander helped her over the windowsill and held onto her until she was stable. “I’m okay,” she told him.

“Be careful.”

She felt a flash of panic as his hand slid free of her arm. Clinging to the sheets, she struggled to keep her thoughts off of the open air behind her as she fought to keep her feet braced against the side of the building. She’d snuck out more than a few times as a teenager but her room had been on the first floor. That had been a BIG mistake on her parent’s part, but she’d never had to find creative ways to climb out of her house, and wasn’t experienced with it at all.

‘Only two floors, only two floors,’ she chanted silently in an attempt to distract herself from the possibility of someone leaping out of a window above her, or the sheets giving way.

Her arms began to ache and her hands were sore from their death grip, but she steadily slid downward until she was relieved to feel her feet hit the ground.

“Are you okay?” Riley demanded.

Mary Ellen nodded at the young girl as she forced herself to relax her hold on the sheets. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the body sprawled nearby but blood splattered the ground beneath her feet. “Don’t look, you won’t believe what you see anyway,” Riley muttered.

Mary Ellen turned her attention back to the building as the brown haired boy swung his leg over and shimmied down the rope far faster than Mary Ellen had. The surfer guy wasn’t far behind him. Mary Ellen glanced nervously away as some bleeding stragglers ran around the corner of the building. Urgency seized her; she shifted from foot to foot as the loud splintering of a tree caught her attention.

“Hurry, hurry,” Riley whispered.

Mary Ellen couldn’t look away from the corner of the building as another loud snap reverberated through the air. Sparks flew high as a telephone pole toppled. She took an abrupt step back and bumped roughly into Riley. The girl grabbed her arm, her fingers dug in as she leaned around Mary Ellen to see what was happening.

Another loud bang echoed through the air. The building shifted with a loud crunch as bricks and mortar groaned and heaved. Riley spun away from her. “Xander hurry!” she screamed.

Mary Ellen took a step back as more sparks shot into the air. The side of the building began to sink as the earth started to crumble. Mary Ellen tilted her head back to watch as Xander helped Al out the window. They said something quickly to each other and then Al was moving down the rope of sheets. Xander swung his leg out when Al was almost halfway down.

Mary Ellen’s breath froze as she prayed the sheets would hold up beneath the weight of both men, and that they remained securely tied to the bed. Al swiftly moved down as he used his legs against the building and rapidly repelled off of it.

He dropped to the ground and bent over to rub his knees as he grimaced. Mary Ellen hurried to his side. “Are you okay?” she demanded.

Al nodded as he stumbled away from Xander’s rapid descent. The building gave another groan as the back of it slid even further into the ground. A startled cry escaped Xander as he lost his purchase on the building and spun around. He crashed loudly against the glass. His hands slipped on the sheet and he fell five feet before catching himself and jerking to an abrupt halt.

Riley let out a frightened cry as the brunette and the surfer guy lurched forward in an attempt to catch him if he should fall. Mary Ellen’s gaze drifted to the back of the building as half of it collapsed into what unbelievably, in fact, did appear to be lava. She stumbled back, dragging Al with her as she fought the inclination to bolt. Every instinct she’d ever had, every desire she’d ever experienced to live, screamed at her to run and to run fast.

Every ounce of human decency she had told her that she had to stay.

They’d let her go second, they'd put her life and Al’s ahead of their own. She couldn’t abandon them now, but what was she supposed to do?

Xander grappled to right himself; he managed to get his legs back around and braced against the building just as it gave another heaving groan and tilted further. Xander was still ten feet up when he released the sheets and plummeted to the ground. Riley screamed as she lurched forward, Brunette and Surfer collapsed underneath him as they tried to break his freefall to the best of their ability. Surfer cursed loudly as he pulled himself from the bottom of the heap.

“Are you okay?” Riley demanded as she ran to them.

“Fine, we’re fine.” Xander accepted Surfers hand and pulled himself to his feet. “We have to go!”

The building heaved and bent again, the back half toppled away, falling into the growing trench of reddish liquid coursing toward them. Bits of dust and brick began to rain down from above; screams echoed loudly from within the building as another loud thwack of a body sounded from somewhere near the front.

Xander seized Riley’s hand and started running away from the building. Mary Ellen held onto Al, unwilling to let her friend go as they followed behind. She went to follow the crowd heading toward the gates but the four kids split off in a different direction. “They’re from town,” Al panted. “They know this area and they can get us out of here.”

“How can you be so sure?” she demanded.

“That’s what Xander told me. We’d be dead if it wasn’t for them so I’m willing to take my chances.”

Mary Ellen wasn’t going to argue with that. They pushed and shoved their way forward as the four kids weaved in and out of traffic. They burst free of the horde of people and fled in the opposite direction of seventy five percent of the crush.

More gunshots blasted as flares lit the sky again. Behind them the sound of twisting and crashing metal reverberated throughout the day. Mary Ellen chanced a glance over her shoulder in time to see the hotel collapse in a brutalized heap. The muted screams from within the building grew higher in intensity before being eerily silenced by the unrelenting river of fire consuming the area.

Xander shoved through a gate and held it open as he waited for the others to go through. “Are you okay?” he demanded as he fell back beside them.

“Don’t fret about me,” Al informed him. “I’m a lot tougher than I look.”

Xander grinned at him as he ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “I can tell.”

He jogged back to Riley and took hold of her hand as they maneuvered through the ramps with the notes for loved ones. Mary Ellen refused to look at the notes again; she wasn’t willing to think about the can of worms that might open up. It had all been pointless. There would be no one coming here again. There would be no Rochelle.

Instead of going back the way they had come, they took a right that zigzagged through a cluster of stores. There were other people going this way too. Mary Ellen assumed that most of them were also from the town and knew their way around the maze of buildings.

They burst free of the stores only to find more wire fencing running the length of the parking lot. There were some people already climbing over top of the fence, while others were running down the length of it.

“This way.” Xander led them back in and around through the buildings. The crush of people eased even further and what was left of them looked like they had survived a war, which she was beginning to feel like she had. Xander and the others stopped at the corner of a building with movie posters hanging across the side of it. “There’s a break in the fence over there. It’s how we used to sneak into the parking lot once in awhile. We didn’t come in that way just in case someone spotted us. It will be easier to get out that way instead of climbing over.”

Mary Ellen was up for anything easy right about now. “Xander wait.” Riley jerked him to a halt as he went to step away from the corner of the building. She wordlessly pointed across the parking lot. Mary Ellen watched in dismay as a group of men with guns ran past them with their weapons at the ready.

“That can’t be a good sign,” surfer guy muttered.

“They won’t hurt us,” the brunette said.

“I’m not willing to take that chance.”

“What could they possibly have to gain from harming us Lee?”

“Wake up Bobby. There is nothing and no one we can trust anymore. They probably consider us as much of a menace as I consider them.”

Mary Ellen frowned at them as they glanced distrustfully at her and Al. “Yeah because we’re a threat,” she retorted. “I agree with being cautious around people, but you can’t shut everyone out. You’ll never survive then.”

“You want to trust those guys?” Lee demanded as he pointed after the group that was no longer in sight.

“Not even a little bit,” she admitted. “But you can trust us.”

“That’s what everyone would say.”

“Enough,” Xander inserted briskly. “It’s pointless to even argue about it. We’re going to need each other to get out of here so just stop. Riley and Lee stay here. Ah... you…”

“Mary Ellen,” she informed him.

“Come with us. We’ll circle around to the other side and see if there are any more of them around.”