Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [151]
“Isn’t it, though?” she mocked, as she escorted him to the stairwell.
“Don’t look at me. It sure wasn’t my idea to take the elevator. I told them not to.”
“I’m sure you did.”
She marched him down the smoky stairs.
Sixty was cooler, a burnt-out hulk of a floor, the steel girders of the building showing through like a bra strap through a torn dress, everything else filigreed with tendrils of smoke as if somebody had just that second snuffed out a million candles. There was fresh air from broken-out windows on this floor. She could hear the rope-handling team deep inside the floor. Her victim would recuperate here and join the others coming down the elevator shaft on ropes.
Diana went back to the stairs to look for Finney.
75. STANDING IN THE BACK ROW AT YOUR OWN EXECUTION
2130 HOURS
Too late, Finney reached around and muffled the bell on his backpack with his gloved fist. If he’d had a gun, he would have shot through the lower quarter panel of the door, for surely they were crouching under the heat and flame just outside the door.
But he didn’t have a gun, and his only option was to run. Scuttling through the reception area and down a long corridor, he kicked in the last door on the right and crawled in. Too late, it occurred to him that by going right he’d taken just one more turn into a dead end. His only compensation was a paucity of smoke in this office, little enough so he could stand up and cross the room on his feet. When he swept the flashlight beam behind him, he noticed his boots had left black marks on the carpeting like a dance pattern on the floor of a school gym.
The smoke on the ceiling was three feet thick, curling in on itself, a collection of gases waiting for ignition. When these rooms took off, they would go in a burst. Even crouched low on the rug in his bunking clothes, the heat in such an enclosed space would broil him alive.
Then, unaccountably, the sounds in the outer office grew weaker. When he heard his pursuers moving to the far end of the corridor, it became clear that their job wasn’t to kill him.
Their job was to keep him pinned down. To make certain he didn’t leave.
In not too many minutes the fire would kill him, and his demise would look like that of any other luckless firefighter who’d become separated from his companions.
Knowing he had a few moments to think, Finney went around the desk and sat in a plush office swivel chair. It was awkward with the bottle still on his back. His flashlight played across a silver-framed photo on the desk, a man, a woman, and three little girls with ribbons in their hair. He tried to think the problem through, but for the first time tonight he found himself beginning to panic. He’d been moving quickly earlier, fighting for his life, but he hadn’t been panicked. Not till now.
He knew if he treated this as a logistical problem rather than the last five minutes of his life, he’d have a better chance, but how could he not think about these as the last minutes of his life when that’s exactly what they were? In minutes the fire would gallop through this dead end he’d fashioned for himself.
He did his best to slow his breathing. To conserve what little air remained in his bottle.
He tried to contact the dispatcher via radio. No answer. He attempted to raise Diana, but there was no reply on the tactical channel either. The telephone on the desk was dead.
At the same moment his air bottle gave out, a whoosh outside the office door signified flames had flared up in the corridor. Already, long fingers of orange crept over the top of the partition separating this room from the next. Lazily, flame crept across the ceiling toward him. He ripped off his facepiece so he could breathe. Surprisingly, the air wasn’t too bad in here.
Should he make a dash for the stairs, the inferno outside the door would eat him alive, and even if he made it, he’d be burned horribly when he faced down the three men with guns.
He couldn’t help reminiscing over all the stories he’d heard about firefighters