Sunday 21 September 2014

Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 260

            There’s a commotion to our right and firefighters, the living arrive to tend to her.
            ‘It moved!’ she screams, hysterical, quite forgetting the obvious pain in her leg. ‘I don’t understand, how did it move?’
            ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Have you found Yates? Or Upson?’
            ‘No,’ she replies, her voice grave. ‘God, Easton I hope he didn’t fall to that other place again.’
            ‘I don’t think…’ I begin but a hand grabs my shoulder. I’m pulled around and I find Yates behind me.
            ‘Thank God you made it,’ he says and buries his face in my shoulder. Elle joins us.
            ‘Easton, I think people got lost on the way,’ he spits like the words are unclean in his mouth and I know he’s mad with Teague.
            ‘Tarquin?’ I ask. ‘Upson?’
            Yates shakes his head. ‘I don’t think either of them made it.’
            My head falls. Brave Upson and true Tarquin. We erupted into their lives and now, apparently we’ve ruined them, ended them, left them lost in a place I’m not even sure we can still reach.
            ‘Where is he?’ I growl. ‘Teague, I’m going to wring his neck.’
            ‘I haven’t seen him. Maybe he got left behind too?’
            ‘I don’t think we’re that lucky,’ Elle says. ‘I’m sure he’ll go running off to find Thacker.’
            I look around the area, surveying the wreckage. The fire has almost disappeared and people from the outside are approaching to help the living and find out what’s happened.
‘Is there anyone else we can help?’

The dead in the area are standing around in small groups, they huddle together in the face of this old place made new.

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