The Ocean in the Fire

by Renee N. Meland

  ***

  The morning that they would attempt to take their home back, Connor, Gabriel, and Drew woke up as the sun started to rise. It peeked over the mountains and slowly illuminated the world before them, one that would start off with a dead peace, and later, turn in to the site of a war that neither of them were sure they were prepared to fight. He had lined up six guns from the weapons cache, two for each of them, with appropriate holsters. They had been sleeping in one of the guard stations where Poe would sit with her shotgun, like three children hiding from their parents in a neighbor’s treehouse so they could pretend to slay dragons and conquer countries just a little bit longer.

  Connor stepped outside of himself for a moment and realized the irony that despite everything he built for his family, he never built his children something as innocent and simple as a treehouse. He’d rarely done anything in his life where the only purpose was to bring happiness to another person. There was always an agenda, always a reason behind every lesson: he taught his children to shoot guns to protect themselves, not to spend time with them. He taught Gabriel to fish not to bond as father and son, but to make sure he would be able to feed himself when society fell. “You’re lucky, you know,” Drew said.

  Connor hadn’t realized Drew was even awake. “How do you mean?”

  “You are a stubborn, difficult, brute of a man. You have every single person in your life stuck firmly under your thumb.” He looked at Gabriel, who was still asleep. “But your children love you. That kid could have got shot last night, but he risked it to save you.”

  “I know that they love me.”

  “Do you?”

  Connor didn’t answer. Love wasn’t something he was comfortable talking about, especially not with Drew. Knowing that Drew had never gotten to be a father made an odd feeling sweep over him, guilt mixed with shame mixed with longing. He wondered if he had gotten the father part of his life right, but not so much the “dad.” He looked around, and noticed there was nothing there but himself, Gabriel, and Drew: no books, no music, nothing. His children had done as instructed. They’d eliminated distractions, and had been prepared for any incoming threat. But in doing so, did they run out of time to experience Vonnegut, or hear Les Misérables? Where was the small box of special toys that every child had, the one they thought their parents didn’t know about? It was certainly not up in that guard tower, and Connor began to wonder if one existed for any of them. He watched as Gabriel rubbed the sleep from his eyes, realizing that his son had become a man much earlier than he should have, and that Connor only had himself to blame.

  Connor felt a pang in his heart as he thought of his daughters as well, especially Poe. Given his medical situation, he wasn’t sure if it was physical or mental. Maybe both. It was all up to her now. No sixteen-year-old girl should ever have so much resting on her shoulders. In a brief flash, he thought about the life he took her from, the life he saved her from: mundane high school nonsense, first dates, pointless graduation rituals. For a second, he wondered if he had made a mistake, but the thought was gone almost as quickly as it came.

  In other circumstances, he would have never asked her to be involved in something so life-threatening: it would never have crossed his mind. He preferred to take on the most important responsibilities that came with caring for his family on his own, but he knew he was not in a position to save them by himself. As much as it pained him, he knew they would have to risk their lives to save themselves, or they would be ruled by the outsiders and their leader forever.

  The grief that Justin was feeling had sent him on a rampage, and there was no telling who would be on the receiving end of his anger next. He had already threatened Poe. They had to act before more of their people died. “I know she can handle this…I just don’t want her to have to.” He didn’t share everything that he was thinking: how he felt that the very fact that they were even considering the plan in front of them was his fault and his alone; that if something happened to her, he would never forgive himself, and it would not be hard for him to walk into the pond by their house, lie face down, and never come up for air again.

  “She’s a tough one, Connor. She’ll come through.” Connor knew he was right; his brain knew anyway. His heart was another matter.

  Poe was the strongest of all his children by far. Somehow she had been born built for the hard stuff; the times that made most children shrivel up into a heaping mass of emotion. He remembered once when he explained to her that her grandfather had died, and she would never see him again. They hadn’t been particularly close with Kate’s father, but enough that he would sometimes dress up as Santa for Christmas, coming to their door with a twinkle in his eye, and send them cards every year on their birthdays. He wasn’t someone they saw every day, but he was involved enough to give them a collection of happy memories.

  For his other children, he prettied it up, telling them about the castle in the sky where he would get to reunite with his own grandparents, and the love of his life that he knew long before their grandmother…but not for Poe. For her, she took comfort in facts, figures. So instead of telling her about how he was at peace and was not suffering anymore, he told her that Grandpa had gone into cardiac arrest the night before, and though his body was alive, his brain was dead. “Is he going to donate his organs?” she asked. Connor replied that he would. “Good.”

  They waited at the edge of the woods toward the front of the house. Since they knew the group would be gathered in the kitchen, when they smelled the smoke, they would leave through the closest door: the front. Nothing else would make sense. Even people as ill-equipped as they were would know that much: when there’s a fire, use the closest exit, not the one on another floor. As the smoke came billowing out of Gabriel’s open window, Connor’s skin started to tingle. He looked at his son’s face, where he expected to see tears of mourning as he watched the place he spent his childhood fade into smoke. Instead, he saw the stone expression of a man who knew what had to be done, and that he was the one who had to do it. He put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s time.”

  They hadn’t counted on one of the intruders coming up from behind them. Whether he was going for a morning walk, or looking for them so he could be a hero and recapture their fugitives, they would never know. All Connor knew was when he looked around and saw a man coming up the driveway he had to be kept quiet. As Connor met the eyes of the man coming toward them, the stranger promptly started shouting and running toward the house. Connor and Drew started chasing him while Gabriel kept watch in case there were more on their way, and Connor could tell that between him and Drew only one of them was sure what he was going to do when he got there.

  Connor got to him first. “Stop! Connor, no,” Drew begged. Connor wondered what it would take for Drew to lose his sympathy for those who hadn’t earned it. If seeing his wife almost beaten to death didn’t do it, and watching the girl he considered his daughter get gunned down didn’t, he wasn’t sure anything ever would. A part of him admired that, but another part knew if he didn’t break him of that, it may get them killed.

  “We don’t have a choice, Drew. It’s him or us.”

  “Maybe there’s another way.”

  Connor looked at him. “Vera’s in there. You saw what they already did to her. We are way past trying to negotiate. Do you really want to take a chance on them hurting her again? We’ve already lost one…” Drew hesitated, and Connor tested him. “Tell me not to do it one more time and I won’t.”

  Connor watched as Drew opened his mouth to speak. He waited for a moment, but Drew remained quiet. As Connor felt the bones crack in the other man’s neck, he tried to ignore the panic in his eyes as he realized his last seconds on earth had come to pass.

  They managed to make it back to their hiding spot, dragging the body behind them, just in time. They had caught the man far enough away from the house that the others had not heard his calls for help. Guilt crept up on Connor as he rolled the body into the bushes, quickly covering him with any
twigs and branches that he could find. He looked Gabriel in the eyes. The calm expression he had before had been replaced with wide, scared eyes. But there was no trace of the contempt that Connor had expected. He just nodded at his father, and Connor saw that his son finally understood: though he would do anything, commit any sin to protect his family, that didn’t mean he was safe from the scars they left behind.

  As Connor was about to walk away, he did something completely unexpected, even to himself. Before they put their plan into action, he uncovered the man’s face for a brief second, and gently pushed his lids shut with the tips of his fingers, noticing that his eyes were brown like his own, and like Poe’s. He wasn’t sure if it was more a gesture for the stranger or for himself, but he hoped that once his eyes were closed, the picture of his last seconds of life would leave Connor’s mind forever.

  As they quickly made their way up to the house, he realized it hadn’t worked. But when he looked up and saw Gabriel watching, his son said two words that would stay with Connor for the rest of his days.

  “It’s okay.”

  The fire started to empty the house of its occupants. Two men came out first and then two more. They stood near the house and looked around, perhaps thinking they must have missed something, while Connor and Drew waited for more to walk into their firing line. They couldn’t risk shooting until everyone was out, because the gunshots would warn those who remained inside about what was waiting for them on the other side of the door, and they may take the time to arm themselves, taking the house back before they ever lost it.

  Then nothing.

  Drew looked at Connor. “Where’s the rest of them? There’s supposed to be more.” Both men stared at the front door, almost willing more people to come out and face what was coming to them. But none emerged.

  Connor’s attempt to answer was interrupted by the sound of gunfire as he saw Cassius storm out of the front door with one of his military-grade guns. The last time Connor saw it, he was locking it in the weapons cabinet, so he knew at least that part of the plan was happening as they had imagined it. Cassius had shot one before two more rushed him, attempting to grab his gun. As Connor and Drew ran out of the woods and toward the fray, they saw him knock one down with the barrel of his AK-47. The last remaining man had somehow managed to wrap his arms around Cassius’ neck when Connor put a bullet in the man’s head.

  Justin was the last to fall.

  Connor stared down at him, the man who had tried to take everything from him. He’d expected to want more, some chance to yell at him, to punish him for what he’d done. But as he looked at the vacant eyes staring up at him, he realized that he was minutes away from getting his family back, and this time, that was enough.

  Between them, they were able to kill all the people who had left the house. He looked toward the upstairs windows and noticed that the fire had seemed to move past Gabriel’s room. The blood in his veins felt hot as he realized what that meant: they had taken too long. “Where’s the rest of them? Where’s Poe?”

  As he asked the question, Harper threw open the door. “They went to try and put the fire out before we could get to them! They made Poe go too! She’s still in there!”

  Connor ran full speed inside the house, with Drew and Gabriel close behind. When he entered, the smoke hit his lungs like the fire it came from, burning as he inhaled it. As he glanced around, he saw two women trying to wrestle a gun away from Kate, who was cowering on the ground, and he heard it fire in an aimless direction. They didn’t see him come up behind them. He pulled both of them away from her easily and pushed them toward the ground, shooting them both as they lay beneath him. As he pulled Kate up, he said, “Run. I’ll find Poe. Get Harper and Gabriel out of here.”

  “No way,” he heard Gabriel from behind him. “Mom, get the rest of them out of here. Dad and I will both go get Poe.”

  Kate reluctantly agreed when she noticed Harper lying on the ground, clutching her arm. “Mom…they got me.”

  There was blood.

  Connor looked at Drew, and he seemed to understand what he was being asked to do. Drew lifted Harper up, Kate hovering close beside them. Vera picked up Jackson and clutched him tightly as they opened the door, letting the sunlight help illuminate the smoke-filled room.

  Quickly, Connor counted the members of the invading group who had been subdued lying around them: two were dead, but one more, Brian, was very much alive. As far as Connor was concerned, Brian was one of them. He lay there with his hand on his head, and a large knot forming on his left temple. That meant two were still missing. He knew immediately where to find them.

  Poe.

  The smoke wrapped around them as they ran up the stairs toward Gabriel’s room. It grew thicker the closer they got, and Connor started to have a hard time seeing Gabriel even though he was right beside him. He squinted downward and noticed the two missing people, both looking either unconscious or dead, each with fire extinguishers in their hands. If he hadn’t nearly tripped over her, he may have missed Poe entirely. He looked down to see the person who understood him most in the world lying nearly lifelessly on the ground below him, curled in a ball like before she was born. “Gabriel! She’s here!”

  Both men pulled her up, one on each side. As they headed back down the hallway, they barely heard a muffled voice from behind them. “Help…”

  Poe stirred. “It’s Lindsey. Please. She tried to help me. Don’t leave her behind.”

  Connor looked at Gabriel. “I can take her by myself, Dad.”

  Connor hesitated, but there was a certainty in his son’s eyes that made him trust him in a way he hadn’t experienced before. It was clarity of purpose, something that had eluded him since Connor could remember. But after what Gabriel had done for him in the barn, and earlier when he had comforted him so perfectly, he realized something: perhaps that clarity had always been there, he just hadn’t bothered to notice.

  “I’ll take care of her.”

  Carefully, Connor transferred all of Poe’s weight to Gabriel, who picked her up and started carrying her down the hall in his strong arms, stronger than Connor’s had ever been even in his youth. He shuddered, seeing one child with her head slumped over, being carried in the arms of another, both of whom he had been unable to protect no matter how hard he had tried. Connor picked up Lindsey and caught up to them, hoping she was still alive and he would be able to accomplish the one thing his daughter had ever asked of him.

  As they left the smoky house and were greeted by the rest of their family, they tried not to notice the bodies lying around them. Connor saw that Brian had somehow made it out of the house, and he was hovering around Harper. He went over to her to make sure she was all right. One of the outsiders had cut her in the struggle, but despite what to Connor looked like a gaping wound, Drew said that she would be fine.

  While he was beside her, he managed to ignore Brian entirely. As much as he wanted to put a bullet in that kid’s brain so he would never bother them again, he knew there were more pressing matters. He thought to himself that there would be plenty of time for that later, now that they had successfully taken back their home.. Fire would always trump revenge, and now that their place was their own again, he had to make sure there was something left.

  Connor looked back toward the house. He thought he could handle it, seeing it burn, if it meant his family was safe, even if the worst happened and the entire thing was reduced to ash. But while he watched everything he’d ever built, everything that was as much a part of him as anything or anyone else disappear behind a cloud of smoke, he realized he couldn’t. The compound was his life’s work, and if what he had dedicated every waking minute of his days on earth to became nothing, what did that make him? Would he, his memory, disappear right along with it? “I’m not losing this,” he whispered.

  In the chaos and the blood, no one noticed as he went back into the house, hidden by the thick blackness of the billowing smoke and his own will.

  He picked up a fire exti
nguisher that was in the shed along the way. In the back of his mind, he realized that so much time had gone by during the struggle that the fire had become too dangerous to fight, which was why Poe and Lindsey had ended up unconscious. It was a miracle that he and Gabriel had gotten them out at all, and while they were outside regrouping, the fire had gotten a chance to grow. But he ignored that thought as stubbornness outweighed common sense and headed back up the stairs.

  By the time he got there, the whole back part of the house was covered in flames. He managed to put out some of it. But as he turned around to look back at where he came from, trying to make sure he had a path out, part of the floor gave way and his leg fell through, pinning him in the hall.

  There was nothing, Connor was sure, that made a person feel quite as small as being trapped, watching their own house dissolve in a blanket of fire around him. Connor watched the flames twirl like little orange tornadoes: up the wall and onto the ceiling, and he thought about how everything he had worked for his entire life had all been taken from him: and by his own hand.

  Yes, Poe had set the fire, but it was his plan that she had put into action. Perhaps he had acted too rashly. Perhaps he had let his emotions quicken his pace, and if he had slowed down, he could have thought of a better plan. Desperation had made him dangerous, and he would never get the chance to say he was sorry. He had let control slip from his fingers and now he would pay the price, and give up the few precious weeks, months or years that he had left. As he slipped into unconsciousness, he saw the outline of a man hovering over him, and hands closing in.

  “Wake up! We have to go!” It was the voice of the last person he expected to see. Brian was pulling him out of the floorboards and onto solid ground.

  As he stood on his own two feet, he asked. “Why did you save me?”

  “You’re a stupid, ignorant asshole, but, God knows why, Harper loves you…and you’re welcome.”