The Hunt of Altswood High (The Altswood Saga #1)

Chapter 14 - Notoriety

Chapter 14 - Notoriety 

 There was dirt under my fingernails, water streaked across my face, and fire in the distance. 

 "Luca, stay down!" 

 The muted background noise was buzzing clearer by the second, and Dad's voice jolted everything back into its proper volume. With sudden clarity, I stumbled to my feet, shaking out the sore scrapes on my knees and elbows. 

Bottle Island was awash in red light. 

"Get down!" 

I lifted my hands, sticky with mud. I made a move to walk towards the road. 

"Dad, what was that?" 

"Luca! Stay—" 

Before Dad could reprimand me another time, his phone began ringing furiously. He cursed, but answered immediately. 

"What?" he snapped. 

I heard faint murmurs come from the other side of the line. Dad's expression shifted, morphing from disbelief, to outrage, back to disbelief. "Twenty houses? What do you—" 

I couldn't stick around to listen. Making a vague indication of looking around at Dad, I bolted off. 

Twenty houses. Twenty remaining players. I hoped the police force wouldn't make the connection, but it seemed unlikely. 

This game was pushing past the breaking point.

 I turned the corner sharply, barely pausing as I wobbled on gravel. My ankle twisted, and wincing, I tore off the heeled boots I had on and continued running in socks. 

On the next street over, I stopped by a house with smoke rising from the backyard. 

"Annabelle!" I called. I jogged towards the garden. "Annabelle, are you there?" 

Action was followed by consequence. Mystery called for the scapegoat. 

"Here!" I followed the voice towards the back, side-stepping the globs of mud that had formed with the earth being blown in. 

And as I turned around the back of the Martinez house, I had stepped into another world. The debris in the front yard was nothing to the wreckage at the back. It hadn't been their house that had blown up, like I had assumed, but rather the water tank. What was once a structure of unmovable steel was now simply a charred circle in the grass; the flayed base resembled a tree stump, broken and torn down. 

Annabelle stood, staring at the mess, while her mom was pacing the line of their fence, hissing into a phone with unrestrained gestures. 

"I didn't check but I don't think ours got as damaged as this," I said, wide-eyed. 

 "I am so sick of this," Annabelle hissed, folding her arms. She was already wearing purple pajamas, her hair up in a bun. "Is this what they meant? Keep playing or you're next?" Her hands went to her head, scrunching at the roots of her hair. "Am I terrified or enraged? I can't even tell anymore!" 

I looked into the horizon, following the line of smoke, whispering, "I'm pretty terrified." The smoke drifted high, most of it a light gray already fading into the darkness of the night. 

 "Annabelle," I said slowly. "Nothing is on fire." 

Annabelle furrowed her brows at me. "Yes?" 

"Why isn't anything on fire?" I asked, becoming more frantic. My gut was wrenching. 

"Am I missing something?" Annabelle replied, her frown becoming increasingly worried. "Why does something have to be on fire?" 

"The island lit up entirely in red when the explosions happened." I took a step back, thinking. "Blowing up the water tank isn't going to hurt anyone. And why would it? We kept playing." I looked toward the sky again, searching for darker smoke, for fire. "What happened to the people who didn't?"