The Edge of the Knife (Surviving the Fall 8)

Most of the contents of the cabinets had been taken, but Dianne dutifully rolled up her left sleeve and consulted the sharpie-written list of must-haves she had jotted down on her arm before leaving the house. It only took a few minutes for her to check the cabinets and by the end she was disappointed. While there were a few bandages and basic antiseptics she located on some bottom shelves there was nothing left that could be used to help Jason.

Dianne clenched her teeth as she checked through the cabinets and rooms in the clinic one last time. She didn’t know why she thought the walk-in would be a good place to stop considering Sarah had told her what locations would have the medications and fluids they would need for Jason. Wasting even a few minutes on a fruitless search could prove to be fatal for her ill friend.

All right. Time to go. Dianne hurried back to the room with the cabinets to get her jacket and backpack. As she leaned over to grab them she heard a faint noise coming from the back of the building. She froze, turning her head towards the sound as she strained to make out the source. It sounded at first like a distant groaning, perhaps coming from the building’s structure as it shifted, but as she listened she began to realize that it was actually coming from two people who were bickering with each other. Dianne crept towards the back door to the clinic, keeping her body pressed against the wall as she moved cautiously, trying her best not to make any noise.

“…did she go, anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“Haven’t we looked around here long enough?”

“No! Her lights went off around here. We keep looking till we find her or see that she moved off. You head that way, I’ll go down the street this way.”

“Ugh. I hate going on foot.”

“Get used to it. If we don’t find her then our asses’ll be in a sling.”

As the two men talked with one another Dianne slowly peeked through the hole in the back door where the window had once been located before someone shattered it. Across the back parking lot, standing in front of a row of buildings behind the clinic, stood two men whom she recognized. They were just starting to separate and walk in different directions down the street but Dianne could still see their faces enough to realize who they were.

Them again? Dianne groaned and moved away from the window, closing her eyes as she realized that the two men were the ones who had tried to steal her truck at the grocery store at the start of the event. They were also two of the group who had been present at the Carson’s home when she and Jason heard about Tina’s kidnapping. As she thought about the conversation she just overhead she realized that the “he” they were talking about was most likely the red-shirted individual who was the leader of the group at the gas station.

If he’s got people looking for me… this is bad. Very, very bad.

Chapter 5

Somewhere in Indiana

Smoke was thick in the air, robbing the sky of color and dampening the spirits of Rick, Jane and Dr. Evans. While the drive through Missouri and the southern half of Illinois had been smoother than the trio could have asked for, when they entered Indiana things started taking a turn for the worse. The first sign of trouble ahead came in the form of light swirls of ashes that came and went with the wind. The ash quickly grew in density and was accompanied by thick, acrid smoke that reduced visibility and made it uncomfortable to breathe.

By the time an hour had passed Rick had been forced to reduce their speed from over ninety miles an hour to around thirty just so that he wouldn’t inadvertently collide with any obstacles in the road. The slowdown in pace was infuriating and no matter what road or direction they took they couldn’t escape from the smoke and ash.

“What’s causing all this?” Jane looked out through the windshield and passenger window, shaking her head in frustration.

“Fire. A lot of it.” Dr. Evans answered from the back seat.

“No kidding.” Jane rolled her eyes, her patience wearing thin from spending so much time cooped up in the car. “What kind of fire, though?”

“The hot, burning kind?” Rick snickered at his joke though he was the only one of the trio to do so.

“A massive fire, perhaps of a nearby forest. To produce this much ash and smoke in this volume the fires would have to be absolutely enormous.”

“Sure would be nice if the wind would change.” Rick swerved to avoid a hole in the highway. “Then maybe we could see more than a few inches beyond our faces.”

“Hey guys?” Jane was staring out the windshield. “Is it just me or is the smoke and ash getting… more orange?”

It took a moment for Rick and Dr. Evans to notice the change, but they slowly realized that Jane wasn’t just seeing things. The sky was, indeed, beginning to take on an orange hue that was backdropped by a glow that would look good on the cover of a horror novel but when viewed in reality was terrifying in ways that Rick couldn’t even begin to express. As the car began to crest a hill, the breeze picked up and the trees by the side of the road swayed back and forth. The ash and smoke swirled, rising and falling as it dispersed slightly, just enough to extend the visibility by enough to see what was causing the glow.

When Rick had taken family vacations with his parents to visit his grandparents in Oklahoma, one of his favorite memories was spending each afternoon watching a movie with his grandfather. Rick’s grandfather liked older movies and his favorite actor was John Wayne. Many westerns were consumed over the years, but Rick’s favorite John Wayne movie wasn’t a western at all. Rick didn’t remember much about the plot of Hellfighters but one thing was cemented in his mind forever: the image of burning oil wells that looked like fountains of pure flame.

Beyond the road, out in a distant field, sat the infrastructure that supported the local oil mining operations. Dozens of pumps and drills littered the field, some covered in rust from years of use while others had been installed mere months prior. Instead of slowly pumping away, though, the oil wells were on fire, and just like in Hellfighters, they looked like fountains spitting out flames.

Smoke billowed into the sky, blocking out the blue for miles in every direction. Even from the extreme distance they were sitting Rick could swear he felt the heat from the fires. It took no small amount of concentration to keep from backing the car up, turning around and finding a path that would take them far, far from the field. The oil wells, however, were not the only things that were on fire.

Past the field, barely visible through the cloud of smoke and the torrents of flame was a veritable ocean of fire. The side of the distant mountain, covered a month prior by a dazzling mixture of red, yel

low and green was now pure orange. The fire was moving slowly through the trees, speeding up when the wind picked up and slowing down when it faded away. Rick’s mouth silently opened and closed several times as he kept trying to find the words to describe the landscape laid out before them.

“It’s as if hell itself has come to earth.” Dr. Evans whispered from the back seat. “Look, out among the fields. You see the cracks in the ground? More like what we saw in Kansas City.”