His bare feet plunged into something cold. Some splashed up on his face.
His eyes bulged at the raw-steel taste. He knew exactly what it was.
“Run!” he screamed.
“Buh-bye,” the Executioner whispered, scraping two matches and tossing them into the gasoline. Soon as it whoomped, he sprinted to the truck.
“Get out of the house!” Marty roared as he wheeled away from the high-test ponding across the first floor. “Now! Out! Run for your life!”
Marty invaded her nightmare, shouting like doom. The pickup morphed into a mushroom cloud. She thrashed like a gaffed marlin.
* * *
Flames licked west on Jackson. Rounded south around Emily’s mailbox, gathering speed as the fuel supply grew richer. Flashed up the driveway, across the porch, and through the mail slot, smelling the mother lode.
The Executioner raced the other way.
Marty pounded up the stairs. He had to stay alive long enough to throw Emily out the window. The concrete frame was so dense no explosion could blow it apart. The fireball would stay inside, pressure-cooking them like-
Detour.
He slammed into a wall to stop his momentum. Ripped open the closet door. Yanked the tommy gun from the violin case. Locked in the ammo drum, worked the bolt, jammed the butt in his shoulder, and ripped hellfire into Heaven.
The buzz-cloud of .45s shattered the skylight into razor rain.
He tossed the empty tommy and charged into the bedroom.
Emily’s head bongo’d as she sprang from bed. “Marty! What are you-”
“Bomb!” he roared as the fire-breathing dragon below inhaled walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, tiles, tools, grout, toilets, and whipped cream, then blew its bowels in superheated fury.
Eggs splattered as something primeval kicked the firehouse. Viking turned off the gas, then ran for his turnout gear. He knew from the sound they wouldn’t even make lunch.
* * *
The dragon blew through the house, up the stairs, and into the bedroom, knocking Emily into the master bath. “Marty, where are you?” she screamed as he disappeared in fire and smoke.
“This is Naperville 911,” the dispatcher said coolly as all lines rang at once. “I can’t hear you, slow down and tell me . . . Jackson Avenue . . . near the VFW post . . .”
She typed a series of response codes, setting off bells and Klaxons at fire stations across the city. “Explosion and fire downtown, end of Jackson Avenue, near the VFW,” she broadcast. “All units respond Code Three.” Lights, sirens, no speed limits.
The mapping software flashed names and addresses of nearby residents.
Biting her lip, she rang for a supervisor.
“All units, Code Thirteen,” she said, switching to police frequencies. Thirteen meant a cop was under attack and death was imminent. “Jackson Avenue, Code Thirteen . . .”
3:17 a.m.
“Marty!” Emily screamed as she kicked her way through the bedroom. “Where are you?”
Fire licked walls and baseboards, wormed through drawers and closets. Her wedding gown was a cone of glowing cinders, her mounted deer antlers, charred. Her little black dress, the one she’d dieted into so relentlessly for her first real date with Marty, was ash on a hanger. Windows were shattered, walls scorched. She saw stars through collapse-holes. Their bed was reduced to wires, wheels, and the “Do Not Remove” mattress tag.
Mayday! her head warned. Abandon ship!
Instead, she stepped into her work boots.
“Where are you?” she repeated, kicking aside embers. “Are you here? Talk to me!”
Still no reply.
She crunched her way to the landing.
The first floor was a lava lamp of orange and red. The stairs were gone. Tarry black smoke chimneyed up and out of the house through what used to be the skylight. She blinked at the roaring heat as her toes smacked a pile of soft.
The pile groaned.
“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, raking the haystack of concrete shards off Marty’s unmoving body. Neither burned nor bleeding, she saw. Still breathing.
“Wake up, wake up!” she yelled directly into his ear. Nothing. She slapped his face, twice, hard. He moaned, but didn’t awaken.
The dragon belched on her back.
“We need to get out of here,” she said, contorting in pain. “You have to get up.”
No dice.
She grabbed his ankles and heaved. It was brutal - he outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She heaved and stopped, heaved and stopped, dragging him across smolders and flares, bending occasionally to slap flames out of his hair.
The dragon munched at the landing.
“The block’s on fire,” the battalion chief reported as his command SUV screamed down Jackson. “Raise the response level to catastrophic, tell PD to evacuate downtown.”