Praying for Rain (Praying for Rain Trilogy, #1)(58)

“Shit.” The profile of his perfect face comes into view as he turns his head to look over his shoulder. “I think I smell—”

Before the word can even leave Wes’s lips, the eighteen-wheeler explodes in a ball of fire. White-hot light fills my eyes and scorches my face as Wes tackles me to the ground.

I don’t feel the impact. I don’t hear the debris landing all around us. I don’t even hear my own voice as I shout my friends’ names. All I can hear are the thoughts in my head, telling me to get up. To run. To help.

Wes is looking down at me now. His lips are moving, but I can’t tell what he’s saying. Another explosion goes off, and I cover my face. When I lower my hands, he’s gone.

I sit up and see Wes’s silhouette running toward the bulldozer.

Which is now engulfed in flames.

“Quint!” I scream, taking off in a sprint toward the passenger side as Wes heads toward the driver’s side. “Lamar!”

I climb up onto the track, thanking God that the fire hasn’t made it through the blown-out windshield yet, and pull the door open. Inside, Quint and Lamar are slumped over in their seats, covered in broken glass. Wes is unbuckling Quint’s seat belt.

Wes’s head snaps up when I open the door, and his dark eyebrows pull together. “I told you to stay the fuck there!”

“I couldn’t hear you!” I lean into the cab, struggling to move Lamar’s body so that I can unbuckle his seat belt.

“Rain, stop!” Wes snaps at me as he lifts Quint’s lifeless body into his arms.

“I can help!” I get the belt off and give Lamar’s lifeless body a hard shake. His eyes flutter open as something begins to hiss and pop under the flaming hood. “Come on, buddy. We gotta go.”

Lamar twists in his seat to try to climb out, but he winces and pulls his eyes shut again.

“Lamar,” I shout, tugging on his shoulders. “I need you to walk. Right now.”

His head rolls toward me, and the light from the flames illuminates a deep gash across his forehead. The dark red blood glistens against his dark brown skin. I pull on his arms harder, but he’s so heavy.

“Lamar! Wake up! Please!”

Two hands clamp around my waist and pull me out of the cabin just before a blur of Hawaiian print breezes past me to take my place.

“Go!” Wes shouts as he pulls Lamar from the bulldozer. “Now!”

I jump off the track to get out of his way and run toward the motorcycle. As I get closer, I notice Quint’s body lying on the ground next to it.

It isn’t moving.

As I rush to him, my mind goes back to the day we met. We were in the same preschool class, and I found Quint off by himself on the first day of school, quietly eating Play-Doh behind Ms. Gibson’s desk. He begged me not to tell on him. I didn’t, of course. I sat and ate some with him just to see what all the fuss was about.

I found out years later that his daddy used to beat him whenever he got in trouble, so he got real good at not getting caught. His little brother, Lamar, didn’t seem to learn the same lesson. He got caught all the time, but Quint always took the blame.

I kneel next to my very first friend and reach for his throat, hoping to find a pulse, but I don’t get that far. I find a shard of glass sticking out of his neck instead.

“Oh my God.” The words fall from my mouth as I grab his wrist, pushing and prodding and praying for a heartbeat.

Wes sets Lamar down next to me as another explosion rattles the ground below us. I scream and cover my head as the hood of the bulldozer lands with a clang about thirty feet away and skids to a stop.

Wes leans over and puts his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “He okay?” he asks, gesturing to Quint with a flick of his head.

“He’s alive, but …” I drop my eyes to the glass sticking out of his neck and shake my head. “I don’t know what to do.”

God, I wish my mom were here. She would know. She was an ER nurse.

Was.

Now, she’s dead.

Just like we’re going to be if we don’t get the hell out of here before that gas tank explodes.

I look around and realize that, with the light from the flames, I can actually see where we are now. The sides of the highway are cluttered with all the cars and trucks that Quint and Lamar pushed out of our way, but the faded green exit sign on the side of the road says it all.

PRITCHARD PARK MALL

NEXT RIGHT

My eyes meet Wes’s, and without saying a word, we get to work. He stashes the motorcycle in the woods, I drag the hood of the bulldozer over to make a stretcher for Quint, and Lamar shakes off his daze enough to stand and help carry his brother past the wreckage.

When we get to the exit ramp, Pritchard Park Mall sits at the bottom, shining in the moonlight like a worthless mountain of crumbling concrete. It’s been rotting away ever since the last store closed up shop about ten years ago, but the land isn’t valuable enough for anyone to even bother tearing it down.

“Fuck. Look at that place,” Wes groans. He’s holding one side of the makeshift stretcher while Lamar and I struggle with the other. “You sure about this?”

“I don’t know where else to go,” I huff, shifting my grip on the corner of the yellow hood. “We can’t put Quint on the bike, we can’t leave him here, and we can’t sleep in the woods because the dogs will sniff out the food in our pack.”