dodge
DODGE WAS DREAMING OF THE TIME THAT HE AND Dayna had ridden the carousel together in Chicago. Or maybe Columbus. But in his dream, there were palm trees, and a man selling grilled meats from a brightly colored cart. Dayna was in front of him, and her hair was so long it kept whipping him in the face. A crowd was gathered: people shouting, leering, calling things he couldn’t understand.
He knew he was supposed to be happy—he was supposed to be having fun—but he wasn’t. It was too hot. Plus there was Dayna’s hair, getting tangled in his mouth, making it hard to swallow. Making it hard to breathe. There was the stench from the meat cart, too. The smell of burning. The thick clouds of smoke.
Smoke.
Dodge woke up suddenly, jerking upright. He’d fallen asleep straight on the floor, with his face pressed against the cold wood. He had no idea what time it was. He could just make out Heather’s and Nat’s entangled forms, the pattern of their breathing. For a second, still half-asleep, he thought they looked like baby dragons.
Then he realized why: the room was filling with smoke. It was seeping underneath the crack below the door, snaking its way into the room.
He stood up, then thought better of it, remembering that smoke rises, and dropped to his knees. There was shouting: screams and footsteps sounded from other parts of the house.
Too easy. He remembered what Heather had said earlier. Of course. Firecrackers exploded here on the Fourth of July; there would be a prize for the players who stayed in the house the longest.
Fire. The house was on fire.
He reached over and shook the girls roughly, not bothering to distinguish between them, to locate their elbows from their shoulders. “Wake up. Wake up.”
Natalie sat up, rubbing her eyes, and then immediately began coughing. “What—?”
“Fire,” he said shortly. “Stay low. Smoke rises.” Heather was stirring now too. He crawled back to the door. No doubt about it: the rats were abandoning ship. There was a confusion of voices outside, the sound of slamming doors. That meant the fire must have already spread pretty far. No one would have wanted to bail right away.
He put his hand on the metal door handle. It was warm to the touch, but not scalding.
“Nat? Dodge? What’s going on?” Heather was fully awake now. Her voice was shrill, hysterical. “Why is it so smoky?”
“Fire.” It was Natalie who answered. Her voice was, amazingly, calm.
Time to get the hell out. Before the fire spread further. He had a sudden memory of some gym class in DC—or was it Richmond?—when all the kids had to stop, drop, and roll onto the foot-smelling linoleum. Even then, he’d known it was stupid. Like rolling would do anything but turn you into a fireball.
He grabbed the handle and pulled, but nothing happened. Tried again. Nothing. For a second, he thought maybe he was still asleep—in one of his nightmares, where he tried and tried to run but couldn’t, or swung at some assailant’s face and didn’t even make a mark. On his third try, the handle popped off in his hand. And for the first time in the whole game, he felt it: panic, building in his chest, crawling into his throat.
“What’s happening?” Heather was practically screaming now. “Open the door, Dodge.”
“I can’t.” His hands and feet felt numb. The panic was squeezing his lungs, making it hard to breathe. No. That was the smoke. Thicker now. He unfroze. He fumbled his fingers into the hole where the door handle had been, tugging frantically, and felt a sharp bite of metal. He jammed his shoulder against the door, feeling increasingly desperate. “It’s stuck.”
“What do you mean, stuck?” Heather started to say something else, and instead started coughing.
Dodge spun around, dropped into a crouch. “Hold on.” He brought his sleeve to his mouth. “Let me think.” He could no longer hear any footsteps, any shouting. Had everyone else gotten out? He could hear, though, the progress of the fire: the muffled snapping and popping of old wood, decades of rot and ruin slurped into flame.
Heather was fumbling with her phone.
“What are you doing?” Nat tried to swat at it. “The rules said no calling for—”
“The rules?” Heather cut her off. “Are you crazy?” She punched furiously at the keyboard. Her face was wild, contorted, like a wax mask that had started to melt. She let out a sound that was a cross between a scream and a sob. “It’s not working. There’s no service.”