Fractured (13 page)

Bash got to her feet, unsteady at first, determined to find Lily. At first, she flailed around, unable to find her sister. She was panicking, unable to think straight. Her fingertips touched skin. “Lily!” she cried, utterly relieved. She embraced her, glad that she was alive, oblivious to the fact that Lily was sticky and wet all over her front. Her arm ached. She didn’t even notice.

Her sister was alive. That was all that mattered.

The extreme narrow focus of the moment then widened enough to include the whole group around them. She heard others who had made it out of the dining room screaming, crying for help.

“We need to get out of here,” Darius was telling everyone. “We’re all in danger here.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Lily said calmly.

Seth’s hand fell on Bash’s shoulder, pulling her from her twin. She backed away and felt some of the wet, sticky liquid trying to suction her to her sister. She tried rubbing it off her front, but her hand came back with a warm, thick, wet substance that smelled of copper.
Blood?

Darius was arguing with Lily. “What the fuck do you mean?” he demanded. “We need to get everyone out of here!”

“You can’t,” Lily said, her voice eerily serene.

“We’re getting out, and either you come or stay,” Seth told her.

“You need a doctor,” Scott chimed in uneasily. His voice sounded hollow, older.

“I’ve never been better,” Lily stated, pride edging into her voice.

Bash was about to protest when Seth took her hand and practically dragged her through the hallway. “Darius, Seth, Maria,” he called. “We’re leaving.”

Bash allowed herself to be taken. She was still numb, trying to figure out where the blood was coming from. Was it Lily? Had her sister hit her head too?

Some other footsteps followed them down the hallway. “This way,” a gruff, older man was saying. “There’s a side door right here that leads outside.”

“There’s a fire outside that way,” Lily’s voice rang out, sounding very far away. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“What the fuck do you mean?” the older man asked. “I can see the snow outside. There is no
fire. Help me, wouldya?”

He grunted, and there was a metallic creak as if a heavy door was being opened. Someone else joined in the grunting and work.

Something deep inside Bash stirred. A warning. “Wait,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. This was wrong. She had no idea how she could sense it, just the sense that something was terribly wrong. They
shouldn’t
open that door.

The air pressure in the hallway changed and the older man screamed. Seth grabbed her and pulled her back with a surprised yell as he kicked the door shut. The older man continued to scream. The scent of char-grilled flesh filled Bash’s nose.

“What’s happening?” she cried. “Seth, what’s happening?”

“I told you,” Lily said again, behind all of them. “I told you that you can’t leave. You can never leave again.”

And she laughed.

Somewhere deep inside the lodge, something else stirred. To Bash, it felt like the heart of Great Trails was laughing too.

She screamed.

*****

Two things happened at once. Darius watched the old guy flailing, screaming his last breaths, dying as an inferno engulfed him, burning him alive. It happened so quickly, Darius knew he couldn’t help. The man collapsed in a burning heap, ashes flaking off him. Scott ran to him and tried putting out the fire. Darius knew deep down that there was nothing they could do. People were screaming in horror at the living nightmare.

The other thing that happened was Lily collapsing. The crazy bitch just crumpled to one side, falling like a rag doll to the floor. Darius jogged over to her and rolled her on her back. He had never really liked her, but she was his best friend’s girlfriend’s sister, so he tolerated her. If a fire like that made her lose her mind, well, he was going to make sure that she wasn’t going to drown in her own blood.

No one had actually acknowledged it yet, but Lily was bleeding profusely from her nose. As she had been walking around, practically taunting them about the situation, her entire front was drenched in blood. It didn’t seem to be stopping. Even now, as he held her up on her side, her blood spilled out in a huge pool underneath her.

Bash was still screaming. Maria yelled at her to shut up in a hysterical voice and then promptly started crying again for Rick.

“What’re we supposed to do, man?” Scott was sobbing and grabbing at his hair with his one hand. He was obviously freaked out. “What’re we gonna do?”

Darius blocked out all of the questions from his mind.
One thing at a time
, he reminded himself. There was a fire in the dining room. Apparently there was one outside this door. All the survivors were in the hallway of the lodge between the restaurant and the kitchen, unsure of where to go. Rick was dead, his neck broken from what must have been an impact with the wall. Maria was in hysterics, and Lily was unconscious.

One thing at a time
.

Bash called out for her sister, absolutely torn apart over her twin’s strange behavior.

“Seth,” he said, “Lily’s fainted. She’s unconscious.”

His friend appeared next to him, checking for Lily’s pulse. His hand went to her wrist, then to her neck. “She’s alive,” he muttered. “Barely.”

“What
was
that?” Darius asked. “Her...
laughing
and shit?”

“I don’t know.” Seth’s face was grim. “I don’t know. But we need to get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m
not
trying those doors again,” Darius said. The way that man had opened the door and burst into flames...it was like it was the exact opposite of a back draft. Like there was a fire outside, even though there wasn’t. He looked through the windows again, at the pristine night outside. Where had the fire come from?

“I’m not either,” Seth said. He sounded tired, shaken. “We’ll try another door. Help me.”

He gingerly picked Lily up. She was limp in his arms, like dead weight. Darius would have preferred leaving the crazy bitch where she was, but Bash’s distress motivated him to help. He didn’t like Lily. He liked Bash and hated to see her upset.

“I’ve got Lily,” he said. “You take care of Bash.” Seth gulped, and then grabbed Bash’s hand. Darius wasn’t even sure if she noticed. “Scott, you have Maria?” he asked. The boy nodded and gently put his good arm around Maria’s shoulders. The woman was completely hysterical, which wasn’t helping things.

Now to get their asses out of there. It wasn’t just their asses either; Darius looked around and saw that there was a group of nearly twenty people huddled around, including himself. Was this it?
Was this everyone who survived? The restaurant had been packed.

He went through a mental list of all the places in the lodge where they could get out. Obviously, if the side door had a fire like that, they’d have to get out another way.

It didn’t make sense—outside the window, it looked like a pristine winter night. He couldn’t understand why it had back drafted like that. Or whatever had happened.

The smoke started filling up the hallway. They had to move now or be stuck.

The back,
he decided.
We’ll go out through the back
. As he looked around, he could see that the hallway opened up to the break room, which
had
to have another outside door. If they couldn’t go out through that door, between the kitchens and the restaurant, they were trapped.

He gritted his teeth and made his way through the crowd, carrying Lily’s body. She flopped around like wet leather in his arms and felt just as slippery too. So much blood and so much death. He had to clear his mind, get everything out before he lost it. The people dying in the dining room, the man burning alive, Lily’s insane laugh.

“Darius...” Bash’s voice trailed off into uncertainty. He ignored her, pushing ahead, moving to the back of the lodge from the great hall. He couldn’t deal with anyone right then.

It wasn’t that far to the other side door,
away
from the horrors he had witnessed. It couldn’t be like that on the other side. If it was, they were trapped without anything logical holding them there. Just fear and fire.

He pushed open the double doors to the break room for the restaurant. It was a small, rectangular room, nothing too big with a table off to one side and some lockers on the far wall. A door that led outside to an area where the wait staff could have their cigarette breaks.

He could almost sense the wall of fire following the small crowd, as if it was herding them like cattle into the small room.

They were going to get out. Through this door, they were going to survive.

At first, he tried the knob, but Lily’s deadweight made it nearly impossible to grasp it effectively, and he nearly dropped her. He frowned, not letting his one objective be swayed. “Scott,” he said. He nodded to the woman in his arms and didn’t wait for Scott to have a secure grip on her before dropping her completely.

“Hey...!” Scott cried at how abruptly Darius had dumped Lily into his arms. His shout ended in a cry of pain when Lily’s full deadweight hit his unprepared bad arm. “FUCK!”

As if in a dream, Darius ignored him and turned back to the door. He closed his hands around the knob. Outside. That was all he wanted. He just wanted to get out of this shithole and away from all this madness.

“Darius, wait!”

Bash’s voice seemed so far away. Like she was on a different world. Or in a different dimension.

How weird would that be?
he wondered.

He turned the doorknob.

“Darius,” Bash said again, desperately. “Darius, I have a bad feeling about this.”

His hand made the complete turn and he pushed the door open to a blinding white light. No, it wasn’t white. It was blue. And red. And orange. And yellow. All the colors of pain. His skin peeled back, burning in agony for a split second before his nerves were turned to ash. By the time he knew what was happening, it was too late. The fire engulfed him instantly. In the doorway of the inferno outside, he turned back to his friends. He tried smiling at the sheer absurdity of the whole thing, and when he did, his lips burned off.

There was nothing left.

There was only one thing he could do at that point.

He opened his mouth but died before he could scream.

*****

“
Darius!”
Seth yelled at the top of his lungs. It was too late. Bash knew that Darius was dead within seconds of him opening the door. Luckily, the weight of the door closed, sealing them back inside and away from the flames.

Someone was making a screeching noise and when she finally managed to take a shuddering breath, she realized she was the one who was doing it.

People were screaming all around her. Maria was still wailing at the top of her lungs.

“What the fuck, man?” Scott was crying, his voice bordering on hysterics. “What the fuck is happening?”

“
Darius!”
Seth was still yelling.

The acrid smell of burning flesh filled the air, filling Bash’s nostrils with a stench that couldn’t be washed away. It was impossible for someone to be burned so completely so quickly, right?

She wasn’t sure. The whole thing felt unnatural and terrible. She felt sick. In fact...

She leaned over to the side and emptied her chicken Caesar salad onto the floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Seth!” she cried. “Seth, where are you?”

Bash waited through a few awful moments of no answer. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, throbbing.
What happened to him? Where is he?
She ached for Darius. In tough situations, he made a good rock for Seth to rely on, to get them through.

Now he was dead.

Her eyes stung, not only from the smoke but from her tears.

Where was Seth?

“Seth!” she screamed again, wanting to feel his arms around her, to tell her that everything would be fine. She couldn’t hear him above the din. She felt alone, lost. The world didn’t make sense anymore. It was all chaos, and she was drowning in it. No one could help her, and no one could lead her through this mess.

Bash felt well and truly alone. A strangled cry cut through her throat. She reached out blindly, and then felt around, trying to get her bearings. The second her fingertips touched cold, clammy flesh, she knew exactly who it was through the shock that wracked her.

“Lily?” she asked, her voice wavering as she felt up her arm and forehead. Her sister was unconscious, comatose even, and she lay on the ground. “
Lily!”

A flourish of colors—she must have imagined it—passed across her vision as she checked Lily’s face for any sign of life. It was the face of that old woman once again, the one she’d seen while she was skiing, silhouetted against the dark of the room. She reached out, seeing her own hands touch the face where Lily’s face should have been.