“I’ll check this one,” She pointed at the old hole, “And if I can move stuff, I’ll hand it back and you can move it out of the way that way.”
“Okay,” David said. The other two formed the line behind their friend, as David stayed close enough to Hunter to touch. All the while they were bombarded with the dreadful clanking, roaring, tearing, and breaking sounds from where the bulldozer drove over the remaining intact parts of the demo
lished home.
Hunter’s feelings suffocation increased as she inched into the small opening on her stomach. Dust and smoke filtered into the space and not only made it hard to breathe, but it dimmed what light there was. Fighting down her own panic took a few seconds, then she thought about the boys. “If you feel closed in, make yourselves think of some open place, like looking off a mountain or on a big plain. It’ll help.”
She pulled loose timbers and sheetrock loose, pushing them by her body to the boys, who worked fast. As she crawled forward, a large rat exploded out of the rubble inches from her face and sprang onto her arm. She jerked and yelled, then the rat was off her, disappearing into a fist-sized opening that angled upward.
David said, “What? What?”
“It’s okay,” Hunter made herself chuckle to ease the boys’ fears, “It was a rat trying to get out, just like us.”
Lonny said, “Maybe he knows the way.”
Hunter paused at that. She pushed forward on her stomach and put her head down to see into the opening where the rat disappeared.
Maybe. Grabbing the splintered wood at the edge of the small hole, Hunter pulled and wriggled it until a two-foot long wall stud came loose. She pushed it to the boys and looked into the opening again. Much wider now, not enough for them yet, but it went the right direction. She worked to pull everything she could reach out of the hole, cutting her hands and forearms on protruding nail ends, and broken pieces of window glass. Once, she shocked herself when her arm scraped over an exposed electrical line half-hidden under some insulation.
She pushed the wire away with the end of a stick, and covered it up at the far side of the opening before continuing to pull and push on whatever was in the way.
The bulldozer stopped moving and idled somewhere off to her right, and Hunter stopped moving things to listen as the men talked. Antonio said, “This is taking too long. Go back and get the cans, bring them up.”
Rodolfo said, “All of them?”
“Whatever will fit in the back of the four-wheel thing, the Gator.”
“Thing that looks like an armored golf cart?”
“Yeah.”
Rodolfo said. “I’ll be back.”
Hunter and the boys listened to the man run off the uneven boards and roofing. Then they heard Antonio talking.
“Hey, Kincaid, I’ve got something coming for you if you’re still alive. We’re gonna wet this thing down with gas and make it the biggest bonfire for miles, turn you all into barbecue.” He laughed at his own words. “Nobody will ever find your bodies.”
They heard the small engine of the Gator arriving at the rubble pile, then of the man dragging jerry cans of fuel onto the pile, placing them in several locations.
Antonio said, “Open the tops and tip ‘em over, let it drain down in there.”
Hunter felt the hairs on her arm prickle as acrid gas fumes reached her. The first can’s gas trickled down among the debris, sounding like water from a hidden spring. Soon the fumes became strong enough so that her eyes watered.
She couldn’t see the fast-emptying can, but hearing the liquid told her it was near, less than ten feet. If it ignited, they would burn a horrible death when the flash fire in the fumes first reached them, followed by the more destructive power of large continuous flames.
She had to move fast. She renewed clearing the tunnel, jerking and pulling on those stuck pieces of debris that blocked their chance to live.
David touched her back, “Hunter?”
She stopped, then turned to the boys, “What?”
“Let one of us up there. We’re smaller, maybe we can get a little farther in the hole and break stuff loose.”
She looked at the tunnel, then back at the boys. “Okay.”
It only took a few seconds for David to replace Hunter and squirm up through a space that Hunter thought was too small. He said, “It opens up again past the blockage. I’m gonna use my feet and try to break it loose, knock it back to you.”
He kicked, groaning with the strain of pushing down with his legs, and continued to reach down to wiggle it with his hands. Chunks and powdery dust filtered down on all of them, but David got one more pieces of wood loose and Hunter and the boys scooted it behind them and out of the tunnel.