Dead Connections

Chapter 23 - My murderer is...

“Zack!” I gasped, noticing that the fire was already burning his 2nd dimension body. I dove in between the flames and grabbed Zack by the arms, using all my strength to haul him off the floor and put out the flames that were growing on the edge of his trousers. Zack was surprisingly heavy, and I couldn’t carry him up all those stairs, especially since the smoke in my lungs was making me so weak.

“Ember! Drew!” I called out as loud as I could. The sound came out no louder than a tiny croak, and it felt like the skin in my throat had been torn away. I coughed, drowning in the smoke. The fire nipped at my ankles and I tried to call out again. I was louder the second time but yet I still got no answers. I began to panic. What had happened to them as well? What if I went upstairs to find their burning bodies led on the floor, already stone dead?

I shook the thought out of my head, my heart beating so fast that I was scared I was going to have some kind of heart attack. I had to focus. My brother wasn’t going to last long in this world if I didn’t save him. I wasn’t strong, but I managed to lift him up properly, able to move him out of the way of the fire that was now consuming the whole of the room.

Cringing each time his shin hit the corners of the stairs with tremendous force, I dragged him up it one step at a time. The heat hit me like a brick wall when I managed to actually reach the top of the stairs. Fire curled around the doorframe, and I ducked out of the way.

In just those couple of minutes that I had been down in the basement the fire up here had got even worse. Possibly ten times as bad.

I squinted to look through the fumes but couldn’t see any signs of movement anywhere that I looked. Where were Drew and Ember?

I couldn’t even breathe now. Not properly anyway. I was wheezing, and coughing and gagging on the smoke every time I inhaled.

“Ember? Drew? Where are you?” I called out, dropping Zack by accident. His head hit the floor and I flinched at the thump sound it made.

“Sorry,” I muttered, also dropping to my knees. The air was no better down here but I could see better down here. The blare of the fire didn’t quite reach us from where we were perched and I could see a body lying about 20 feet away.

“Ember!” I gasped, immediately jumping to me feet. I didn’t know what to do. I glanced from Ember to Zack. If I dragged Zack along with me then it would take longer to get to Ember which could be a matter of life and death and if I left Zack he might die. I had to make a split second decision.

Biting down on my lip, I lurched forward towards Ember, leaving Zack where he was on the ground. He had a few minutes before the fire actually reached him and I feared Ember didn’t have quite that long.

Ember was led scrawled out on the floor with one arm about her head, blackened by the smoke. Her eyes was shut but her chest rose and flattened very slightly every few seconds, signalling that she was still just about alive.

I shook her by the shoulders, trying to wake her up but she didn’t respond.

“Ember?” I shouted in her ear, anxious and frightened. “Come on, wake up for god’s sake. I can’t do this alone.”

When she didn’t reply I knew I would have to at least try so I moved Ember over to Zacks side so they were in what I believed was the safest place to be. The next thing I had to do was find Drew. I wished so much that he could talk at that moment because he’d be able to shout back to me when I called for him, but of course he couldn’t, and we could thank Unseen for that. I still called out anyway, hoping that he would find his way to me to show me that he was ok.

“Drew? Drew? Are you still ok? Where are you?” I called out. I could hear nothing over the roar of the spreading fire, and as I ventures further into the flames in the hall, I feared for Ember and Zack’s lives. Had the flames go them yet. I tried not to think about it. I had to find Drew before I went back to them.