This started out as a 3 page paper for my L.A class, but I decided to continue...... there are more chapters to come.
I was running so fast you couldn’t even imagine. Aside from the deathly shrieks and cries of people, all I could hear were the heaves of my breath and the pit-pot of my shoes. I guess I was just so used to hearing death that I didn’t pay attention to it. The screams where getting louder, I was almost there. I pushed on harder I had to get there in time. If too many people died my boss would get mad at me. My breathing increased and my worn out gym shoes flew beneath me. Don’t trip Kurt I told myself, don’t blow it. That had happened once and I almost got banished because everyone died before I was even close to saving them.
I was close enough to see smoke floating, reaching towards the sky. These peopled lived all the way on the outskirts of town. Almost there, the road went on forever, no one had ever tried to follow it. Even the bravest men never came back, and if they did they were always messed up and delirious. I had always wondered what had happened to them and how it happened, but I could never muster up enough courage to go myself. If you go far enough some of our people put up signs telling you to go back. If you past the signs it was like committing suicide. People who did that here in Dark Falls where anything but honored.
I finally reached the burning farm house. It is typical for people to light their farms on fire, if you move to suddenly or if you accidentally tip over your lantern it's like a chain reaction. Everything reeked of smoke, I hated that smell but it was becoming an everyday thing for me. I ran inside, my job was to get people out, not to stop the fire. Quickly and swiftly I ran through what was left of the burning house. I could hear screams toward the back, that was a good sign. People where sill alive. I hadn’t completely failed.
Yet.
There where timbers and burning embers falling on me. But I didn’t even feel them, I was so used to being hurt and burned it didn’t even effect me. The smoke still did though, my eyes watered, and I was coughing like crazy. It was the smoke that killed you not the flames. Just the life in the everyday job of a Runner.
Crack! I looked up a beam was in mid air headed straight for me. I tried to dodge it, but it fell right on top of my right leg. This was the worst hurt I had ever felt in my whole experience as a Runner. I heard the bone crunch under the weight of the fallen beam. The pain started at my foot and slowly but painfully burned up my leg. I had to pull through, this could end my job, my life. With my left leg I kicked the beam off of me, jumped up and not so gracefully limped over to the back of the barn. I wasn’t quite sure how I managed to get up. My vision blackened as I tried to walk. I wobbled on my leg, and blinked furiously until I regained my vision. It was impossible to move my right leg.
There was a little girl rolled up in a ball. I bent down and quickly but gently picked her up. The burning flew up my leg as I straightened myself. The little girl was crying into my shoulder as I haled her further into the blazing barn. As I limped looking for a way out of the burning maze, I knew that the little girl wasn’t the only one screaming.
I searched like a mad man. Was I just being paranoid that I though someone else was in here? No, go with your gut my boss had always told me. So I went with it and searched. The flames where closing in. It was getting hotter and with every move I made something cracked and broke. This place was going to come down any second. Where was the other person? The girl now felt as if she weighed a ton lying on my shoulder.
