The Rebuilding Year (30 page)

“Ambulance?” he asked, coughing.

“On its way,” Caldwell said. “Let’s get the kid over here. What happened to him?”

“I think he was shot.”

“Shot? Jesus!” The lights made the blood on Patrick a lurid red, staining his body from shoulder to knees.

John helped lay the boy down. “He needs pressure on that, and an ambulance, now! And yeah, you guys need to be careful. My son said there’s a man with a gun out here somewhere.”

“Your son?” Caldwell looked around them. “Where is he?”

John turned to stare up at Smythe Hall. The windows were not so dark now. On the fourth and fifth floors, the baleful glow of fire lit them. “Up there,” he said. “On the sixth floor. With my boyfriend.”
All of my life is up there, in that inferno.

Ryan hauled himself up the last flight to the sixth floor, cursing steadily under his breath. This was crazy; this was suicide. He shouldn’t be in here without clothing and gear. He’d be just one more victim for the guys to haul out when they finally arrived. And he’d lied about it being the right thing to do. But he’d seen the look in John’s eyes. If he’d kept insisting it was lethal, John would just have come up here himself. And gotten his damned, stubborn, fine, inexperienced ass burned to a crisp. At least Ryan had the training. He’d know exactly how he’d fucked it up when he died.
Better me than John.

He stayed low, bent over as much as possible. Smoke rolled in a malevolent cloud up the ceiling above him. When he hit the sixth-floor hallway, the fire door was still in place. He went through and shut it behind him. Then he dropped to a crawl below the worst haze, his stick in one fist, the phone in the other. The air in the hallway was hot and harsh, but not as bad as what he’d passed a couple of floors down. Still, Ryan knew how quickly things could change.

He paused, and put the phone to his ear. “Mark. It’s Ryan, I’m on your floor. Is the guy with the gun still out there?”

“I don’t think so,” Mark said. “I haven’t seen him since the alarms went off.”

“Still no way out?”

Mark’s voice shook. “I don’t see one.”

“Then yell for me, make noise so I can find you. Just stay behind something, in case he hasn’t gone.”

“What if he comes back?”

“Show him the phone,” Ryan said. “Tell him you’re recording it all and the cops are coming. He won’t want to hurt you on candid camera. Now where are you?”

He heard the yell over his phone and cursed. “Wait and try that again.” A moment to silence the speaker, and then he listened. He thought he heard a faint voice from his left.

“Keep calling,” he directed. “I’m coming.”

As he crawled, Mark’s voice got louder. So did the sounds of hungry flames. Ryan knew those sounds, knew them intimately. He had heard them from behind protective gear in a hundred other burning buildings. And once, he had heard them as the fire burned over him, eating his flesh to the bone, ending his life.
Don’t think, don’t remember.
He crawled toward the boy’s voice.

The black plaque beside the door said “F. Crosby, MD”. Ryan pulled the door open and went in. The heat hit him like a blast furnace. He could feel his hair singeing. He dropped even lower, and looked.

The middle of the lab to his left was on fire. Ceiling panels dropped small embers onto the tile floor. Cabinets smoldered. The Bunsen burners were all lit, their small domesticated flames witness to the fact that the gas was still on. Papers and fabric scattered across the floor in heaps that flamed and died. Flecks of ash drifted upward in the currents of hot air, edges still red and smoking. The wallboards were flaming nicely.
Fucking old, substandard construction.
There was a pop and a whoosh as some flammable liquid in a bottle caught, flared and ran in lines of fire across the counter and onto the floor. A ceiling tile let go completely and fell, bright fragments scattering almost to Ryan’s feet.

“Mark!” he yelled. “You there? Make some noise.”

Beyond the flames, he saw the boy’s smaller form. Mark stood in a doorway and looked at him, his shape wavering in the heated air. “Ryan!”

“Fuck. Close the door! Now!”

“But you…”

“Now!”

When the door had shut Ryan pulled out his phone and turned the sound back on. “Listen up,” Ryan said, as calmly as he could. “What’s going on in that room? Any fire?”

“Not yet.” Mark’s voice was raspy. “Smoke.”

The smart thing would still be to get out fast and wait for the pros. But the way the fire was creeping along the ceiling, it would be into that next room any time now. The boy would panic. Maybe try to jump. Or stay and burn.
Shit, shit, shit.

The sprinklers should have been going off. But there was no water. As Ryan surveyed the scene, he wondered in the back of his mind why the drop in pressure hadn’t triggered the fire alarms earlier. Well, at least no water meant no steam burns.

Just real ones.

The air was better down here than he would have expected. Maybe from the big vent hoods overhead. Which still meant fucking awful. He coughed, choking.
Go now or go home. Or get dead.

You don’t have to do this.
His leg screamed with remembered pain. The odd whispering rush of moving flames ate into his brain, echoes of hell.
You should run, get out. Tell the boy to wait by the window for rescue and get out.
He crouched, frozen.

“Ryan? What do I do?” Mark’s voice asked. “It’s getting hotter here.”

“I’m coming to you,” Ryan said over the pounding of his pulse. “Stand back. I’ll be coming through the door fast. Get your jacket off and hold it ready. If any of me is smoking when I get there, beat on me with the jacket to put it out. Got that?”

“Don’t, Ry,” Mark begged. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I know what I’m doing. Trust me. Get ready.”

The first step was like going off a cliff. Then he was moving fast through the flames. He felt something hot land on his left hand and shook it off. A patter of blows across his shoulders, like being patted by small hands. He smelled scorching fabric. The air was so hot, it felt like a solid force against his skin. A shower of sparks erupted to his left and he dodged, cursing silently. Despite holding his breath, the heat seared his lungs. And then he was through. He hit the door, swung around it, and slammed it on the flames behind him.

Mark ran to him. Ryan thought he was trying to hug him, and realized belatedly that Mark was trying to get at his back. The boy slapped at his shoulders with thick fabric. “Let me get it off.” Ryan slid his arms out of his jacket sleeves, and yanked it off. Half the back was burned, black and crumbled. He felt no pain, but it had to have been close. And then Mark hugged him fiercely.

“God, Ryan, I was so scared.”

Ryan gave him a quick squeeze and stepped back. “We’re not out yet.” He took a quick look around. No obvious exit. He pulled out his phone and dialed John…
Oops, need to dial yourself.

John answered instantly. “Ryan?”

“I’m with Mark. We’re in the lab, sixth floor.” He looked out the window. “Overlooking the library. Where’s the fucking ladder truck?”

“Not here yet,” John’s voice was hoarse. “On its way. Apparently there was a false alarm all the fucking way across town.”

“We’re not getting out the door,” Ryan said. “And we may not be able to wait here much longer.” He had an idea. “Can you get around underneath us, look at the fifth-floor windows, tell me how the room below us looks? You’ll spot us by the broken window. Don’t stand right underneath it.”

“Can do.” From the sound of his breath, John was running.

“What broken window?” Mark asked.

Ryan considered the choices, and the fire. Breaking a window would cause air currents, which would feed the fire and could suck flame toward them. But he didn’t see much choice. “This one,” he said.

It was tougher than it looked. It took three blows with the handle of his cane before the glass shattered. He looked out and down. A police car, lights, and there, a running figure that was John. “Stay back till I finish with the glass,” he said on the phone. He swiped the cane over the sill until all the jagged shards had cleared.

“I see you,” John said.

“Fifth floor. What do you think?”

“Looks okay directly under you from out here,” John said. “Around front though, the fourth and fifth both look bad.”

A loud sound from the lab behind the closed door decided Ryan. “We’re going to have to move,” he told John. “If the fucking ladder gets here, send them our way. But we can’t wait. This lab is going fast. I’m going to try to rope down one floor.”

“You have a rope?” John said.

“Not exactly.”

Ryan put the phone away. He did a quick survey of the space. No exposed wires, no computer cables, just benches and glassware and a refrigerator. The fridge would have a cord, but not long enough to help.
Shit.
He went to the rack of lab coats hanging on the wall. They were sturdy cotton canvas, and the longer style. He yanked them down, and began knotting them together. Pain and tightness in his hands suggested he’d managed to scorch himself a little, but his fingers still worked.
Don’t look, don’t think.

“Can I help?” Mark asked.

“No offense, kid, but I trust my own knots.” There were six coats. With knots he was willing to trust, it made about eighteen feet of rope. He took it over to the window. Mark clung tight to his side, glancing back toward the door. Mark suddenly flinched and gasped, a sound that was almost a squeak. Ryan looked back and saw a finger of brightness through the crack above the door.
Too fucking close.
“Time to blow this joint,” Ryan said. There was an old-fashioned radiator beneath the window. Ryan knotted the improvised rope to it, and tossed it out.

“That won’t reach the ground,” Mark said anxiously.

“Nope. We’re going down one floor and back in. Then we’ll find some stairs.”

“You think?”

“Confidence, kid.” Ryan turned to him. “There’s going to be two hard parts to this. First, you have to wait here while I go down and break out the window so we can get back inside. You can’t climb out until I tell you. Even if the fire is getting close, you have to wait. I don’t think this thing will support us both. Stay right by the window. Breathe the outside air. Then when I call, you’ll have to get out and down the rope by yourself. I’ll show you how.” He demonstrated where to hold, and how to get out the window. “The first bit over the sill is the hardest. Can you do that?”

Mark’s eyes were huge in his face. “I suck at rope climbing in PE.”

“Yeah. But this is down, not up.” Suddenly there was an explosion from the lab behind them. Ryan whirled the boy in his arms against the wall, putting his own back to the fire. But whatever flammable substance had just caught, it was far enough away. The door held.

He let Mark go. The boy was shaking but he nodded, glancing over his shoulder. “Okay. I can do it.”

“Promise? I don’t want to have to climb back up and get you.”

“I can.”

Ryan gave him a swift hug. “Good man. Wait until I call you.” He swung to a seat on the window ledge and took the cane in his mouth, lips stretched wide around it.
Like around John.
Stupid brain. Hands on the makeshift rope. If it didn’t hold, odds were they would both die.
God, if You exist, don’t do that to John.
Ryan swung himself out.

Going down a rope was mainly arm strength. Ryan had put in the sweat and pain to get all of that he could. The makeshift rope held. One floor down, dangling over forty feet of nothing, he peered in the window. Dark.
In a fire, dark is good.
He took a life-or-death grip on the rope with one hand, and reached for the cane in his mouth with the other. Rope in one hand, feet braced on the wall, raise and swing.

It was a measure of his desperation that the first blow worked. Glass shattered inward. He dropped the cane, cursed as it fell out of sight, and grabbed for the rope with his second hand.
Don’t fall, don’t fucking fall.
The muscles in his arms screamed at the jolt of his body weight, but held. He got a foot onto the windowsill and the relief was amazing. With his bad leg, he kicked at the shards of glass still holding in the frame. They gave reluctantly. Finally he was able to swing himself into the room.

One glance showed it was better than the furnace upstairs. Ryan leaned out and looked up. Mark was looking down. “It’s time, kid,” Ryan called up cheerfully. “Piece of cake. I’ll be reaching out around the rope. Come down slowly and I’ll guide you in. Use your feet on the rope as well as your hands, just like I showed you.”

For a long moment he thought the boy had frozen up. Then Mark’s legs appeared over the sill. He slid out, feet first, feeling for the rope. It swung, as Ryan tried to guide it from below. Mark kicked it, slipped and then found a grip. Slowly he moved one hand from the windowsill to the rope. Then the other.

“I don’t know if I can hold on,” he hissed. “Shit. Ow.”

“You can do it,” Ryan told him. “Just like in fucking gym class but this time you’re gonna show them all how it’s done. Just four feet or so to go, and I’ll have your feet. Come on, nice and easy.”