Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [101]
Finney assumed from the amount of smoke on the other side that they were returning to the main warehouse. It was hotter after the relative calm of the closed room, and once again they could hear water streams beating against the outer walls.
For a split second Finney glimpsed a door on the wall directly behind Sadler in the smoke.
“Over there,” Finney said, walking forward. As he proceeded, Sadler ran not for the door, but directly at him, reaching him in two large strides, knocking him backward.
Finney tumbled back through the doorway, his bottle clanking on the concrete floor, the wind knocked out of his lungs, his hip and one elbow numb with pain. For a moment he felt as if he’d been struck by a bus.
“Goddamn it, Gary!”
Rolling onto his hands and knees, he took a moment or two to regain his senses before he realized Sadler was under a pile of burning debris. He felt the heat on his wrists as he frantically pulled the burning materials off his partner.
Several boards and one timber had fallen from somewhere above. They might have killed an unsuspecting Finney if Sadler hadn’t knocked him out of the way. When he turned and saw a pile of burning lumber teetering on a mezzanine over their heads, he half-carried, half-dragged Sadler out of the way. A hose stream from outside burst through a high window, forcing steam down on them. As the heat came down, Finney slipped and fell beside Sadler.
He became aware that he was lying on something, a lot of little somethings. Like ball bearings. He felt around with his gloved hand and then turned on the small flashlight on his chest strap—pigs’ feet, hundreds, thousands of pigs’ feet.
“Come on,” Finney said, receiving no answer. “Lieutenant?”
There was nothing more cumbersome than a man in full bunkers carrying another man in full bunkers. Sadler weighed 230 plus his 50 pounds of equipment. Finney knew it would be hard to drag him, next to impossible to carry him, but still he knelt and pulled him to a sitting position. When he had him almost standing, he threw his shoulder under his hips and folded his limp body across one shoulder. For a moment he thought rising from this half-crouch wasn’t possible, but with a great effort, he finally succeeded.
Breathing like a racehorse, he walked slowly, shakily, toward the wall where he’d seen the exit. At each step his legs threatened to buckle. How the hell did I get in this fix, Finney thought, as he tried to calm his breathing. I go to a big fire, the world caves in on me. Is it just me? Even as he had these thoughts, things began to get better. As it happened, he walked almost in a direct line to the outside door.
After he’d put Sadler down, he looked up and saw two firefighters nearby, both wearing backpacks and masks. He made sure they saw Sadler against the doorjamb and waited until they were approaching. Just before they reached him, Finney stepped back inside and lost himself in the smoke.
50. AN INCH OF COOL AIR
Alarm bell ringing, he made his way on rubbery legs across the warehouse space. His bottle would soon be drained of air, but unlike a lot of younger firefighters, Finney had entered the department under a regime when firefighters rarely masked up for anything, so he knew from brutal experience he could force himself through almost any amount of smoke.
Together with the conviction that they’d been within a few feet of the victims, frustration and anger nudged Finney back into the depths of the warehouse and beyond the immediate sounds of hoses and running pumps and shouting men.
He was dizzy and hot and still shaky from carrying Sadler, and even though he didn’t want to admit it, he was scared.
What he couldn’t have foreseen was the astonishingly quick buildup of heat in the building. “Christ,” he said to himself.
He reached a wall and followed it to the left. He’d lost the battle lantern and now had only the small, department-issue flashlight, which he could use to see at arm’s length in some places, not at all in others.
Locating a set of wooden stairs, he