Firestorm Read Online Free PDF Page B

need to get him out of here now.”
    Part of me
wanted to shout with joy but the other part wanted to break down
and cry. Ali lifted Don’s good arm and propped him up with his
right shoulder and I did the same to his left shoulder. Meagan
walked ahead of us looking back constantly. A few minutes later we
were at the top and in the cave.
    I helped Ali to
sit Don as gently as we could onto the ground so he could lean
against the cave wall, but my eyes were on the back of Meagan. I
scurried over to where she was squatted and as I gazed upon my
grandfather, I felt as if I’d been punched in the chest.
    He was awake
and cognisant but he was in pain as his right leg had a huge bite
in it with torn skin and blood was dripping from it. Meagan pulled
the first aid box out of the backpack and poured some rubbing
alcohol over the wound. Grandpa yelped and cursed at the same time
as Brad wrapped his arms around Grandpa’s chest to hold him
still.
    For the next
few minutes Meagan and I tried to clean the wound but it was just
too open and gory to do it any good. We wound the gauze tightly
around it to stop the bleeding and keep the skin in place, and then
turned to see what the guys were doing. Ali was digging through his
backpack.
    “Okay, Brad,
did you bring your cell? Seems like mine fell out when I dumped my
bag back at the house.”
    Brad searched
his backpack and shook his head.
    “Same here. But
hey, what about the walkie-talkie?”
    Ali asked Don
where the walkie-talkie was and Don flung his hand in the air and
said he threw it in the water.”
    “It didn’t work
so why keep it?”
    “Well, that’s
great. We can’t call for help and there’s no way we’re going to get
these guys out of here before it gets dark which is like, in
minutes from now. Looks like we’ll be spending the night here.”
    Ali sat on a
short boulder beside Meagan and huffed.
    “Brad’s right.
We need a boat to get across the river and even if we had one, we
can’t see a thing in the dark, anyway.”
    Just then Don
began to whine.
    “I don’t want
to stay here. I want to go home.”
    Grandpa hadn’t
said anything and was just watching us while he rubbed his wounded
leg. I curled in beside him and he put his arm around me, giving me
a bit of security, but I knew that he was in more pain than he was
letting on. It was as if he read my mind and then squeezed my
arm.
    “I’m okay,
Sarah. The one guy got me but I gave them our catch and they took
them and ran off. I was hurt way worse than this in the war.”
    I smiled at
Grandpa and then remembered that he’d never met Brad and Ali so I
introduced them and I could tell by the gleam in his eyes that he
liked them.
    “Thanks for
coming out here with my girls, fellas. Looks like we’re here for
the night so you might as well make yourself as comfortable as you
can. Nana will be insane by now with worry, but there’s not much we
can do about that right now.”
    Poor Nana. I’d
forgotten that she must be sick with worry. But again, Grandpa was
reading my thoughts.
    “She’ll be
fine. This isn’t the first time that I got lost out here. We’ve
been through this a few times and she’ll be okay.”
    We sat inside
the small cave and made a campfire on the rocky floor in the middle
to keep us warm from the cool damp air that lingered inside the
cave. The smoke went straight up and through an opening above us
and as the sun went down, so did the temperature. Brad and Ali had
gathered a pile of heavy branches and logs to block off the
entrance and keep strange animals out during the night. They found
two short branches that looked almost like baseball bats to use as
a weapon in case we got unwanted guests.
    Brad took the
blankets out from his backpack and curled in beside me so that we
were all covered, and Ali squeezed in beside Don with Meagan on his
other side and spread the other blanket over them.
    I held on to
Grandpa’s arm but I couldn’t stop shaking. I’m not sure if it was
from the