Alex worked frantically at the door, finally found the right key, and got the door unlocked. He threw it open and waved his arms, signaling to the women farther back up the hall.
“Come on! Fire! Everyone out!”
A few of the women started down the hall, but more simply stood staring. Jax came out of a room, pushing two women. She gathered up others along the way, shoving them, urging them to hurry.
Alex started going into rooms on the opposite side of the corridor from Jax, pulling women out of bed and herding them toward the fire escape. In short order they had most of the women moving out of the fire-escape door.
Alex took Jax by the arm. “Come on, we need to get the men’s wing opened.”
“I don’t think we have all the women out. Some ran from me and hid.”
Alex could see the flames leaping out toward the counter in the nurses’ station. “There are nine floors in this building. We don’t have time to do more than what we’ve done. We need to keep moving and get as many people out as we can. I’m hoping that as we go down to the other floors, where the people aren’t as mentally ill or as heavily sedated, we can get some of them to help us. But we’re running out of time.”
Alex unlocked the fire-escape door at the end of the corridor on the men’s side as Jax started rousing the male patients. All the while he screamed, “Fire!”
When the two of them had ushered the men out onto the fire escape, telling them to go down to the ground where they would be safe, Alex and Jax turned back in to the heart of the building. The fire, already racing through the ceiling, had jumped over the walls of the nurses’ station into the wards on both sides.
Gritty black smoke billowed along the ceiling. As they ran toward the center of the building, Alex could see bright yellow and orange tongues of flame licking out through the greasy black smoke. Paint on the walls bubbled and crackled and curled.
Alex couldn’t believe how fast the fire had gotten out of control, or how hot it was. Just since they got the men out the fire escape, the smoke rolling along the ceiling had lowered to half the height of the hall. He worried about being caught by the flames, but he knew that smoke was deadly, too. It could render a person unconscious.
Pulling Jax by the hand he headed for the nurses’ station. He could tell by how much effort he had to put into urging her along that she was well beyond exhausted. She stumbled several times. The drugs were making it difficult for him to hurry. He hoped Jax didn’t simply pass out. If that happened he didn’t know what he would do.
Beyond the front of the counter, on the other side of the nurses’ station, he could see the body of his mother. There was nothing he could do for her now. There were people still alive who would die if he didn’t leave her and try to get people to safety. He knew it was the logical thing to do, but he hated how cruel it felt.
“Help me,” the orderly lying near her pleaded. “Please. . don’t leave me.”
He was lying on his side, holding his guts in with both arms. He lay stiff and still, fearing to move.
This was the man who had killed his mother. He had no trouble killing a helpless woman. Now, fearing for his own life, he was reduced to begging for mercy. Alex only briefly met his beseeching gaze and then hurried on. He was in anything but a merciful mood.
They had to skirt the far side of the utility room to get past the flames to make it to the internal stairway in the back. Alex stopped Jax as he reconsidered the plan to go down to each floor alerting patients to the fire. Jax leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes as she caught her breath.
Alex realized that he had no way of knowing how many of the staff were involved in Dr. Hoffmann’s plot. For all he knew, everyone could be involved.
They could be rushing down into an ambush.
For all he knew, Hoffmann had alerted the staff before starting to set fire to the files. They might be torching the place on the floors below.
“Do you think that all the people working here could be from your world?” he asked Jax.
She opened her eyes, struggling to focus. “I don’t know, Alex. I suppose it’s possible. We know they’ve been coming here for a long time. It’s possible that over that time they’ve infiltrated the whole place. But why would they do such a thing?”
“Dr. Hoffmann was taking orders from Sedrick Vendis. Maybe they weren’t just trying to get information from my mother. Maybe they used this place to get information out of other people when they needed to. After all, they kept you and me here in an attempt to find out what we knew.”
“That’s possible,” she said, running her fingers back into her hair as she tried to think. “We know they’ve been working on things here in this world for a long time, but we don’t know the extent of their meddling. They would have had plenty of time to set up this hospital as a place for questioning people. From what I’ve seen it would certainly have given them the seclusion, anonymity, and cover they would have wanted.”
“So then there’s no telling how many of staff could be involved,” Alex said, thinking out loud. “For all we know, they could all be involved.”
Jax wiped a weary hard across her face. “I can’t answer that.”
“From what I can tell, it seems most of the people working up here on this floor were from your world. Others, like Hoffmann, were cooperating with them. This is a large facility. The top two floors are relatively small, but below that the hospital extends along the whole block. It has a lot of different mental-health services. It could be that they confined their activities to this floor and maybe the unit below. Being locked down as they are they could control everything easier. Dr. Hoffmann could have seen to that control.”
Jax gave him a look. “But we’d better not take that for granted.”
“I think you’re right.”
If there were other people involved, they could be looking for him and Jax. Going down to the next nurses’ station could get the two of them captured. But without an alarm to warn them, a lot of innocent people could die in the fire. He tried to think of what to do.
Struck with an idea, Alex went into the utility room and snatched a couple of the longer white coats off the rack. They looked like lab coats that went to mid-thigh. He handed one to Jax. “This might help fool them.”
They buttoned up the coats on the way to the stairs. It took Alex a frustratingly long time to find the right key out of the dozens on the fat key ring. He was finally able to unlock the stairway door. Once in the stairway, he shut the door tight, hoping it would slow the spread of the fire.
Jax followed close behind as they raced down the stairs to whatever waited.
40
ALEX UNLOCKE THE DOOR on the eighth floor and raced past the utility room and the shelving area with the files. He didn’t see any fire. That much of it was a good sign. Several nurses turned when they heard Alex and Jax coming. One of them, frowning, stepped toward them to block their way. “Who the hell are—”
“Fire!” Alex screamed. “The top floor is on fire! It’s already spread through the ceiling. The whole upper floor is involved. We opened the fire-escape doors and got everyone we could out of the place.”
“I’d better go check it out,” one of the other nurses said.
“You need to evacuate your whole floor! Do it now!”
“There’s been no alarm,” the first nurse said. “We can’t evacuate a secure facility without an alarm — especially when we don’t know who you are.”
Alex, gritting his teeth in frustration, ran to the wall and yanked down the lever on the fire alarm. Nothing happened.
“See? The alarm doesn’t work. Hurry! The fire is spreading out of control. You need to get everyone out, now!”
One of the nurses at the counter picked up the phone. She pressed the line of buttons one at a time.
“The phone lines are dead.” She sounded stunned.
Alex snatched the fire extinguisher off the wall. He pulled the pin and squeezed the handle.
“Dead.” He held it up, squeezing the lever, demonstrating. “See? The extinguisher upstairs was dead, too.
