MAN FROM TOMORROW
CHAPTER 8: FIRE, FIRE, BURNING BRIGHT!

He spotted the beat up, silver truck, and was even more confused as to how it got there without him noticing. When had it got there? If it had been the hitman who arrived late in the night, then they would have been dead before being able to even think of a defense.

Martin could make out that the truck driver had parked the vehicle and fallen asleep. A good night’s rest was most important for any driver. He must have parked in the middle of the night, long after Martin and Anita had fallen asleep.

He watched Kevin approach the truck, with the tool he intended to use to siphon gas from the truck. Hopefully, it would have enough fuel to get them to the next town without stranding the driver with his goods. He watched the man work from a distance. From what he already knew about Kevin- or Joseph- he was a mechanic, and if he could help them get moving again, there was no point in hassling the man. Several minutes later Kevin came back to the car and began pouring the gas he had stolen into the tank.

“Give her a try,” Kevin said once he closed the latch on the side of the car. Martin opened the door and reached inside to turn the key. The engine turned on. He read that the gas dial which showed some fuel. Hopefully, it was enough to get them to the next town at the least.

Martin got into the driver’s seat and buckled up. Kevin hadn’t got into the car yet. Anita was sitting beside him, silent and looking worried.

He cocked his head in her direction. “Something wrong?” He asked, and she nodded her head. He saw that Anita had opened his briefcase and had Kevin’s file in her hand.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“About Kevin- your Joseph?” Her words came out at the wrong time, just as Kevin opened the back door and hopped into the back seat. Martin and Anita remained silent, but the woman couldn’t help but look back at him.

“What about me?” He asked, bewildered.

“You-you’re a terrorist!” She shrieked, shrinking back against the passenger car door.

“What in the world are you talking about?” Kevin’s eyes widened in fear and confusion when he saw Martin raise a gun directed at his face. “There has to be a misunderstanding! I’m not a terrorist!”

Martin kept the gun raised. “I’ve been deputed by the FBI to capture you dead or alive. If you don’t cooperate, I won’t hesitate to shoot you and take you back to them as a corpse.”

“But I- I didn’t- “Kevin’s words abandoned him. He held his hands out in a defensive stance. Martin wasn’t happy to resort to such methods to capture the man, but Anita had blown his cover. It annoyed him greatly. Before she interfered, he had planned on learning about Kevin and the people pursuing them. Now that plan was ground to dust.

“Martin! What are you doing?” Anita shouted. Normally he would ignore her, but he realized that her opinion mattered to him now. He hadn’t known her long, but... He looked over to her, his resolve faltering at the sight of her terrified face.

Kevin took this small opportunity and lunged forward, grabbing hold of the barrel and pushing it up toward the roof in one swift motion. Martin’s grip was weakened. Martin was annoyed that the man touched his gun. He fired it- though the bullet only shot straight through the roof and went up into the sky. The sound was deafening. Anita screamed.

Just as the shot went off, the car was jolted forward. This knocked the wind out of them. Kevin was the first to look behind and see that they’d been rear-ended by a pickup truck. There were three men stuffed into the front seats, none of whom looked familiar to Kevin, but all them held guns; aimed and poised to fire. This was no accident

He saw this as an opportunity to escape the mess he’d been dragged into.

Martin and Anita were still dazed from the impact of the truck, but Kevin hopped out of the car and moved toward the driver door of the pickup. One of the three men hopped out of the truck. He intended to take a shot at Kevin. The second his feet touched the ground, Kevin lunged forward to grab the man’s gun and punched him in the face; hard enough to splinter his nose and send fragments of cartilage and bone into his brain. The force of the punch alone was enough to send him flying backwards. If puncturing his brain hadn’t been enough to kill him, smashing his skull to the ground would be.

It all happened so fast that the other two men hardly had time to react. Because the truck’s door had been left open, the man sitting in the center seat took a shot at Kevin. Kevin quickly dodged the bullet. He moved like a monkey on steroids. The man seemed taken aback by Kevin’s superfast movements and was unable to fire another shot before Kevin raised his stolen gun and used it to rain bullets on the remaining two sitting in the truck. He then hopped up inside, gripped the dead man by the shoulders, and threw him out of the truck to join his other companion on the floor. Once the truck was finally under his control, he slammed the door shut. Kevin threw it into reverse, and before speeding off, opened the passenger door to throw the remaining corpse from the vehicle.

“Kevin, wait!” It was Anita that called for him, but he didn’t want to risk his momentum by stopping for her. He saw that she’d gotten out of the car and was running toward the truck, but he was already passing her by.

He sped off, leaving Anita, Martin, and the three dead men on the road. Martin scrambled out of the car after Anita. When she ran onto the road toward Kevin, it was too late to stop him. The truck was speeding past and was but a dot on the road ahead of them. Unless they moved fast, they wouldn’t be able to catch up with him.

Anita turned her gaze from the road to the three corpses lying on the ground. Such super fast reflexes! Kevin killed them all with such little effort, but he restrained himself from using such a force against them. Why? He could have taken Martin’s gun and shot them. He didn’t. Instead, he put himself in danger and killed the men who were after them.

Martin kept his gaze on the bodies, all of which lay in a crumpled, bloodied mess. Already the thick pools of blood were covered with a thin layer of dust and sand. The pool of blood was fast drying in the hot, desert sun.

He was being forced to make another difficult decision. In the two seconds he used to make up his mind, he turned back toward the car and pulled the door open.

“Get in the car. We’re going after him,” he said, throwing himself into the driver’s seat.

“O-okay,” Anita said. She was still dazed but pulled herself together ran around the car and hopped back inside. Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ Find_Nøvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

As soon as she was seated, Martin sped off in pursuit of Kevin.

The pair remained silent for the entire ride; Martin, because he was sulking about the fact that he had Joseph- or Kevin-or whoever he was and yet, failed to capture him. He doubted he would get another opportunity, and because of that, his entire operation was thrown into chaos. He needed to find Kevin again, and this time he had to be prepared to hand him over to the FBI.

What he didn’t know or what he thought about the case was irrelevant- he had a job to do.

It was Mid-Afternoon. The sun was high in the sky. Anita and Martin hadn’t eaten for many hours. His gaze shifted from the side of the road- which was populated for the first time since last evening- and onto Anita. Since he’d taken her from his place, she hadn’t been following him of her own free will. She was pulled along with him as her life was also being threatened. Maybe at the beginning, she helped him because of her genuine interest in Kevin, but he lied to her and hid the fact about him being a terrorist.

Anita’s eyes met his when he looked to her. She was fighting her confusion, but most of all, her anger. First, Martin had lied to her that Kevin’s name was George Wilson, which he was not. last night, since she was under great duress, she hadn’t followed up on Martin’s lie. Kevin said he was Kevin. But Martin’s file said he was Joseph, a terrorist. Who was he? Kevin? George Wilson? Joseph? It was difficult to blame Martin for what he did. Maybe he had to lie because of his work in the FBI. But she had difficulties not blaming him; she decided to anyway. He could have told her, she could have helped him, and then they wouldn’t be chasing the man they had found already.

She looked away from him and back to the world around her. Martin seemed a good man, but his deception hurt her. She would leave if she could, but she relied on him for survival. She couldn’t entrust her survival to herself, especially not against psycho killers searching for something she didn’t understand or wanted nothing to do with.

Her thoughts were all over the place when they entered the next town. She sat on the edge of her seat looking out the window, wondering where in the world Kevin would have gone. Would he have even stayed, or would he continue on in search of a somewhere much further away? She hoped he stopped here; the thought of chasing the man across the country was rather unappealing to her.

Buildings flew by on the edge of their vision, but that wasn’t quite what either of them paid attention to. The skies were dark with large clouds, but Martin knew they weren’t just clouds. The air seemed thicker as they drove deeper into the town, and once they were at its heart, he could see the source of what was undeniably smoke. Black smoke billowed from what he assumed to be a building. There was no doubt that, like him, Anita’s gaze was being held by the scene. It seemed to be an unspoken agreement that it would be where they were heading.

“Looks like there’s a fire,” he said. Martin had tried speaking with her earlier on in their drive, but she’d been intent on ignoring him. This time, however, she caught every word. Though she was now willing to listen, she was still adamant about speaking.

Anita only grunted in response.

Martin began to wonder about the circumstances of the fire. It had to have started recently, but they wouldn’t know how recent until they reached the site. Martin couldn’t help but think about the worst. Wasn’t Kevin supposed to be a terrorist? How was he supposed to rule out the possibility that Kevin started it? It was possible that Kevin started it purely as an act of terror. If it was Kevin’s doing, in a way, it was Martin’s fault, too.

He drove onward apprehensively, driving in the direction of the thickening smoke until they finally reached the building on fire. They’d spotted the smoke ten minutes back, and it appeared it had got significantly worse. Martin stopped in the center of the blocked street; there were too many vehicles and other onlookers in the way to keep moving. Martin saw what was going on. And he froze in horror.

The building wasn’t any building… it was an elementary school. He gripped the steering wheel with the force of his anger, and for a moment, he swore he saw red. What if it really had been Kevin, who did this? Martin would never forgive the man for putting innocent people- innocent children–and if he caught the man again, he would be delivering a corpse instead of a man to the FBI.

Martin managed to sneak through the mess of traffic and pulled to a stop just outside the school’s grounds, far away from the fire trucks and the commotion. Anita was already out of the car. They both stood on the sidewalk with their hands gripping the chain-link fence. The school was going up in flames, but that wasn’t the worst part of the entire ordeal. It was midday on a Wednesday. The school would have been in session. They both hoped that everyone was able to make it safely outside; it appeared too late to save anyone who might be left inside.

“Do you think, Kevin...?” Anita asked, and tugging at his arm. He didn’t first understand what she was trying to do, but he allowed her to pull him along anyway.

“It’s possible,” he gulped. If it was Kevin, it was his fault. All of this was his fault.

The flames were prominent on the other side of the school. He realized then that Anita wanted to see what was going on. They tried to break through the crowd that piled at the front of the school. Martin stopped dead when he saw the flames. They shot up through the ceiling on the one side of the building, hot orange tendrils licking at the building’s walls. Black smoke poured through the remnant of the building’s west wing, suffocating everything that was in its path.

Martin scanned the area, looking through the crowd to try to find Kevin, but had no luck. He roamed further into the crowd with Anita behind, moving closer to the school and the teacher’s parking lot. But then on the far end of the nearby lot, he noticed a poorly parked red truck; he was positive that it was the vehicle Kevin stole from their attackers and drove off with earlier that day.

He clenched his fists when he again thought it may have been Kevin responsible for the fire. Anita, however, wasn’t content to just stand around. She went to the front of the crowd of the chatty onlookers, questioning them on what happened. Martin was close enough to catch some of their conversation and the responses that Anita received, but it was more than enough.

“Someone went in to find the rest of the kids just a few minutes ago, “a man said in response to one of her questions. Martin was baffled by the possibility of that. Weren’t the firefighters supposed to go in before the fire got too bad to search for anyone still trapped inside? And yet there was a civilian brave enough to run inside the burning building to do something they weren’t properly equipped for.

Martin inched toward the fence and leaned over it, trying to get a good look at the front doors, which were becoming engulfed by newer flames. The flames were growing faster now; whatever it was the firefighters were doing clearly wasn’t enough.

The smoke inside the building was thick, and the flames grew swiftly when more oxygen was found for it to consume. All Kevin could see through the haze of smoke were the slightest of shadowy movements, his hands made when waved in front of him. That was how he spent the first five minutes inside the building, with his minimal supply of usable air depleting much quicker than anticipated. Finally, he began to see more than shadows when he grew nearer to the flames, the red-hot glow piercing the many layers of smoke that stung at his eyes.

Kevin had entered the school sometime after the fire began when he heard there were still children missing. Several people told him that it was too dangerous to try and help and that there were firefighters with proper equipment searching inside, but he needed to try and help. He couldn’t watch from the sidelines when he knew there were children who were in need of help. He used the brunt of his strength to force his way past the authorities and the crowd of people that was accumulating at the scene and rushed inside without a semblance of a plan.

He heard faint screaming down the hallway. He was sure they were the screams of children. He needed to find the source of the noise. He bolted in the general direction of the shouts, finding a veneer of comfort in the fact that the screams were of terror, not of pain. If the fire had yet to reach the children, he may still be able to save them.

Of course, it was when he finally had a lead on the children when everything around him began to confuse him. It was the carbon monoxide in the smoke, he knew, messing with his mind. He may be able to find the children before he passed out. By then he would be useless to them. Like that, they would all die; him, for nothing. There had to be another way.

He stood staring into the hallway before him in a daze. It seemed to wind through the school, no longer heading in a single direction. For every second that passed, his senses were distorted twofold. At that moment, it has been the first time since entering the building that he felt his strength begin to falter. His limbs seemed to grow light, and Kevin had to fight it in order to keep moving. Too much smoke had gotten into his lungs, and even the abnormal strength of his body wasn’t going to be enough to hold out for much longer.

The screams were louder now, and as he got closer, he was able to perceive the direction of the cries. Closed doors were everywhere, but so were the flames, closing in from what seemed like every side. From some angles, the flames seared his skin and blinded him, but the pain didn’t stop him. He had a goal, and it wasn’t one he was about to give up on. Kevin ran onward, kicking open each closed door open as he passed; yet there was no sign of the missing children, even though he could still hear them. Each door, he opened to nothing began to deepen Kevin’s growing panic. His own mind was beginning to fail, he had to find them soon.

Kevin ran further, deeper into the flames and the thickening smoke. His body was weakening against the heat, and he could feel ash and chunks of other debris stick to his slick, sweaty flesh. He heard the screams again, but this time more clearly. He instantly turned to the nearest door, knowing that finally, he may have found them. Without hesitation, his foot slammed into the wood of the door, breaking it from the hinges and sending it flying into the room, where it split in half against a nearby desk.

There was something different about this room, Kevin realized, once he took a step inside. He’d inhaled a breath of fresh air; somehow the fire’s smoke hadn’t managed to find a way inside the room. The relief of the gratifying, small gulp of fresh air was erased from his mind when he heard the panicked slamming of limbs against another door inside the classroom. He ran in that direction. The sounds seemed to come from the classroom’s closet.

Kevin’s hand grasped the strangely cool handle and turned it, his blood ran cold. It was locked or jammed. He couldn’t help but think of the worst; what if someone tried to keep them in there on purpose? Trying to push the horrible thought from his mind, he fought against it to find a way to get the children out.

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