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🔵 Graham’s Resolution, Book 1 - The China Pandemic
🔵 Surrender the Sun, Book 1 - Bishop’s Honor
🔵 Dawn of Deception, Book 1 - Unbound
🔵 Remember the Ruin, Book 1 - Rebel Blaze
🔵 Watch the Wreckage, Book 1 - The Drone Keeper
🔵 Times of Trouble, Book 1 - In the Meantime
🔵 House of Light, Book 1 - See the Light
🔵 Motel at the End of the World, Book 1 - The Coffee Killer
🔵 Look Good, Book 1 - Look Good
🔵 Disasters in a Jar, Book 1 - John’s New Place
Chapter 7
The orange bloomed at our feet, and then suddenly, I’m falling backward through the wall I thought was there. The girl too. Only it wasn't a wall. I realized soon after that it was a door that someone thought to open. Liquid fire. Fire everywhere and all at once. The girl sitting on my chest is suddenly lifted as my pant leg catches, and I become the girl screaming from the fluid flame. I'm pulled away, and the same man from before, my partner in crime, is now stomping on my foot. But there is no time for whining as the bloom flames, and I am up and running as others shout. The girl is holding my bag now and yanking on my arm. She is loyal, it seems, even in the face of death. I'm grateful because I'm also hobbling along. Then as my old partner waves us to follow, she jerks her head and pulls me in the opposite direction. I know what she's doing. In this short time, we've made our own rules, our own alliances, she, and I.
As I stare after our liberator, I see too, he's joining a crowd, and I agree with the girl. We mustn't get caught with numbers. She and I are the right size for a solo mission as long as I don't blow it with my devices.
My phone?
I begin beating my chest, trying to find the solid, and then realize, I never let her go. She's still in my hand, and luckily, my unconscious mind turned off the damned ringer. I slid that troublemaker into my pocket where it will remain until I have time to save my own life… and the girl's who's become my caretaker.
I owe her.
I nearly got her burnt to a crisp.
And still she's loyal to a man with no shoes, no socks, and singed toes.
"This way," she whispers as I check back over the darkening field and realize some of the fires in the distance are beginning to die out. The light they've created is dimming along with the lives it's taken. In a few hours, what I imagine will remain are charred bodies and the mother of all questions as to what prompted their demise. But it's too early for that now…
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