Chapter 12 - Fire Beneath the Floorboards
The impact sent Clara crashing hard onto the wooden floorboards, the revolver flying from her hand and skidding away into the dark recesses of the open safe. Elena scrambled after it, her knees scraping raw against the splintered wood, but the thick, acrid smoke billowed upward with blinding speed, stinging her eyes and choking her lungs.
"Let me go!" Clara shrieked, thrashing beneath Elena’s weight as she fought like a cornered animal, her nails raking across Elena’s cheek and drawing a sharp line of hot blood.
Evelyn didn't run toward the door; instead, the older woman dropped to her knees, coughing violently as she grabbed the heavy iron key still dangling from the exterior of the room's lock. With desperate, rattling breaths, Evelyn jammed the key into the mechanism, turning it twice until the heavy iron latch finally disengaged with a loud, metallic snap.
The mahogany door swung wide open, revealing a hallway completely choked in thick, black, chemical smoke. And standing right at the threshold, coughing hysterically and clutching her white stuffed rabbit, was little Lily, her yellow dress stained with soot, crying real, unscripted tears of pure terror.
"Mommy!" Lily wailed, extending her small arms blindly into the smoke.
Clara shoved Elena off her with a vicious kick to the chest, scrambling backward toward the hallway on her hands and knees. "Lily! Stay back!" Clara screamed, her voice cracking as she lunged through the smoke to scoop the child into her arms.
Elena pushed herself up from the floor, wiping the blood from her cheek with the back of her hand. Her beige blouse was torn, her hair completely unraveled, and her lungs burned with every breath of the toxic air. She looked down at the floor: Clara had dropped the wooden box, and the flash drive lay half-buried under a pile of smoldering drywall dust.
"You're not going anywhere, Clara," Elena coughed, stepping over the threshold into the smoke-filled hallway.
Evelyn grabbed Elena’s arm, her grip surprisingly strong despite her age. "Forget the drive, Elena! The house is going up! The old wiring in the basement—it’s caught fire! If we don't get out right now, this whole wing is going to collapse on top of us!"
Down the hall, the staircase leading to the ground floor was already engulfed in orange flames that roared upward like a blowtorch, eating through the old floral wallpaper and licking at the ceiling beams. Clara, holding Lily tightly against her chest, staggered back toward the master bedroom at the opposite end of the corridor—the only room with a fire escape leading down to the back courtyard.
"You can't trap us here!" Clara yelled back through the smoke, her face black with soot as she kicked open the bedroom door and retreated inside, slamming it shut behind her.
Elena coughed violently, staring at the blazing staircase blocking their only exit. She looked at Evelyn, whose eyes held a grim, fatalistic determination.
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"There's an old service ladder in the master bathroom," Evelyn wheezed, pointing toward the opposite side of the burning hall. "It's our only way down. Move!"
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