Bright orange light illuminated the cloud of smoke in the stairwell as the roar of the conflagration announced its arrival. I thought I could see the silhouette of my friend moving at the top of the stairs. I started upward amid the rush of heat and began kicking the flaming pieces of pressboard off to the sides in order to make a path.
I was still working at the task when he started down through the maelstrom. My ears were met by the cacophony of a repetitive thump, and before I could look up, I collided with my friend.
“Down!” he croaked, grabbing me by the shoulder and twisting me around. “Back down!”
I pushed forward, taking hold of Deckert’s arm as I went and pulling him back down the stairwell with me. The three of us stumbled back into the basement hacking and gulping at the less tainted air. I looked back and could see the smoke now curling along the ceiling at the mouth of the stairs, stretching grey tendrils to undulate languidly along the acoustic tiles. The paneled wall along the stairs was starting to bow and discolor, and in the amount of time it took me to suck in another breath, yellow flame began to pry open the seams.
“It’s fuckin’ blocked or somethin!” Ben sputtered the words and then coughed hard before continuing his frenzied explanation. “I couldn’t budge it. Besides that, it’s hotter than hell.”
“There’s got to be another exit,” I appealed.
“In the back,” Deckert wheezed. He had lost his hat in the rush, and his hair was sticking out in disarray. He seemed to be having even more trouble breathing than Ben or me, and he was fingering his tie in an attempt to loosen it.
“Carl, are you okay?” I reached over and worked the knot loose for him as I stared into his face.
He managed to spit out a response. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.”
He was lying. His face was pale, and I could see that his left hand was clenched into a fist.
“Come on,” Ben urged, hooking a hand under one of Deckert’s arms as I took hold of the other. “We gotta get outta here before…”
The fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling buzzed loudly and immediately doused, throwing us into almost complete darkness. The smoke was now rolling into the room behind us, and it was no longer content with hanging in wispy cloudlike formations around the ceiling. It had taken on a life of its own, and it was intent on filling the room to capacity with its airborne virulence.
A wave of heat was pushing through the room, chasing away the earlier frosty atmosphere that had plagued me. We started forward across the darkened basement, aiming for the dim light of the doorway some forty feet away. We had taken three steps when from behind us there came a noise unlike any I’d ever heard.
The initial sound hammered into my ears and drove directly into my skull, jarring every bone in my body. It was followed immediately by a dull roar that swelled in pitch to a persistent ring, all underscored by my ears feeling as if they were full of water.
I remember being lifted off my feet and flying forward through the air, only to be deposited onto the plywood sub-floor a pair of yards from my original position. My face did a quick double bounce from the hard surface, and my arm twisted as it folded beneath me, driving a harpoon of pain into my already tortured shoulder.
I groaned and rolled to the side then began pushing myself upward. An out-of-control spill of orange flame rolled down the stairs and waved its angry arms upward, instantly igniting the rectangular foam ceiling tiles. Black smoke from the burning polymers joined its dingy grey sibling to push deeper into the room, at the same time adding a layer of toxic fumes to the haze.
“Ben?! Carl?!” I could hear myself inside my head, but to my ears, the words were a muffled tangle of syllables.
My friend was already dragging himself upward, but Carl was motionless between us. I struggled to my feet and stumbled for a moment. I touched my face, and it felt sticky. My nose and cheek were aching, and my shoulder felt like it had just gotten in the way of a freight train.
I don’t know that Ben could hear me any more than I could hear him. His lips were moving, and I thought I could pick out something resembling his voice. In any event, we both took hold of Deckert and pulled him to his feet. We half dragged him toward the doorway as he began to come to then he started moving with us as we rushed for the opening.
I cast a glance over my shoulder and saw that the wall along the stairwell had already begun to collapse, bringing the melting tiles and grid work of the drop ceiling with it. The flames were arcing in violent bursts, swinging monkeylike from panel to panel as they consumed anything they touched. When I returned my gaze forward, I realized that it had crowned over us in the open space above the tiles and was now burning through in our path.
Directly in front of me, a molten dollop of foam ceiling tile dripped to the floor, pulling a stream of flame with it. I shifted hard to the right, slamming once again into Carl and pushing him into Ben. We careened around the synthetic lava flow and slammed against the wall then ricocheted back onto a zigzagging course and covered the last few feet to the doorway.
The ringing in my ears had subsided to a low whistle, and I could now hear the roar of the holocaust around us. Ben shoved Deckert through the opening then clamped his hand on my shoulder and pushed me in. The plywood sub-floor had ended at the threshold and dropped a few inches to the original concrete, so I tripped as I went through. Ben followed and faltered as well.
The smoke was now hanging in the entire basement from the waist up, and we were hunched over in search of cooler, cleaner air. The only source of light in the room, other than that of the flames behind us, was a small, glass block window above us at ground level.
We began scanning the room with frantic urgency, battling the thickening smoke for visibility. The caustic fumes were beginning to overtake us, and each breath was coming at an even higher cost.
“Where’s the door?!” I heard Ben almost scream the question. “Where the fuck’s the door?!”
CHAPTER 16:
Angry flames had all but caught up to us, casting sharp fingers of orange past the doorframe. The fire had become a hungry cat, and the three of us were mice cowering in a hole. I searched for a door to close on the opening and found only bare hinges where it had been removed. I jumped and backpedaled to the center of the room as the claws of the monster made a desperate grab for me, singeing my hair in the process. For a moment, the arc of the blaze retreated as if it had been sucked back into the realm of hell from which it had originated. Unfortunately, as with any storm, it was merely a false calm. The pause lasted no more than a breath before a second explosion rattled through from the opposite end of the house, forcing a blast of flame, heat, and burning debris in upon us.
We danced about, avoiding the flying detritus as best we could. All the while, we were struggling for each and every breath as a fresh supply of smoke billowed into the room. Carl hit the floor with a heavy thud, and I rushed over. He was kneeling, and I came down even with him. Although my eyes were burning and blurred, I could still see that he was looking worse by the moment.
“How are you doing, Carl?” I felt myself yelling just to be heard through the thickness in my own ears.
“Goddamn… Chest… Fricking… Killing… Me…” He wheezed in a breath between each word.
I wasn’t qualified to make a diagnosis by any means, but I’d seen this before, and the only thing that entered my mind was heart attack. I didn’t say it aloud, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was thinking the same thing.
“Do you have a handkerchief?” I raised my voice once again.
He nodded and began trying to reach into his pocket. I took over and rummaged through his coat until I found the large cotton square. I gave it a quick fold then pressed it over his nose and mouth.
“Breathe through this,” I instructed him. “And try to relax. We’re going to get out of here.”
He pressed his right hand up over the makeshift mask and nodded.
I climbed to my feet and began feeling my way clockwise around the room, keeping as low as I could in search of breathable air. I still had my shirt pulled up over the lower half of my face, but it was being overwhelmed by the ash content of the atmosphere. I could see that Ben was moving on the other side of the room, engaged in the same search from the opposite direction.
“Back wall,” Deckert croaked, barely audible over the din of the fire.
