The bedroom door was the first thing to go, flying off its hinges and slamming into my brother’s back before flipping into the air. He roared in pain, my gun falling from his hand and clattering across the floor.
It wasn’t the bang I was expecting.
Like the explosions you see in movies where the roof flies off in a blaze of glory, and there’s this almost satisfying boom that accompanied it.
Then came the heat, it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before and instantly the fire was climbing the walls where we’d just been standing less than half a minute ago. Like a parasite it ate away, swallowing the walls in its blaze.
Romeo and I tried to get as far away from the doorway as possible, my face and my leather feeling like it was fucking melting off my body.
At first, I was thankful thinking that the stone had saved our asses—the bedroom being that one-third of the cabin which was still the original stone they had built the house with. Then I realized that wasn’t the case because we’d put ourselves into a fucking stone oven which was quickly beginning to heat up.
I couldn’t breathe, the strange thick dark smoke was swiftly filling the room with no escape. That bastard sealed everything. He wanted this cabin to be like a fucking coffin, and he was willing to go down with it. That’s the point where you know someone has made too many shitty life choices. He knew if he survived this, Romeo would have already talked, and it would have only taken a few words from the club for not just the criminals, but also law enforcement to know who he was and come after him looking for blood.
He was going to take Romeo out with him.
The bastard wasn’t going down alone.
“We have… to get out,” Romeo yelled, trying to pull himself across the floor to me.
I tried to cover my mouth and take a breath, but even that was already a struggle. The air was too hot, it felt like it was burning my lungs. “Window,” I managed to yell. My brothers were outside. I knew they would be surrounding the place waiting for some kind of sign if they weren’t already trying to get in.
Romeo looked up and spotted the window that had boards over it, and without a second to think, pulled his entire hood over his face and pushed his weak body up into the heat and thick smoke. Reaching out, he grabbed one of the boards, roaring as he fought to pull it from where it had been nailed.
“Fuck,” I choked, leaping to my feet and trying to fight my burning eyes, grabbing the other side of the board and pulling it with him. On the second pull, it came flying off, throwing us both backward and onto the floor. My entire body ached, it burned, and my head told me it was okay.
Just lay down.
Go to sleep.
You don’t have to fight anymore.
I didn’t want to fight anymore. I wanted to lay here and not get up.
“Ham, get the hell up, asshole. I need you!” my little brother screamed in my ear, the panic and desperation in his voice enough to rouse me. I looked up at him, fighting with the next board, the smoke in his hair and his eyes, pleading with me to help him get us the hell out of here. I fought to get to my knees, but my body was weak, it was giving up.
Could I just sit here and watch my brother die?
Hell no.
Every movement was hard, and my lungs were wheezing, fighting for air that wasn’t dirtied with black smoke and carbon dioxide.
“Move back,” I heard a voice scream. It was muted and hard to understand because it was coming from outside. Romeo stumbled back, and suddenly a huge rock smashed through the glass and broke two of the boards that Romeo was trying to pull off.
“Come on,” the voice yelled, much clearer now, and I realized it was Blizzard.
Romeo rushed over to where I was still struggling to get up and grabbed my body, lifting me off the ground. He was weak, and he stumbled, but he got me to the window. My brothers were still smashing away at the glass, trying to clear the shards.
“The blanket,” I coughed, pointing at the lone bed in the room with a single quilt on it which looked like it was original to the house, like the stones that had shielded us from the explosion.
Romeo quickly realized what I was saying and snatched it up from beside him and laid it across the broken glass before passing me through. Three brothers caught me on the other side, my body a mess of limbs as they rushed me into the trees and away from the burning cabin.
Romeo was right behind me, Optimus and Wrench hefting him out and hooking his arms around his shoulders as they rushed him to safety.
It took me a few moments as I was lying in the thick leaves and dirt on the forest floor that I was being pelted by sharp, cold drops of rain. It felt like fucking heaven against my skin, which I was almost sure had melted off my bones.
“Holy shit, are you two lucky,” Skins huffed as he fell to his knees beside me and started pushing and prodding against parts of my body checking my heart rate and my breathing.
“We gotta go,” Blizzard urged, breathing heavily as he crouched next to Romeo. “This thing is on fire, it’s like a damn beacon pointing right at us.”