The wall blew apart. Bricks fell to the ground all around me while I screamed, covering my head with my arms. I didn’t keep myself safe from everything. One brick slammed into the back of my shoulders, and even more peppered my legs. I waited for one to break a leg, or to do more damage than this fatal bruising, but nothing like that happened. The rest fell around me.
When the bricks stopped falling, I lifted my head to look around the space. Dust clogged the air, making it hard to breathe. I tried to keep my mouth closed but couldn’t quite manage it. The dust crowded the inside of my mouth, making it taste chalky.
I shifted, moving the bricks. They tumbled away from me, crumbling to the ground with a loud noise. I froze, waiting for the demons to show up. They could pluck me from my spot and do anything to me. I could hear my sister in the back of my head telling me that I shouldn’t have done this. That I should have listened to her. I silenced that voice and waited.
No one showed up.
I breathed out, which only got more dust in my mouth.
“Derrick?” I hissed under my breath, trying to be quiet. I pulled my legs out from under the pile of bricks, which proved to be harder than I would’ve thought. When I got to my feet, I stumbled over them, and fell down on my knees. One of the bricks dug into my skin, and I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming in pain.
“Derrick?” I hissed again.
This building had looked perfect for hiding in. Then again, I’d never had to hide before, and that might’ve had something to do with it. It had been condemned by the city almost two years ago, and the inside looked like it. The walls had crumbled, the ground looked rotted out in places that didn’t have concrete floors like where I stood. The old factory would’ve had plenty of places to hide, I thought. And it did.
I just didn’t count on our pursuers to be so dedicated.
“Tomorrow?” someone whispered from my right.
I whipped around, prepared for…something. I didn’t come prepared for this fight, and it was starting to get to me. It had been an impulse to run off with Derrick, Seamus, and Seanan. I thought that we would be able to get away. Maybe that had been foolhardy of me, but I couldn’t change anything now.
When Seamus peeked his head around the corner, my heart started to slow down. I put my hand to my chest. “You scared me,” I said, turning around. Because I didn’t have a better option, I grabbed one of the bricks that laid in a pile. It felt good in my hand, but also too small. What would a brick do against someone like those who waited outside? Nothing. But at least I’d face my fate with a weapon.
I turned back to Seamus. “What are you doing? Where’s Derrick?”
“I don’t know,” Seamus said. “Have you seen Seanan?”
“No,” I growled, tightening my grip on the brick. We had all agreed to split up in the hopes that we could confuse the demons if they came into the building. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but again, I could just hear my sister’s voice in my head telling me that I had been stupid. She wasn’t wrong, which only made me more upset.
“The demons aren’t coming in here,” I said. “They’re going to keep blasting at the building until the entire thing collapses.”
“It looks that way,” my friend said, brushing his hands through his hair. “What do you want to do?”
“We have to find the others,” I told him. “If we run, then maybe we can get out?”
Seamus didn’t look like he believed that. I couldn’t blame him because I couldn’t make it sound like I believed it either. The two of us walked from the room, ducking down a darkened hallway. When I stepped into the shadows, I put my back against the wall immediately.
I went from one of the back rooms to an office. It still had a desk with an old office chair. The latter looked rotted out and like the perfect home for bedbugs. I still touched it, pushing it aside to look for Seanan. She would’ve been just small enough to squeeze underneath the desk if she wanted. When I didn’t find her, I cursed, and stepped back. “She’s not in here.”
The two of us walked down the hallway looking into every room, around each corner, and turning over every bit of debris that we saw. The longer we looked and didn’t find anything, the more creative my mind got in throwing answers at me. Like, maybe she didn’t show up because she had died. When the demons blasted the building, a wall had collapsed onto my friends, and I’d never see them again. Or Seanan had panicked and run right out the door into the waiting arms of the demons outside.
I could’ve lived without my active imagination right then. Especially as I could see the strain of it starting to wear on Seamus.
We walked onto the factory floor where conveyor belts stretched to every corner of the room. The smell of rusted metal had become obvious until I couldn’t smell anything else. Old rotten boxes littered the floor, each of them adding to the ambiance of the room.
I saw a flash of gold from the corner of my eye and turned just in time for Seanan to plow into me. Her arms came around my middle so hard that I could barely breathe.
“Oh my god, I totally thought you were both dead, and that I’d have to tell my parents that I got their only son killed, and then I’d have to tell your sister that I got her twin killed, and then everything would’ve been terrible forever.”
I patted her shoulder. “Well, none of that’s happened yet, Seanan, but could you loosen your hold? A girl’s gotta breathe.”
My friend released me immediately, and I sucked in a grateful breath…that tasted like rusted metal. Awesome.
Seamus received a hug next, and it looked like she tried to squeeze the life out of his body. I watched as he took it like a man. When his sister released him, I said, “Have you seen Derrick? He was right behind me when the last attack hit, and then he vanished.”
Seanan stared at me with wide eyes. “No,” she said. “I’ve been on my own since we decided to split up.”
“Derrick found me like four minutes before the attack,” I said. “He was saying that this wasn’t working, and that we had to get out of here. Where could he have gone?” This last question, I asked myself. I pushed my fingers through my hair and tried to breathe through the tightness in my chest.
I felt a rumble in the ground and knew that another onslaught was headed our way.
Seamus cursed as he grabbed me and Seanan. Before I could protest, he had shoved us back to the ground, and covered our bodies with his. The building shook with the attack. Tiles from the ceiling came falling down, striking me in the back. Each blow hurt worse than the bricks had, but Seamus took the brunt of the assault. I wanted to shove him away and tell him that I could take care of myself.
Instead, I didn’t make matters worse. I sat there, huddled up.
The ground stopped shaking, and I lifted my head to peer at the ceiling. Beams stretched across the space, allowing me to see how much damage the roof had taken. The night sky peeked through the holes, stars shining brightly. I hated each of those stars, because they did nothing but mock me. They looked like freedom.
“Are you guys okay?” I asked.
Seamus groaned but nodded. One of the ceiling tiles had sliced through his thin t-shirt, and into his back. Blood started to ooze from the wound. Seanan stared at it with wide eyes. “Oh my god, you’re gonna need stitches! Mom and Dad are going to kill me!”
“Not if we find Derrick and get out of here,” I said. “They’ll never know.”
Seanan nodded in an absent way. We had agreed to leave our parents behind for Derrick’s sake. Not that I had parents to go back to. Just my sister, and she had made her choice to stay behind with our guardian. Derrick would’ve ended up leaving his parents behind no matter what. But Seamus and Seanan had chosen to do this for the sake of keeping Derrick safe.
It looked like the ramifications just started to hit Seanan, who looked at her brother with wide, frightened eyes.
“Derrick?” I called again, hoping that he would answer.
I didn’t hear anything, and my heart started to drop.
“I’ll go look down that hallway,” Seanan said. “I’ll meet you back here in five minutes. Stay with Seamus.”
Before I could argue, she took off, disappearing around the corner. I wanted to curse, but Seamus hissed a pained breath through his teeth. I knelt down next to him, touching his shoulder. “How bad is it?” I asked.
He looked at me, panting. “I’ll be fine. Just a flesh wound.”
I looked at his back and knew that Seanan had been right. This would need stitches, and a lot of them. He’d carry a scar for the rest of his life, in all likelihood.
“Derrick Harris,” the demons called from outside, their voices magically amplified. “We are tired of waiting. Come out, or we go in, and you friends will suffer for that. They will suffer greatly.”
I stared at the ceiling and sighed. “Where is he?”
Then I heard his voice in the distance, and my heart plummeted down to my stomach. “All right, I’m coming out.”
“What?” Seamus asked, lifting his head. “What is he doing?”
“You stay here,” I barked, and took off in the direction of the voice. If I could get there fast enough, then Derrick wouldn’t make the mistake that I knew he was about to make. I turned the corner just in time to see him walking down the other end of the hallway, disappearing. I chased after his shadow, my heart pounding so hard that I could barely breathe.
I whipped around the corner just in time to see him walking out the door. “Derrick!” I shouted and took off after him.
He didn’t turn around.
I bolted after him, screaming in my own head about how stupid the move was. Instead of worrying about it, I pushed the door open before it could close and stumbled outside, right behind Derrick.
The demons had lined up in a row, ten of them. They all watched Derrick with empty eyes as he approached them. My heart pounded. “What are you doing?” I shouted.
Derrick stopped, looked at the ground, and then turned to me. His dark brown eyes had filled with resignation. With his black clothing, dark skin, curly black hair, and dark eyes, I shouldn’t have been able to see him, but the moonlight illuminated my friend. He looked…defeated.
Instead of answering me, he turned to the demons, and walked toward them. One of the demons lifted his hand and touched Derrick’s forehead. My friend fell to the ground immediately. His chest still rose and fell, but otherwise he looked lifeless.
“Please,” I said, turning my eyes from him to all the demons. “You don’t have to do this. Just let him go. Please?”
One of the demons stepped forward. He had bright hair and eyes, but his smile had a cruel twist to it. “Go home, Tomorrow Hyatt. Go home before this gets worse.”
I blinked, and they all vanished.