If he made most of the lights, his friend’s home was less than twenty minutes away. Sean wasn’t sure whether or not that would be enough time, but he had to try. Better to be wrong and early than right and late.
2
Sean’s Triumph screamed the last mile down the quiet borough street. He was fortunate most of the bar hoppers had settled on a location, leaving the roads relatively vacant of pedestrian traffic. The last thing he wanted was to run over someone crossing the road. Fortunately, he’d not had any close encounters and had been free to speed around the slower vehicular traffic as needed. The one police officer he’d seen had been at a stoplight, which luckily Sean had been forced to obey due to the line of three cars in front of him.
He whipped the black British motorcycle into Tommy’s driveway just as he saw a familiar yellowish flash from the living room. Keeping his helmet on, he rushed to the front door and tried the doorknob. The door swung open easily. Sean glanced at the doorframe where it had been splintered from forced entry. He’d run out of his house so quickly to get to his motorcycle, Sean hadn’t even considered grabbing one of his spare firearms from the garage. He kept a small arsenal of weapons in a locker there. Now, as he stepped into Tommy’s house, he wished he’d thought of it.
No time for regrets now. The tiny incendiary device ignited the putrid gel, and Tommy’s living room sparked into flames in an instant. His eyes scanned the room, trying to find his friend. He was nowhere to be seen. Quickly, Sean moved into the hallway that joined with the kitchen and a small breakfast nook in the back. Tommy wasn’t there either. He turned and hurried down the hall to the master bedroom as the flames ran after him along walls, doused in the orange substance.
He kicked open the door and slammed it behind to cut off the fire. That would only keep the blaze at bay for so long. Sean looked around the room and found his friend lying prostrate on the bed off to the side near a window.
“Tommy!” Sean shouted at his friend as he stepped closer to the bed. He could see the same handiwork on the back of his skull that he’d been dealt. A little patch of dried blood mixed with his friend’s curly, dark hair.
Sean reached down and shook his friend. “Tommy. Wake up. We gotta get out of here.”
Tommy grumbled something incoherent, still clearly unconscious from the drugs and the blow to the head. Picture frames cracked in the hall just outside the door, and Sean knew he only had seconds to get the two of them out.
His eyes surveyed the room, and he saw that the walls and hardwood floor had been doused in the flammable gel.
“Not good,” he said to himself.
He couldn’t wait any longer. Sean moved back over to the bed and kneeled down. Grabbing one of Tommy’s arms and the back of his corresponding leg, he hefted his friend’s limp, two-hundred-pound frame over his shoulders. Then he remembered the hallway would be a tunnel of flaming doom.
“Man, you are going to need to drop a few pounds,” Sean grunted, knowing his friend couldn’t hear him.
He set Tommy back down for a second and grabbed a baseball bat that was sitting on the floor, propped up against the side of a chestnut dresser. Sean gripped it with both hands and moved to the backyard-facing window. He bashed the glass, shattering it into hundreds of pieces and sending it flying outward. He continued to chop away at the window frame until there was nothing left that resembled what it had once been. Thankfully, the window sill was only two feet from the floor, so heaving his friend through the opening wouldn’t be as bad as if it were a four-foot-high window.
Something exploded in another part of the house, shaking the entire structure violently. Sean figured it was a gas line, but he had no intention of investigating or sticking around. He grabbed Tommy again and hefted him over his shoulders. His friend was bigger than he was, but he managed. All those nights he spent at the gym were worth their weight in gold at the moment. He staggered over to the window and lowered his friend out, feet first. Holding Tommy around the neck and pinning him to the exterior wall so he wouldn’t fall down, Sean straddled the window sill and climbed down.
Once his feet touched the thick pine mulch below the window, he grabbed Tommy under the armpits and dragged him out into the yard, all the way to the back fence to get as far from the house as possible.
As he backed away, Sean could see the scope of the damage being done to the home. Enormous flames roiled out of the windows. The outer edges of the roof were entirely consumed. Black smoke, like he’d seen at his own home, poured into the night air. Even two hundred feet away, Sean could still feel the searing heat of the flames.
There was another explosion, and the bedroom they’d just escaped erupted in flames. The door must have given way. Once it did, the free oxygen inside was sucked into the fire and gave it an extra breath of life. In a matter of seconds, the blaze flared out of the window Sean had broken.
Once again, the sound of sirens in the distance filled the air. Twice in one night. Any doubts that lingered in Sean’s mind about what was going on were completely eradicated. Someone was trying to kill them. But why?
His thoughts raced as he smacked his friend gently on the cheek. Tommy started to rouse and jerked at the sudden contact to his face. His eyelids lifted like upward flowing molasses, and he rolled around uncontrollably for a few seconds. The words coming out of his mouth were incoherent at first.
“Sean?” The name came out loud and blubbery, like a drunk who’d fallen off a barstool and smashed his lip.
“I’m here, buddy. Everything’s okay.” He held his friend still for a minute until Tommy’s eyes started to focus.
“What’s going on? Is that my house?”
Sean hesitated to answer, but he was going to find out eventually. “Yeah.”
“What the…?” Tommy grabbed the back of his head, reminding Sean of the thumping pain still pounding away at his own skull.
First order of business would be locating some ibuprofen. Sean leaned back against the wooden fence and eased his head against it, taking in a few slow breaths.
“Is my house on fire?” Tommy asked, staring in drug-fogged confusion.
Sean moved his head up and down in an overly deliberate nodding motion.
“Why is my house on fire?”
“If it makes you feel better, so is mine.” He tilted his head and stared over his shoulder at his friend.
“How did we end up in the backyard?”
“I pulled you out of your house.”
Tommy’s eyebrows lowered. That didn’t seem right. “I’m way bigger than you. How’d you get me out?”
“Leverage.”
He seemed to accept the answer and tried to stand up. The fire trucks were getting closer. Tommy wavered for a moment and then plopped back down onto the ground. Sean used the fence to help him get on his feet and then offered a hand to his friend, who still struggled to find his balance.
Sean braced him and started walking around the side of house that had the most clearance between the burning walls and the fenced perimeter.
“Where are we going?” Tommy asked. “I think I want to sit down again.”
“Nope. We need to get out of here.”
More bewilderment washed over Tommy’s face. “What do you mean? Shouldn’t we wait until the police arrive?”
Ordinarily, that would be the correct thing to do. In this case, however, Sean had a bad feeling. Something in his gut said they needed to disappear, and fast. The two staggered into the front yard, and Sean was relieved to see his motorcycle virtually untouched by the blaze. He’d purposely left it far enough from the house just in case something like this happened.