Parallel II: A New Ordinance

8-FIRE

The orange glow bled through the artistically-designed windows and glowed in my eyes as I looked to each side of me, wondering how John and Troy planned to respond. They started to gesture their hands as if they were to press against a wall that wasn't there, an automatic response beckoning for safety. I found myself doing it too, but once I noticed it I snapped my hands back to be closer to the rest of my body. "Do you have a fire escape, Uncle John?" Troy shouted, full of urgency. "Uh... Not exactly. The window was the fire escape..." Troy looked down in distress. "Alright, then let's get out of here. NOW." He was very clear, and I could see why. The fire was like a tornado of pure energy and heat, ripping into the wood of the cabin like steel through skin and inching closer to us by the second.

We rushed to the stairs and hastily headed down them. Troy pushed me in front of him, showing that he wanted me, above all else, to escape and be safe. I started to practically let myself fall down the stairs, merely holding myself up with the railing. Once I got to the bottom, I looked for the front door and rushed toward it, however, outside of the door's built-in window, I could see THEM, standing there. The Order, it was them, without a doubt. I immediately stopped and whipped my head around, only for John to knock right into me. Two things went through my head. First was an admiration for Troy, as he had put not only myself but also John before himself in a time of such urgent danger. Second, was that I NEEDED to stop them from going out that door. If their methods are anything like those of the Ordinance, then dying in the fire is preferable to any encounter with those monsters.

I picked myself up from the ground as John assisted, with a deep look of both guilt and confused anger on his face. This became even more clear as he shouted out "What's the matter with you?! Why'd you stop?!". I opened my mouth to offer a response, but as soon as I saw Troy staring out of the door window with pure terror, I knew I didn't need to. "John... It's them. They found us." John lifted me up the rest of the way and looked out of it too, igniting a very similar reaction. Troy looked at me, John looked at Troy, I looked at John. I had no idea what to do. Of course going out there was the worst possible idea, but dying as the flames rip us slowly apart wasn't quite what I would wish for instead. "What the hell do we do, John?!" Troy shouted, as John's mouth remained wide open. "I... I suppose there's only one thing to do." He bolted over to a small part of the wall and grabbed a hammer from a nearby primitive wooden box. He started to hammer away at part of the lower wall as cracks started to form. Troy and I looked at one another with sheer confusion. "What exactly are you doing?", I asked. "You see, before I had this whole series of cabins, before I managed to hide people more openly and comfortably, I had to keep them all down here. They were the hunted, the biggest targets in the state, sometimes even in the entire region. So, just like my grandfather did before we were given the first layer of freedom, I needed to shove around a dozen folks into this... cellar. They were my prisoners in a way, this is no way for a 'free' man to live, but I was just the least horrible warden they could get. I think, if I can burst through this wall, we can reach it and get out of there through the cellar door."

I worried that the Order might have already found this exit, but due to the extraordinary number of troops they had piled in front of the house, I found it doubtful and simply unrealistic that they could have more waiting for us around the back. The fire started to make its way into the house as I noticed Troy grabbing a few family heirlooms. I saw the faces of their family members in old, tattered photographs. To think that so much history, so many things of value, could be destroyed by the cruel, unstoppable fire in a matter of moments, was quite harrowing. Though what bothered me more was that I would never understand their desire to take care of these hereditary artifacts. I would never have the generational bond that they did, even if it was linked together through blood, suffering, misery, tears, sweat, and stolen lives. Even if they were hunted just like me, they were hunted with the spirit of a hundred previous generations flowing through them. I was an alien to my past... But that didn't mean I had to be an alien to the present moment at all.