Zeke Bartholomew by Jason Pinter

Sparrow.
    Spots appeared in front of my eyes. Then, just as I was about to lose consciousness, Ragnarok lifted us both off the ground and one at a time dropped us back into the dark, dank sewer.
    I landed on my back, pain shooting through my legs. Sparrow landed next to me. I heard a terrible thud. She screamed and held her arm. Her shoulder looked out of place, and she rolled on the ground, clutching it.
    I ignored the pain, gathered myself, and ran to the base of the ladder. I looked up.
    Ragnarok was holding Kyle again. My friend was still breathing. Something to be thankful for.
    But Ragnarok had removed the glove from his right hand. In that glowing appendage he held a small black orb. He squeezed it, opened his hand, and I saw that the orb was glowing a bright, shining red. Smoke cascaded from it.
    My eyes widened. He was holding a fire grenade.
    â€œMove!” I yelled to Sparrow. Grabbing her around the waist, I threw us forward, just as the beast tossed the red, smoking grenade into the sewer.
    There was a huge explosion, and then everything went away.

3:47 p.m.
    Four hours and thirteen minutes until everything goes kablooey and I’ll never get an iPad.
    I don’t know how long I was out for. It couldn’t have been too long, because when I came to I couldn’t breathe.
    My face was underwater. I lurched up, spat water out of my mouth, coughed, and snorted it out my nose. It was terribly dark, and I couldn’t make out much of anything except the acrid smell of smoke from the fire grenade. Ragnarok had been waiting for us.
    He’d needed to know where we were. He needed to know we weren’t coming after him.
    He had Kyle.
    I felt an awful pang in my gut when I realized that the sick, molten monster had taken my best friend. And my only hope was…
    Sparrow?
    â€œSparrow!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
    I couldn’t see her, couldn’t see anything, really, so I felt about in the dark. Feeling for something, anything, that would let me know where she was.
    â€œSparrow!” I shouted again. “Where are you?”
    I tripped over a rock. A pile of them actually. I went down in a heap and bashed my elbow.
    I rolled over, holding it and rocking back and forth. I’d ruined everything. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have put my family and friends in danger. And now here I was, sitting alone in the bottom of a destroyed sewer system. My best friend was kidnapped, and the girl who’d saved my life had disappeared.
    Then I heard a noise.
    Eek.
    Eek.
    Kids in grade school used to call me that. It started one Halloween night. A kid named Steve Berg (Isabel Berg’s brother) had lost both of his front teeth. He tried to call me “Zeke,” but it came out “Eek.” That stuck for far, far too long.
    Eek.
    â€œI hear you, Sparrow! Where are you?”
    â€œHere,” came the voice.
    I followed the noise to where it seemed to be coming from.
    â€œSpeak again!” I said. “I’ll follow your voice.”
    â€œI’m over here,” she said. There wasn’t much energy in her voice. I had to find Sparrow.
    I followed the voice for a minute before I came upon her. My heart sank.
    â€œOh, no…Sparrow…”
    She was lying on the ground, cradling her arm. I remembered that sickening sound when she’d hit the floor. Noticing the angle she was holding it at, I could tell that her shoulder was definitely separated.
    But more worrisome was that her entire lower body was buried under rocks. Some big ones. I couldn’t even see her legs.
    â€œI tried to pick them up, get them off me,” she said lethargically, “but I couldn’t with this.” She gingerly moved her damaged wing.
    â€œDon’t move,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
    I stepped forward and began to remove the rocks from Sparrow’s fallen body. Some of them were quite heavy, so I concentrated on the smaller ones