Chapter 12 - The Oxygen of Defiance
The sweet, sickly scent of carbon monoxide began to mix with the acrid smoke rolling in from the hallway floor vents. Sarah felt her head spin instantly, a heavy, disorienting fog clouding her thoughts. Baby Lily let out a weak, sputtering cough against her chest, her tiny fists clenching and unclenching in distress.
"Connor... we have to move," Sarah breathed, her voice slurring slightly as the invisible gas filled the dining room. "We... we can't breathe."
Connor’s eyes were bloodshot and frantic. He slammed his heavy metal key ring against the reinforced glass of the French doors leading out to the back patio, but the glass had been treated with ballistic laminate; it didn't even crack under the brutal impact.
"The chimney!" Connor yelled, grabbing Sarah by the arm and dragging her toward the large, stone hearth at the far end of the living room. "The flue is manual. If we can reach the roof access ladder in the guest suite upstairs..."
"We won't make it to the second floor," Sarah gasped, her knees giving out as she collapsed onto the braided rug, shielding Lily with her entire body. "You go, Connor. Take Lily. Get out through the service hatch."
"Shut up, Sarah!" Connor shouted, his own breathing ragged and shallow as he lifted her bodily into his arms despite her dead weight. "We leave together or we don't leave at all!"
He kicked open the heavy oak door of the ground-floor library, where a tall, antique brass fire iron stood beside the hearth. Seizing the heavy poker, Connor rushed back to the exterior french doors, bypassed the laminated glass, and began hammering relentlessly at the wooden mullions holding the entire door frame in place. Wood splintered and shattered under his frantic blows, the cold autumn wind rushing in through the widening gap to punch a ragged hole through the toxic air.
Connor dropped the poker, grabbed the jagged edges of the wooden frame with his bare hands, and wrenched it open with a primal roar, tearing skin from his palms as the whole assembly gave way.
Fresh, freezing night air poured into the burning room. Sarah gasped, greedily sucking in oxygen as Lily let out a loud, healthy cry against her shoulder.
They tumbled out onto the damp grass of the back patio just as the interior of the dining room flashed with a blinding white light from an electrical short circuit.
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Connor collapsed beside Sarah on the lawn, his hands bleeding and raw, watching the second-story windows of the grand house begin to billow dark, thick smoke. But as they caught their breath under the starlit sky, the heavy iron gate at the end of the driveway suddenly ground open with a metallic shriek, and a sleek black sedan pulled up the gravel path, its headlights cutting through the smoke.
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