Page 61 of Little Girls Sleeping
Smoke filtered into the barn, followed by an intense crackling noise.
McGaven peered up. “What the…?”
“A bomb.”
“A what?” he yelled. Clearly his hearing had been temporarily impaired.
“Nothing too catastrophic; most likely a pipe bomb,” she surmised. “C’mon, we have to get out of here now.”
Katie stood, wavering slightly, dizzy, head pounding, and began to look for an escape route. The smoke was building, making it difficult to breathe. She coughed several times. “Cover your nose and mouth,” she ordered.
McGaven did as she instructed, pulling his shirt over the lower part of his face, and they moved back toward the front, where flames were already licking into the barn.
“There’s only one way out!” Katie yelled, choking and coughing.
She climbed back up the wooden ladder to the loft with McGaven at her heels and headed to the window area, but she struggled to open the access.
“Get back!” McGaven yelled. He fired several rounds into the hinges holding the opening closed. At first the shots had no effect, then the hinges buckled before finally giving way. There had been small reinforcement-steel pieces and miscellaneous hardware forged into place.
Katie glanced down to the main area and saw that the flames were approaching fast—in minutes they would be completely engulfed. Frantically they pried, scraped, and battled to get access through the opening. But she began to feel her vision fade due to her incessant coughing, and her legs and arms weakened like jelly.
Finally McGaven managed to clear their escape route. As Katie peered through the opening at the drop, her stomach seized up and she closed her eyes. The deputy shook her hard, rattling her teeth. “Stay awake!” he yelled. His strong grip and bulky build made him seem like a Goliath.
The flames were touching the floor of the loft and inching their way towards them like angry tentacles.
McGaven shook Katie again. “Look,” he rasped. “There are a couple of bales of hay next to the lumber that haven’t caught fire yet. We can reach them.”
Katie nodded. She couldn’t speak. Her throat was dry, tightening her vocal cords.
McGaven held her by her waist and gently moved her toward the extreme edge of the loft before turning her body in the direction of the hay below.
Katie struggled to keep her eyes open. She wanted to lie down and sleep—push everything out of her mind.
“Katie!” he yelled. “Feet first, tuck and roll. You can do this—it’s easy for you.”
She focused intently on the spot where she was going to land. She remembered a time when her squad had to escape a building before a rocket was launched. The sound when it hit the structure was unlike anything she had ever heard in her life.
She snapped back to the present, hearing McGaven yelling instructions and encouragement in the same breath. Intense heat crept up behind her along with huge puffs of black smoke.
“Go!” he yelled.
The free-falling sensation was briefly calming, like being protected under the wing of a bird. The wind smacked Katie’s face and revitalized her just before she hit the stack of hay. Instinctively she tucked and rolled several times before stopping. The impact wasn’t as bad as she’d initially feared.
Within seconds, her peripheral vision caught the blur of McGaven following her down, but as she watched in horror, he hit the edge of the bale and crashed to the ground, where he lay in a crumpled heap.
No.
The battlefield of horrors gripped her soul. The flames and smoke were closing in on them. She crawled toward the unconscious deputy and grabbed hold of his jacket, then slowly dragged him, inch by painful inch, away from the blazing barn.
When they were a safe distance away, she retrieved her firearm, which was still secured in her holster, and took cover. It occurred to her that whoever had tried to kill them inside the barn was probably somewhere nearby. If they had gone to this much trouble already, it could be assumed that they would finish the job.
McGaven muttered. Katie looked down at him. He was coming round.
“C’mon, we need to get to that shed over there,” she instructed. It was the best place under the circumstances to shield them from potential harm and keep watch for the enemy.
Once they’d moved to the storage shed, Katie’s senses began to return to normal. Despite the fatigue, adrenalin kept her body rigid and alert enough to make conscious decisions.
The barn continued to burn; flames engulfed the structure, and beams fell like dominoes.
