The Eleventh Plague

TWENTY-THREE

“Jenny!”

I threw myself into the doors of the barn, scorching my hands and choking on a lungful of smoke. “Jenny!”

Flames were spreading up the walls and tearing into the roof of the barn. I dropped low where the air was clearer and covered my mouth and nose with my sleeve. My eyes stung but I searched the barn, yelling her name as loud as I could. There was a flash of movement by the bed. I raced toward it, finding Jenny on the ground, coughing, her legs pinned under a pile of charred wood from the partially collapsed ceiling. She was trying to get out from under it but was weak and barely able to move. I grabbed her under her arms and pulled but she cried out.

There was a whoosh as the wall next to us caught fire, exploding into a curtain of red and orange. The smoke swelled and thickened.

I dropped to my knees at Jenny’s waist and thrust my hands into the smoldering pile of wood, ignoring the feel of my fingers searing as I threw the timbers off. I shook Jenny by the shoulders, but by then she was unconscious.

I looked all around me. The doors I’d come in had caught fire, as had the walls on every side. Fire flowed over the ceiling. I was trapped. The old wood of the barn, dry and weak from years of neglect, popped and hissed, burning as easily as paper.

I rolled Jenny onto her back, then muscled her up over my shoulder. The ceiling groaned louder. There was no time to waste.

I stood up, eyes watering and lungs aching, then dropped my head and shoulder and ran as fast as I could, straight at one of the burning walls. There was a panicked instant when it resisted, but then the wood cracked and flames gouged into my shoulder and cheek.

Our momentum carried us out of the barn and to the tree line, where I stumbled and Jenny went spilling out into the brush. I collapsed, coughing and heaving beside her. Jenny moaned. Her one good eye was open, but barely. She was breathing.

“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “We’re going to be fine.”

“I thought it was Will and them,” she rasped. “But it wasn’t. It was a group of men. They didn’t even say anything, they just —”

“It’s okay,” I said.

There was a crash behind us as part of another wall fell in. The relief of safety washed away, though, when I realized that everything we owned — my pack and supplies, Jenny’s clothes, Grandpa’s rifle — was all in the barn. We couldn’t go back to Settler’s Landing and without shelter or supplies, and with winter coming on fast, we were dead.

I could still make out the hole in the wall I had broken through, a splintering oval wreathed in flame. Fire had spread nearly everywhere, but the roof still hadn’t come down. I had seconds. If that.

“What are you doing?” Jenny said as I pushed away from her. “Stephen!”

I ran for the barn and took a deep breath before jumping through the gap, stumbling toward what was left of the bed. My lips were sealed tight and my fingers pinched my nose closed. If I tried to take a breath, I was dead. I tripped over a pile of timbers and landed hard. The smoke had dropped almost to the level of the floor. I felt around wildly, squinting into the gray clouds until my fingers hit the side of my pack. I pulled it to me and threw it over my shoulder. My knife was in its sheath next to it. I stuffed it into my back pocket.

There was a crack behind me and the sound of falling wood. I caught sight of the rifle lying next to Jenny’s sketch pad, its barrel pointed toward me. I reached for it but the red-hot metal singed my fingers and I had to yank them back.

There was a growl above me. The roof was coming down. I reached out again and my fingers closed around Jenny’s sketch pad. I scrambled to my feet and ran toward the opening in the wall. The growl above me turned into a long moan. There was a whoosh and the wall behind me collapsed. Then the ceiling started to come down, forcing the smoke and heat down on my shoulders like two giant hands. Burning wood fell at my heels, popping and hissing.

The way before me was closing off. All I could see was gray and livid yellow. I thought of Jenny, lying out there alone, and threw myself into the air.