Page 80 of Montana Falls
Dozens of them, almost.
A deafening roar shook my home, and I was thrown back against the coffin as the entire room seemed to lurch sideways. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling, the floor beneath my feet trembling violently. The blast left my ears ringing, the sound disorienting, painful.
I barely had time to register what had happened before Retta moved. She lunged toward me, faster than I expected, and I felt her cold hand clamp down on my wrist as she used my surprise against me. She wrenched my gun from my grip before I could even think to react.
My breath caught in my throat as she pointed my weapon toward me, and I felt my home cave in on itself.
I watched myhomestart to be ruined just as much as my family had.
“Get up,” she commanded, her voice low and controlled. She might have seemed calm, but the tension in her body told me everything.
This was no accident. No freak explosion from a gas leak and poor luck.
She had planned this.
I swallowed hard, my mind spinning as I tried to process everything and work out a way around the switch up of control. But I had to do it fast, because the entire house was still falling and burning, and Retta was marching me toward the wall where a window had once been, the grip on the weapon steady, determined, as she ordered me out of the crumbling bricks.
“Retta-” I began, but she shoved the barrel of the gun against my side, cutting me off.
“Move, Maggie.”
I had no choice.
My legs carried me forward, out of the room, into the cool air. My heart was racing, grief and confusion mixing into a nauseating cocktail. The distant rumble of the explosion and screams still echoed in my ears, and all I could think about was the others. Were they okay? Had they been hurt? I didn’t know how powerful the bombs had been, or where exactly they had gone off.
All I knew was that my home was on fire.
The place my mama had lived and been happy. It was falling apart and dancing with red flames.
The place my daddy had loved me was crumbling and ruining in a way that would never be repaired again.
Was it foolish to cry over a house? Did it make me insane that I was crying over the wreckage of the Montana mansion as Retta all but marched me across the grounds, into the surrounding woods?
Did it make me pathetic to be more angry about my home than the gun pointed at my skin?
The trees loomed tall and dark around us, the scent of pine and earth filling the cool night air and colliding with the stench of smoke and death with far too much violence.
“Stop here.” She ordered, and before I could ask another question, she pulled a small detonator from the purse strapped around her shoulder, clicking it without a single word.
Another explosion. Another bang and static and ringing in my ears that I doubted I would ever get rid of.
Another part of her twisted plan I ought to have guessed because she was a fucking psycho who dished out explosions like they were candy.
I felt a sickening lurch as the ground beneath our feet gave way, the trees and foliage tearing away like ragged curtains as the world fell into chaos around us.
My screams were swallowed by the roar of collapsing earth. Everything was spinning, dark and disorienting, and then — a sudden, brutal impact. Pain shot through my body as I hit the ground. I lay there, dazed and gasping for breath, the darkness of the hole around us pressing in. The sound of debris settling, the muffled shouts of distant voices, and the eerie silence that followed the collapse filled my ears.
I tried to move, to get up, but my limbs felt heavy and unresponsive. I turned my head, squinting into the gloom, tryingto make out anything in the oppressive darkness. My hands scraped against the cold, rough soil as I pushed myself into a sitting position and desperately tried to get my bearings and figure shit out.
I didn’t want to be taken again. I would die before that. But I much preferred the idea of living. Living and being happy. That was what I wanted…
As I lay there, struggling to regain my bearings, I could hear Retta’s breath, uneven and strained. But there was no time to find a new plan or salvage things. She was on her feet, dragging me up with a force I could not stop, even without the gun still held my way.
“Move,” she ordered. Her voice was cold, and it cut through the disorientation like a knife. “We’re going to walk.”
The word ‘walk’ felt like a death sentence. I struggled to keep up as she led me through the darkness, in what was clearly a tunnel designed for someone as wicked as her. I had a vague memory about learning of old, abandoned prohibition tunnels that were deemed unfit for use, and I was fairly sure the local government had them blocked off decades ago, but clearly not well enough.
Retta had been using them. Using them to wander my city undisturbed and sneak around as she did whatever horrid things she planned.
