Sky on Fire Read Free

list of things to do.
    After I fed the stupid strangers outside the store.
    *   *   *
    The hatch to the roof was easy to unlock. Niko had fixed sheeting over it with Velcro, so you could just rip it open and it would hang off to the side. And the padlock had the key right in it.
    I set the bin down on the step in front of me and pushed the hatch up and open.
    The last time I’d been on this roof we hadn’t known anything about the compounds. We had watched the cloud going up from NORAD, thirty miles away.
    The last time I’d been on this roof I tried to kill my brother.
    It was dark now. The air seemed to absorb the light seeping out from the hatch. The sky above was opaque black. No stars. No clouds. Just black mud suspended in the air.
    I cursed myself for not bringing a flashlight.
    I didn’t want to go all the way back for one, though, so what I did was set the box down on the roof and scooted it toward the edge, crawling behind it.
    I sure as hell didn’t want to fall off the roof in the dark.
    After a minute of undignified crawling and scooting, the bin came up against the edge of the roof. I tipped it up and over and listened to it come crashing down.
    â€œHey!” I heard Scott Fisher yell.
    â€œYou’re welcome!” I hollered.
    They’d find the loot. And I’d be inside by the time they did.
    They were lucky Astrid had a nice streak in her and that I was such a pushover.
    I edged my way back toward the light coming from the hatch. I couldn’t wait to take the air mask off.
    The whole mask/glasses combo was driving me crazy. The mask was large enough to fit over my glasses, but it made them cut into the bridge of my nose. And my nose was still battered from when Jake had beat me up, so that hurt. A lot.
    And I wanted to get my layers off. The layers were starting to bunch up under my arms and behind my knees.
    Again, I tried not to think about Alex and Niko and the rest.
    They had sixty miles to cover, wearing their layers and air masks, on a half-fixed school bus on a dangerous and dark highway. And I was whining to myself about a couple of hours in layers and a mask.
    I got to my feet and started to make my way, slowly, back toward the hatch. In a dark world, that leaked light looked really bright, I tell you.
    But I went slowly, because the roof was uneven and dented in places from the hailstorm a million years ago that had landed us safely in the Greenway.
    I was thinking about the hailstorm and about how lucky we were that the grade-school bus driver, Mrs. Wooly, had not only thought to drive the bus into the store to get the little kids out of the hail, but had then returned to rescue us high school kids. I was thinking about Mrs. Wooly and wondering what had happened to her in the end. Had she made it to safety? Had she even thought about returning for us, as she promised, or had she just decided to fend for herself?
    I was thinking about Mrs. Wooly when the light from the hatch went out.
    I was alone, on the roof, in the dark.

 
    CHAPTER TWO
    ALEX
    Â 
    61 MILES
    This is slow going.
    In 3 hours, we have gone approximately 8 miles.
    Denver International Airport is more than 60 miles away.
    This is going to take longer than I had hoped. It took us 20 minutes just to get from the Greenway parking lot onto I-25.
    It’s hard to see out of the windows because of the Plexiglas, which is not clear like regular glass. It’s like driving through fog.
    The highway is cracked in places. Sometimes there are gaps and craters in the asphalt. But so far there’s been nothing the bus couldn’t make it over.
    Every 200 yards or so, there are big, battery-powered floodlights. These are good:
    1. They lead the way.
    2. They help us to see better as we pass.
    3. They give us hope that there’s someone looking out for us.
    There are cars densely packed on each side of the highway and just one lane going through the middle. My best guess is that the