Thanks for the reviews! This story is finished other than a few last edits on the later chapters (and it's a short one, only 11 chapters), so it'll be coming two or three chapters a day until it's all up. Enjoy!
Chapter 6
Okay, so apparently it wasn't actually the entire world that exploded. But when it's all quiet and you're jumpy and anxious, pretty much any loud noise that shakes the ground and sends things flying is going to make you think that the earth just got cut in half by a massive meteor.
Somehow, Ponyboy and I were on the ground, flat on our stomachs. My arms were crunched against my chest, hands by my chin, and my skirt was – I realized in horror – flipped up over my back. I couldn't even remember falling.
And then, for a second, I thought some magical force had been unleashed that was making the Earth push me away from itself. Then I realized Ponyboy was pulling me to my feet by my jacket.
"Come on," he shouted, "before the-"
And again, another explosion, this one right behind us. We stumbled forward, but had enough momentum to keep running.
My eyes burned and watered from the smoke, so when Ponyboy wrapped his hand around mine, I closed my eyes and let him drag me along. Around us, the heat and noise of the fire closed in.
"Hey," Ponyboy shouted, so I squinted my eyes open just enough to see that he was calling to a man up ahead of us. To our left and behind us were burning rubble and train parts, to the right was the side of a warehouse, and in front of us, clear air and the shadowy figure of the man Ponyboy had called to.
"What's he doing?" I said, because the man had whipped around to face us and was pulling something out from under his shirt.
Ponyboy stopped short, yanking me backwards when I didn't match his change in momentum. "Shoot," he said, and just as he pulled me toward the warehouse, that's exactly what the man did.
"Was that a gun?" I was indignant. Was some random stranger trying to murder me in my own story? "Did he just shoot at us?"
"In here," Ponyboy said, blatantly ignoring my rhetorical question.
The warehouse we bolted into was lit only by the red glow of the exit sign above our heads, but the smoke hadn't seeped into it yet. Ponyboy pulled on the door behind us and ran frantic hands around the edges. "No lock," he reported.
My heart pounded a rapid status report that it repeated over and over: We're screwed. We're screwed. We'rescrewed we'rescrewed we'rescrewed. "There's nowhere to go," I whispered.
As we stumbled through the warehouse, my eyes adjusted enough to keep me from colliding with the randomly placed crates and boxes. Somewhere behind us, a momentary increase in light and the whoosh of a pressure change told us the man with the gun had come through the door.
Sure enough, he announced his presence. "Come on out now, kids, I ain't gonna hurt ya'. Ain't noplace to go in here anyhow."
Yeah, okay.
The two of us ducked behind crates and slid alongside boxes in a constant dance of avoidance. The shooter made it easy at first as he tried to coerce us out of hiding. Within moments, though, he got smart and shut his mouth. I shadowed Ponyboy's silhouette like a calf teetering behind its mom.
After a silent minute of creeping around, Ponyboy held up his hand, and we stopped. I got the idea pretty quick that he had lost track of where the guy was. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when I realized he could be right around the next corner. I imagined what it might feel like to have a bullet rip through my chest. Did it hurt right before you died? Did anybody really ever die instantly?
It was just when Ponyboy waved a hand to me to follow him again that I noticed the stairs up ahead, right in the middle of one of the long walls. There was a huge metal door just to the right of the stairs.
I grabbed Ponyboy's hand and pointed when he looked at me.
"He'll see us if we go up," he whispered.
I shook my head. "The map," I whispered back. "We're in the map."
An instant later, it must have clicked, because Ponyboy's face registered sudden understanding.
"The steps," I said. "From the map." I was talking about the other steps - the ones that disappeared through a square somewhere to our left. It seemed like the only things to our left, though, were boxes and crates.
Ponyboy motioned with his head for me to follow him, as if there was even the vaguest possibility that I would decide to wander off on my own.
It seemed like we were heading in the general direction of where the second stairway should be, but all we kept finding around every corner were more boxes and crates. I was just about to comment that maybe we were going the wrong way when Ponyboy froze in that way that screams imminent danger.
And then, I saw - the silhouette of a man was directly ahead of us, just across the aisle we'd been creeping through.
It took a slight wave of dizziness for me to realize that I was holding my breath, and then to realize that the guy wasn't facing us. He was slinking along, just like we had been, in the same direction as us, and it didn't look like he had any idea we were right behind him.
With tremendous effort, I fought down the overwhelming urge to turn around and run the other way. Instead, I followed in Ponyboy's footsteps, almost literally, as he crept along like a cat tiptoeing up to a mouse. The only sounds were the muffled roar of the burning trains outside, and the sirens in the distance.
As soon as we got to the corner, we both took a big step to get out of view of the guy. Only thing was, if we started off in another direction, we would lose track of him again. Next time, we might not be so lucky. And if we came face-to-face with him . . . well, I knew a little something about guns from one of my uncles, and at close range, with me right behind Ponyboy, the guy wouldn't even have to waste more than one bullet on us.
Ponyboy must have had the same thought, because instead of putting distance between us and Gun Man, he waited until the guy had turned the corner, then moved along parallel to the aisle the guy was in.
After only a few minutes of this reverse bear hunt, a looming crate had me stopping and staring upward. I reached out and took hold of Ponyboy's arm.
When he turned, I pointed, wrapped my hand around the back of his neck for leverage, and leaned in so close to his ear, I could smell his shampoo through the Pomade. "This crate," I said in a breeze of a whisper, "doesn't look normal." It was too big, too well constructed, too . . . permanent looking, to just be a crate.
After a quick survey of the crate, Ponyboy nodded and started running his hands around the edges. He gestured me over and breathed into my ear, "Maybe there's a door."
So he was thinking the same thing I was - this could be where the other staircase was.
The two of us were so intent on exploring the crevices of the wooden structure, we almost didn't notice the approaching footsteps. From both sides of the crate. Ponyboy and I gave each other the same startled look when we apparently hit the same conclusion at the same time - Gun Man had a partner.
As our frantic fingers flew over the surface of the crate, I started shaking so hard my teeth chattered. My breath came in gasps that I was sure were echoing through the whole warehouse. Ponyboy, while working just as desperately as I was, managed to keep his hands steady and his movements precise.
An instant later, just before the footsteps made it to our aisle, part of the crate's side pivoted from its center like one of those bookcases in movies about haunted houses. Without a second thought, I ducked into the opening right behind Ponyboy, and the wall behind us closed.
I used to think I knew what the term pitch black meant, but until that moment, I guess I didn't. The darkness was so deep, it was like gazing with useless eyes into the starless end of the universe.
"I'll," - was the only thing Ponyboy said before there was a scraping sound, and I felt an abrupt and eerie sense of emptiness in front of me. I swiped out with my arm (which, I realized, would have given Ponyboy a good bruise on the ribs if he had actually still been there), but he was gone.
"Po-," was the only thing I managed to say as I slid my left foot forward, and the world disappeared from beneath me.