Chapter Eighteen: Fire And Flames
Equis, Equestria, Ponyville
I stood, frozen in place in front of the library, looking off into the distance where there was a huge fire blazing not a mile away. It was not a small fire. No, it was a fire like nothing I had ever seen before. Bigger than my back yard bonfires. Bigger than when I set a pine tree on fire. Bigger than my house fire even. But that was not what had me worried. The part that made me worried was that the fire looked like it was burning at Sweet Apple Acres.
"Oh no..." I said, my voice shaky.
Derpy saw it too, and her eyes grew wide as she realized what we were looking at. I took a guess that she had never seen anything like this before from the shock that was visible on her face. "Is that-"
"Sweet Apple Acres?" I finished for her. "Eeyup, it looks like it."
She looked at me with wide eyes. "Django, we need to go see what's going on. If the farm's on fire, then we need to help."
I nodded. "Yeah, you're right. C'mon Derpy, let's go see if we can help out."
We started to run down the dirt road towards the farm. It was clear that there was an emergency at the farm, and I needed to get there as soon as I could so I could help. Applejack probably needed all the help she could get right now, and I was not going to hang back on the side lines. That is not how friends work.
I was not sure how long we had run for, but at the end of it, we were panting hard. It only seemed like we were running for a second, but I know that it was much longer than that. I know this because when you are panicking, time moves differently than it normally does. Sometimes it moves faster, and other times slower. I could not tell which it was this time, but I did not care. We were at the farm, and the barn was burning.
"Quick, get those buckets! Hurry everypony, we gotta get this fire down!" a familiar voice with a southern accent yelled. Applejack was shouting orders frantically at all of the ponies already at the farm helping get the fire under control. "C'mon y'all, we need to get as much water flowin' through them hoses as possible!"
I ran over to her and stopped a few feet short so I did not cross in front of a line of ponies carrying a huge water hose. "Applejack, what the hell's going on?" I asked her.
She just shook her head. "I don't rightly know Django. One second everythin's fine, and the next, the barn's goin' up in flames."
"How can we help?" I asked, getting straight to the point.
She was about to say something, but she hesitated.
"What? What is it?" I asked her.
"Well, it's your friends Django," she said slowly. "They haven't come out yet, and I think they might be in trouble, but we can't get the doors open to get to 'em."
I felt my blood freeze. The barn was burning down to the ground, and my friends were still inside of it. They might already be dead in there. But it does not matter if there is a chance of them being dead. That just means that there is a chance of them being alive too. "I'm getting them out of there." I said, matter-of-factly.
"But Django-" Applejack started.
"I'm going in there, and you can't stop me." I turned to face Derpy. "Derpy, I need you to help them put out the fire as much as you can. While I'm in there, every second counts, okay?"
She looked stunned that I was saying this. "Django, it's too dangerous!"
I walked up to her and put my arms around her. "Don't worry about me, yeah? I'm totally indestructible, so I 'll be fine."
She looked like she wanted to stop me, and she probably did, but she did not try to stop me. Instead, she kissed me, hard. It lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. I could feel the better-than-amazing sensation that I felt when I kissed her the first time, but I could feel something else too. I felt tears in the kiss. I pulled away to look her in the face, and I could see that she was crying. "Please be safe Django," she said in a choked voice, then she let me out of the lock I had not realized that we were in and I stepped back.
I saw Applejack giving me a look that could kill, but I ignored it. I ran up to the side of the burning barn and could feel the heat on my face like I was staring into a furnace. "Doors are for pussies," I said to myself. The I took a running start at the wall of the barn and smashed into it as hard as I could. The walls were weakened by the fire already, so it was easy for me to break through them. But as I did break through, I almost wish that I had not. It was so hot inside of the barn that I could hardly breathe. But I was on a mission, and I would not leave until I was finished. I needed to get my friends out of here, and I was going to.
I started walking along the side of the barn, avoiding the burning parts and covering my face with my shirt. "Hey, guys!" I yelled as loud as I could. But the roaring and the cracking from the fire was making it almost impossible to hear anything. I walked a little further, then I heard something.
"Help!"
I recognized the voice. It was Dante, screaming for help. I could hardly breathe, so I did not waste any breath yelling back at him. I just went over to where the voice was coming from and tried to find him. I was near the back of the barn now, looking back and forth when I saw something move. I walked over to it, and moved a crate that was in the way. Dante, and most of the others that were staying in the barn were back here, trying to break a hole in the wall. "There you are!" I yelled. "Where are the rest of y'all?!"
"They not here!" Bird yelled over the roaring of the flames.
I nodded. "Okay, follow me! There's a way out over here!"
They all got up and followed me over to where the hole was. The fire had spread since I had entered the barn, but the hole I had made was still mostly traversable. "Okay, Go out one at a time!"
The first out was Rasheed, then George, then Bird and David. But just when Dante was about to go through the hole, a burning beam of wood hit the level above us and brought down a shower of smoke and embers that blinded us for a short moment. When I had regained my sight though, I saw something horrible. The beam had brought down a part of the barn with it and now our exit was blocked off, and we had no way out.
"Fuck!" I yelled in anger. That was our only way out, and now we were trapped inside of this burning barn that could come down on top of us at any moment. It can not end here, it just can not. I will not let this be the end of me. I look around for anything to smash another hole in the wall, but everything is on fire. I am unable to use myself as a battering ram again because if I do, I will be burnt up from the fire now climbing the walls all around us.
Just as I am about to give up and try something else, I see something. I walk over to it and discover that it is a ladder, mostly intact and leading to the next level of the barn. It is a risk climbing this ladder, but it is either the ladder, or the fire. "Hey, you two climb the ladder to get higher up and away from the fire!" I yelled to the two behind me. I go up first and wait for them to climb up after me when I get to the top. The ladder is burning past the second floor, so I look for another way up, and find some crates stacked up that we might be able to climb on.
"Django, where do we go?!" Demetrion asked me in a scared voice.
I pointed over to the stacked up crates. "We climb those so we can get to the top floor of the barn!" I tell them. They both agree and we work our way over to the crates, but as we reach them, something grabs my leg. It scares me at first, but when I look down, I see Mike's face, covered in soot.
"Django man, I need help!" he yells.
I look further down and see that his leg is twisted in an unnatural angle and that he has a large box on top of it. I think about leaving him and saving the two who can walk, but I push those thoughts out of my head immediately and kick the box out of the way and pull him up on to the crates. I can see that Tyler is also behind the crates. He is not hurt, just scared. "Tyler!" I yell loudly, but he does not listen. I decide not to waste time and just grab him by the arm and pull him up with me. Dante and Demetrion are already on the third floor of the barn, and I have them help me pull up the two still below. When we are all up on the top floor, I help Mike to walk and we try to make our way over to a small window near the front side of the barn. Dante and Demetrion are pulling along Tyler, and he is half walking because moving him seemed to snap him out of his fear induced trance. They reach the window and start waving down to the ponies down below us for help. I am about to reach the window so that I can tell them what to do, but Mike's foot falls through a hole in the floor and he gets stuck.
"Ahh! My foot is stuck!" he screams at me. "Django, please help me!"
I bend down to pull him out of the hole, but the floor breaks, and he falls. I reach as fast as I can, but I could only manage to grasp his fingers. I am on my knees, holding on to him so he will not fall, but the floor is still breaking. I try to pull him up, but he is too heavy. The floor breaks a little more, and my foot is nearly over the edge.
"Django, pull me up!" Mike yells.
I look at him straight in the eye and make a split second decision. "Sorry Mike, but I'm not dying here," I say in a cold voice, and I let go. His eyes go wide, and he screams all the way down to the ground. It was a short trip, judging by how short his scream was. I turn around and walk away from the edge, and I do not look back.
The fire is louder now than it was when I had first entered the barn in search of my friends, and I can barely hear any of the words that my friends are shouting. I walk up to the window and push my head out to yell for help, but I see that Applejack is already one step ahead. Down below is a huge trampoline with a big X in the middle of it.
"Django, tell your friends to jump!" Applejack yells up to me.
I nod at her, then turn to face my friends. "Okay, we need to jump to that trampoline to get out of here, got it?!"
My statement was met with nervous stares from all three of them. They were scared of jumping out of a three story building, and I can not blame them. But if they want to live, then this is what we will have to do. "Listen, it's either this, or we burn to death," I say to them. Then, as if to emphasize what I said, the whole barn shakes violently and half of the roof caves in and nearly crushes us. "We have to jump, right now!" I yell one more time at them.
"I'm not going to burn to death," Tyler says, almost to himself. He walks up to the window, and then he jumps out of it, and after a few seconds he makes contact with the trampoline on the ground.
"Okay," I say to the remaining two. "You see? It's safe. So now y-" but I was cut off by a piece of falling roof that hit me square in the chest, and sent me tumbling out of the window. I could not tell where I was going to fall, or even if my eyes were open. I was spinning so fast that all I could see was a blur of orange and black mixing together. I was falling for maybe four seconds before I hit something solid, but luckily, I bounced. I had miraculously hit the trampoline and had avoided splattering on the hard ground. When I came back down from my bounce, I rolled off of the trampoline and turned towards the barn. I did not see Dante or Demetrion in the window. But what I did see was the barn crumbling in on itself, shooting flames into the sky, along with a huge column of smoke and millions of tiny embers. I looked around and expected to see them standing somewhere, but I did not see them, anywhere. I saw Applejack and Derpy walk up to me, pained expressions on their faces.
Oh, god no. Don't let them be dead.
"Django, you're friends... They didn't make it out of the barn," Applejack said in a voice that was filled with emotion.
I did not speak. I could not speak. I had risked my life to save them, and I had failed. I just could not believe that I had failed to save my friends. I felt dizzy, and fell on my ass in the dirt. I sat there, not feeling anything other than hollowness. They were counting on me, and now they are dead. I just-
"I'm sorry."
"What?" I asked numbly, not knowing who had spoken.
"I'm sorry Django, it was my fault."
I look over to my side and see Tyler standing there. "What do you mean?" I asked slowly.
Tyler shifted his weight around from foot to foot. "Me and Mike went down in the basement of the library and stole those joints. When we got back here, we lit one of them up but it fell and caught some hay on fire. That's how the fire started."
I was staring at Tyler now, not believing what he was saying. He had started the fire? He was responsible for the damage and the death? "Tyler," I say quietly.
"Yeah?" he responds.
I stand up and look him in the eyes. "I'm going to kill you." I then shoot out my hand faster than he can react and grip him by his neck tightly. With my other hand, I pull out my Glock from my belt and put it to his chest.
"No," he chokes out. "Django no!"
I do not frown. I do not smile. I do not even blink. I do not show any expression. I just pull the trigger, five times.
End Chapter: Chapter Eighteen: Fire And Flames