Vertical Burn

by Earl Emerson

  Diana Moore stepped up to Cordifis as he was pulling the straps tight on his blue rubber facepiece and said, “Sorry about the fans. The IC told me to put them back. I didn’t know what to do, so when I saw these guys through the smoke, I joined up.”

  “Don’t worry about it, darlin’. You did right.” Finney thought he detected an amused twinkle in Diana’s eye at the word darlin’. He had to hand it to her. She had enough self-confidence to let things pass.

  Finney was beginning to get a bad feeling about this building. Even though he could hear more units rolling up the street behind them now, he knew you didn’t find this much smoke in a building and then squander fifteen minutes without putting water on it. You found the seat of the fire as expeditiously as possible. You stormed in and you tapped it. Ninety seconds could make the difference between a tapped fire and a grounder. They’d already been here ten minutes. Engine 22’s pump was running, but the lines on the ground were not yet flowing water. So far, nobody had found the seat of the fire. Or any fire at all.

  In a building this large there was too much space for superheated gases to accumulate. Finney knew that if those gases got hot enough and blended with oxygen in the proper ratio, they would ignite, and anyone luckless enough to be inside would be trapped in a flashover. In a house fire the rooms would go from two or three hundred degrees to twelve hundred in the time it takes to snap your fingers. In a place this big the higher temperatures would chop a man down where he stood. The body recovery team would find the soles of his rubber boots melted to the concrete floor.

  3. REARRANGING DECK CHAIRS ON THE TITANIC

  Back inside, Finney and Captain Cordifis found the door to the basement they’d already searched and, using the east wall as a benchmark, they moved north from there. The building was filled with home furnishings shrink-wrapped in thick plastic and loaded onto wooden pallets, the pallets stacked on huge metal racks, the racks extending higher than they could see in the smoke.

  They were moving faster now and they both knew they needed to cover as much ground as possible. The wall they were using as a reference point was mostly bare, as was the space nearby, and they moved almost without impediment.

  Sooner than Finney thought possible, they arrived at the far right corner of the rear wall and worked their way along it, Cordifis an arm’s length from the wall, Finney an arm’s length from Cordifis. They were heading west, paralleling their original traverse across the front wall.

  Finney was beginning to feel warm from the movement, so he knew Cordifis had probably been sweating profusely in his bunkers for some time. Although the manufacturers boasted of breathable fabrics in the liners, anyone who actually bothered to put on a set of bunking clothes and do any work knew that firefighters were sealed up like fresh-cooked muffins in a plastic bag. It could be like running a marathon in the desert, and some tolerated it better than others. Finney loved it. Cordifis sweated nearly to death each time they had a working fire.

  “This way,” Cordifis said. “I got a door here.”

  Finney stepped through the half-open door and for the first time in more than five minutes he could actually see his partner. Wrapped in a cocoon of smoke, the two men had been communicating by touch and sound alone. Now Finney followed Cordifis’s gaze and was startled to realize he was looking at stars. They were standing in a closed, rectangular well, the high, windowless walls of the warehouse behind them, a lower wall of red brick in front, the structures cobbled together by walls at either end.

  From time to time pockets of filthy brown smoke from the roof dipped down into their canyon. An orange glow reflected off smoke in the sky, though it was hard for Finney to tell whether the glow came from behind or in front. Wherever it was, the fire was growing larger.

  “This is where the goddamned band is,” said Cordifis, looking at the smaller building across from them. “Nobody’s going to let a bunch of punk-ass kids mess around with all that furniture back there. Hell, they’d be banging their girlfriends on the sofas. They’re in here.”

  He was right, Finney thought. There were three doors; two of them looked impenetrable. Finney took his axe out of its scabbard and approached the third, knocking off the paint-splattered two-by-fours nailed across the edges. He ended up demolishing the entire door when he found it had been screwed to the frame.

  Devoid of smoke, the space appeared to be an abandoned machine room with steel counters built into the walls, a dilapidated drill press on its side on the floor. Maybe the fire hadn’t touched this side. It was possible the band members were unaware even that the building was on fire.

  The room had two interior doors, both closed and locked, one of which looked as if it led farther into the building. Finney used his axe again.

  The door opened onto a long passageway, a small ghost of smoke hovering near the ceiling at the far end. They worked their way down a row of doors, searching the rooms one by one. The rooms to the left were clear, the rooms to the right increasingly smoky. It was disconcerting to be this deep into a building without a hose line, even worse to realize the smoke was compartmentalized in a manner they didn’t often see. Finney could tell it bothered Cordifis, too.

  When Cordifis opened an unlocked door near the far end of the corridor, torrents of smoke poured out over their heads, the first really hot smoke they’d encountered. Visibility in the room was near zero and the smoke swirled in angry circles. Finney stepped inside and stumbled into a set of drums.

  A pair of cymbals crashed to the floor. “You go right,” Cordifis said from behind. “I’ll go left.”

  “I don’t like this,” Finney said.

  “Me neither, but we got to do it.”

  There were other ways to search a room, but this would do. Split up. Right. Left.

  Finney could see maybe twelve to eighteen inches in front of his light, and expecting to touch a body at any moment, he kicked some bedding on the floor—and then, as he advanced, a sleeping bag, a pile of clothing, a guitar case, some loose beer bottles. It was slow going, because even though they’d left the door open, the smoke wasn’t clearing.

  Finney found a low sofa, a table, a lamp. He couldn’t tell until he had his facepiece up against it that the lamp was on, the bulb staring at him like an eyeball. The walls were made of rough brick, and pieces of mortar fell out when he brushed them with his gloves.

  “Hey, take a look here,” Cordifis said. “Down here at the end.”

  Finney quickly located Cordifis, who was studying the wall with his battle lantern. Finney took off a glove and held his bare palm close to the hot bricks.

  “You know what I think?” Cordifis said.

  “God, that’s like a stove.” Finney pulled his glove back on and heard a loud crunching sound. He began moving. “Let’s get out of here.”

  As he turned, Finney heard a crack that sounded like a gunshot. He managed two running steps before something knocked his legs out from under him. It was as if he’d been tackled from behind on a football field.

  The urgency of the situation became instantly clear to him. He sprawled on his stomach and scrambled forward while debris continued to rain down on him. A particularly heavy projectile slammed into his helmet and knocked him flat. Before he could start crawling again, more debris fell, and he was half-buried under the weight. The noise and confusion persisted for another twenty seconds and then died out like a spent avalanche.

  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. It crossed directly in front of the door, and it rocked precariously when he touched it. Should it fall, it would likely land on Bill, or at least on the pile under which Bill was trapped. And it would fall if anyone tried to open the door, which had become the trip-hammer in a deadly booby trap.

  Quickly, Finney traced the perimeter walls a second time, searching for another exit. He didn’t have the strength or the means to get the beam away from the door without compromising Cordifis, nor did he have the tools to lever Cordifis out from under the pile. It didn’t much matter. Even if he freed him, Cordifis weighed 265 pounds buck naked, and his protective equipment and clothing weighed an additional fifty. Finney was six feet, muscular, and in the best condition of his life. If he were uninjured, he just might drag Cordifis out of the building. But there was no way he could carry him. Not tonight. Not without help.

  Breathing heavily, Cordifis said, “I talked to Smith.”

  “He say who he was sending?”

  “Everybody he’s got.”

  “Tell them not to come through this door.”

  Finney was in a locked room, had one good arm, limited air, a light, a Buck knife on his belt, and a service axe in a scabbard. For a few seconds he found himself incapable of productive thought. Death wasn’t the enemy. He knew that. Panic was the enemy.

  They were both running out of compressed air. Any minute one or both of their five-minute warning bells would begin ringing.

  Crossing to the wall opposite the doorway and placing his back against it, Finney swung the service axe one-handed down between his legs, using the pick-head side of the axe. He swung again, again. The concussion of each blow spewed pain through his shoulder. He broke one brick into pieces, chipping out the mortar around it. Then a second brick, a third.

  Fortunately, this wall did not have the same solid planking at its core as the wall that had collapsed.

  Even so, his five-minute alarm bell began ringing as he pulled out the broken bricks. On the other side of the bricks he encountered a layer of plaster and lathe and then an empty space about four inches deep, the back side of newer wallboard beyond that. When he punched that with his fist, he broke through to another room.

  Using his axe, he chewed away at the edges of his escape hole until the opening was large enough for a man with a bottle on his back. Then he went back to Cordifis, reaching behind his back to muffle his own ringing bell so they could hear each other.

  “I’m going for help. If they get here before I come back, don’t let them through that door.” As he spoke, the ringing bell behind his waist stopped and Finney found himself sucking on the rubber facepiece. It felt as if somebody were clamping his nostrils and mouth at the same time. His bottle was dry, and he might as well have had a plastic bag over his head. He loosened the chin strap, tipped his helmet back, and lifted the facepiece off his chin.

  He’d forgotten how abrasive and gritty and putrid a lung full of hot smoke tasted. He knelt instinctively to get some of the better air near the floor.

  “You okay, John?”

  “Are you kidding?” Finney gasped. “I love this stuff.”

  “Plug into my bottle. I don’t need all this air.”

  “There’s no time. Listen, Bill. I’ve got a hole. I’m going out to find help. I’ll leave my PASS device outside that wall so when help comes, they’ll hear it and know you’re in here.”

  “Here. You take the radio.”

  “Quit offering me stuff. I’ll be back with help in a few minutes. Breathe slow, old man.” Finney stooped down, their faces glowing in the gray-yellow soup formed by the light of Finney’s battle lantern. It was important that he make eye contact before leaving.

  Cordifis chuckled. “Have fun, kiddo.” Bill hadn’t called him kiddo in years. “And don’t go have a brain fart and forget where I am.”

  “I won’t.”

  After Finney had squirmed through the small opening on the floor, he found the next room was as smoky as the one he’d left. He reached back and pulled his MSA backpack into the room, along with the PASS device, which was designed to let out a high-decibel screech when it ceased moving. Jiggling the device shut off the noise, but it would resume after twenty-four seconds of no movement.

  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.