Chapter 151

The building was definitely coming down around her. Rain could feel the floor shaking as the ceiling fell down around her. Covering her face with one hand as the smoke choked her lungs, and keeping the other hand over her head in a futile attempt to keep the bigger chunks of ceiling from hitting her on the top of the head and potentially unconscious, or at the very least, cutting her head open.
“Mist!” she shouted as she ran along. The lights had gone out, but she could still see where she was headed because of the fire raging up ahead and around the corner. The orange glow was bright enough for her to make out the larger debris on the floor--and the bodies.
So many bodies littered the ground. Many of them were wearing the brown uniforms of the Mothers. Occasionally, she’d see a black uniform. She’d check to make sure it wasn’t Mist, which it never was, then check for a pulse, which they never had, and then move on down the hall.
“Mist!” Rain shouted again. She wouldn’t be able to go much further without the heat overwhelming her. She didn’t want to leave the building without Mist, but she also knew that if Mist was beyond that wall of fire, Rain wasn’t going to be leaving the building with her friend.
A soft groaning hit her ears from up ahead of her, near the end of this hallway where it joined with the one where the fire was burning. It had to be some sort of a chemical fire, judging by the smell of the smoke and the fact that it was burning so quickly down a hallway that wasn’t completely made up of flammable substances.
She saw a crumpled form on the ground beneath a large slab of concrete and rushed over to it, tripping over another piece of debris and catching herself just as she almost landed face-first on the hallway floor. Recovering, she pressed on, her ankle hurting a bit from the misstep.
Rain reached the person and saw that it was a woman wearing a black uniform. She couldn’t see her face because of the large piece of ceiling that was lying on top of her, but she was alive, so Rain was going to help. Getting down on her knees, she used her leverage to push the large chunk of heavy material away--to reveal the broken, bleeding body of her friend.
“Mist!” Rain shouted, rolling her onto her back so she could check her injuries. “Where does it hurt?”
All she got in response was unintelligible groaning.
Rain could see a few places where her uniform was cut or ripped and there was a great deal of blood coming from those areas, but she thought that the most serious injuries were likely to her internal organs, which were probably damaged when the heavy object fell on her.
Rain didn’t have her healing wand anymore, and she hardly had any medical supplies left at all, but when she felt around in her pockets, she did find a sealer that she quickly squeezed out of the tube and smeared over the wounds she could see. It wasn’t much, but it might help to keep some of the blood from gushing out of her wounds.
“Come on, Mist. We’ve got to get out of here,” Rain said, feeling the fire getting closer before she even lifted her head to check on the proximity of the flames.”
“No,” Mist groaned. “Go without me.”
“I’m not going to go without you. Don’t be stupid.” Rain hauled her up to sitting. She was heavier than she looked, especially with her boots and the rest of her uniform on.
It didn’t help that she was fighting her. “Go, Rain!”
“Mist, I’m not going to leave you here to die!”
The building rocked again. Rain threw herself over the top of Mist, but thankfully, this explosion seemed to be on the other side of the structure.
“Leave me here!” Mist screamed, tears streaming down her face. “I wanna die, Rain! I wanna die!”
“No!” Rain screamed at her. “Look at me, Mist! Look at me!”
Mist opened her eyes and stared into Rain’s face, even though her eyes were having a hard time focusing.
“Walt would not want you to die, Mist. He would want you to live. He would want you to go on and find another man to love and to be loved by and have lots of babies and do all of the things the two of you always dreamed about doing.”
“No!” Mist’s tears increased as her face scrunched up in pure misery. “I can’t, Rain. I can’t do it without him.”
“Yes, you can, Mist! Don’t do it without him--do it for him. Listen, The Bridge wasn’t real. We know that now. And that means Walt isn’t being recycled to someone else. He will always be Walt--and that means he will always be with you. If you live, a part of him will live, too. Now, come on, Mist! We’re running out of time.” Heat from the fire was closing in on them, and the smoke was becoming so thick, it was nearing impossible to breathe.
Mist still wasn’t cooperative, but this time, when Rain bent to lift her, she didn’t fight her. She let her slip her arm around her neck and pull her up to standing.
But Mist wasn’t able to walk. Her legs were either broken or severely injured. Rain was going to have to carry her out of there.
Bending down, she put her back under Mist’s torso. With the injuries there, lifting her was excruciating for Mist, she screamed as Rain picked her up, pulling on her arm and looping her other arm through Mist’s legs. She didn’t have any choice but to carry her. She hated hurting her, but she wasn’t leaving her behind.
Rain took off running back the way she’d come, going as fast as she could, but the building continued to shake, much more frequently, and now the explosions were so close, Rain felt like she was running down the hallway trying to escape the bombs, only a step or two ahead of each of them as the floor rattled and the ceiling rained down on them.
“Put me down, Rain!” Mist kept shouting. It was hardly audible over the sounds from the building crumbling down on their heads, but Rain’s ear was close enough to her friend’s mouth that she could just make it out. Besides, Rain knew Mist well enough to know that she would be saying just that.
“I’m not putting you down. Now, shut the hell up!” Rain screamed. She didn’t have a lot of breath left, and she didn’t want to waste it chastising the woman, but she didn’t have much choice. She needed to concentrate on getting them out, and Mist’s insistence on being left behind to die was a distraction, to say the least.
Up ahead of her, Rain saw the end of the hallway. It wasn’t the exit to the building. She knew that she’d have to turn and run down another hall before she reached the final hall that had an exterior door. That was, if she wasn't so disoriented that she was completely mixed up about where she was. Nothing looked as it should now. The lights were all out because the power had gone out. The fire and smoke cast shadows and obscured doors and rooms. She’d tripped more times than she could count over bodies and debris, and dodging the larger chunks of the building as they came down was getting more and more impossible as the explosions continued.
The Mothers sure knew how to tear stuff up.
When she reached the end of the hall, she decided to go right. That was back the direction she’d originally come from when she entered the building looking for Mist. It wasn’t the closest exit to the camp, but it was one she thought should be fairly easy to access. After all, if Mother White intended to use that door that Rain had both left the building and reentered the building through to make her own escape, surely she wouldn’t have too many bombs set to go off there, would she?
If she was able to make it to the end of this hall and down another corridor, she’d find out.
Rain’s side was beginning to ache from the strain of running. Even if she hadn’t been carrying Mist, it would’ve been hard. Every part of her body hurt. All she wanted to do was lie down on the ground and close her eyes. But she couldn’t do that or they’d both die, and while she was beginning to care less about her own existence with each step, she was determined to get Mist out of there.
She could see the end of this hallway now, too. The smoke wasn’t as thick here, and most of the lights toward the end of the hall were still working. Rain was beginning to think there was hope that she would be able to get both of them out. She continued to push herself just to take one step and then another as quickly as possible.
Mist had stopped pleading. Rain wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. Mist usually fought until the bitter end. It wasn’t like her to give up. So either she had lost consciousness or all the fight was out of her. Neither was good.
Just as Rain turned down the final hallway, only a hundred or so feet from the exit, another series of explosions detonated. These were closer together--and closer to them. The roof was coming down on them now, not just in chunks but in large, solid pieces. Smoke burned the inside of her lungs with every breath as she did her best to navigate around the falling debris, but it was hitting her now, crushing her head, falling on her shoulders, hitting Mist, threatening to bring them both down.
If she dropped Mist right then and there, she could probably beat the chain reaction of destruction to the door. She could probably get herself out. But the thought only entered her head long enough for Rain to dismiss it.
She wouldn’t do that.
She couldn’t do that.
If Mist died in the medical building, then Rain would die there, too.