Heller's Girlfriend (21 page)

He grabbed another two barely
awake people, and I wasted precious moments urging another two very
drowsy people to their feet. Their stupor turned to fear when they
realised that flames surrounded them. Panicking, they staggered
into each other, not listening to my instructions.

“Come on people,
wake
up!
” I screamed at them, shaking their arms in frustration as I
struggled to herd them in the right direction. They kept banging
into each other and me, and the three of us lurched slowly to the
door. I was so glad to reach it, dumping them to collapse on the
manicured lawn with the others while I sprinted back inside. We’d
rescued ten guests so far. Fourteen to go.

The smoke became chokingly
thick, forcing me to pull up my polo shirt over my mouth to assist
my breathing. Farrell did the same. He dragged a deeply slumbering
guest by the arms out of the living area, down the hallway. I
grasped an unconscious Gabriela by her hands and dragged her across
the floor. She wasn’t heavy, being such a petite woman, but it was
still a strain on my back and arms.

I deposited her safely on the
lawn into the care of the other guests who had well and truly
sobered up by now, and Farrell and I returned inside the burning
house. The heat was intense and we were both feeling scorched and
sweaty as we laboured.

After confirming with each other
that we had twelve guests safe with twelve to go, we each seized
the nearest slumbering body from the floor. We unceremoniously
dragged them out of the house and dumped them on the lawn, and
returned for the next two.

My back was killing me. Not to
mention my eyes and my lungs. The hot smoke I inhaled with each
heaving breath made me cough and burned my lungs. My eyes were
streaming. I began to worry that we weren’t going to rescue all the
guests in time. There were so many of them left and the whole back
wall of the house was afire.

I redoubled my efforts, and like
a wild woman I hauled the next person out in record time, dashing
back in to grab another. We moved closer to the burning back wall,
trying to reach the people in most danger. Between us, we managed
to drag another four out of the house. Sixteen safe, eight to
go.

The tapestries in the hallway
were now alight, making the trip to the front door even more
hazardous. Pain stung my bare forearms where flames licked at my
skin. After dropping my latest rescue, I had a coughing fit on the
lawn, bent over double with the effort. I spat out a huge quantity
of gray phlegm and vomited up more. Farrell spared a second to pat
me on the back before he rushed inside again. Wearily I followed
him, my throat scorched and barely able to see out of my
tear-filled eyes.

The kitchen was on fire by now
as well and the heat was intense. In desperation, Farrell decided
to pull two recumbent figures at the same time, an extremely
difficult manoeuvre that left him gasping for oxygen, his face
screwed up with effort, the muscles in his arms and neck popping
out in strain. The extra weight slowed him down considerably and
caused all three of them to suffer through the burning hallway.

A couple of the drunks managed
to rouse themselves with the racket, one of them Marty. I slipped
my arms around their waists and helped them stagger their way out
to the lawn, where they collapsed on the ground breathing in great
gasps of oxygen. I breathed in a few myself while I was out there.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Thank God!

Farrell and I went back in,
noticing immediately that the situation had worsened since our last
trip. The raked timber ceiling of the living area was now also on
fire. I didn’t think we’d be able to come back inside again after
this trip – it was too dangerous for amateurs like us. We needed
professionals to take over.

We each grasped a person by the
hands. My back screamed at me to stop the torture, but I had no
choice but to tune out the pain. My face baked in the scorching
heat, and I struggled to breathe or even see in the thick smoke. I
was ahead of Farrell, just about to drag my person into the
hallway, when something in the kitchen exploded with an enormous
blast that lit up the entire house. A savage tongue of flame added
its force to the ceiling fire. Part of the roof of the living area
suddenly collapsed with a great crashing noise, trapping Farrell
and his person beneath.

Chapter 15

I swiftly pulled my person to
safety, my arms shaking in panic, before dashing back in. I threw
burning debris left and right, scrabbling through the rubble with
my hands, oblivious to the burning pain. I lifted off a sheet of
plasterboard to mercifully find Farrell still alive, but with an
ankle caught under one of the beams from the ceiling that had
fallen with the blast.

“Get the other person out,” he
ordered, his eyes brilliant in his sooty face.

“Farrell,” I protested, trying
to lift the beam off his foot. I couldn’t. It was too heavy for
me.

“Do it now!” he shouted, so I
reached for the unconscious man and slowly hauled him to safety
over the wreckage and down the hallway. He was big and heavy and it
took me a while.

Where were the damn fire
fighters?
I thought desperately to myself, as I dumped the man
on the lawn and sprinted back through the flames, arms over my face
to protect it from the burning tapestries.

I wasted a valuable minute
trying again to lift the beam off Farrell’s foot with no success.
There was another minor explosion from the kitchen and its ceiling
slowly caved in.

“Get out, Chalmers!” he shouted
at me. “We’ll both die in here otherwise.”

“No! Not without you,” I shouted
back and thought frantically. I needed a lever of some type to lift
the beam. Then I remembered the fireplace and thought the fire
poker might do. Luckily for me it was in a part still accessible
and I crawled towards it. I felt around cautiously until I touched
the hot tiles of the marble hearth, moving along them until my
fingers recognised the fire tools. I cried tears of relief when my
fingers closed around the poker.

I crawled back to Farrell.
Although I knew it was going to hurt him, I used his leg as a
fulcrum, laying the poker across it as a level, wedging it under
the beam. I pushed down on it with every scrap of strength I had
left in me. He howled in pain and I hoped I wasn’t breaking his leg
in the process. The beam lifted slightly, just enough for him to
wriggle his foot free. I hooked my arms under his armpits and
lugged him towards the front door.

The tapestries were badly on
fire by this point, and it was a painful and slow trip for both of
us. He wasn’t light, packed with muscle, but tried to help me by
pushing on the floor with his good foot to propel us faster. I’d
never been so glad as when I reached the front door with him. I
dragged him across the lawn and propped him up next to a tree. I
realised then that his pants were on fire and rolled him on the
grass until it was out. Then I fell on the ground next to him and
we raggedly breathed in the clean air, our skin blackened with the
smoke, our throats raw.

Oh God, the two in the guest
room!
I jumped to my feet and ran back to the house.

“Chalmers!” he tried to shout
out, his voice weak and hoarse with heat and smoke. “Where are you
going? You can’t help anyone else! Come back here, you stupid
woman!”

“There are two more in the front
room. I think I can get them,” I shouted, equally hoarse, over my
shoulder. And I re-entered the burning building, not hearing any
more of his frenzied protests.

The guest room was closest to
the front door and still reachable. Just. I battled through the
hallway into the room where the two remained lying on the bed in
the same positions I’d left them. They would have inhaled a lot of
smoke and were now probably unconscious from that rather than the
alcohol. I crossed my fingers that they were alive.

I made a spontaneous decision to
go for the man first because my strength was swiftly running out
and I didn’t want to leave him until last. I roughly hauled him off
the bed, wincing when he thumped heavily to the ground. But I was
pretty sure he’d choose a sore back over dying in a fire any day.
With much effort, I slowly dragged him out of the room, down the
hallway and out the front door to the lawn. Some neighbours who’d
been woken by the explosions rushed forward to drag him away
further from the danger.

I considered the burning house,
gasping in air, my hands on my hips, almost bent double in an
attempt to relieve the excruciating pain in my muscles. It was
insanity to go back inside. How many times had I watched news
reports of people who’d entered burning buildings to save someone,
only to be killed themselves, overcome by smoke and flames? But we
had surely lost two guests in the living area, so I felt compelled
to try to get one more person out if I possibly could. That’s the
only rationale I could later give for my foolish, rash actions.

So I re-entered the house,
Farrell’s cries of anger and distress just faint rumbles over the
noise of the fire. I’d never realised before just how loud fires
could be.

I barely made it through the
hallway without my uniform catching fire, the flames on each side
of the walls were licking so close together. The woman on the bed
was a lightweight, and as I did with the man, I pulled her off the
bed onto the floor with no care for her comfort. But as I dragged
her to the bedroom door, the hallway exploded into a solid wall of
flame accompanied by a huge cracking noise.
Shit!
I slammed
the door to the bedroom shut with my foot and looked at the
full-length window. It was our only possible escape route.

I don’t want to die, I don’t
want to die
, I half-sobbed to myself in panic as I dragged the
poor woman over to the window.

I tried to open the window, the
varnish on the timber frame blistering in the heat from the fire,
but it wouldn’t open very far without a security key. I slid my
fingers desperately around the window frame, sure the key would be
hanging on a hook somewhere nearby, but it wasn’t. I remembered
from my earlier visit to the room that there was a metal-legged
stool in one corner of the bedroom’s adjoining bathroom, so
stumbled my way there through the choking darkness, banging into
walls and furniture on the way. I used my fingers to guide my way
to the stool and picked it up gratefully.

I carried it back to the window
and holding it behind me like a baseball bat, swung it violently
towards the window, cracking it but not smashing it, so depleted
was my strength. Crying in earnest now, I tried again and smashed
it this time, using the pad of the stool to push enough of the
glass out to give me a decent escape space. The oxygen streaming in
from the broken window was sucked underneath the closed door,
feeding the flames in the hallway. The searing temperature in the
room rose a few more degrees.

I couldn’t pull the unconscious
woman out through the window because I’d be dragging her over
jagged broken glass. So somehow – and I’ll never know from where
the strength came – with much manipulation and struggle, and much
precious time-wasting, I managed to flop her over my shoulder. I
climbed through the broken window, both of us sustaining some
unavoidable glass cuts during the process.

We escaped just in time as the
flames ate down the door and burst into the room, swallowing up the
free flowing oxygen from the window, devouring the bed linen in an
instant. I staggered with my burden to the side gate, which was
locked of course.

It wasn’t a good place to be,
wedged in a narrow side path between highly flammable plants and a
house on fire. I examined the locked gate. Could I climb it with a
woman on my back? A quick check behind me confirmed that the side
vegetation was on fire at the back of the house, so I couldn’t even
run to the swimming pool for shelter. It appeared as though I
didn’t have much choice.

The woman was beginning to feel
so heavy, even though she was small and thin. I was incredibly glad
that I’d left her until last, because there was no possible way I
could have rescued the man in these circumstances.

I slotted my boot in the first
foothold of the metal gate and hauled us up with shaking, screaming
arms, leaving the woman to balance precariously on my shoulder
without any support from me. I needed both arms to climb.

One step.

I found a foothold for my other
boot and repeated the movement.

Two steps.

And step by step, encouraging
myself all the way, I managed to reach the top of the gate.

But as I sat straddling it,
planning my journey down the other side, the woman stirred and
moved in panic, throwing me off balance. We both fell down onto the
ground, a good two metres. She didn’t move, and neither did I for a
while, my back about to pack it in for the evening, sick of the
abuse. I felt physically ill, choked with smoke, aching everywhere
and completely unable to move, blinking up with stinging eyes at
the evening sky. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. After a
couple of minutes rest though, I roused myself and grabbed the
woman by her arms, dragging her towards the others. This close to
the house, we still weren’t out of danger.

As I rounded the side of the
house to the front, there was a huge cheer and it took me a few
moments before I realised that it was for us. I stood shakily,
surveying the scene. There were people everywhere. The fire
fighters had arrived since I’d been in the house and one of them
came to relieve me of my burden and help me back to where Farrell
was still propped up against the tree. His foot was being attended
to by a paramedic and the most incredible look of relief and wonder
crossed his face at the sight of me. I crumpled next to him.