Fun and Games - Duane Swierczynski [47]
The events of this horrible wretched day—erased.
Which was why Mann was completely stunned by the massive explosion that suddenly rocked the top of the house.
17
If you have any doubts as to how to end a movie,
set everything on fire.
—Samuel Z. Arkhoff in conversation
with Brian Helgeland
VOMITING, LANE would later realize, probably saved her life.
She didn’t know that at the time. Midheave she felt something slam into her from behind. Immediately she started to choke, and when she was finally able to draw in some air, on her hands and knees in the middle of the hallway, Lane was overwhelmed with the odor of something burning.
Holy fuck—
It was Charlie.
Nausea and vomiting was immediately forgotten, as if her brain realized there were bigger things to deal with, hunched its shoulders, and said, Okay, you win. Go do what you have to do.
Half crying, Lane kicked the one door shut, then the other, then grabbed the pile of wet towels from the floor and slammed them into Charlie’s burning form. What was that line from grade school? Stop, drop, and roll. Well, Charlie was already stopped and dropped. Should she roll him? She should. She touched his sides and was stunned by the heat emanating from his body. She rolled him anyway.
“What the…?” Mann said, looking up at the fireball from down below.
O’Neal barked into his phone. “The hell did you do, A.D.?”
Directly underneath the house, A.D. missed the initial blast. He felt it rock his body, though. He rolled over until he was able to gaze up at the smoke and the fire licking the sides of the house. Did he do that? No. He couldn’t have. The pig wasn’t loaded with any kind of explosives. From his vantage point, the holocaust looked otherworldly, like it was happening at some great distance instead of just a few floors away. Kind of cool, actually.
“A.D., answer me! What the hell happened, man?”
“Wasn’t me,” A.D. said.
All of that dark smoke. So beautiful against the hazy gray skies.
Every year there are a handful of natural-gas explosions in the United States. Few of them are powerful enough to knock down a structure.
The injuries to anyone present inside can range from minor to moderate burns, depending on how many cubic feet of gas has accumulated inside before ignition.
Hardie groaned. He didn’t lose consciousness—at least he didn’t think so. He was just… confused. He couldn’t remember falling down the staircase or hitting the floor. And how did striking that wooden match spark a blast? There was no gas in the air, far as he could tell. Unless they pumped in something that was both undetectable and extremely flammable…
In which case they were kind of fucked.
Hardie could see the fire raging behind the double doors leading to the staircase. The doors were beginning to peel and warp. He could feel the heat radiating from them. They needed to move.
He rolled his head to the side in time to see Lane pausing in the doorway that led to the bottom floor. She seemed unable to make up her mind. Which was fine. He couldn’t blame her. Maybe she thought he was already dead, and had to figure out how to save herself. Lane made her way back to Hardie.
“Go,” he told her. “Get out of here now—I’ll be fine.”
“Go where? Outside to the people who are trying to kill me? This is them, trying to flush us out.”
“Well, it’s working,” Hardie said. Smoke was filling the room now, seeping under the door and through the soundproofing ceiling panels. “We can’t stay in here.”
Lane disappeared behind his head. The next thing he felt was the agony of her touch under his shoulders, trying to heave him up. Hardie screamed and rolled out of the way.
“I can do it, I can do it…”
“I was just trying to help!”
“I know, but it’s better if I do it.”
Pressing his palms to the carpet, Hardie pushed himself off the