Out of Place (22 page)
Authors: Shane Scollins
Zack
saw the lighter falling towards the gasoline but it was too late to stop it. It hit the floor with a whoosh and flames started spreading out in all directions.
He ran past the flames to Emily and yanked on
the handcuff, but that pipe wasn’t moving. The heat was growing more intense by the second. Zack felt the sweat start to pour down his face. He looked towards Cheryl’s body, knowing that key was probably in her pocket.
He shielded his face with his hand and tried to step towards her body
, but she fell right in the center of the gas and it was already burning.
“No,
Zack don’t!” Emily yelled.
“I need that key!”
“No, you have to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Please, Zack, you have to go.”
The fire jumped across the floor and latched onto Emily’s sneakers, burning them.
Zack bent over and quickly doused the flames, but they came back, so he yanked the shoes off her feet and flung them across the house, aflame. He didn’t know what to do.
He looked
at her, tears streamed down her face, mixing with the sweat that poured down from the growing heat. “Zack, you have to leave, please. If you love me, you have to leave.”
There was no way he was leaving her, not a chance in hell. “I love you,
and I won’t leave.”
She started crying hysterically as the flames wrapped up the wall around them and split in two directions. “Please, I’m begging you,
Zack, just go.”
He put both hands on either side of her face. “I love you. I couldn’t live one day
knowing I left you here to die. If we have to die, we die together.” Wrapping both arms around her to shield her from the heat, her sobs of anguish pouring into his chest got him crying. He wasn’t crying for himself, he was crying for her pain.
It was so hot
. It was a burning heat, licking at their bodies with vengeance. Zack felt the floor shift, and shudder, it sank under his feet and gave him an idea. “Jump! Start jumping now!”
He started jumping as hard as he could, she
jumped in unison with him, and after a few shots, the floor gave way and they both broke through the boards and plummeted into the unknown below them.
It was a farther fall than
Zack expected, but they dropped into a pile of furniture debris. He tumbled away from her. She screamed in pain, as she was hanging by her wrist, unable to reach the floor because some debris blocked the pipe.
Zack
started clearing the debris, a table, chairs, small bed, away from the pipe and tossing it to the side. He looked up, and the floor was broiling and pieces of wood were cracking. He knew it was only a matter of time before that entire structure came down on them.
He got the debris cleared and Emily was able to drop down to the floor. She was still
latched to the pipe, but the pipe curved towards the wall.
She saw right away that she could follow it all the way across the floor. They came to a bracket that stopped the cuff where two pipes were lashed.
Zack kicked the pipes hard and broke the bracket apart, allowing Emily to continue along the path.
A huge beam came stabbing through the floor
, crashing down right there they’d just been, but they pressed on to the far side of the basement where an old furnace sat. Emily was able to get right up to it, but not free as the pipe led into an old box.
The pipe
s down here were not the heavy cast-iron, they were softer copper, and after a few pulls, the two of them were able to break the pipe out of the box and get Emily free.
The structure above them started to come down, they were running o
ut of time. They ran to the far side, where a bank of narrow windows stretched across the basement. Zack helped Emily up to the ledge and pushed her outside. She rolled out of the way so he could follow. They were outside, but still too close to the house as the building started to tilt towards them.
On
their feet, they started running as the two-story structure fell towards them. Zack could feel the heat closing in on his back. He ran with everything he had and dove, taking Emily down with him and the structure slammed to the ground just inches from his feet.
They got up again and ran another few steps clear as the cracking and roiling structure crashed in a heap down in on itself and all around. They stood there in the tall weeds
, trying to catch their breath.
They faced each other and
shared a long exhale.
It was finally over. They both sat there
in the same bubble of silence they’d been in since they started walking away from that house. Emily was unsure how to feel. Certainly, she was supposed to be happy. She was free. But she’d been here before already and a little part of her didn’t want to believe the moment was real.
She looked over at
Zack, who sat with his hands on the steering wheel like he was driving, but the car wasn’t even running. There were so many words she wanted to say, but looking at her dirty and bloodied feet, the only thing she could think of was, “Can we go buy some new sneakers?”
Zack
tipped his head back and looked over at her. “What color do you like?”
She pursed her lips. “In sneakers? Or just in general?”
He shrugged. “Just in general.”
“I like yellow.”
“And in sneakers?”
“I guess it depends.
I think I want orange ones.”
Zack
nodded and started the car. “Where do you want to go to get sneakers?”
“How about
Florida?”
“No problem.”
They drove for hours in complete silence. Emily had been working on the lock on her handcuff, determined to pick it on her own without help. Zack told her how to do it, but it was so much harder than it looked on television. It was a good challenge, and after a long effort, she finally got it. She sighed in relief, but didn’t make a big deal about it. She just dropped the cuff to the floor and enjoyed the satisfaction.
The highway seemed to lull them both deeper into a trance. Emily broke it when she said, “I’m mad at you.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you could’ve died in there.”
“Sorry, but I wasn’t leaving.”
“You’re stubborn.”
“Yup.”
“And stupid.”
“Yup.”
“And I love you.”
He nodded slowly. “I know.”
“And you love me.”
He nodded again. “I know.”
She smiled and lightened the mood.
“And you want to be with me forever and ever.”
“
Most certainly.”
“So we should like, go to
Florida, buy sneakers, and get married.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
She suddenly felt less playful and swallowed hard. “You want to actually marry me?”
He met her eyes.
“Absolutely.”
She blew an audible breath and
fanned her face with her hands. “Oh, my God, you’re not kidding.”
“Not in the slightest.”
“You’re crazy.”
He twisted his lips. “Yup.”
She looked down at her stomach and felt a pinch of sadness. “No, there’s no way it could ever happen. I can’t marry you.”
He glanced over at her. “Yes
, you can.”
Tears started to bubble up and blur her eyes. “No, I can’t do that to you.”
He sighed and pulled the car off the road into a sandy space near the ocean, shut off the engine, and got out of the car. He walked around the front and leaned on the hood. She sat there looking at the back of his teal T-shirt and hesitated. This was apparently what he was going to do whenever they needed to talk about something.
She finally got out and sat on the hood next to him
looking out at the ocean. “It doesn’t matter to me, Emily,” he said. “And it never will.”
“You say that now. But you don’t know how you’ll feel when the time comes and I can’t give you a family.”
He shook his head. “I don’t love you for what you can give me. I love you for who you are and what we’ve shared. Besides, there are always ways to have a family. Just because you can’t carry a baby doesn’t mean we can’t have a family. There’re surrogates, and there’s always adoption. Or we can just get a bunch of dogs and cats.”
“I feel like damaged goods.”
He put his arm around her. “Emily, you’ll never be damaged goods. And you shouldn’t feel like that. Your sole purpose on this earth is not to carry a baby. You can laugh, love, and live a wonderfully fulfilling life. We’ve both been dragged through hell by none of our own doing, and now it’s our time. It’s our time to enjoy life. And I want to do that with you. Forever.”
He got down on one knee in front of her. “
Emily Bontrager, I have known you for just a breath in time and you’ve stolen my heart like a cat burglar riding on the tip of a lightning bolt. I can’t imagine a single second on this earth without you by my side. I think we both know how precarious life is, and I don’t know what the future will hold, but I know as I go into it, I want to hold you, because you hold my heart.” He took out a ring. “Emily, will you marry me?”
Even though she knew this was coming fo
r the last several minutes, the sight of that ring, the ring of those words, it just seemed so unreal. She nodded, but had trouble opening her mouth. But as he took her hand and slid the ring onto her finger, she finally said, “Yes, I will.”
He stood up and kissed her. She looked down at the ring. “When’d you get this?”
“Oh, I’ve had it for years. I give it to almost every girl with a cute butt. You’re just the first one that’s said yes.”
Emily nodded. “Seems legit.”
“Oh, it’s legit.”
She looked at the water. “We’re crazy, you know that
, right?”
He nodded. “Yup. And I think
, given what we’ve been through, we have every right to be a little crazy.”
“Funny thing is, I don’t feel crazy. I’ve given up Yale, escaped a psychopath
, and gotten engaged to a guy I’ve known for like a month, most of which was spent in a hospital.”
“It’s silly.”
“But that’s the weird thing.” She looked at him, met his eyes. “Silly and crazy has never felt so sane and right.”
“The world works in mysterious ways.”
They kissed.
THE END
Acknowledgements
As always thanks to the incredible team at Limitless Publishing for all their hard work.
Thanks to my friends and family for their continued support. Special thanks to all my friends on social media who continue to humble me with their efforts. And a big huge thanks goes out to my fans who keep allowing me to take them on a journey away from reality for a little while.
About the Author
Shane Scollins is a freelance writer and author. From New Jersey, he now resides in Upstate New York with his wife, Heather.
He has worked as an automotive service manager, a website developer and a computer network engineer.
Primarily a science fiction and paranormal novelist, Shane enjoys taking readers on surprising and unexpected journeys that twist reality. He is currently working on his next book
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