House Fire

My computer is full of deleted scenes from my novels. Most are too crap to publish. But I’ve just decided that this one isn’t.

If you enjoyed Hit List, hopefully you’ll like this alternative prologue. And if you haven’t read Hit List, hopefully this encourages you.

House Fire

by Jack Heath, 2010

I don’t deserve to die, Kathy Connors thought. I’m not perfect, I’ve done some stupid things, but I don’t deserve this. It’s not fair!

The smell of burning books filled her skull, clouding her thoughts – the fire must have reached the study. The kitchen was already gone, plastic plates melting into Dali paintings, the fridge glowing red as the metal cooked.

She ran towards the back door, head low, eyes watering. Maybe she could still get out that way. But when she rounded the corner, she saw that it was hopeless. The back door, like the front, had been drenched in petrol, and was fully ablaze. She hovered a few metres away, torn – she could try and charge through, and she might survive with some skin intact, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. There was so much heat, she didn’t believe the heat, and she wasn’t bold enough to throw herself into the flames. In any case, once she was outside, she had no means of defending herself.

She was just a software developer, for god’s sake. How had she gotten herself into this?

The answer, she knew, was in a series of suspicious emails, phone bills and bank statements she had stumbled across. Each one was meaningless by itself, but when put alongside the others, a terrifying picture had emerged. When she was a girl, she’d watched her conspiracy-theorist mother scowl at the newspaper each morning and mutter, ‘Everything is connected.’ At the time, Connors hadn’t believed her. Now she did.

She could hear the chanting of the mob outside – Child Killers Burn In Hell! Child Killers Burn In Hell! – and she screamed, ‘I didn’t kill anybody! Help me! Please!’

But the roaring of the fire swallowed her voice. Even if the angry crowd could have been reasoned with, she could shout until her throat bled and they still wouldn’t hear a word.

She wished her husband were here, and then immediately cursed herself for being so selfish. She didn’t want him to die. She just didn’t want to die without him.

Another bottle flew through the smashed window, trailing flames through the crackling air. Connors turned to run as it burst on the floor, splashing the walls with burning spirits.

Skin blistering, mouth dry, she dashed into the bathroom and slammed the door. She switched on the taps in the sink, the bath, the shower. Smoke swam around the ceiling like oil rising to the surface in a glass of water. She switched on the extractor fan, hoping it might buy her a few precious minutes.

She crouched in the shower, hot water blasting down onto her back. She’d only switched on the cold tap – the fire must have reached the pipes. She tore a strip off her skirt, soaked it, and clamped it over her mouth to keep the smoke out.

The tiles burned her knees. The glass in the shower door creaked, expanding in its frame, and exploded, raining crystals down upon her. Connors squeezed her eyes shut.

This is a nightmare, she told herself. This can’t be real. Any second now my alarm is going beep at me and I’m going to shudder at the memory of this horrible dream and shake it off and go eat some cereal.

The shower sputtered and died. The extractor fan groaned to a halt.

She cried. She was hot and sore and wet and alone and no fire truck was on its way and she was going to die and she didn’t deserve this.

The cellar, she thought. Heat rises, right? The cellar will be safe.

She ran out from the shower, coughing, choking on the smoke, certain she was going to vomit but determined to get to safety before she did. Her feet were cooking in her shoes. She tugged the door open, and recoiled from the heat – but the stairs were just up ahead.

You can make it, she told herself.

She reached the staircase, touched the handrail, and snatched her hand away as the metal seared her flesh. She trotted down the steps, feet a blur, the air becoming darker and darker.

She hit the cellar door, groped for the handle. Come on, she screamed at herself. Come on!

She found the handle. It wouldn’t turn.

It was locked.

That made no sense. The cellar was never locked. She didn’t even own a key. And looking down, she saw that even if she had, it wouldn’t have helped – a row of nails had been hammered in below the handle so as it wouldn’t turn.

Someone had been in her house, and made sure that she would die here.

She jiggled the handle, but neither it nor the nails had any give. Dropping the wet rag, she tried to rip them out of the wood, but with her bare hands it was impossible, and the only hammer she owned was on the other side of the door. She rammed her shoulder against it, and it was like hitting a concrete wall.

‘Ma’am! Can you walk?’

She whirled around. There was a firefighter at the top of the stairs, gas-masked, yellow-gloved, silhouetted by the flames. He held out a hand.

She started running back up the stairs, crying with relief. ‘Thank you!’ she shouted. ‘Thank you!’

She was almost at the top when she saw the hammer on his belt.

She hesitated. Maybe firefighters always carried hammers. Maybe this was a normal thing. But when he saw her stop moving, his body language changed. The helping hand turned over, becoming a weapon. He reached out and shoved her, not hard, but with enough force that she lost her balance.

She wobbled backwards on the step, arms wheeling, eyes wide, and then fell. As she tumbled back down towards the locked door, a step slammed into the back of her head. Another cracked her spine. By the time she hit the bottom, the world was already becoming darker, blurrier.

The last thing she saw was the fireman who wasn’t a fireman, looming above her, tugging out the nails out with the clawed side of his hammer and dropping them into his pocket. The cellar door was already burning. No-one would ever know he had been there.

Please, Kathy tried to say, as the heat faded, the light dimmed, the roaring of the flames became distant. I don’t deserve to die.

But while many things in life are connected, there are two things that are not. What we deserve, and what we get.