Lit Page 14

  What had he been thinking? Why had he gone on what was increasingly a plain suicide mission? Why had he told Victor to take Sonya?

  It was getting warmer in the bathroom. There was more smoke, he was certain. The crack and roar of the flames on the other side of the wall were louder.

  He imagined how angry Keri would be when Victor appeared without him. She’d lose it. She’d have every right to. All these selfless acts he’d undertaken in these last minutes were, in truth, selfish. He hadn’t thought of her or of his family back home in Houston. He’d neglected to think of all the future clients he’d never be able to counsel to help live healthy lives. He was going to die in a bathtub with an unconscious old man he’d never met lying on top of him.

  He thought of all the interviews he’d seen on television with people who’d done heroic things. None of them considered themselves heroes. All of them claimed they’d done what anyone else would do when put in the same circumstances. He’d long questioned whether that was true. Would anyone dive into a roiling ocean to save a drowning man? Would anyone pull over to the side of the road to rescue someone trapped in an automobile accident? Would anyone thwart a would-be robbery by attacking an armed thug? Would anybody run into a burning building to save someone trapped inside?

  Clearly, as he’d run up on the burning houses on this street, not everybody would do those things. He pictured the faces of the men and women standing in the street doing nothing, taking videos and pictures with their cell phones, calling after him as he ran around the side of the house and into the smoke, chastising his choice to act.

  For a split second he thought about leaving Stanley in the tub. Nobody would blame him except Sonya. Getting the man out of the house was going to be impossible. The idea that Victor would even make it back to the bathroom was improbable.

  Stanley let out an audible sigh and then a groan. Unsure what to do and worried the elderly man might freak out if he came to completely, Dub whispered into the man’s ear.

  “Shhhh,” he cautioned. “It’s okay. I’m here with you, Stanley.”

  The man groaned again and then coughed, wheezing on his exhale. His body shivered, sending a ripple through the water. Dub continued to speak softly to him, trying to keep him calm should he awake as much as he was trying to keep his own wits about him.

  Minutes passed and then, finally, from outside the bathroom, Dub heard a thump that made him believe Victor was coming back for him. There was coughing coming from the bedroom. Somebody was there.

  “We’re still here!” he called out. “We’re still in the tub!”

  Another round of coughing and then a figure manifested next to the tub. It was Victor. He was on his knees. They were going to survive.

  “C’mon,” he said, his voice weak, “we gotta go.”

  He leaned over the tub and helped Dub lift Stanley from the water. They each took one arm and draped it over their respective shoulders. Climbing to their feet, they moved through the narrow galley in the bathroom, bumping into the walls, tripping over themselves until they found themselves in the bedroom.

  Dub was at once hit with a flash of dry heat, as if he’d opened a hot oven with his face too close to the coils. To his right, and only feet from him, flames ate through the door. They climbed the walls, defying gravity, spreading outward like molten ivy.

  Sizzling air filled his nose and then his lungs when he inhaled. His throat was tighter with every step. Each movement now hurt. The air in his lungs burned.

  Stanley’s weight was heavier with every difficult step. It was a short distance from the bathroom to the rear window. Shouldn’t they be there? Where were they? Was that the window ahead of them?

  Another blast of heat burned the side of his face, and he instinctively moved left, away from the source. That forced Victor into the foot of the bed. They lost their balance and tumbled forward in the dim gray light. Dub landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle and knee when Stanley landed on top of him.

  “You okay?” Victor yelled above the din of the fire. “Can you get up?”

  “Yes,” Dub said.

  Or he thought he said it. He tried to say it. He wanted to say it. Nothing came out. And he wasn’t okay.

  He couldn’t breathe. Suddenly he realized he hadn’t taken a breath in several seconds. His pulse was throbbing against his chest and neck. He tried sucking in a breath but couldn’t. His throat was closed. It was swollen and damaged from the superheated air of the fire.

  His vision blurred, and he opened his mouth like a fish out of water. Nothing came in or out. So much smoke. Too much heat.

  Panic flooded his body, and he struggled, flailing, to free himself from underneath Stanley’s body. He couldn’t. Even as Victor managed to pull the again unconscious man from atop his legs, Dub was powerless to help himself. As the lack of oxygen made his head tingle and his extremities twitch, there was a familiar touch on his body. It was feminine. It was strong. It was Keri.

  ***

  She couldn’t stand it any longer, not when the smoke pouring through the one-story house turned from gray to black, not when Victor had come out without Dub and then gone back for him. Keri had to act.

  While residents worked to comfort Sonya and pull her free of the smoke, Keri ran towards the house. She followed the same path Victor had taken twice, diving into the opaque haze that shrouded everything more than two feet in front of her. She felt her way past the open gate and into the backyard. She fought past the sting in her eyes to find the open window at the back of the house. Victor wasn’t anywhere. He must have already climbed inside.

  Twenty feet to her left, the back of the house was on fire. It was a wall of flames shooting straight up into the air and threatening the large jacaranda tree whose canopy arched over the roof.

  The window in front of her was chest high. Keri wiped the moisture from her eyes and pressed her palms flat against the sill, pulling herself up and onto the open ledge. She squinted into the darkness, trying to make out shapes or forms. All she could see were the spreading stalks of flames along the wall.

  She held herself there for a moment, debating whether or not she should drop into the burning house, when she heard a noise straight ahead of her. Through the smoke she could make out the vague outline of three figures. As soon as she made them out, they collapsed in front of her.

  She scrambled through the window, almost falling onto her face inside the house. She caught herself, jamming her right shoulder into the hardwood floors with a grunt. She steadied herself and rolled onto her knees.

  There were voices. Or a single voice. It was Victor. He was asking Dub questions. Dub wasn’t answering. Where was he? Where did he go?

  Then she found him on the floor in front of her. The right side of his face was red and blistered. It was obvious even in the dim, smoky light that filtered into the room from the window. His right eye was swollen, the collar of his shirt was stuck to his neck. None of that frightened her as much, though, as the look in his open eye and the static gape of his mouth.

  His tongue was waggling in and out. His left eye rolled back into his head. He wasn’t breathing. Dub was dying.

  With strength she didn’t know she had, and a gargantuan surge of adrenaline she’d never felt before, Keri lifted him from the floor and dragged his limp, heavy body to the window. She yelled at Victor to help her. He crawled toward her, and they heaved Dub half through the window. Keri quickly climbed around him and dropped to the ground outside. The rush of hormones still raging through her, she pulled Dub from the window, dragging him far from the house, and laid him on his back near the fence line with the neighboring home directly behind the one she’d just escaped.

  Her own throat now swollen with emotion, she tried giving him air, performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It wasn’t doing any good. It was like blowing air into a thin soda straw. Virtually nothing was getting into his lungs. There was so much resistance. She paused, hovering over his wounded body. Her hands trembled, her pulse ra
ced. She could feel the heat emanating from his wounded face without touching it. She was afraid to touch the swelling blisters. She’d carefully tilted back his head and lifted his jaw. There was thick black soot around his mouth and underneath his nostrils, and the odor coming from the burned flesh and singed hair made her gag. He was missing his right eyebrow. If she didn’t know it was Dub, she was certain she wouldn’t have recognized him.

  She ripped open his shirt, the collar tearing away burned layers of skin. Bile stung the back of her throat. She tried to keep calm. She placed her head to his chest and listened for a heartbeat. It was weak, but it was there. Incredibly, it was there.

  She tried mouth-to-mouth again. It was useless. Dub’s body seized and then tensed. Keri backed away, the scope of what was happening beginning to paralyze her. Dub blurred behind the tears spilling down her cheeks. He was dying, and she couldn’t help him.

  The world slowed around her. The sounds of the fire, the smells of the smoke and of Dub’s burns dissolved into a mindless haze. None of this seemed real.

  She’d woken up that morning to an emoji-laced text from Dub inviting her to join him for breakfast before catching an Uber to Santa Monica. It had been a perfect day. The Uber was on time, the driver didn’t try to engage them, and the weather was beautiful when they’d arrived at the pier.

  They’d walked around in the healthy breeze. She’d relished the feel of his strong hand holding hers, the clean, briny scent of the air. He’d looked so good today, his blond hair stylishly unkempt and his bright blue eyes intensely fixed on hers whenever she spoke to him.

  She’d confided in him that she was rethinking her major. She wasn’t so sure biology was the right path for her. South campus majors were typically more challenging than north campus. They were the science and math kids. Although she enjoyed both, she was competing with human calculators who were blessed with photographic memories. In the courses where the grades were curved based on class performance, she had not fared well.

  Keri had envied Dub’s certainty, his confidence. He got to UCLA knowing he’d be a psychology major, and he’d dived in head first. He was in clubs, he participated in studies, he relished every major-related class. Granted, his need to explore other people’s minds and issues was the direct result of his own upbringing, his own issues.

  She’d hesitated before telling him, fearful that he wouldn’t understand her indecision. He’d stood across from her, leaning against the pier railing. He didn’t try to fix anything or tell her she was rash. He listened. He was better at that than anyone she’d ever met. Her sisters certainly never listened. Her parents tried but were too consumed with the daily noise of life to hear her above the cacophony of distractions and responsibilities. Dub understood her. He truly, fully got her.

  And they shared so much in common. They both loved binge-watching the latest Netflix series or spending time wandering the art-clad halls of museums and exhibit halls. He loved sushi as much as she did; she enjoyed onion rings as much as him. Hers were always doused in ketchup; he liked his dry. She loved watching him play basketball. He was graceful and powerful all at once. She relished those moments when she’d watch him play, and after he’d stroke a three or block a shot, he’d search for her as he ran up the court and lock eyes with her. It was as though they were the only ones in the gym. Her heart fluttered thinking about it.

  Much of her life she’d wondered what form her Prince Charming would take. She’d found him in Dub.

  Sure, he could be an ass like any guy. He had his selfish moments where he’d demand a horror flick over a rom-com or poke instead of pizza. Ultimately, though, he was kindhearted, sensitive, and brave. Those wonderful attributes that made Dub who he was were what made her fall in love with him. It was those same things that led to him lying burned and nearly dead on the ground in front of her.

  She’d resolved to try resuscitating him once more when someone grabbed her shoulder. A firefighter was staring down at her. He was saying something she didn’t comprehend. A second firefighter helped her to her feet and moved her back from Dub. Then the two of them went to work on him, trying to save him.

  In shock, Keri stumbled backward a couple of steps and dropped to her knees again. She grabbed fistfuls of thick green grass and tugged the clumps free of the ground, ripping them at the roots. She surveyed the scene unfolding around her, the world still in slow motion, and saw Victor standing in the middle of the yard, his hands on his knees. Two more firefighters were huddled over an elderly man who was on his back.

  Behind them the house burned. Flames now reached through the open window at the back of the house. They consumed the exterior, having broken through a sliding glass door that now contained no glass at all. The roof was virtually invisible behind the monstrous curtain of smoke that rose higher and higher.

  Keri inhaled deeply. It was a ragged, phlegm-laced breath; it was too deep. Smoke filled her nostrils and mouth, and she coughed it out.

  Snot drained from her nose, and drool stuck to her chin. She coughed again. Her eyes burned from the smoke and the tears that wouldn’t stop. Her pulse pounded in her chest. Her head throbbed. She was cold. The world was distant, as if she were observing everything from above. Behind her she heard the firefighters using a word she didn’t understand fully despite her major: escharotomy. What was that? It didn’t sound good.

  She searched her mind. The suffix otomy meant “to cut into.” What were they cutting into?

  She saw them. There was no cutting. They were working to intubate Dub, to open his airway. They were failing. She could see it in their faces. Dub’s legs were pale, almost translucent. And they were still. So still. It was the last thing Keri consciously processed before the world went black.

  CHAPTER 15

  Friday, October 17, 2025

  Westwood, California

  “We’re trapped,” said Barker. “We can’t go this way. We can’t head back to the house. We need to split the difference and head across campus.”

  He stood in the middle of the street across from an elementary school five blocks from campus. His shoulders were already sore from carrying Becca’s pack on his shoulders. All the sorority sisters had brought large backpacks filled with clothing, makeup, toiletries, and other “essentials.” They also carried water bottles of various sizes, and most of them held a useless brick of a cell phone in one hand. They all wore surgical masks over their faces.

  Barker had volunteered to be Becca’s pack mule. His neck and lower back were cursing him for it now. One thing Westwood was not—flat, and they’d traversed the hills along the eastern edge of campus, venturing back into Holmby and the steep neighborhoods that abutted the Wilshire corridor.

  He was the lead mouse in a maze, and none of the paths led to the cheese. Zagrecki, the house mother, was actually the one in the lead. She was making the decisions about where and how to evacuate. She carried a special pack that contained first aid supplies, an air horn, flares, and additional masks.

  “I’m not sure heading through the heart of campus is going to help us,” she said. “That’s as dangerous as any of the other routes we’ve tried.”

  There were forty coeds, most of them sophomores, awaiting instructions. Make that thirty-nine.

  Gem lowered her mask, cupping it at her chin, and directed her thoughts at Zagrecki. “Believe it or not, I agree with Sparky here. We should try to make it to the Hill.”

  “It’s Barker,” he said flatly.

  Zagrecki shrugged her pack higher on her shoulders and eyed Gem and then Barker. “When you crossed campus before,” she said, “what was it like, Barker? Any trouble spots?”

  “It was a couple of hours ago, easy,” he replied. “Things have changed since then. It was pretty smoky, no flames that I could see. Nothing on campus was burning at the time. I couldn’t say what it’s like now.”

  The house mother sighed and scanned the horizon. There was smoke everywhere. It was impossible for her to know where the hotspots were.
The only way to see the active fires through the veil of smoke that blocked out the sun and cast a gray pall over everything was to be too close to the flames. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, Barker noticing for the first time she was wearing orthopedic shoes, and then pointed toward campus.

  “Let’s head that way.” She backed up and waved her arms to motion the coeds into a tight grouping around her.

  Barker remained as close to Becca as possible. They’d been walking side by side the entirety of their aimless trek, occasionally holding hands. She stood next to him now, her hip touching his while Zagrecki awaited the group’s semicircle formation.

  “You okay?” he asked her quietly.

  “Yeah. My legs are tired, but I’m good. Thanks for carrying my pack.”

  He smiled. She smiled back. Their moment ended when Zagrecki whistled and the sisters hushed. A swirling breeze chilled the air and pushed Zagrecki’s hair across her face. She fingered it aside.

  “Okay,” the house mother said loudly. She’d cupped her hands at her face and pulled off her mask. “We keep hitting dead ends. The fires and the winds are too unpredictable. I don’t want us to wander into a situation we can’t handle. We have to cross back over Hilgard to get there. I want us staying close together. No dawdling. I can’t stress that enough, girls.”

  “Where exactly are we going?” asked Gem. “What’s the end game here?”

  Zagrecki frowned. “The end game is keeping all of you safe.”

  Gem’s eyebrows arched with suspicion. “So where are we going?”

  “On to campus,” Zagrecki answered. “That’s the first thing. We’ll assess the situation when we cross Hilgard and see what’s what.”

  The house mother pulled her phone from her back pocket and held it up to the sky, essentially mimicking what every sorority sister had been doing since they’d left the house. She squinted at the display and ran her thumb across the screen. She pouted and returned the phone to her pocket.