Read From the Fire for Free Online

and cobalt with its newness, stenciled by Tom just last year, stating in ominous block capitals:
    “D EA D
    EN D.”
    One last turn, and there it was.
    The waterfall. The cave. The shelter.
    Awareness, a fiery surge of immediacy, of the desperate compulsion for survival, filled Sophie’s veins. Where was Lacie? She could not remember. By reflex, she rose in her seat and looked up into the rearview mirror but there was only the terrified and pallid aging woman there, quivering with terror and glaring back at her. Tears were streaming down the woman’s cheeks.
    Me.
    Even as the Hummer neared the little waterfall, Sophie kept staring into that stranger’s eyes. She could no longer look away.
    Tom? Lacie? Lacie is … is she? Where is she?
    ~
    “Warning! Impact is —”
    ~
    Mid-sentence, the emergency bulletin on the radio went silent.
    Outside, a horrible, enormous sound welled up over the mountains, covering endless miles in a moment with its deafening wail. Sophie could hear it perfectly through the windows. Her frantic and colliding thoughts, unable to place the sound or why it was so important, told her in unison that it was an Archangel unseen above the sky, and the Archangel was mourning. Screaming.
    The siren.
    Death. The Angel of Death. O, clarion.
    The siren.
    The emergency klaxon sounded, on and on. Far off behind the town of Black Rock, toward Rollinsville and up by the ranger’s tower, it sounded that keening signal which Sophie had always loathed, but had learned in time to ignore. The klaxon that always made Lacie cry, that startled her from napping. It was the one siren that was always tested on the first Wednesday of every month, meant to presage tornadoes and forest fires, simple and tiny disasters from a yesterday-world that soon would be burned to ashes.
    The cry of the siren, it raged in Sophie. It spoke to the most primal part of her.
    Flee. Flee.
    There would be no more tornado warnings, no more warnings for wildfire. This was the final cry of war, This is war, this is really happening , and the missiles were coming down.
    Halfway around the world and they’re almost here.
    We’re going to die, Tom is dead, we’re all going to die.
    Oh, Lacie. Oh, Lacie I’m sorry I ever gave birth to you.
    I never meant for this to happen to you.
    This isn’t the ending I promised you, oh I love you.
    I’m sorry for the world, for bringing you here, oh I am so sorry.
    Never did I believe they would ...
    they would actually
    never
    never never
    Time had become so tangible, so weighty and slow. The emergency bulletin was on again.
    ~
    “Twenty-three minutes and fifty seconds …”
    “Warning! Impact is imminent …”
    ~
    I’m not going to make it.
    Sophie heard herself give a choking cry. She was going to be sick, her stomach was twisting in upon itself, the coffee was gurgling, welling up and burning her esophagus. Her cheeks puffed out with a moan of nausea.
    Can’t stop
    can’t stop
    She hit the gas. Looking down the road, it was right there. The waterfall was real, the shelter, it was actually there.
    I’m not going to.
    Driving as fast as she dared, she aimed the H4 directly toward the waterfall that marked the road’s dead end. The Hummer swerved of its own accord as its right front wheel caught a rainwater-tumbled rock on the edge of the wheel rut, then came down with a slippery thud and locked itself into the rut again. The Hummer veered toward the right-side canyon wall. Sophie yelped as the passenger-side mirror collided with the rocky face, shattered, and snapped one of its metal supports in two. The mirror there dangled and bumped against the passenger door, as Sophie steadied the H4 away from the wall.
    Faster.
    Thirty yards away from the waterfall, twenty.
    The waterfall was little more than a few stringy gouts of white water cascading down, but they sprayed up enough of a mist to obscure the cave behind to just about anyone, and Tom’s cleverly-painted canvas hid the cave entirely. The