Book 10 Chapter 6
Part 1
A second meteor shower was falling.
We had to survive this and we couldn’t afford to lose Pierre Smith of JB either.
We needed to overcome this crisis.
A meteor shower didn’t need to actually hit you to be deadly. The shockwave produced when it hit the ground would do the trick. But lying flat on the ground and hoping to weather the storm wasn’t going to work.
“Sebek,” said my stepmom. “JB’s toy is still nearby! It should be able to survive the shock!!”
We had to bet on that.
We dragged unconscious Pierre, gestured instructions to Anastasia, and retraced our steps. I could see the meteors falling toward the city even now. We weren’t protected by thick walls here, so the shockwave would reach us soon enough.
The giant stone and gold crocodile lay lifelessly on the ground, covered in the grass and dirt it had thrown into the air as it moved.
I could hardly believe my eyes when my stepmom stuck her head inside its twisted jaws.
Hadn’t she said all the concentrated power inside prevented someone from riding inside it for long? So was it safe for a short time? Hopefully it didn’t have any nasty side effects. Our options were inside that or out here, so getting through this undamaged wasn’t an option.
Anastasia paled.
“E-ewww. We’re going in there? Really!?”
“I say we stuff its creator Pierre inside first. Then if it starts moving, it’ll bite him along with us.”
“…”
“We’re dead for sure if we stay out here, so which will it be, Anastasia!?”
“Okay, fine!!”
The small blonde girl hopped inside the croc’s mouth half out of desperation. I went last. I pushed on soaking wet Anastasia’s small butt to hurry inside those jaws.
We were supposedly closed in, but the world grew pure white a moment later.
A meteor must have landed quite close by. I couldn’t see outside, but I could tell the bus-sized mass was sliding sideways. My ears were ringing really bad too, suggesting an extreme change in atmospheric pressure.
…We’re dead for sure if we stay out here, huh?
My own words pained me now. Some random strangers had saved me in Paris. How had they fared with these back-to-back disasters? I was kind of familiar with the meteor shower since this was the second one. Hopefully they had the experience they needed to act appropriately too.
“Pant, pant.”
Once it was over, I realized I was holding Anastasia tight in my arms.
But my stepmom was holding us both even tighter.
“D-did we survive?” gulped Anastasia.
I poked my head out from the croc’s broken jaws and heard a low rumbling. Probably thunderclouds. Lots of dust and dirt had flown into the air, destabilizing the atmosphere.
The first meteor shower had led to contaminated rain, a flooded river, an earthquake, and volcanic activity.
But the second one might not follow the same pattern.
“Let’s start by seeing what he has to say.”
Amatsu Yurina’s suggestion sounded out of place. It took me a second to realize she was focused on Pierre Smith of JB.
“We don’t need any special tools. Yes, suffocating him with muddy water and cloth bag should work. Satori, you look after Anastasia-chan. Your mom will take care of everything, but make sure the young girl doesn’t see any of it.”
Part 2
Absolute Noah’s Amatsu Yurina tried to handle everything in the Absolute Noah style, so I had to put a stop to that. I doubted that a JB cast member was going to talk so easily, but I couldn’t let her torture him.
“We have an internet connection. There are other ways of going about this!”
I started by photographing his face and body and then getting detailed records of his fingerprints, eyes, and teeth. Pierre Smith might be a fake name, but biometrics couldn’t be fooled. In our modern digital society, I could find all the data I needed with a quick search.
“Maxwell, start with a search of the whole internet. Focus on photo-based social networks and video sites.”
“Let us hope he posts a lot of selfies to find dates and seek self-validation.”
“I’m not expecting that much. But he might show up in the background of a photo posted on a complete stranger’s account. If we find the distribution of those photos and videos, we can work out where he usually lives based on that.”
“Found him,” said Anastasia, arriving at the answer first.
She seemed delighted she had beaten Maxwell. I wasn’t sure what was so fun about challenging a machine, though. Was it like playing shogi or chess against a supercomputer? The soaking wet blonde girl grinned and shook her phone.
“He’s usually found around Milan, Italy, so I’m guessing Pierre Smith is a fake name. Based on the ATMs he tends to use, his home must be-”
“Maxwell, check his fingerprints or irises.”
“Sure. I have found a Fiancé Home Security front door lock using his fingerprint. It belongs to an apartment in Legnano of the Province of Milan. It is registered with a Vizza Valdia. He is a 22-year-old man attending the Polytechnic University of Milan. He is having trouble finding employment.”
“I-I found him first! That’s just a bunch of extra stuff!” tearfully insisted Anastasia, her cheeks puffed out so much I thought they were going to explode.
“I want something we can use to negotiate. Any personal information we can use against him? Even something from his search history or purchase history could work.”
“I must wonder why you immediately jump to the idea of him having unusual sexual proclivities, but I cannot find anything like that,” said Maxwell.
“So does he live a clean life while he focuses on fulfilling his JB duties?”
“However, once he started living on his own a few years ago, he began viewing an impressive amount of stepmother porn. Aunts and stepsisters do not seem to do it for him.”
“Bingo! Give me the worst title of the recent ones he’s watched.”
Amatsu Yurina put her hands on her hips and gave me one helllllllll of a glare, but we needed this information to resolve this peacefully! If this didn’t work, my own stepmom was going to grab some pliers and start pulling his 32 teeth one at a time!! And when Pierre – or rather, Vizza – was already into stepmoms, who knows how twisted his desires would get if she straddled him and began attacking him with a literally demonic smile on her face!!
Anyway…
“Good morning, Pierre. Or should I call you ‘Trapped Between My Mother and Grandmother – Will This be a Motherly Night or a Womanly Night?’ ”
“Eek!? D-don’t get the wrong idea! You know how it is when you’re really bored at 3 in the morning, right!?”
“Let’s hope all the people starved for entertainment in their living rooms know what you mean. Now to get this information uploaded. Tap – there, all done.”
“Wait, what did you just do!? A video site? A burner social media account? Oh, god! My life is over!!”
Vizza Valdia trembled in terror until I showed him the “cancel upload” screen.
“But I will do it next time. I mean it. So tell us everything.”
“…”
“Is this how the 3 minute videos on ClikClok work? I can have the world’s teens spread it for me. It’ll travel around the globe until your poor mother in Milan happens to see it!!”
“Comment> Yes!! I love how the shriveled dried persimmons of her tits show some vestiges of how big they once were. Truly, breasts age like a fine wine. Bless you, uploader!!” recited Maxwell.
“Okay, I’ll talk! I’ll talk!!”
Peel back the mask, and this is generally what you find with mysterious global string pullers. They only try to make themselves seem so big and powerful in order to hide who they really are deep down. The fact that they manipulate people using their fear of the darkness is basically an admission of how pathetic they are.
Anastasia looked confused.
“Wait, what just happened?”
“Ask me again in 10 years and I will explain it all in detail, 11-year-old.”
I gave her a gentle smile and dodged her question.
If Vizza Valdia still refused to tell us something, I could get ignorant Anastasia to call him “scum” in a disgusted voice. You know, standing above him with her arms crossed and looking down on him like he was garbage.
“JB is an organization intent on staging a ‘jailbreak’ from this oppressive world. Or more specifically, from this world that has been finetuned to the gods’ liking.”
I still wasn’t clear on the exact definition of a god, but now wasn’t the time to get sidetracked on that. A second meteor shower had fallen. We had escaped the immediate shockwave, but another disaster could strike at any time.
“I know that much. That’s why you stole some nukes from France so you can compress a bunch of dirt. That way you can create a new planet that’s more to your liking and move there.”
My stepmom had said she doubted it would work out the way they wanted. Even if they did create a brand new planet and move there, either amino acids would form there or JB would bring along some “uninvited guests” in the form of microbes. Once those multiplied and evolved, they would find that world was also governed by rules not of their making.
But Vizza Valdia tilted his head.
He actually looked puzzled.
“Our goal is not moving there.”
“What?”
“We are creating a new planet, but not to move to. That would only save the people our organization chose to go with us. How would we be any better than Absolute Noah and their ark then?”
“…”
Cross-armed Amatsu Yurina glared even harder at him. Not surprising when her ark had been destroyed by Archenemy Echidna, who had actually been sent by JB to infiltrate her organization.
But this made sense.
If they had basically the same idea, JB wouldn’t have needed to destroy Absolute Noah’s ark. They could have secretly remade it and hijacked it for their own purposes instead. But they had in fact chosen to destroy it.
That meant their objectives were incompatible.
In other words, JB’s jailbreak was not sending a chosen few to live on another planet.
“Then what is your objective?”
“JB will view society from the very bottom and identify its mistakes.”
“What is your ‘jailbreak’!? I’m sick of JB’s riddles. What are you trying to accomplish by stealing nukes and creating a new planet with them!?”
“And we will save everyone. Not just a chosen few – everyone from the bottom up. That is what our jailbreak is meant to accomplish. We are the cast that wins freedom by fighting against this world’s farce and its shitty script.”
“Satori,” called a sharp voice.
I didn’t get why at first.
The hunk of metal sliding in from the side filled me in pretty quick. A large object had broken its main rotor against the ground, tore through the grass as a simple blunt object, and crushed Vizza Valdia beyond recognition.
Was that JB’s attack helicopter?
Had it failed to dodge the meteor shower and crashed? Had JB been this desperate to silence Vizza? Or had the gods who opposed JB intervened? Why had this happened!? Someone had died before my eyes and I had no idea why!
I wasn’t even so sure this was Absolute Noah vs. JB anymore. What were we supposed to do? I had no idea what to believe in anymore.
The crashed helicopter exploded a short distance away, but it didn’t even surprise me at this point. The focus of this commotion was clearly shifting elsewhere. That fearsome ruler of the sky seemed foolishly behind the times now.
“There’s something wrong with the sky, Truth.”
Anastasia took a few steps back while looking up into the heavy night sky that remained dark but also showed no stars.
I had heard some deep rumbling earlier. The meteor shower must have sent a lot of dust into the air which was now rubbing together in the sky.
“Something’s coming, Truth. We need to get out of here. I don’t know what’s going on, but we can’t get any more information out of a dead man!!”
Several thick lightning bolts struck in the distance. I couldn’t work out any pattern. They may have been targeting the tops of tall buildings that acted like lightning rods, or they may have been striking plastic bags floating in the wind or the fire hydrant water being sprayed on the buildings. I only knew one thing for sure.
The next disaster was lightning.
Specifically, a high voltage storm that sent an unnatural amount of lightning all over the place.
“Warning: tall trees are a serious risk in a lightning storm. I recommend you take care in the route you choose to escape this plaza.”
“Aren’t we at more risk here where it’s as wide open as a golf course!?”
“There is an urban area immediately outside the Hôtel des Invalides. The lightning pattern will be easier to predict there. If you remain among the trees, any lightning that strikes the top of the tree will travel through the ground to reach you.”
Doubting Maxwell, a simulator stuffed full of disaster related data, would be a bad idea. I snatched Vizza’s phone from the pocket of a scrap of clothing that had torn away and then gestured for Anastasia and my stepmom to leave the plaza with me.
The trees weren’t the only problem. The open area also had the metal outdoor lights to worry about.
Since the lightning came from dust rubbing together in the air, there appeared to be a physical concentration to its distribution. It was like a crackling sandstorm was blowing our way. We had no choice but to run away from the rumbling thunder.
“Maxwell, I want as much information as I can get before the noise affects my phone’s connection! What’s the basic countermeasure for lightning!?”
“Avoid water, flat, open areas, and tall trees or poles and hide in a sturdy building until the storm has passed.”
Open areas and trees were a problem!? Talk about a double standard!
“Hey, Truth? Are there any sturdy buildings left in Paris anymore!?”
“By the way,” said Maxwell. “The idea that lightning is drawn to metal is a superstition. As long as it meets the conditions for a point discharge, then it will strike a tree or plastic just fine. And under electrical breakdown, the human body itself acts as a conductor, so be careful.”
Maxwell’s information was accurate but not particularly useful at the moment. Our best bet was to keep running so the high density lightning zone didn’t reach us.
Then I noticed some rumbling approaching from up ahead as well.
Amatsu Yurina clapped her hands together.
“Stop right there, Satori! The meteors fell all across Paris, sending dust into the air in multiple locations. There isn’t just the one unnatural thundercloud!!”
“Damn!!”
We avoided the badly damaged trees, left the Hôtel des Invalides’s grounds, ran below a sputtering raincloud, and arrived on a large road partially covered in rubble.
It was like a deadly searchlight. If we entered that ring of light cast down from heaven, we would be roasted to the bone by high enough voltage to trigger electrical breakdown in the air. We had to keep running through the darkness to prevent that.
I heard a voice shouting in French from the darkness to the side. Anastasia came to an immediate stop while I tugged on her arm.
“This way, Truth!”
She guided me and my stepmom into a short, partially-collapsed building. As soon as we were inside, several intense flashes of light struck despite the lack of rain. With an explosive boom, something was torn to shreds outside. Probably a streetlight or something. They were made of metal and heavier than a barbel.
A lightning strike like that would be deadly to a human body,
“Phew.”
More and more lightning struck outside, so we would have to wait here a while.
I took a look around to find…it wasn’t a convenience store. It looked more like a general store. A middle-aged man was the one who had called out to us. Was he an employee or a customer? Since he couldn’t bear to just watch as we fled the lightning, he must not have been a bad person.
Intentionally or not, Vizza Valdia was dead now. He had been killed by the JB rescue helicopter (had it been hit by the meteor shower or a lightning strike?), so there probably weren’t any other JB members around for us to question.
That meant we only had one source of information left.
I pulled an unfamiliar phone from my pocket. It was the one Vizza had been carrying.
“Maxwell, can you get through this thing’s lock screen?”
No response.
“Maxwell?”
“It’s no use Truth. We have no signal. And it doesn’t look like we can find a way through by switching to Wi-Fi. The lightning must have caused a largescale communications failure.”
“So we have to pause the investigation until we get through this, huh?”
My statement was answered by a few more lightning strikes. The dazzling light and earsplitting boom were nearly simultaneous, so they had to be quite close by. I knew we were inside a building, but it still squeezed at my heart. They felt a lot like explosions.
Vizza had said something interesting.
He said JB’s “jailbreak” was for everyone and that their new planet wasn’t for them to move to.
It had happened so quickly I may have been numbed to the fact that he had died before my eyes. Like I hadn’t had time to mentally classify it properly. I should have been wailing and holding my head in my hands, but I was able to take an objective look at it instead.
I felt terribly impatient, but there was nothing I could do without a connection to Maxwell. Anastasia would be in a similar situation. Modern hackers relied on the convenient programs they had written for themselves, so none of them actually typed madly away at their keyboard to hack into their enemy’s system.
“I’m starting to feel hungry,” said Anastasia.
It was currently half past 10 at night and the last thing I had eaten was the meal on the flight. Had Anastasia or my stepmom eaten more recently?
We had been on the move all day, so now that we finally came to a stop, the exhaustion caught up with us. Without the lightning unpredictably ringing in my ears from so close by, I might have lay down and fallen asleep despite how wet I was.
“Satori.”
Amatsu Yurina produced a chocolate bar and a jelly drink as if by magic.
“Share these with Anastasia-chan. Your adrenaline and noradrenaline can only numb your senses; it can’t actually sustain you.”
I wasn’t sure where it had come from, but I noticed the packages were written in Japanese. Had she brought them from Japan rather than steal them in Paris? I realized she had come to France with a clear goal in mind, so she would have come prepared. She wouldn’t have had to start stealing food so quickly after an emergency struck. That really brought into focus how pathetically unprepared Anastasia and I had been.
“Munch, munch. Oh, this is grape flavor.”
“Ew. I shouldn’t have eaten the chocolate first. Now I can only taste the jelly’s chemical flavor.”
Anastasia and I took turns with the food and drink. It wasn’t very satisfying since it didn’t fill our stomachs, but it had to be providing the nourishment we needed. Maybe it was the sugar circulating my body, but I felt like my head was swelling out like cotton candy. I was starting to feel really sleepy.
“Hold on,” said Anastasia. “Isn’t this an indirect kiss?”
“Yawwwwn. So what if it is?”
“…”
For some reason, she fell silent and kicked me in the shin, which drove the sleepiness from me pretty quick.
My stepmom had approached the general store’s entrance to observe things outside and she gave us a report.
“Looks like our break is over.”
“?”
I was confused at first, but then my nose detected the oddity. Something was burning. The lightning had started a fire somewhere.
We were talking about rainless lightning with all the buildings in the area partially or fully collapsed and the space between them filled in with rubble. If a fire started spreading now, who knows how far it would go.
“We can’t just stay here,” I said.
“B-but we can’t run back out into that lightning either!” said Anastasia. “One hit and we’re toast!!”
Lightning occurred when the static electricity in a cloud grew powerful enough that it could break through the poorly conductive air to reach the ground. These were clouds of dust instead of natural clouds, but the principle was the same.
So…
“We just have to redirect the lightning energy elsewhere.”
“Wait, Truth!”
My stepmom appeared to be speaking French to explain the risks to the middle-aged man in the general store with us.
I took a look outside and saw the fire was closer than I had thought. It was only about 3 buildings away.
If we were going to leave, it had to be now.
It was too late once the flames and smoke reached us.
Part 3
Lightning was commonly thought to strike from the sky, but that part of the lightning wasn’t the real threat. Lightning would first drop from the sky to the ground and immediately follow the exact same path back up into the sky. That second part is known as the return stroke and it is far more powerful than the initial part. It just all happens so fast the human eye only sees a single flash of light.
And unlike rain or snow, lightning is extremely difficult to predict. The Japan Meteorological Agency doesn’t even have any standards for it. The warning you often see is issued as long as there is a possibility of damage from lightning. So there are ranks and warnings, but you can’t work out a percentage change like you can with rain.
Or to sum up…
“No one can predict where the lightning will strike,” shouted a pale-faced Anastasia. She must have had a lot of lightning-related knowledge since she worked with computers. “And with this unnatural level of electrification, we will be hard pressed finding anywhere out there that’s safe! We might as well be sticking our head into a cumulonimbus cloud formed on the ground!”
“But the fire will reach us if we stay here. And there might be more fires. In fact, the fires are probably growing along with the lightning strikes.”
“~ ~ ~”
She puffed out her cheeks and looked ready to start throwing a tantrum right here. She even had some small tears in the corners of her eyes.
An electric hell awaited us outside. If we left the door without a plan, we could get struck on our very first step.
But if we stayed inside for too long, the approaching fire would consume us.
It was a bad bet, but the lightning left us with some chance of survival while the fire was guaranteed to take our lives. I didn’t need Maxwell to calculate out which one was better.
And…
“Lightning is a natural phenomenon that treats the sky and the ground as two giant electrodes and exchanges the electricity built up within the cloud. That means the barrier of air is broken and a vertical bridge of high voltage electricity forms. It’s not exactly the same, but the principle is similar to a giant stun gun.”
“A-and? How does that help us!?”
“That means those are the two places we have to work with. If we alter either the sky or the ground, the lightning strike won’t form. That’s the only way we can walk safely outside.”
Fortunately, this was a general store.
It would be far from a professional job, but we had a chance of throwing together something. I checked the products lined up the shelves. France was an agricultural country, wasn’t it? That explained the excellent supply of gardening tools. I was nervous without Maxwell’s assistance, but I grabbed some duct tape, adhesive, and a flathead screwdriver and got Anastasia’s help.
We didn’t have time to create anything too complex.
“This should do it.”
“This is meaningless without at least more than 100 of them,” said Anastasia. “I would really prefer around 300, but the pressurized tank could rupture if we overdid it.”
We ended up with a toy that probably would have been in violation of Japan’s Swords and Firearms Possession Control Law.
I walked up to the register counter, set down enough money for what we had used, and placed an eraser on top of that so the wind wouldn’t blow it away.
“What’s the point?” Anastasia sounded exasperated. “There’s a fire headed this way.”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
I strapped the heavy unit onto my back, held the main part in my hands, and walked toward the exit.
The world outside the clear glass looked like a battlefield.
The bright flashes and loud booms were frightening. There was no reacting to that in time to dodge and it seemed like artillery shells were going off throughout the city.
But I also detected a burning smell entering through the gaps in the glass door.
“Are you ready, Anastasia?”
“Ugh. The lightning is striking once every 5 or 10 seconds.”
The fire would be here soon. I knew where it was and how fast it was moving, which made it all the more frustrating that we couldn’t stop it. Unfortunately, spraying a fire hose outside was a very bad idea with all that lightning.
We would die if we stayed put.
But we would also die if we rushed outside without a plan.
“The trick is to think carefully before we make any move. Our top priority is to escape the fire.”
My stepmom approached us and gave a worried look toward one corner of the store.
“Those people say they are going to hide in the basement. There’s apparently a sturdy food storeroom there.”
“…”
I wasn’t confident that was a good idea, which was why we weren’t joining them. But everyone had to make their own decisions. Escaping through all the lightning was a gamble as well. We had no way of taking responsibility if they went with us and were hit by the very first lightning strike.
We didn’t have the data or time necessary to determine what was actually safe.
Hell, there might not even be a safe option.
I couldn’t say what was right. I had only gone with the “escape outside” option because maintaining freedom of movement was convenient for our purposes – or for our “desire”, I guess you could call it. I couldn’t use my phone here, so I wanted to escape outside the lightning’s noise, reconnect to Maxwell, get whatever data was on Vizza’s phone, and pursue JB who were planning to create a new planet by compressing space dust with France’s nukes.
But none of that mattered to those people who only wanted to survive. They had no reason to accept the additional risk. Staying put met their requirements just fine. This fulfilled their purpose – or their “desire”.
“Tell them in French that the fire could take several days to die down, so they need to prepare the necessities for a long time down there. Since it’s going to be dark down there, tell them to prepare multiple battery-powered lights and clocks. And they need to bring as powerful a jack as they can find. If the burning building collapses on top of them, the basement might survive, but the trap door might not be able to open with all the rubble on top of it.”
In a disaster, all you could really do was hesitantly head down the path you believed to be at least a little safer than the others. We needed to assist each other when we could, but we couldn’t demand they share our own fate just because we think it’s best. This isn’t just a matter of empathy and obligation. Lives are on the line. Unless they’re being suicidal or rioting based on insufficient information or fake news, we couldn’t get in the way of someone else’s earnest efforts to survive.
Another lightning bolt struck nearby.
In fact, more and more were striking every 10 seconds or less, so it felt like we were inside a giant bug zapper. If we ran out without a plan, we would be struck in that same time period and torn to pieces.
We had two units ready.
I had Amatsu Yurina carry the other one. It was a spare. If the primary one malfunctioned or ran out of gas without warning, we would be killed instantly, so it was always worth having a backup.
There was no point in trying to time our escape.
The lightning was so constant that waiting would just waste more time. We were trying to escape a fire on foot, so we needed to get going as soon as possible.
I suppressed the fear trying to drive me back inside and raised my voice while choosing to brave the great outdoors.
“Let’s go!”
The sound of me throwing open the large door was drowned out by an especially loud blast of thunder.
We were outside now. Presumably.
But the bright white light made it impossible to tell.
“––––––!?”
Anastasia yelled something from less than a meter away, but I couldn’t hear her. A tree on the other side of the street had split in two and was burning like a torch. The same would happen to any of us if we were struck. And despite all the lightning, there was still no rain. The dry air felt powdery in my mouth, which was a bad sign. It felt like all the air here was steeped in malevolence.
Just as I heard a deep rumbling reminiscent of an animal’s growl from overhead, I used both hands to grab the metal unit held under one arm, aimed it diagonally up, and pushed it as far up into the empty night sky as I could.
“Please work, damn you!!”
Heavy recoil hit my hands and a sound even duller than a sewing machine hit my ears. The trail of light being sucked into the sky while reflecting the fire and lightning was no more than water. The water compressed in the tank on my back passed through a hose and could be controlled with the valve in my hand. For our purposes, it didn’t need to draw out an arch like I was watering plants with a hose. In fact, it was best if it was divided into small pieces that I rapidly fired vertical shots like a machinegun.
The night sky immediately reacted.
Very sensitively at that.
A piercing flash of lightning burst in the sky. To be honest, I couldn’t follow it with my eyes. I could only really make out the result by following the blue afterimage burned into my retinas while I cowered in fear of the deafening roar.
“I-it worked,” said Anastasia, her voice trembling.
After staring up into the sky, she finally hugged me in joy.
“Ah ha ha! We did it!! We actually induced the lightning!!”
By creating a lightning strike elsewhere, we could release the energy built up in the air. From there, we simply used the principle behind a lightning rod. Take a conductive material, give it as pointy a shape as you can, place it somewhere high up, and then the point discharge would let you control the lightning. The height alone needed to be 100m. If we were going to fire a series of “water bullets” mixed with table salt on all the other safe places, 300m would be best. Combining all that with a building’s lightning rod would be even better. The end result happened to look like a dangerous weapon, but it was really just a metal pipe, a shower hose, the tank to a hand-pumped agrochemical sprayer, and the big motor and battery to a handheld vacuum.
We made sure to send lightning elsewhere at short intervals while we made our way across the open street full of intense light and noise.
Embers passed us from behind.
We finally had time to look back. Anastasia gave into the temptation, but she immediately stiffened. I knew what she must have seen. I could feel a pain in my back like it was being pricked by tiny pins even though I was wearing the heavy tank full of water there.
I looked back myself.
A wall of red and orange covered everything there like a giant wave. The street, the trees, the abandoned cars, and the buildings were all engulfed as the wall approached us. Almost like it was intent on chasing us down even if that meant trampling everything in its path.
There had to be cars and propane tanks exploding in the flames, but the intensity of the flames drowned out even that.
“Ah, ahh. Ahhhhhhhhhh
