Page 14 of The Mountain Man's Summer

Six

Summer

I wake up in hell.

It must be a thousand degrees in this room. Thick smoke plumes around me and into me, packing my lungs. My chest heaves to expel a cough but the breath required is already snuffed out of my body. My hands shackle my throat that is full of muck.

The angry flames race across the floors and scale the walls.

Fire licks the edge of the bed, its hungry red tongues lashing out at my feet, and I curl up my legs. Ashes and embers fall all around me in crackling spits.

What the holy shit. My eyes double, triple in size.

Boyd. Where is he?

Where is Topher?

“There you are. I’ve got you.” Gloved hands close around me in the haze. “Arms around my neck, sweetie.” A tranquilizing male voice.

He isn’t the deranged man I sensed earlier, in the Darkness.

Or is he? Fear wraps around my vocal cords and I want to scream, let me go let me go, but he places this heavy thing on my face and cool, clean oxygen rolls into my lungs.

I’m taken outside. It’s late evening. Maybe the middle of the night. All the stars in the sky are alight. The temp is lower out here than in, by a lot. The mountain air races over my fevered skin.

I’m laid on a stretcher.

Where are they?

Where the fuck are my boys?

~ * ~

A steady rhythm wakes me up.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

My eyelids peel back and the first thing I see is him. His handsome face. His soulful eyes. Just glimpsing Boyd’s smile is a soothing balm to my soul.

“Hey there, sleeping beauty.”

I smile back. “We’re alive?” I ask. “Both of us?”

“Yes.”

My eyes bang open. “Topher,” I gasp.

“He’s okay too.”

I heave a sigh. “H-how,” I manage. “How did it happen?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you.”

“Me?” I puzzle a look.

He holds my hand, it’s an ephemeral caterpillar cocooned in his bigger, warmer one. “Could they have found you, somehow? Did the Keepers do this?”

“What?” I ask, perplexed. “Keepers? What are you talking about, honey?”

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