Melody Burning

by Whitley Strieber

  Hissing. What was it? No, it was early, it was early.

  Fire was gushing out of the inspection port. The hissing became a roar.

  His whole body, all at once, felt as if his skin was being ripped off.

  Fire.

  CHAPTER 17

  Beresford’s muscles were screaming, his head was pounding, his lungs sucking agonized breaths. He had been running for hours, always moving in the direction of the tall buildings he glimpsed occasionally. He’d tried to stop cars, but nobody would let him in. When he’d seen police cars, he’d gone the other way or hidden.

  He took big, ragged strides down the shoulder of a highway with cars speeding past just inches from him. To his left was the wall that enclosed the highway; above it appeared the sheer facade of the Beresford. A sunken highway ran along the west side of the building. You could see it when you looked down.

  Ahead was an exit ramp, but it was narrow and had no shoulder. Nonetheless, he had to get up there, so he took it, squeezing himself as tightly as he could against the concrete wall. The cars passed him so close that some of them actually bumped against his right thigh. There was honking, the squeal of brakes, shouting.

  Then he was high enough to reach the top of the wall, and with his great arm strength, he hoisted himself up.

  Before him stood the side wall of the Beresford, its cladding gleaming black in the soft midmorning light. Ahead was the front of the building, with its doorman and concierge and other lobby personnel. He must not go near them; he must not let them see him.

  Quickly, he trotted across the street and went down the alley behind the building. There was no concealed way to enter except that one door. In the front there would be more building personnel, and he feared that he wouldn’t have time to explain the situation before they called the police.

  He had to get into the fuel storage area and get that bomb out of there. Again and again, he’d tried to think who would put it there. Terrorists was the only answer he could think of, but how had they gotten into the depths of the building like that?

  He came out the far end of the alley. Now he was on the east side of the building, and the entrance to the parking garage was just ahead. It was not attended, so the only chance he had of being seen was if somebody happened to be driving out and became suspicious.

  As he hurried toward the parking level elevator lobby, he thought of only two things: the bomb in the basement and Melody on the top floor. In the back of his mind, though, were less formed thoughts of all the other people in the building, and all the animals, and the fact that the explosion would be so dangerous.

  A few more steps and he would be standing in front of the elevators. But he did not take those steps, because he also knew that he would then be on camera.

  To one side of the four elevators was an alarmed entrance to the emergency stairs, and if he opened that door, not only would an alarm sound, another one would go off in the security office. He wouldn’t get two flights before he was caught.

  But he had a better way. One of the chases came all the way down to this level. From this side, its opening was buried behind the spray-on ceiling material. But Beresford knew that it was like all the other chases—open-shaft construction.

  To reach it, he stood on the hood of a car and pushed at the ceiling material until he found an area that had give. Then he pushed a fist through and tore at the ceiling until he had made a hole large enough to enter.

  The car he was standing on was now a mess, but that didn’t matter. From here, it would take him just a couple of minutes to reach the crawl space between the two basements. He would remove a few ceiling tiles and drop right down into the machine room, then make his way to the fuel storage area.

  This was the same shaft he used to reach Melody, and being in it again made him think of her fifty stories above him. Right now, he could only hope that she was safely away from the building. But why would she be on the morning after her big concert? She’d be resting.

  He looked up into the darkness. There was a faint light that he knew came from the elevator shaft—again, an open shaft that should have been closed.

  How he longed to just climb to Melody and get her out of here—and Mom, too, even Mom. Because he knew that Melody loved her, despite all their fights. So he loved Mom. Not like his own mother, of course, but he would fight for her life if he had to, no question there.

  The second he got the bomb out of the building, he would tell Melody and Mom everything, and he was going to make them stay out of the building until the police had searched every inch of it.

  He was just raising himself into the chase when there came a distant sound, a pop like bacon frying, but louder. The chase was lit yellow, and he dropped down onto the car and rolled away as a big ball of fire burst out of the hole.

  For a second, he was too shocked to move. The chase was now filled with flickering light. He raised his head into fume-choked heat. If that fireball had hit him, he would be dead.

  He looked up. The higher reaches of the chase were still untouched.

  He had to climb, and he had to do all fifty stories or Melody was going to die. He pulled himself up into the chase. Off at the end of the crawl space there was roiling fire, but it was boiling up the elevator shaft and the chase that ended in the equipment room, not this one. This one would be clear for a while.

  Without another thought, he started up, climbing hand over hand, pulling himself on pipes, doing it the way he had always known. Except, this time there was a difference. This time he was already terribly tired, and as he grabbed pipe and drew himself up, he felt unaccustomed pain in his muscles.

  Still, he continued. Normally, he could do twenty stories with ease, thirty if he really wanted to push it. Then he’d rest for a couple of minutes and go on. There was no time for that now, and he forced his body to keep working, forced himself to ignore the torment in his muscles and the fire in his lungs.

  Then, as he passed forty, he heard barking and immediately recognized Gilford’s voice. He cried out in anguish. He couldn’t let Gilford die in a fire! But Melody—she was in bigger trouble way up there.

  Moving as fast as he could, he went to Tommy’s and dropped down.

  “Hello! Anybody home?”

  Only Gilford, who jumped up and down, snorting happily. The apartment was filled with a haze of smoke, and the detectors were buzzing.

  He picked the wiggling dog up, went to the front door, and opened it. He already knew that this was safe; he’d seen from the crawl space that there was no fire here yet.

  He could hear others crying out, and he ran up and down the hall, hammering on doors.

  “Get out! Use the front fire stairs!” he shouted. They would be safe, at least for a while. He assumed that the pressure of the explosion would have blown in the doors on the back stairs, at least up to the lobby. So they were likely full of smoke, probably fire, too.

  He ushered people toward the stairs, giving Gilford to a woman he didn’t know and making sure that Cheops, the Egyptian cat from 4033, and Modred, Sam and Angela Parker’s big old Lab, were also safe.

  Then he returned to Tommy’s apartment and reentered the crawl space, continuing on his journey upward. As he passed forty-one, he saw elevator four stuck at an angle, smoke pouring up around it. From inside he heard terrible, terrible screaming.

  He could not pass. He had to go over there. So he jumped the chase and headed for the smoke-and flame-filled elevator shaft.

  He got to the elevator, which was shaking, and he could hear coughing and crying. Jumping onto the roof of the elevator car, he started choking, too, because the smoke was thick here. Just above him was the pull-down lever that opened the shaft to the fiftieth floor, but he was not going to pull it because it would only increase the draft, drawing the fire up from below even faster.

  The cars had access hatches in their ceilings, but they weren’t really for escape. They were maintenance shafts, and narrow. He unhooked the four latches and pulled the cove
r off, pushing it away past the cable housing. Faintly, it went clattering away into the glow from below, which was rapidly increasing.

  Inside the elevator, there were two people. One of them was Mrs. Scutter.

  Her face was black, her hair partly burned, and she was shaking so badly that, when he dropped down into the car, he could barely lift her birdlike frame onto its roof.

  There was a man there, also, and Beresford was horrified to see that his skin was raw and broken, his clothes almost burned off. This man was standing, looking down at himself, muttering.

  “Come on,” Beresford said. “We’re getting out of here.”

  Then he recognized this man. It was Luther.

  His burns were terrible, but Beresford could only hate his father’s murderer. Had he been in the basement? He must have been. Beresford lifted him onto the top of the car, then he came out of the thick, overheated air only to find that the smoke around the car was practically impenetrable.

  There was no fire control system in this shaft, and the flames already seemed close to maybe the eighth floor. Dropping down from above were molten bits of plastic burning off pipes and wire sheathing on the top two floors. The fireball that had come up this shaft and the north chase had set the underroof on fire, and flames were now spreading there. The fiftieth floor would be trapped, and roof access was probably already impossible.

  Time was rushing by. He had stopped to rescue others, and now he feared there might be no way to get Melody and her mother out.

  Dragging a shrieking Mrs. Scutter, he crossed the crawl space to the south chase, then moved a few feet until he was above one of his hatches. He threw it open and lowered her into the apartment. “Go feel the door. If it’s hot, don’t open it. If it isn’t, go to the front fire stairs. Do you understand?” When she nodded, wide-eyed, he left her.

  Then he went back to Luther, but it was too late. He looked into the faded eyes, at the surprise and shock that still haunted them. Poor man, he thought. But ironic, too, that the person responsible for all the violations would also be killed because of them.

  The other elevators were far down at the bottom of the shaft, enveloped in flames. He could only hope that nobody had been in them.

  The chase was getting hot now and filling up with fumes. Even so, he returned and began going up once again, forcing himself not to waste breath by uselessly screaming her name.

  The building shook, and suddenly he was casting a long shadow ahead. He didn’t need to be told what this meant—he threw himself into the crawl space between forty-two and forty-three just as a solid wall of flame came up from below and filled the chase.

  He screamed then, not because he had been burned—he hadn’t—but because this meant only one thing. Melody was now hopelessly trapped.

  CHAPTER 18

  I don’t know what it is, but it smells horrible and there are bells ringing and I hear sirens and—Mommy, the ceiling has smoke, the ceiling has smoke.

  It’s impossible; it has to be some kind of weird nightmare. I feel like I’m in mud or something, like I can’t move. From the hall, I hear terrible screaming, again and again and again, screaming and banging against the walls.

  I try 911 on my cell, but it won’t work.

  “Mom! Mom!” I go out into the living room, and she is there, bent over the phone. The front of her hair is all curled and black, and the whole place stinks of burned hair. She looks up at me, and it’s as if we are both dreaming as she says, “I can’t get this to work,” and hands me the phone.

  This is not happening. It cannot be happening. I see that her bedroom door is shut and there is a sort of haze by the door, and under the door is flickering light.

  This phone is dead. I curse at it, and she bursts into tears.

  I have to get out of here. I cannot bear this, not one second longer. I run for the front door and grab the handle—it’s as hot as an iron! I scream, and Mom screams, “DON’T OPEN THAT!”

  She grabs me from behind, drags me away by my hair—my hair, that’s right—growling like a tiger, and, my God, she looks like a creature from another planet with big, bulging eyes and a face as gray as somebody already dead.

  “Mom, here—” I run into my room and grab my computer and open it. It comes to life, so I call up the Internet, and it works.

  “I’m online!”

  I go to Twitter and tweet “Help we are burning Apt 5050 Beresford Melody McGrath Call 911 Help we are burning call 911 call call call 911!”

  I press Update, and it just sits there going, “Loading.” Loading, oh, God, it’s not posting. I watch. It will not post! Come on, COME ON! But it will not post.

  Then I realize the truth. That was a cached page. I’m not online at all.

  As a helicopter passes the windows, I glimpse the pilots, their faces turned toward the building.

  “Mom!” I run and grab my bedspread. The ceiling is now all cracked, and smoke is sort of shooting down in puffs, like people on the other side are blowing cigarette smoke through little holes.

  “Help me!” I go back to the living room and start to open the door onto the balcony, but Mom grabs my wrist.

  “No.”

  “No? There’s a helicopter right there!”

  “If we open that door, we’ll create a draft.” She says it quietly, as offhandedly as a teacher explaining a problem she has explained many times before. Then she covers her face with her hands and begins shaking. But then she stops.

  “Mom?”

  A great cry comes out of her, and she throws her head back with her fists to her temples and howls. I scream, too. I scream because she is screaming, and I know it’s because we are going to burn and there’s nothing we can do and nobody can save us.

  The smell is horrible, and oh, God, I am so afraid. I am so afraid that I am just about to burn. I’m going on the balcony, and I am going to jump. If the fire comes near me, I will. I will!

  Again, the helicopter passes. But what can they do? How can they help us?

  Smoke is coming out of my room, so I pull the door closed. That is my life in there: my dolls, my snuggly Boo-Boo that my daddy gave me when I was four, my iPad, and, oh, God, the one thing I cannot lose, my guitar.

  All of a sudden, a strange sort of calm comes over me. I am going to die, and I am going to either see God or be nothing. My mind starts saying it over and over—“see God or be nothing, see God or be nothing”—and that seems to make it all real and unreal at the same time.

  “Mom,” I say as I return to the living room, “MOM! MOM! MOM!”

  She comes out of the kitchen. We throw our arms around each other.

  The water stopped working almost right away, so she was gathering up all the Cokes and stuff and soaking kitchen towels with them.

  “Help me,” she says.

  We line them up at the bottom of the front door. The door is so hot that the towels hiss when they touch it. The hall must be a complete firestorm, and that door is liable to blow open at any minute. In fact, Mom was right about not going out on the balcony. If we slide that door open, the smoke and fire will blow into the foyer and the apartment will become an inferno.

  Again, I hear sirens. They seem miles away.

  Mom grabs my shoulders. “They’re coming,” she says. She laughs and her face is scary. “They’ll be right up.” Solid confidence in her voice.

  No, they won’t. I know what happens to skyscrapers when they catch fire. Everybody does.

  I nod to Mom. She kisses me, covers my face with kisses.

  “My baby, my baby,” she says, and I see over her shoulder that one of the towels we just put against the door is smoking, and then I see a slim tongue of flame rise along it, leaving a dark scar where it licks against the door.

  I run into the kitchen and open the freezer, and there are still ice cubes in the icemaker. I pull out the whole thing and go back and throw ice against the flame.

  The flame goes down, but the ice hisses into steam when it touches the door. I realiz
e that our time is almost up—we must only have minutes. And no sooner do I think this than the flame comes back, and another one beside it, low, flickering.

  Then there is another sound—pop pop . . . pop . . . poppop. It’s Mom’s bedroom door now. Her room must be full of fire, and the hollow wood door is not going to last much longer.

  “Mom, we have to try to escape.”

  “Don’t open the front door! Don’t touch it!”

  “There’s that crawl space I was in, remember that?”

  “Oh, that’s got to be a deathtrap.”

  “We could break through the den closet. We could, I know it!”

  She points upward. The ceiling is full of little cracks, and more of them are appearing by the second. I realize that the crawl space above it must be filled with fire. The ceiling will fall any second and I am going to catch on fire then, and it hits me all over again, the idea of burning and feeling that pain. I look again at the glass wall and the big doors and the balcony on the other side.

  The sky has dozens of helicopters, some close, some farther away, all of them, I know, with cameras on this building.

  “WHY DON’T THEY SAVE US?”

  Mom has Perrier water, which she opens and pours over me. She cries as she does it, then she takes me in her arms and encloses me in herself as best she can. Long, deep red tendrils cross the ceiling.

  “We have to try the balcony.”

  “Don’t open doors and windows during a fire. Close all doors and windows.”

  “Mom, it doesn’t matter anymore. Either we stay here and burn or we take our chances out there. A little more time, Mom! And maybe that’s all we need. Maybe all we need is a little more time, and they’ll get to us.”

  “If we open that door, it’s over, honey.”

  “What if they don’t know we’re even here? What if they think the apartment is empty?”

  To get some attention we hang her bright red robe on the curtain rods, and when I get up on the couch, the air is so hot it hurts my head.

  I decide that I will not burn. I will not let the fire destroy my face. I will jump instead. But I am so afraid of heights.