Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [135]
It would get easier by seventeen pounds, he knew, after they emptied their first bottles and off-loaded the empties.
Floor fifteen was clear enough that all three had taken off their facepieces and were gulping building air. When Kub sat against the wall, Finney noticed the nose cone of his facepiece was half full of sweat, the fluorescent lights glaring off the tiny moving puddle like a mirror. Kub had unsnapped his coat, and his T-shirt was sopping. Diana took her coat off and then her T-shirt, dropping the shirt, which slapped the floor like a wet dishcloth. She was left with a damp sports bra and bunking pants.
Diana scouted out a watercooler and began tossing down water from a small paper cup. “If we don’t drink,” she said, “we’re going to get dehydrated, and that’s going to cause us to start making bad decisions.”
“Hell,” Kub said, struggling to his feet. “We already made one bad decision. We’re here, aren’t we?”
Diana’s smile was weak.
Finney said, “This next is going to be the tricky part. We not only have to get past stairwell division, but we have to get past the fire.”
“It’s already way hot,” Diana said, pulling her facepiece back on and opening the valve on her regulator.
As he began breathing bottled air again, Finney laughed at their audacity. The three of them didn’t stand a chance of bluffing their way past stairwell command, much less plunging into what would probably be the worst heat they’d ever encountered. The higher they went, the hotter it would get.
Moving with a load again was not a pleasant experience. After only one floor Finney’s thighs began burning and his shoulders ached where the air-pack straps pulled. The insides of his bunking coat and pants were still wet and clammy from their first climb. Soon that clamminess would feel like a sauna. It didn’t help that the air coming through Finney’s regulator didn’t come fast enough. Nor did it help that he secretly believed this whole wrong-headed idea would get Diana and Robert Kub killed. Just what he didn’t need. More dead partners.
They climbed past sixteen and encountered smoke so thick they had to keep one hand on the guardrail to maintain equilibrium. They slogged through running water that came down the steps like a mountain stream. Finney assumed the water was pouring out the door on the fire floor, that the panicked firefighters on that floor were using too much water, but sometimes pranksters opened one of the stairwell valves, and these could remain open for weeks, or until somebody charged the system and water began spilling out the way it was tonight.
Finney led the way, though the others followed so closely that when he slowed they bumped into him. On eighteen they ran into five firefighters kneeling under the heat. Just inside the door to that floor another crew worked a hose line.
A short man in an orange captain’s helmet rose from a crouch and approached. “Okay, I want you three on this backup line, while these others rotate inside. Give me your passports.”
“This isn’t the firefighting stairwell,” Finney said. “I thought everyone was in A.”
“We’re using both now. Give me your passport.”
“They told us to go higher,” Finney lied.
“Forget that. Nobody’s going higher. And give me those spare bottles.”
“We’re supposed to take the bottles with us.”
“We tried that. It’s too hot. Who the hell are you guys?”
Finney didn’t hear the rest—he was moving.
They were already hot, but as soon as he reached the turnback on the stairs, he could feel severe heat beginning to crawl inside his bunkers. Because he was first in line and higher than the others, it would hit him first. He hoped that would give him some measure of control, that he could turn back before Diana and Kub were burned too badly.
They passed nineteen, and by now the stairwell was so smoky their flashlights were useless. Last week’s burns on his ears and neck began