Forget the Forgotten

Chapter Twelve

The force of the explosion threw Amelia against the rear cinder, where she bruised her left shoulder. Brick fragments shot her in the face. Screams were ringing in her ears.

When she opened her eyes again, she could hardly see anything. The others lay on the floor, only one torch was still burning. A red cloud of dust hung over everything. Amelia coughed and brushed the damp hair from her face. She blinked in the dense dust and discovered a gaping hole in the brick wall. It was big enough for one person to comfortably climb through.

"Are you okay?" Nick asked everyone. He sat up and wiped the dust off of him. Amelia stared at him with her eyes narrowed. Blood dripped down his forehead. "Are you all right?" he asked her.

"I think so," she replied. "What exploded, Nick?"

"I don't know," he muttered. He wiped the blood off his face and flinched when he touched the cut on his forehead. Amelia watched him. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Nick was terrified, you could see it in his eyes. Tom rolled over and scraped off the brick pieces that had landed on him. He opened his mouth to say something and closed it again. Then he shook his head. "Phew!" he pushed out.

"What was that?" said Jacob. He lifted his bent glasses from the floor.

"Nick?", was Veronica's voice heard. She sounded quite dazed.

"I'm here, Ronnie," Nick replied.

She crawled through the rubble towards him and hugged him. He wrapped his arms around her, too. Amelia turned away and reached for the only torch that was still burning.

"I'm really scared," Veronica moaned. "What happened?"

"I don't know," replied Nick, pulling away from her and lit his torch again. It took him three tries to light it again.

"Everyone okay?" he asked again. The others murmured in agreement.

"Let's look for a way out of here as soon as possible," Jacob urged. "That was pretty scary."

"Something blew up this wall," said Tom.

Veronica coughed. "With all that dust, you can't breathe." She blinked several times and Amelia noticed that her eyes were watering. "Why doesn't the dust settle?"

"That's right," Jacob confirmed. "It's so thick I can hardly breathe."

Amelia put her hand over her mouth and held her torch into the reddish cloud. Tiny particles swarmed around the flame like moths. They alternately clumped together and dissipated without sinking to the ground. This stuff didn't look like dust at all.

Somehow it felt heavier than normal air, wetter. And warmer.

Amelia scratched her nose. This weird dust seemed almost alive to her.

"Uh!" said Veronica, disgusted. "What's that smell?"

Now Amelia smelled it, too. It was the sour stench of rotting meat. She held her nose and raised the torch a little higher. The strange particles of dust were a deeper red than the bricks and were now gathering into a dense cloud that wrapped around Amelia and the others.

"What is it?" Tom whispered in a choked voice.

He picked himself up and waved his hand in front of his face. But the strange mist did not lift. On the contrary. It seemed to thicken around Tom and envelop him more and more. Fearfully Tom opened his mouth.

"Something's wrong here," he murmured. "Something's not right at all."

"Hey," Nick said. "What's wrong?"

Tom's body suddenly went rigid. His fingers bent into claws. His eyes came out of their sockets. Amelia gasped in horror.

"Tom..." Nick said. But the scream cut him off.

Tom's scream swelled into a deafening howl as the red mist lifted his body off the ground.

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588 words

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