by Tarah Benner
“Gideon, what on earth are you doing?” cried the old man. He sounded much closer this time, and Lark sensed him standing just outside the door.
“Trust me, Father,” Gideon huffed, scrambling to his feet and flipping Lark onto her back. “This is the only way.”
Gideon grabbed Lark by the ankles and struggled to bind her legs together while avoiding a kick to the face. As she fought, Lark caught a glimpse of the old man Gideon was talking to. He was withered and gray and had the look of someone who had once been muscular but had lost a great deal of weight.
“This is madness,” said the man in a voice of stunned disapproval. “Surely this is not what God intended . . .”
“What God intended,” Gideon growled, “was for us to build a world where His people could live as we once did . . . guided by morality rather than our baser instincts.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe in your vision,” his father murmured. “I am just beginning to question your methods.”
“Well, Father . . . This is why our values were nearly extinguished in the world,” Gideon panted. “Because no one — had the fortitude — to spread His word and do what must be done . . . to reach the kingdom of heaven.”
His father didn’t respond to that, and Gideon finally managed to secure Lark’s ankles. She was still thrashing around on the floor, but she knew it was futile. She was at Gideon’s mercy.
He lifted her bodily off the floor and dragged her out of the kitchen. He opened the door to what must have been a pantry and shoved Lark inside.
She caught a brief glimpse of canned goods and a broom before her backside hit a low shelf and Gideon slammed the door in her face. She was thrust into total darkness, surrounded by the smell of spices and grain.
“Give me that,” Gideon snapped.
Lark heard a heavy scrape of furniture across the floor, and she guessed that he was barricading the door.
“Is this really necessary?” asked the father. “Who is that girl?”
“No one,” Gideon muttered. “Just a good-for-nothing whore.”
Lark wanted to scream, but she was struggling just to draw breath. The wad of fabric crammed in her mouth was obstructing her airways, and she could hear the blood pounding in her temples.
She couldn’t move more than an inch or two in any direction. She could feel shelves encroaching from nearly every angle, and her ankles were bound so tightly that it impeded her balance.
The old man was speaking again, and Lark had to strain her ears to hear. They seemed to have moved down the hallway and into the room beyond. “She’s one of the girls who escaped from that prison, isn’t she?”
Gideon didn’t say anything, but Lark heard his father’s rumbles of disapproval and the scrape of a chair against the floor.
“This needs to stop,” he said in a worried voice. “Your mother and I have discussed it . . .”
“What have you discussed?” Gideon snapped.
The old man hesitated, and Lark could practically see the steam coming out of Gideon’s ears.
“Son . . . we want to stand by you. We believe in what you are doing, but there are some things that we cannot tolerate.”
“What are you saying, Father?”
“I’m saying . . . This ends now.”
There was a long, protracted silence, and Lark was sure that Gideon’s face was twisted in a mask of fury.
“I’m sorry, Father,” he said after a moment. “But I cannot abide by your wishes. This is bigger than all of us now.”
“This isn’t right.”
“What’s not right is that our family is starving,” Gideon snapped. “It’s not right that Walter Bailey should have all the water in the world to provide for his abomination of a daughter and her treacherous, evil —”
“What is it that you’re hoping to achieve?”
Gideon didn’t answer right away, and Lark leaned forward half an inch to catch what he said next. “Either they will see what we have built and join us, or we will demand their farm as a ransom for their women.”
“That is your plan?” The old man stuttered. “These are human beings. They cannot be traded like cattle!”
“Says who?”
Bang!
At that moment, the walls around Lark shook violently, and a glass jar slipped off one of the shelves and shattered at her feet. Lark jumped when a heavy can fell on her foot, and she felt a blast of heat so intense that it made her shrink back against the pantry shelf.
A woman screamed. Gideon swore, and Lark heard a whoosh of air.
She let out a startled cry around her gag. She didn’t know what had just happened. It had felt like an explosion. Heat was emanating through the wall, and she knew that it wasn’t coming from the fireplace.
Lark heard more swearing coming from the sitting room, followed by footsteps thudding past her hiding place.
“What in God’s name —”
“I don’t know!”
“Gideon! Quickly! Help me with your mother!”
There was an intense flurry of activity in the next room, followed by the sound of something rolling across the floor. Lark smelled something burning, and she became aware of another sound: the loud crackle of a fire.
She heard Gideon and his father scrambling in the other room as they helped his mother, and Lark tasted smoke on the back of her tongue. She coughed and wretched around her gag, and she realized that smoke was leaking into the pantry.
The back door slammed, and Lark waited for the footsteps to return. They didn’t.
Lark screamed against the wad of cloth in her mouth and twisted to the side so that she could throw her shoulder against the door. She rammed into it as hard as she could, succeeding only in sending an agonizing jolt of pain through her shoulder. She gritted her teeth and slammed into the door again, but it wouldn’t budge.
Tears were leaking from the corners of Lark’s eyes, and she tried again to scream around her gag. It came out like a terrified mew, which was quickly lost in the rush of the fire.
Smoke was billowing into the pantry at an alarming rate, burning Lark’s airways and choking her slowly. She continued to ram her body into the door and even tried to wedge the knob in the crook of her arm, but it was no use.
She started to sob and choke in earnest. The fire was snuffing out all the oxygen in the cramped dark pantry, and Lark had crossed over from panic to terror.
The Millers were gone. They weren’t coming back. They’d left her alone in the burning house, and she was going to die.
16
Soren
The force of Axel’s explosion was so strong that Soren could practically feel the heat all the way across the compound. He’d asked Axel to create a diversion, and Axel had chosen to blow up Gideon’s front porch.
But whether Axel had meant to burn the house to the ground or had simply failed to account for the tinder-dry conditions, Soren wasn’t sure. Half of the farmhouse was already ablaze, and the fire was consuming the structure at an alarming rate.
“Jesus!” Soren cried as the flames whipped through the tall grass, inching toward one of the shacks behind the main house.
“Whoooweee!” Axel yelled, lifting his sweaty face to admire his handiwork as three stooped figures fled from the house. One of them appeared to be pushing a wheelchair, and Soren felt a fresh stab of guilt.
“What — did you — do?” Soren yelled. He’d counted on Axel’s flair for destruction to give them an advantage, but he’d vastly underestimated him.
“I gave us a distraction!” Axel shouted, not at all sorry. “Now let’s go git our girls!”
Soren was horrified, but the damage was already done. Axel had given them a window of opportunity, and Soren wasn’t about to waste it. Conrad, Thompson, Katrina, and Simjay were all ready for battle. They were dressed in black and heavily armed. Even Denali was straining at his leash, bound and determined to get to Lark.
“All right,” Soren growled, steeling himself for a fight. “Ever
yone has their area to canvas. Find the girls, get them to the truck . . . Kill whoever gets in your way.”
That last part sent a surge of darkness through Soren’s heart, but he knew he had to be okay with it. They’d already discussed it as a group. The Sons of David had proven themselves dangerous, and they had to be defeated.
They split up to canvas the farm, Soren running with Denali in the hope that he would lead him to Lark. They didn’t have much time. Two of the little shacks had already caught fire, and Soren could hear screams in the distance as their inhabitants scrambled to extinguish the flames.
He knew it was useless. It hadn’t rained in the area in weeks. The flames would devour everything in their path, stopping only when they hit the dirt road on the other side of the trees.
Denali tugged at his rope, and Soren let the dog lead him in a straight line toward the barn. Denali whined and pawed at the door, and Soren dropped the leash to heave it open. The barn was locked.
Soren had anticipated this. He’d brought the ax Walt used for splitting wood. He attacked the door with savage force, splintering the weak wooden panel on his first swing.
He managed to hack away the wood until he had a hole that was large enough for him to fit through. Denali whined louder as Soren climbed in and disappeared through the gap. The hole was just high enough for Denali to reach with his snout, but he couldn’t leap through after him.
The instant Soren entered the barn, he heard the girls’ frantic cries. It was pitch black inside the structure, and Soren hadn’t brought a flashlight.
He stumbled blindly through the darkness, following the sound of the girls’ screams. Their voices were scratchy, ragged, and desperate, and when Soren finally reached them, it took him a minute to spit out who he was.
“Soren?” came Bernie’s voice.
“I’m here, I’m here,” he said, feeling his way across the ground until he found a pair of ankles. He went to work loosening Bernie’s restraints, and she let out a pitiful cry of relief.
“Portia?”
“Mhmm.” Her voice made Soren’s heart beat faster. It was weak and muted — not at all the way he’d expected her to sound.
“Are you all right?”
“Just peachy,” Portia mumbled. But she still didn’t sound right to Soren.
“Lark?”
Nothing. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he was able to see Bernie and Portia more clearly. Their faces were shining with perspiration, and the whites of their eyes were bright with fear. Lark was nowhere in sight.
“Where is she?” he asked, casting around for another body.
“She’s not here,” said Bernie. “They took her.”
“What?”
“She tried to escape,” said Portia hoarsely. “She told me she was going to run, but we heard the struggle outside.”
“What? When?”
“Maybe twenty minutes ago,” said Portia. “They took us to the outhouse one at a time. Lark thought that was her best chance to escape.”
“Gideon must have taken her somewhere,” said Bernie, sounding just as panicked as Soren felt.
“Where?” he snapped, tugging the tape off Bernie’s wrists with shaking hands. “Where would he have taken her?”
“I-I don’t know,” said Bernie. “The farmhouse maybe?”
A jolt of horror shot down Soren’s spine. It couldn’t be the farmhouse that Axel had just torched. If Lark was still inside . . .
“Get Portia out of here!” he growled, finally freeing Bernie’s wrists and shoving a pistol into her hands. “Do whatever you have to do. Get to the road. The truck’s parked a quarter mile east. Go!”
He didn’t hang around to offer further instruction. He just tore out of the barn as fast as his legs would carry him.
Soren could hear the blast of gunfire in the distance, but he had no way of knowing where the bullets were coming from. He just focused on reaching the farmhouse, which had become a blazing inferno.
If what Portia said was true, Gideon could have hidden Lark anywhere. He hadn’t asked Bernie why she thought he’d taken her to the farmhouse, but if Lark was inside, she was running out of time.
Steeling himself for the worst, Soren approached the burning house. He could feel the heat on his face from thirty feet away and knew the fire was burning hot and fast. The back door was hanging open, creaking slightly in the breeze.
Fear surged through Soren like a poison, stopping him dead in his tracks. Every nerve inside his body was supercharged with adrenaline, screaming at him to turn around and leave the burning wreckage behind.
Smoke was billowing from the house, and Soren realized with a sinking feeling that the cracked door was providing just enough ventilation to fuel the fire. A small treacherous voice inside his head told him that if Lark was inside, chances were good that she was already dead. But if she was alive, she was depending on him. Soren wouldn’t let her down.
Grinding his back teeth together, Soren wrenched his T-shirt up over his head and dunked it in a trough of water. He tied it around his nose and mouth and took a few steps closer to the house.
Squinting against the hot smoke and ash, Soren stepped inside and shuffled slowly down the hallway. Immediately he realized that the fire was blazing strongest in the sitting room, just a few yards from the spot where Axel had detonated the explosion.
A wall of searing heat nearly bowled Soren over, and he dropped to the ground and continued to army crawl toward the epicenter of the fire. He could see the flames raging beyond the sitting room archway, where the couch and the walls were already ablaze.
Soren heard a nasty creak above him, and he knew he only had a few minutes before the structure started to deteriorate.
“Lark!” he yelled, his voice morphing into a cough. “— ark!” He fought back another wave of agonizing coughs, sucking in a burst of smoke that scorched his throat.
Soren blinked furiously. His eyes were watering. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of his face, and he had no idea how he was going to find her.
He dragged himself past the kitchen, and the floor became unbearably hot. He could feel it burning his arms and chest, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. He focused on pure forward motion, crawling on all fours into a little alcove with a door that hadn’t yet been devoured by flames. He heard another ominous groan from above him and knew the floor joists were weakening from the fire.
Every surface seemed to grow hotter as Soren fought his way toward the alcove. Someone had left the bathroom door ajar, but there was a second door on the right that probably led to a bedroom.
Soren reached up to turn the knob and let out a yelp of pain. The metal surface had burned his hand, and he could feel blisters erupting all over his palm.
“Lark!” he choked, pounding on the door in desperation. The whole thing was radiating heat, and Soren could smell his own burning flesh. Flames were spilling from the sitting-room archway, lapping at the baseboards and causing the ancient wallpaper to bubble and curl.
Soren crawled away from the bedroom back in the direction he’d come. He wasn’t getting through the sitting room. That door had closed. He could feel the hairs on his face burning away, and he thought that his eyeballs might explode. The flames reaching through the doorway were nearly as tall as he was — roaring as they fed off the two-hundred-year-old structure.
Soren inhaled a breath of smoke. He gasped, but that only resulted in a sharp slice of agony that ripped through his throat and lungs. The fire was devouring oxygen at an alarming rate. If he didn’t get out of there, he was going to die.
Lowering his body to the floor, Soren crawled back down the hallway. He could feel the heat chasing him out of the house, but he still hadn’t found Lark.
He called out her name. All he heard was the crackle of timber. He was starting to feel lightheaded, and his vision was fuzzy from the smoke. Every tiny movement felt slow and clumsy, and he knew he was minutes from passing out.
&
nbsp; But then Soren heard something that sent his heart into overdrive — a soft scraping noise coming from a door on his left.
“Lark!” he croaked, his voice coming out in a pathetic gasp. The dizziness was starting to get to him, but the surge of hope he felt gave him the boost he needed to pull himself toward the door.
He’d blazed right past it on his way inside. It was tucked away in the little alcove leading to the kitchen, and it looked like a pantry or a coat closet.
“Lark!” he called again. This time, all that came out was a starved vowel sound followed by a hacking cough, but he was sure he hadn’t imagined the sound.
Just then, he heard a sickening groan accompanied by a loud crack! Soren flattened himself against the wall on instinct just as a flaming pile of debris came crashing through the ceiling.
He hunched his body and covered his head as fiery splinters rained down from above. There was another terrible moan, and a half-disintegrated floor joist came crashing down. Soren squinted through his eyelids as it careened into the wall, and the entire house shuddered.
Soren coughed. His head was spinning. The floor joist was blocking his path, but at least he was alive.
Chancing a glance above him, Soren saw a solid sheet of fire pouring down the walls like lava. He was out of time.
Choking and retching, he ripped the T-shirt away from his mouth and reached up to grip the scorching knob. He pulled the door wide open and felt his way along the dusty floor.
Soren’s hands found a pair of boots, and his heart leapt. He felt his way up two legs, which were attached to a body that pumped life back into Soren’s tired heart.
He blurted out Lark’s name in ecstatic relief, but his throat was so dry that it came out as a choke.
Soren couldn’t tell if Lark was still conscious. She wasn’t moving, and he couldn’t see her face. He just scooped her up and dragged her across the floor.
In the blinding light of the fire, he saw that Lark’s eyes were closed, and her head was hanging limp from her neck. Soren couldn’t try her name again. He was out of air.
Just then, he heard another deafening crack! and the house shuddered as a cloud of ash and dust cascaded down from the ceiling. Something large and heavy crashed through the opening, sending a deluge of blackened wood and crumbling plaster onto his shoulders.