AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I had conquered the premonition.
I shut the door behind me, hopeful. Twenty-seven floors were all that stood between us and freedom.
Twenty-seven floors and Dean.
Dean, whose stare I caught across the deck as I shut the door behind me.
“Fuck!” I yelled down the stairwell after the men.
“I know,” Sam hollered. “I saw him as we ran back. There’s nothing we can do about it. Luke, how are you holding up. Are you going to be sick?” Luke’s face was a mix of disgust and horror.
“Maybe, but I’ll keep going.”
We kept a steady pace down the steps. I lost count after the first few flights, but Sam knew where he was going. I tried to picture my feet bleeding in the sand. The constant movement made it difficult, and I realized I may trip and fall trying to do both at the same time. I had to wait until we boarded the tender and try again.
“Luke, is it a bad time to ask you what the fuck happened?” I asked.
He chuckled and cleared his throat. “Is it a bad time to ask where the fuck we’re going?”
“We are leaving this ship on another smaller, less on fire vessel. Care to join?”
“Well, yes, thank you for the invitation. And what the fuck happened is Dean was having me plant Assembly of the Eternal pins in Sam’s bunk. That piece of shit gave me a key and told me to leave him a package on the desk. Well, I forgot the key and tried to slide it under the door. It seemed thin enough, and I was being lazy. Well, it ripped, and I saw the pins. I know he doesn’t like you, Sam, but that’s some next-level bullshit. So, I went looking for you.”
That fucking asshole. I would never forgive Dean if he killed Sam, so his next step was to turn me against him. We have to get off this boat.
“Dean wasn’t answering his radio, and I’d be damned if I walked into his party with AOE shit. I went to engineering and someone said you signed out to do some inventory. When I got down there, some of Dean’s goons asked what I was doing. I don’t even know how they got down there. We fought. They said I was stealing stuff, which I wasn’t. I had just gotten there. I ran off through the growing rooms to grab one of Dean’s guns. I never fired a shot, though. When I got up through the ag unit, they started shooting at me around all the pesticides we were storing for the islands. Complete dumbasses. They lit the place up.”
“That’s good, though,” Sam muttered.
“What is good about any of that, Sam?” I huffed back. Even going downstairs, I was exhausted, and my hip was killing me. Each step shot pain through my leg and each breath felt like fire in my lungs. I must have inhaled more smoke than I realized. “And how much further?”
“The good thing is the fire started in ag. Those chemicals will burn loud and hot, but they should be able to keep it contained. More people won’t die, which is good. And Luke, sorry, but I was the one stealing. I have a boat stocked and ready to go. Five more flights, Row. Are you okay?”
He looked up the stairs to me, and I gave a frail smile. We were so close and my hip would not stop us. “Just fine,” I lied.
Sam continued a light jog down the stairs. “What you saw back there, Row, the stuff with Luke and who knows what else. Do you think you can do it again?”
“What?” Luke mouthed back at me.
“I’ll try when we aren’t in the middle of an Iron Man, but yes, I think I can do it again. Jesus, Luke, I’ll just have to catch you up later.”
“Yeah, you know, I think I’m done with mind-blowing news for the day. Thanks,” he shot back.
Sam got to a doorway in what felt like the hundredth stairwell and paused. I knew his hesitation because I felt it, too. Was Dean on the other side? Had he beaten us down here?
“Wait,” I snipped. “Luke, you said some of Dean’s guys grabbed you by the inventory and you didn’t know how they found you. Did Dean ever give you anything? Anything that could track your movements? Could that anything be on you right fucking now?”
Luke’s eyes tracked back and forth in thought. He held his limp arm close to his chest and shifted his weight. He lowered the bum arm and gave it a hard look. “My watch is gone. He gave me a watch. The same one I gave Lori. He said he would be pissed if we lost them.”
“I ripped that off to break your wrist,” Sam added. “I think we’re good.”
Luke gave a lopsided smile. “Thanks, I guess.”
We all nodded and opened the door. The hallway was dark except for some flickering overhead fluorescents. It smelled like mildew, but I saw a light at the end of the hall. Sam pointed toward it as he picked up the pace and we all ran after him.
Lori’s head popped through the shadows, and it gave me the extra adrenaline I needed.
“They made it,” Sam cheered. The boys were then at her side, and I sprinted down the rest of the hall until we all collided. I could smell saltwater in the air as I pulled them close.
