Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [100]
“Jesus Christ!” Sadler said.
“What happened?”
“Look at this shit.”
Finney couldn’t see anything but smoke. He placed his face within a foot of his battle lantern and discovered they were on a balcony. Though he couldn’t see the ground floor in the smoke, the drop-off was fourteen or fifteen feet.
“I almost went off!” Sadler said. “There’s no goddamned rail! Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“What about the victims?”
“Fuck the victims! They’re dead. Hey, anybody here? Hey, you assholes? Where are you? See? There’s no people. We’re getting our butts kicked for nothing.”
Fueled by fear and adrenaline, Sadler turned and headed back the way they’d come.
“We can’t leave,” Finney said.
Sadler spoke clearly and succinctly. “I’m going out. You coming with me?”
“I’m coming.”
49. THOUSANDS OF PIGS’ FEET
Moving with a recklessness he hadn’t displayed earlier, Sadler plunged down the stairs, and then, instead of hugging the walls, he proceeded directly through the open space toward their entry point. Finney couldn’t decide whether Sadler was angry or scared. Maybe both. He didn’t have time to think about what he was feeling, but he knew he was some kind of upset. They’d just left at least two people to die up on that mezzanine.
In short order they passed the door that had fire behind it and ran headlong into the two doors they’d kicked in to get into this section of the plant.
“Sombitch,” Sadler said. “Goddamned stupid sombitch.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Look at this bullshit! Sombitch door’s jammed.”
“It can’t be. We broke the lock.”
“Yeah? You try it.” The doors were as solid as if they were anchored on the other side by a large truck.
“Maybe these are the wrong doors?” Finney said.
“Not a chance.”
Had he been riding a ladder company, Finney would have used the axe on his belt to chop through, but he didn’t have an axe. They were rapidly running out of air, fire was eating its way through a door thirty feet behind them, the space they were in was superheated, they couldn’t see anything, and their original entrance point was locked.
In another minute they would be trapped by fire in this corridor.
Sadler continued pulling at the doors.
Then they both kicked at them, their feeble efforts a testament to how much strength they’d lost in the heat. “What happened?” Finney asked.
“I don’t know,” Sadler said, gasping for breath. “Something locked them after we went through.”
Sadler tried his radio but couldn’t get through.
Arrows of flame were already darting out over the doors behind them. Instead of taking the left wall as they had before, Sadler said, “This way,” and took the right. Finney couldn’t get over how Gary was mothering him.
The fire leaked quickly through the doors behind them, and began riding the wall above their heads, moving in great, screwlike twists toward the ceiling. As the amount of flame in the area grew, visibility got better.
When Finney spotted an unlocked door to their right, they entered a thirty-by-forty-foot room with a ceiling almost as tall as the room was wide. Smoke filled the upper portions of the space, but from five feet above their heads to the floor it was surprisingly clear. They spotted an exit on the far side of the room, a single door set into a heavy brick wall, locked and nailed shut.
Finney found a small bar on a workbench and began prying. After he’d worked fifteen seconds, Sadler took the bar out of his hands, his impatience signaling a reservoir of anxiety he never would have admitted to. Finney decided right then and there he was not working with Sadler again. He would transfer out of Twenty-six’s—if it took an act of Congress, he would transfer out. Sooner or later Sadler was going to get him killed. The thought occurred to him that if he did transfer, he might do it directly to the King County Jail.
It took