Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [146]
A contract was entered into wherein the car would transport the first load down to the street and then quickly be sent back for the others. Norris did some rough calculations. Say they were taking twenty-five down at a time—that would be seven, no, eight trips.
When the doors closed, Norris found it difficult to breathe. Men cursed. A woman giggled. Somebody passed gas. It would be intolerable if he didn’t realize the alternative was waiting to be burned to death.
Norris found himself scrunched sideways, the wall on one side, a lanky waitress pressed up against the other. He began to smell body odor and bad breath. He was glad he had thought to fill his cheek with Tic-Tacs in the bathroom. He didn’t complain. They would soon be safe, while those left behind had nothing to look forward to but headaches from the smoke and whatever came after that.
Somebody pushed a button and the car began a rapid descent. For a few moments Norris felt as if he were floating on sheer relief. In minutes they would be cooling off in the fog in the street.
Somebody jokingly said, “I wonder what the weight limit on this baby is?”
A man with a rich baritone voice said, “About four hundred pounds.”
Muffled laughter broke out. They were headed toward freedom, and a feeling of conjoined euphoria was sweeping over them.
Norris’s ears started to pop, but he stifled the yawn, wanting to savor the sensation of escape, of descent. They’d only been moving ten or twelve seconds when the elevator began to lose speed. One didn’t descend seventy-five floors in a few seconds. Everybody knew it was too soon. Norris had worried about a lot of things, about the sheet metal in the walls collapsing, about the elevator crashing into the basement, about not getting unbuckled before they sent it back up, but it hadn’t even crossed his mind that they might end up on the wrong floor. This was terrible. Now the firefighters would not be able to find them. Now they’d never get their spot in line back.
When the car came to a halt, one woman who didn’t understand the implications of their abbreviated trip said, “Oh, goody, we’ll be home in time to watch The X-Files.”
The doors opened, and a wave of heat engulfed them.
Then came the crushing weight against the rear of the car, the screams, more heat. And more. Norris would have sworn he heard bones breaking. For many long seconds he couldn’t breathe or move or even think.
He tried to squat, but there were too many people crushed up against him, and besides that, he was buckled to the rail. Suspended in place by the crush, the woman next to him lost consciousness. The pressure against Norris at the rear of the car became greater.
Norris realized with a start that he smelled burning hair. For a few moments as the hot smoke rolled in and enveloped them, he had a flashback to his childhood. Once, while baking peanut butter cookies with his grandmother in Iowa, he’d stood too close to the oven, so that a blast of heat struck him in the face when the oven door opened, frizzing his eyebrows and causing him to cry out. He’d been seven, and his grandmother had spanked him for getting too close. He never forgot that searing heat. Even as an adult it defined hell for him.
“Close the doors,” Norris whimpered. “Please close the doors.”
He had no idea how long he remained upright, or how much heat he endured, or what the temperatures were, but after a time, maybe ten seconds, maybe a minute, the pressure began to moderate. Not a lot, but enough. The deafening screeches began to wither away, and Norris sensed a space under two women next to him. He tried to move but found himself hanging by his own belt on the railing. Burning his hands on the metal, he unbuckled himself and dove under the women. It wasn’t until then that he discovered the lower he got the cooler it was. He began burrowing.
72. NEVER TAKE AN ELEVATOR IN A FIRE
The building security man—the rock climber they’d dropped