by Beth Martin
Roemell grabbed the closest box out of the pantry and said, “We can just sit outside. It’ll be brighter out there.”
She made a face which he couldn’t quite decipher in the dark. “Maybe the security system is getting an update as well.”
A tightness gripped his gut. He had an unsettled feeling that something was wrong, but he figured it was just hunger.
They took the door from the kitchen to the back courtyard. This patio was similar to the one at her mother’s house, except larger, surrounded by the kitchen to one side, entrance hall in the middle, and Spencer’s office on the other side.
There was a bench facing the open side which had a view of rolling hills. In the distance, he could see lights from other estates here and there. The moon hung low above the ocean, and its reflection glittered in the far distance.
They took a seat on the bench, and Roemell ripped open the box he had swiped. He reached in and pulled out a handful of square, bite-sized crackers. He popped the entire handful in his mouth and began chewing while reaching in for another fistful. It felt surprisingly good to finally have something in his stomach.
Leona held out her hand, and he poured some crackers into her palm. She ate them one at a time as they both stared off into the distance.
He grabbed another handful. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
She glanced at him before looking back at the ocean.
“Yeah. I don’t see it like this too often.” He looked over at her as she continued to stare at the view. The glitter she wore during the day had rubbed off of her skin, and the moon glinted in her eyes. She caught him admiring her. “What?”
“Can I ask a personal question?”
She bit her lip. “Uh, sure.”
“What do you want to do with your life?”
“I don’t know. Just keep doing what I’m doing, I guess.”
He shook his head. “No, like, what’s one big thing you want to do in your life? You have all these resources at your disposal—you can do almost anything you wanted! Like your art. Don’t you want to become a world-renowned painter, or recreate all of Davinci’s sketches?”
She sat silently for a while. “I don’t know. I never really thought about it. Being a famous painter sounds cool.” She ate her last cracker, then wiped her hands against her gown to clean off the crumbs. “How about you? What’s your life ambition?”
His chest felt warm, and he was a little embarrassed. “It’s stupid.” She looked at him, her eyes searching his while she waited for an answer. He took a deep breath and said, “I want to change the world.”
“How?”
“Anything. It doesn’t even matter what as long as it has some big impact. I just… I want the world to be different in some way because I lived.” He set the box down on the ground and brushed his hands over his PJ pants. Leona nodded her head, but didn’t say anything. “I told you it was stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.” She placed her hand on his knee, then withdrew it quickly. “You were able to save your nephew. You’ve already made a huge difference in his life.” She looked at him, and he met her eyes, holding her gaze.
“No, I mean something bigger than that. I want to touch the lives of lots of people.”
She leaned toward him, placing a hand on his cheek before touching her lips briefly to his. Then she sat up straight again. “You’ve touched my life.”
He wasn’t sure what came over him. He ran his fingers through her hair, and pulled her close, kissing her passionately. Warmth spread from his heart to his limbs, while his fingers and toes tingled. He drew back suddenly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
She smiled. “Well, I kind of started it, so I’ll forgive you.”
He chuckled. “Good.” He gave her a hug, a firm—but intentionally platonic hug—and said, “Maybe we should go back to bed.”
His mind was racing. He shouldn’t pursue the woman he was supposed to protect. However, his affection for her would make him even more diligent, and he would take extra care to keep her out of harm’s way. How would her father react? He decided that he’d spend the rest of the night in the second bed.
“Okay.” She bit her lip. He suspected she had gotten the wrong idea. He was about to specify that he meant sleep, when she said, “Looks like the sun is rising.”
He still wasn’t sure what time it was, but the red glow coming through the entrance hall into the courtyard didn’t seem right. His heart dropped to the bottom of his gut. “Oh no.” He threw open the door to the hall and sprinted inside, his socks slipping against the polished concrete floor. He pushed through the large front door and stepped outside to find the source of the light.
A moment later, Leona ran up and stopped next to him, grabbing his arm. She glanced up and saw what he was staring at. “Oh shit.”
“We need to get your father, now!” They ran back inside and up the stairs as an enormous fire continued to blaze outside.
Leona didn’t get a chance to process how she felt about the kiss before she and Roemell were dashing upstairs and to the end of the hall where her father’s bedroom was. She was about to knock on the door, but Roemell burst through it without warning instead.
“Mr. Poole, there’s a fire right in front of the house.”
Spencer sat up and hopped out of bed. “Is it the lurch?”
Roemell nodded. “Likely.”
Her father felt around blindly, fumbling for a lamp. “Turn on the lights, dammit.” He looked around the room, which remained stubbornly dark. “Lights, on!”
Leona rushed up to her father and grabbed his arm, pulling at him to get him to follow her. “I think the robots are doing a system update. We couldn’t get any lights or Bellabot to work, either.”
He shook his head. “No, systems for the house would still function if that were the case.”
Roemell grabbed the older man’s other arm, and he and Leona half dragged Spencer from his room. “You think the power is down?”
With no windows, the only light in the hallway was the menacing flickering of flames reflected up from the entrance hall. Spencer slowed down, even though they really needed to pick up the pace. “The network must be down too.”
“What does that mean?” Leona asked.
Her father took a step back. “We’re flying dark and dumb.”
She looked from her father’s lined face to Roemell, who seemed jittery to the point of shaking. She had almost forgotten that he had run for his life from a fire only a couple days ago. “What should we do?”
Spencer was practically in a panic, his normal, serene facade completely gone. “The shelter. We go there. It’s just behind Papa’s house.”
Leona’s grandfather, or Papa, was in his nineties and still going strong. His house was on the eastern side of the estate’s residential villa. It wasn’t far, which gave them a good chance of reaching it before the fire could spread to the main house.
“Let’s go!” Leona said, urging everyone down the stairs and out of the house.
The air was thick with smoke, the smell of ash assaulting her nose. After being inside the darkened house, she had to squint in the bright light from the encroaching fire. Lifting the neckline of her nightdress, she pulled the fabric over her nose and mouth to protect her lungs.
Roemell hesitated. “I have to get Ivan.”
“There’s no time!” Spencer shouted.
“Right before she died, I promised Jovelyn that I would raise her son. I’m not leaving him behind.”
“I’ll go with you,” Leona said.
Her father grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “No, you’re coming with me.”
She looked at her father, then to Roemell. Roemell nodded, and said, “Go with your dad. You’ll be safe in the shelter. I’m not putting you in a more dangerous situation.”
Tears stung her eyes. She had only known Roemell for a couple days and was already attached to him. She didn’t want to lose him. “The shelter’s that way.” She pointe
d at Papa’s cottage. “There’s a single bush that doesn’t have flowers in the back. The entrance to the shelter is behind it.”
“Thanks.” Roemell turned and ran in the opposite direction, following a road which led to the medical facility.
Her heart sunk in her chest, and she yearned to run after him, but she needed to focus on her own safety. “Let’s go,” her father urged, tugging on her arm. They jogged over to the shelter entrance. There was an entire line of shrubs, but just as she had told Roemell, the entrance to the shelter was sticking slightly above ground next to a flowerless bush. The thick metal door was already open.
“Good,” Spencer said. “Papa and your mother must already be here.”
She looked back at the other houses. None of the lights were on, and there was no way to tell if the rest of her family had gotten out and were currently waiting in the shelter. If that was the case, why hadn’t they come to get her? “Wait!” she shrieked, but it was too late.
As her father took the first step into the shelter, a woman dressed in all black with unruly brown hair and a black bandanna over her mouth and nose jumped up from inside and grabbed Spencer. There was a knife in her hand, and in a flash, she dragged it across his throat.
Leona screamed as blood sprayed from his wound. Not even waiting for her father to slump down to the ground, she turned and ran away as fast as she could. The woman in black chased after her. Leona wasn’t sure where she should go, and ran back toward the main house. She pushed between two of the large terracotta planters, shoving one over in hopes it would slow the assassin down. It gave a satisfying crash as the pot crumbled, and she looked back to see the woman wearing black easily hurtle over the pile of soil, plant matter, and shards of clay. Leona kept pushing herself. Flames were licking up the front facade of the main house.
Wherever she decided to go, she needed to get there faster than she could on foot. There was a garage linked to the kitchen that usually had a few cars inside. She wasn’t sure one would be there now, but with the other woman gaining on her, it was her only chance. Pushing through the back door into the kitchen, she dashed across the room, her bare feet slapping against the tile floor. On a whim, she grabbed one of the chairs from the breakfast table before taking the exit to the garage. Slamming the door shut behind her, she wedged the chair under the handle. A loud crash came from just the other side of the door, sounding like the assassin had slammed her body full-force against it.
It was so dark inside, it was hard to tell if there were any cars in the room at all. She strode forward, forgetting about the steps down from the door to the floor. She tumbled down onto the hard floor, breaking her fall with her hands, but still landing on her bare knees. Something cut into her left knee, and she yelped in pain. She shuffled into a sitting position to examine her legs. Some tool, she couldn’t remember what it was called, had gotten wedged into her skin. Gripping the handle, she gave it a sharp yank, freeing it from her flesh. She could feel blood trickle down from the gash, but there was nothing she could do at the moment to help her wound, and instead ignored the pain as she looked around the garage. The Jeep was here. She was in luck.
Another sharp thud came from the door, and she could hear the legs of the chair squeal against the top step and fall away. Without waiting for the door to fly open, she jumped into the driver seat of the Jeep and pressed the ignition button. The engine ground for a second before roaring to life. Every time she had ridden in a vehicle, an android had driven for her. She wasn’t entirely sure how to operate it. There were levers on both sides of the steering wheel as well as to her right, none of which were labeled. She twisted one and the wipers started swishing.
The kitchen door flew open with a loud crack, and the woman dressed in black leapt through, then grabbed onto the side on Leona’s door. Leona tried another lever, pushing it to the side. The vehicle shot backwards.
She screamed as the Jeep drove through the large garage door, causing it to crash down around her and explode onto the driveway. Pushing the lever only made an awful grinding noise. There were pedals under her feet, and she tried stomping on one, which made the vehicle screech to a halt.
With a large hole in the garage, the eerie light from the fire illuminated the interior, showing that the assassin was unharmed and crouching on the floor. She looked up, her eyes locking on Leona, then ran full speed at the Jeep and yelled.
Leona pushed at the lever again, this time putting the car in drive and stepping on the other pedal. The Jeep was much harder to maneuver than she thought it would be, and she had a hard time keeping it on the roadway as the terrorist chased her. As the Jeep gained speed, the woman wearing black fell farther and farther behind, until she stopped chasing the vehicle altogether.
Now that the most imminent threat was over, Leona had to pause a moment and take a couple deep breaths. The fire had spread onto the roof of the main house and was closing in on the buildings. Where was she supposed to go?
She would get Roemell. He would know what to do next.
In the distance, the fires were consuming all of their fields. There wouldn’t be anything left by the time the flames burned out.
She stopped the Jeep outside the medical center and left it idling as she ran inside.
“Roemell!” she shouted. She could see his silhouette through one of the hanging sheets of plastic. Instead of going around it, she ripped it down. He was trying to pull at the wires which were attached to Ivan. “The lurch are in the shelter. We need to go somewhere else.” She looked around the medical facility, her eyes wide with fear. The initial relief of outrunning the assassin had worn off. “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do.”
“Where’s your dad?”
Her throat constricted, making it hard to get the words out. “She got him.”
Roemell finally looked away from Ivan and turned his gaze to her. “Leona, your knee!”
She had forgotten about the fall. Looking down, she saw blood flowing out of a deep gash, the sight making her feel faint. He gripped her arms to steady her and helped her sit in the nearest chair.
“You need a bandage on that. Then we can decide what to do next.” He went to one of the cabinets in the room and opened each drawer, looking for supplies. In the third one, he found gauze and tape. He used a few gauze pads to wipe up some of the oozing blood before pressing a handful of fresh ones against the wounds and securing them by wrapping the tape around her leg. “It needs to be tight in order to stop the bleeding.”
She tried to bend her leg, but the bandage limited her motion.
“Will you help me detach all this stuff from Ivan?” The baby was sleeping quietly in his crib.
Before she could get up to help, a figure dressed in black ran by the front and threw something through a window—a glass bottle lit on fire. When it smashed onto the floor behind Leona, the contents burst outward, blanketing the floor in flames.
Leona jumped up and gripped the edge of the crib. “Take the whole crib! We’ll free him later.”
Roemell grabbed the side of the crib and started rolling it to the back of the medical center. “There’s another door in the back.”
She helped him push the crib through the doorway that separated the hospital side from the storage area of the building. This room was stacked high with plywood crates. She saw the narrow walkways between the large boxes and shook her head. “There’s not enough room.”
Sure enough, when he tried to push the crib through the narrow path, it struck against the crates, too wide to fit through. “Crap!” He scooped up the tiny infant along with the bedding into his arms. “Just rip the leads away.”
She grabbed a few wires and tugged sharply. It took some effort, but they snapped apart. The fire was now all the way to the threshold directly behind her. She frantically pulled off more wires, then tugged at the tube which fed into the baby’s nose. The whole time, the heat of the inferno intensified around them. Finally getting the baby free from his bed, Roemell ran,
holding Ivan, and Leona climbed up and over the crib, following close behind.
They escaped out the back door. “I parked a car right out front.”
Roemell was still jogging away from the storage center and yelled back, “Whoever threw that fire bomb would have taken it!”
She chased after him, barely able to catch her breath. “Where should we go?”
“Water.”
Her bandaged knee made it hard to keep up. “The ocean is half a mile away.”
“Good, then we’ll make it.”
She breathed heavily as she continued to run behind him. Roemell kept shouting encouragements to her and urging her on. She wasn’t sure she would have been able to make it without him.
Once the blaze was a good distance behind them, he slowed down to a walk. “Just a little farther.”
She had no idea what they’d do once they reached the coast, but she could hear the rolling waves. Finally, the trees and shrubs ended and they were walking on the sandy beach, dark water churning in front of them. It was windier here, and it sent a chill down her body.
“Now what?” she asked.
He dropped down to a sitting position on the sand. “We rest, regain our strength, then decide what our next move should be.” He carefully wrapped the blankets around the baby and set him down on the sand.
Leona sat down next to Roemell and stared out into the ocean. “I just lost… everything.” She looked at Roemell, gazing into his green eyes. “I saw my dad die.”
He wrapped his arms around her as she wept.
• • •
Roemell held Leona until she drifted off to sleep. He gently lowered her to the sand before turning to Ivan. The baby was sleeping soundly, bundled up in blankets. In front of them, the waves continued to crash on the sand, and the sound helped Roemell relax. Behind him, however, the rising sun was hidden by thick, black clouds of smoke and ash which were illuminated from below by the still raging flames.
