Do What It Takes to Survive

No, literally. The freaking floor collapsed under our weight. I mean, I wasn’t as skinny as a stick, but come on. I guess the bad guys hadn’t picked the sturdiest house to burn down. I guess this made sense, though. They had to have burned down a vacant house that was probably in the middle of nowhere. Why not pick an old house, too?

Well anyways, before I knew it we were falling, and then we hid the floor beneath us. I fell on my right ankle at a bad angle, and I thought I heard it snap, even through the sound of breaking wood. I thought I heard something else crack milliseconds later, but it wasn’t one of my bones.

I waited for the dust to clear, but then I realized it was just more smoke. Of course there was more smoke here. We were closer to the fire, because we were in a small hallway, which was probably the upstairs hallway. There was no fire too close to us, but I saw it down the hall one way. The other way was sealed by a wall.

Gerard groaned. He was clutching his right arm, the one with the cuts, to his chest. Oh. So I had heard something else snap. It had been Gerard’s arm. Perfect.

“Are you okay?” he asked me. His eyes flickered to both sides of the hallway, already assessing our situation.

“Uh, I don’t know,” I replied. To check, I rolled up my jeans to look at my ankle, which was starting to turn from feeling numb to feeling like someone was trying to tear it off. It had already swelled to the size of a softball. “I take that back. I think my ankle’s broken, and it looks like your arm is, too.”

He nodded. “Probably. Do you feel like you can stand on it? We haven’t gotten free yet. We need to find a safe way out of here.”

I didn’t answer, but he got up and tried to help me to my feet with his unbroken arm. His right arm, however, dangled uselessly at his side.

Once I was standing with all my weight on my left side, I gingerly set down my right foot and put a little bit of- “Ah!” I gasped, and then bit my lip. I leaned into him. “That’s not going to work.”

“Okay,” he said calmly. How could he be so relaxed at a time like this? “I’ll try to carry you, kind of. I’ll like… be your crutch. You know I’d just pick you up if my arm wasn’t broken.”

He pulled my arm around his shoulder and tried to hold it there with his good arm, carrying as much of my weight as he could. “We’ll try the stairs first,” he said.

Slowly, we made out way down the hall. It got warmer and warmer as we got closer. When we got there, flames were eating the staircase hungrily, as I had morbidly expected.

“Well then,” Gerard said, still sounding irrationally serene. “I guess it’s time for Plan B. We look for an easy way out of one of the windows.”

I hopped, agonizingly slowly, to the nearest door. Gerard opened it, and we hobbled to the window. It didn’t quite hold what we were looking for. We stared dejectedly out the window and down the cliff just below it.

“That crosses off every window on this side of the house,” Gerard concluded. We hopped to the door across the hall. I barely noticed that we seemed to be in a baby’s bedroom. The walls were a soft blue with a teddy bear boarder. The room was completely empty of all furniture, making it seem eerily abandoned.

“Yeah!” Gerard exclaimed, flinging the window open. Beneath the window was a ledge of roof that we could easily climb out on. How he planned to get from there to the ground, I did not know.

He left me leaning against the wall while he climbed through the window, and then he helped me through, trying not to knock my ankle on anything.

So there we sat, breathing raggedly, on the thin ledge of roof. He looked at me uneasily. “Um, Lana… We’re going to have to jump.”

My eyes widened. “Are you kidding?” I choked out.

He shook his head grimly. “If you do it right, you shouldn’t break anything.” Eyeing my ankle, he added, “Anything else. But even if you do, it’s worth it. Would you rather have a broken leg, or be a pile of ashes?”

I closed my eyes and whimpered. I knew the answer to that question. I still wasn’t ready to die. I nodded slowly.

“Alright,” he said, his words coming more urgently. The fire was getting closer to us every second. “When you jump, keep your knees bent. Land on the balls of your feet, fall to your knees, and then to your hands. It, um… It will probably hurt, what with your ankle being broken and all.”

I nodded again silently. I had already come to that conclusion.

“Want to watch me do it first?” he offered.

I nodded once more, opening my eyes this time. Gerard slid to the edge of the roof. Then he fell to the mulch several feet below, landing just as he had instructed me to. He proceeded to walk to the side to give me room to land and then grimace up at me.

“Your turn,” he called up.

I gulped and slid to the edge of the roof just as he had. I counted to myself in my head. Three… Two… One…Jump! And I let myself fall.

There had been no need for him to tell me how to land. As soon as my broken ankle struck the ground, white hot pain shot up my leg. I screamed and fell to my knees and then forward onto my hands.

“Lana!” Gerard cried, gathering me into his good arm. Tears streamed down my face and I held my foot carefully. I bent over it and moaned. Trying to be strong, I said through my teeth, “I’m okay. I’ll be fine. What do we do now?”

His eyes scanned the land around us nervously before he said, “Um… We need to get away from the house. We should go into the woods, in case The Boss sends someone to make sure the job was done.”

I nodded, trying to force away the black spots in my vision. Gerard got to his feet and pulled me up once more. He practically dragged me the sixty feet to the woods and then even farther so that we were shielded by trees.

He sat with his back against a tree and me in his lap. My breathing and heartbeats gradually slowed down. The black spots in my vision threatened to take over me, though, and my whole leg still burned.

“I wish I had ice for you to put on it,” Gerard mumbled, more than physical pain etched in his voice and expression.

“S’okay,” I muttered. “Not your fault.”

Suddenly, he grinned. “I do believe we just escaped from the burning house they trapped us in… The very one I was convinced was impossible to escape from.”

I smiled weakly and murmured, “You were only keeping your promise.” At last I couldn’t take it anymore. My eyes fell shut and I slipped into unconsciousness.