Page 83 of No Safe Place

As we reached the next room, I called out.

“Is everyone all right?”

To our left, I saw Mathias and Mario crawling out of the rubble toward us.

“Just swell,” Mario said as he dusted shattered glass off his bald head. “This is better than Disneyland.”

We all reached the middle stairwell thirty seconds later. Suddenly, Mario pointed to the other side of the factory.

“Fire!” he yelled. “Fire!”

I peeked out. Mario wasn’t being sarcastic this time. Down the corridor, the entire ceiling was on fire.

“Down the stairs now!” I yelled as I saw one of the rooms down at the far end blossom up with flame.

We got to the ground floor by the barricaded door and then continued down the stairwell for the basement.

At the landing between the first floor and the basement, I stopped and went to the half-open window.

“Help me open this all the way,” I said to Mathias.

Mathias came forward and forced it open hard enough to shatter one of the glass panes.

“Now what?” Colleen said.

“We have to go out the back here and get up to the bridge and cross it to Mathias’s truck,” I said.

“But it’s too open. They’ll see us,” she said.

“We have to try. What other choice do we have?” I said.

“Wait,” Mathias said. “I have another idea.”

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“I’m all ears, Mathias,” I said as smoke began to billow down from the floor above.

He pointed out the window but not at the bridge to the right. He pointed down river to the left.

“What if we crossed the river to the south beyond where that roadblock is?”

“But how are we going to get across the river?” I said. “This is the only bridge for miles.”

“About a quarter mile from here along the river on this side is a small brick building.”

“Next to a waterfall,” I said, remembering the running path and the cormorants, which felt like a million years ago.

“Yes,” Mathias said, nodding. “We’re working there as well on a second hydroelectric generator and one of the company trucks is parked there in a lot on the other side of the river along Route 4.”

“But how do we get across the river?” I said. “Swim? The river is deep there and wide. And there’s a thirty-foot waterfall.”

“We won’t need to swim,” Mathias said. “There’s a phone cable that goes across the river above the waterfall. The telephone pole has rungs on it. We climb up and go hand over hand across the cable to the truck.”

I thought about that.

It sounded insane.

“The cable will hold us?”

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