Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [6]
When he heard the brittle clicking sound of a single brick falling against another single brick, he shook off some of the debris. The left shoulder strap of his breathing apparatus felt like it had claws. He was pretty sure something in his shoulder was broken.
Using his good arm, he pushed himself to his knees and then his feet. “Captain? You all right?”
Finney looped the thumb of his left hand under his right chest strap in a makeshift sling, then began making his way to where he’d last seen Cordifis. The pain in his shoulder throbbed with his heartbeat. The temperature in the room had soared, and even with the battle lantern in his right hand he could see nothing but blackness.
“Bill! Bill? Are you all right?”
He took two steps and stumbled into a pile of debris, the jolt from the fall hitting his shoulder like a .38 slug. He moved the battle lantern across a large mound of bricks and mortar. Around the central pile dozens of individual bricks littered the floor helter-skelter.
Cordifis was gone.
Circling the mound, he discovered that the place where the brick wall had stood earlier was nothing but a wooden core now, a few bricks still embedded in the wall at knee level. As he moved backward, he nearly knocked himself out on a heavy beam, one end of which was jammed into the corner at the ceiling, the other anchored in the rubble behind him. “Bill? Bill?”
He searched the area around the rubble, and just as he was about to call out again, he found the toe of a rubber boot protruding from the pile.
4. TWENTY-EIGHT PACES
Working frantically with one arm, Finney began pulling bricks from the mound. He worked in darkness because he couldn’t hold his light and work at the same time. He cleared a layer almost a foot deep before he uncovered the top of a helmet, then part of a head. He clawed the material away from Cordifis’s face mask, picked up his light, and shone it into the hole. Peering into his partner’s facepiece, he realized his lens was fogged over, which meant Bill wasn’t moving air.
More frantic than ever, Finney worked until he’d removed enough debris so that Cordifis’s entire head and neck were free and he could hear the mask leaking air out the sides. Cordifis stirred. Finney reached down and adjusted the facepiece until the seal was tight; the lens cleared. Miraculously, Cordifis blinked.
“You all right?” Finney asked.
Cordifis mumbled, “Where am I?”
“Leary Way. We’re looking for musicians.”
“Christ on a crutch. I guess I was dreaming. What happened?”
“The wall collapsed on us.”
“What wall?”
“The one that’s still on top of you.”
For the first time the captain grasped his situation.
Now his partner’s chest and arms were free, but Finney couldn’t pull the rest of the mound apart without moving the heavy beam that had Cordifis’s lower body pinned. It was clear that Bill had made a run for it, though he hadn’t gotten far. If Finney hadn’t continued to scramble after he’d been knocked off his feet, he would have ended up directly under the end of the beam himself. It would have killed him. Both of them would have died here. Finney put his back against the beam and tried to dislodge it, but it was like trying to move a house, and the pain in his shoulder increased exponentially as he exerted himself. He stopped only when he heard Cordifis yelling, “God, don’t move that. You’re killing me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. It feels like I’m all twisted around down here. Don’t move it.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s a two-man job.”
“Let me have your portable. I’ll tell them where we are while you scout around.”
While Cordifis made radio contact, Finney discovered a second massive wooden beam angled across the doorway flush with the door. Six by ten inches, the beam appeared to be supported at the far end by what was left of the collapsed wall. He tried to trace the beam with his lantern but detected nothing but smoke and dust.