Emmi in the City by Salima Alikhan

Author:Salima Alikhan [Alikhan, Salima]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Stone Arch Books; Girls Survive; Salima Alikhan;Alessia Trunfio; Action & Adventure/Survival Stories; Historical/United States/19th Century; Nature & the Natural World/Disasters; Social Themes/Emigration & Immigration; Chicago; The Great Chicago Fire; 9781496578518; 9781496580115; 9781496578563
Publisher: Capstone
Published: 2019-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

City Cemetery, south of Lincoln Park

October 9, 1871

Monday evening, 11 p.m.

A woman running by paused, surprised to see our heads poking over the top of the grave. “Get out of there!” she called. “You’ll suffocate! The fire will smoke you out!”

Seamus, Cara, and I clawed at the earthen walls of our grave. We managed to pull ourselves up and out of the hole, just as one of the wooden grave markers nearby caught fire. The marker tumbled to the ground. The grass burst into flame.

“Come on! Come on!” I shouted.

The twins and I rushed to join the people racing away from the graves. We tripped over gravestones and the piles of belongings that people had left behind. Small, screaming children toddled around in confusion. Parents scrambled around after them.

The three of us stumbled north after everyone else, our lungs blazing from the smoke. The heat was like a wall at our backs all over again, pushing us forward. I tried desperately to see through the ash and smoke.

As we ran from the burning cemetery, the grave markers burned with snaps and pops. Flames and smoke rushed over the graves, abandoned household goods, and headstones. Burning tree branches snapped off and landed at our feet.

We followed people through the dust and smoke, into thick clusters of trees in Lincoln Park. We held each other’s hands so tight I thought they’d break. We ran until the flames were far behind us.

Soon the air wasn’t quite so thick with smoke. We were near the shores of the lake.

Suddenly it looked like we’d reached the end of the world.

I slowed down, so tired I wanted to keel over. Gazing around, I held on to my friends to keep from falling over. It looked as if everyone on earth had ended up here, among the trees.

I’d never seen so many kinds of people so close together before. The people in once-fancy clothes were frightened and covered in soot, just like the poor families.

People sat on overturned carts, on tree roots, and on the ground. Sick and injured people lay on blankets while others tended to them. Parents huddled under blankets holding crying children in their laps. People slept on the grass. Animals and wagons and piles of furniture and mattresses were strewn all over the place.

I saw one little boy all by himself with a dog on a sad, frayed leash, crying for his mama. A pony galloped around, its halter broken, whinnying in fear. Dogs wandered around among the people, panting, their eyes scared too.

Behind us, more terrified people flooded in from the south, pulling their children and belongings along. They were sooty and filthy, batting at flames and cinders crawling over their skin and clothes.

I looked over at Seamus and Cara. I saw the same question on their faces that I probably had on mine. How in the world were we going to find our families in all this?

“Is the fire going to come here?” Cara whispered. “Should we keep going north to the prairie?”

“I hope it doesn’t come here,” I told her.

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