Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [8]
Which way? He tried to recall all the changes of direction they’d put themselves through. Keeping low, he ran his gloved hand along the wall and moved left through a doorway, where he found a room that was hotter than anything they’d encountered so far. He crouched on hands and knees until he found a layer of semi-breathable air, his mouth inches off the floor. He made his way around the wall, around tables, around counters and machines.
Minutes later he felt a gush of air waft into the building. Before he could think about it, an orange-yellow glow lit up the room.
The incoming air brought oxygen with it. The oxygen mixed with the hot gases at the ceiling, and the room flashed over, fire roaring above his head. Now, even if he knew which direction to take, he wasn’t sure he could get out. At head height, the temperature would be somewhere around twelve hundred degrees.
Because he’d been low, the initial ignition hadn’t scorched him, but now the heat was so intense that all he could do was curl up and shield his head, the movement exposing a small sliver of skin between his gloves and his sleeves; he could feel the skin beginning to bubble. He was being burned, but the fact that his wrists didn’t hurt scared him. He felt only a strange dullness and an incredible need to close his eyes and sleep. He’d never felt this much heat in his life.
He realized at some point that he had assumed the classic fetal position. He was dying. Or as good as dead. It had all been so quick. So this was how it was going to end, he thought. Here on the floor in this dirty building where it was too hot to move.
As he began to drift off, he remembered that Bill was depending on him. Bill was going to die because he was taking a nap. The thought woke him up.
Using both arms, he rolled himself over and began crawling on his stomach, feeling the painful heat once again as it singed his wrists and neck. He tried to remember if he’d repositioned the Nomex hood after removing his mask. He couldn’t recall; he wondered if they’d be able to save his ears.
He crawled until he found a wall, followed it to the right, praying he would find a door, any door. If he was going to die, at least he was going to die moving. Nobody was going to say he’d given up, that he’d stopped trying.
He continued to crawl, taking shallow, painful gasps, barely able to suck any breathable air off the floor. The wall stretched on, seemingly without end.
He wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed. All he knew was that somehow he was standing now, walking. It wasn’t as hot as it had been. Or maybe he was simply too numb now to feel the pain. Dizzy and disoriented, he had somehow groped his way out of the back room. He remembered stepping over his own screeching PASS device once again and knew that with great effort he had been counting his footsteps as he worked his way toward what he hoped was an exit.
At twenty-eight paces from the PASS device, two firefighters in full gear hove into view, flashlights wagging in front of them.
He couldn’t tell if the firefighters were real or a figment of his delirium. And then as he moved forward, seemingly in slow motion, something heavy and metallic fell in the corridor just behind him. The earth seemed to shake.
Before he could turn around to see what it was, the shorter firefighter spoke. They were real. “Christ, what was that? You see Ladder One anywhere in here?”
The taller man stepped close and shone his light on Finney’s naked face. “This is Ladder One right here,” he said. “Look at his helmet. Where’s your mask, buddy?”
“Bill’s back there behind me,” Finney heard himself saying. “He needs help.”
“Bill who?”
Finney tried to recall the captain’s last name, but he couldn’t dredge it up through the fog in his brain. It scared him. In five minutes he’d turned into a moron. He knelt to get out of the hottest smoke, straining to align his thoughts so he could describe Bill