No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

“Oh, come on—”
* * *
A fireball ripped through the restroom’s triangular
window, pushing a scorching wave of pressurized air. Darby
leapt outside, a half-second ahead of the blast, bouncing off a
picnic table and landing hard, twisting her left ankle.
She felt a sickening pop.
Jay turned, a few paces ahead. “Darby!”
“I’m fine.”
But she knew she wasn’t. Her ankle throbbed with jarring
pain. Her toes went instantly numb; a sharp mess of pins and
needles inside her shoe, like invisible fingers pinching her
nerves—
“Can you walk?”
“I’m fine,” she said again, and another surge of fire roared
through the broken window above her, drowning out her
voice. Another wall of hot air threw her to her knees in the
snow.
The visitor center erupted into towering flames behind
them, tongues of fire pumping a column of filthy smoke. It
climbed the sky, a furious tornado-swirl of glowing embers.
The size and of closeness of it was overwhelming. Raging heat
on her back, the whining suction of devoured air. The charcoal
odor of fresh fire. The snow lit up with orange daylight and the
trees cast bony shadows.
Jay gripped her hand. “Come on. Stand up.”
Darby tried again, but her ankle folded limply beneath her.
Another surge of nauseating pain. She hobbled forward.
“Is he dead?” Jay asked.
“Don’t count on it.”
“What does that mean?”