The Rescue - Nicholas Sparks [119]
Moving on instinct alone, he rushed toward the window, his head growing light, closing his eyes to keep the smoke and heat from damaging them any further. He made it to the window and in one quick motion threw the man through the shattered window, where he landed in a heap. His damaged vision, however, prevented him from seeing the other firemen rushing toward the body.
All Taylor could do was hope.
He took two harsh breaths and coughed violently. Then, taking another breath, he turned and made his way inside one more time.
Everything was a roaring hell of acid-tongued flames and suffocating smoke.
Taylor pushed through the wall of heat and smoke, moving as if guided by a hidden hand.
One more man inside.
A boy, nine years old, in the attic, calling from the window that he was afraid to jump . . .
Taylor closed one of his eyes when it began to spasm in pain. As he pushed forward, the wall of the office collapsed, topping in on itself like a stack of cards. The roof above him sagged as flames sought out new weakness and began to surge upward, toward the gap in the ceiling.
One more man inside.
Taylor felt as if he were dying inside. His lungs screamed for him to take a breath of the burning, poisonous air around him. But he ignored the need, growing dizzier.
Smoke snaked around him and Taylor dropped to his knees, his other eye beginning to spasm now. Flames surrounded him in three directions, but Taylor pressed onward, heading for the only area where someone might still be alive.
Crawling now, the heat like a sizzling anvil. . . .
It was then that Taylor knew he was going to die.
Hardly conscious, he continued to crawl.
He started to black out, could feel the world beginning to slip away.
Take a breath! his body screamed.
Crawling, inching forward, praying automatically. Ahead of him, still more flames, an unending wall of rippling heat.
It was then that he came across the body.
With smoke completely surrounding him, he couldn’t tell who it was. But the man’s legs were trapped beneath a collapsed wall.
Feeling his insides weakening, his vision going black, Taylor groped the body like a blind man, seeing it in his mind’s eye.
The man lay on his stomach and chest, the arms out to either side. His helmet was still fastened firmly on his head. Two feet of rubble covered his legs from the thighs down.
Taylor went to the head of the body, gripped both arms, and pulled. The body didn’t budge.
With the last vestiges of his strength, Taylor stood and painstakingly began to move the rubble off the man. Two-by-fours, drywall, pieces of plywood, one item of charred debris after another.
His lungs were about to explode.
Flames closing in now, licking at the body.
Piece by piece, he lifted off the wreckage; luckily none of the pieces were too heavy to move. But the exertion had taken nearly everything out of him. He moved to the head of the body and tugged.
This time the body moved. Taylor put his weight into it and pulled again, but out of air completely, his body reacted instinctively.
Taylor expelled his breath and inhaled sharply, strangled for air.
His body was wrong.
Taylor suddenly went dizzy, coughing violently. He let go of the man and rose, staggering in pure panic now, still without air in the oxygen-depleted room; all his training, every conscious thought, had seemingly evaporated in a rush of unadulterated survival instinct.
He stumbled back the way he had come, his legs moving of their own volition. After a few yards, however, he stopped, as if waking forcibly from a daze. Turning back, he took a step in the direction of the body. At that second the world suddenly exploded into fire. Taylor nearly fell.
Flames engulfed him, setting his suit on fire, as he lunged for the window. He threw himself blindly through the opening. The last thing he felt was his body hitting the earth with a thud, a scream of despair dying on his lips.
Chapter 24
Only one person died that early Monday morning.
Six men