Escape From Norriswood

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Tara was in a haze. The smoke had sifted silently through the forest, and the gaps between trees, between branches were filled with the grey, billowing smoke.

She coughed and thought she saw the squirrels running in the opposite direction to her, thin brown bodies leaping from one branch to another. She thought she heard the cackle of birds as they erupted into clear sky overhead.

Hardy's frame ahead of her waned into and out of view. One moment, she could see her shirt, the colour of the backs of her arms as she darted forward, and then in another moment she was gone, lost in the cloud.

Tara ducked under a fallen log, and ran through the moss, the damp earth. She ran into something hard and heard Hardy's yell as she fell backwards. Sat up, saw that Hardy had also been knocked over, and then moved over to help her up. The smoke was everywhere now, in her eyes, clawing at the tissue of her lungs from the inside out, polluting it.

Tara's mouth emitted barks, and she barked and barked, and Hardy's hand was on her back, and she stayed stooped down like that for a few moments, until she realized that Hardy herself wasn't saying anything.

She looked up: to the right, a circular clearing, the brush pushed back, and cut along its edges. A cabin, its roof tin, the sides of it made of 2 x 4 and tarp sat some ways off at he edge of the clearing, a few meters back from where it stood.

When she saw it, she realized Hardy was also seeing it, and for a second she felt Hardy's hand in hers. Was she seeing this great log struck into the ground, Terry hung up in the middle of it, flame crawling up the trunk towards him, through her own eyes? Or did she see it through Hardy's eyes? Or both?

She felt the pressure in her left hand and realized that Hardy was squeezing on it. She ran forward.

As she got to the great log, Tara saw that the flames rose up higher than she had thought. The flame rose up over her head, and Terry's body went up about 20 feet in the air, before his dirt-covered feet, ankles, the wiry black hairs on the front part of his legs could be seen.

Tara's jaw hung lax. She rotated, looking around for Hardy, and saw that outside the clearing, outside where they stood, the rest of the wood was setting itself on fire. Evergreens tormented into red and orange flame, the heat coming off the trees from where they stood, and all the time, the smoke constant, all around them.

Hardy was beside her then. "Come one, we need to get something to get him down," she said, her voice cutting through the sizzle of the dry leaves being taken by flame.

Tara's gaze found the cabin. "There," she said, and rushed around the log, and forward.

She reached the door and felt her lungs clog with smoke, dried out and irritated. She weeped, coughed, tried the door. It was locked.

"Watch out," Hardy said, and then she charged the door with her shoulder. A sharp crack rose from the wood, and the door turned inwards.

She charged it again, and this time there was a loud clack, as the door smacked against the frame. Hardy took a step backwards, but Tara held out her hand.

Tara stepped away from the door with her left foot, and then rose her right knee up a few inches, turned her hips over, and brought her right foot out in a jab, striking the middle of the door. The wood cracked, caved in. Tara spun around so that now she stood on her right foot, and popped off the same movements with her left leg, but this time she held her leg in the air and struck the wood a second, third time.