Escape from the Twin Towers

by Kate Messner

  Sixty-one … sixty … fifty-nine …

  Soon, Risha told herself, they’d be out in the plaza. Mom would be waiting. Everything would be all right.

  “Move aside!” someone shouted as they approached the forty-fifth floor. A long line of firefighters was coming up. The stairs were so narrow that Risha and Max had to turn sideways to make room for them.

  Risha watched the firefighters pass, red-faced and breathing hard. It was so tiring climbing down all these stairs. She couldn’t imagine climbing up. And with all that gear! The firefighters carried axes and hoses, and tanks of air on their backs. They wore heavy, dark coats with bright yellow markings, and had serious looks on their faces.

  How many people were still upstairs? Those firefighters had to know what it was like on the higher floors. But they were going into the smoke and darkness anyway. They were rushing in as everyone else ran away.

  Risha stared as the firefighters climbed past her. She hoped her mom had already left the building. But just in case she hadn’t — just in case she was up there somewhere — Risha felt grateful someone was going up to help.

  “Thank you,” she said as the firefighters passed. Other people started saying it, too.

  “Thank you for your service.”

  “Be careful up there.”

  “We’ll be praying for you.”

  One of the firefighters, a man with bushy brown hair sticking out from under his hat, paused to catch his breath on the step opposite Risha. She stopped, too, and held out her water bottle. He hesitated, but then took it and had a drink.

  “Thank you,” he said, handing it back. He gave Ranger a quick pat on the head. “Go on now. You need to keep moving.” He started climbing again.

  “Be safe!” Risha called after him.

  “You too,” he said, and disappeared up the next set of stairs.

  The line of firefighters went on and on. Risha had counted more than a hundred by the time she and Max reached the twentieth floor. She couldn’t imagine how the firefighters were carrying so much heavy equipment. Her backpack couldn’t weigh more than five or ten pounds, but her back was soaked with sweat. She’d run out of water ten floors ago. Her throat was sore and dry. Her feet were wet, and her fancy city shoes pinched her toes with every step.

  Behind her, Max coughed. He’d been coughing more and more as they descended.

  Risha looked over her shoulder. “You doing okay?”

  Max nodded, but his eyes were watering. “Wish I had my inhaler. It’s in my bag back in the conference room.”

  Ranger gave a quiet bark. A gap in the line had opened in front of Risha when she slowed down. Ranger nudged her with his nose. He didn’t like this long, crowded stairway. They needed to get outside where there was fresh air, where things didn’t feel so shaky and dangerous. They needed to find Risha’s mother, so Risha and Max could go home. Maybe then Ranger could go home, too.

  Finally, they approached a landing where an open door led to a bright mezzanine. Risha had never been so relieved to see sunlight. She hurried down the last few steps. Mom would be waiting on the plaza outside. She’d hug them and tell them how grown up they’d been. She’d tell them how proud she was.

  “We made it!” Risha said. But when she stepped into the light, her relief turned to horror.

  “Don’t look!” someone shouted. “Don’t look outside!”

  But it was too late. Risha couldn’t look away.

  The beautiful, flower-filled plaza — the one where they were supposed to watch the dance performance tonight — was covered in burning, twisted metal. Whatever had fallen from the sky had crushed the pretty fountain and sculpture. All around, charred papers, dust, and hunks of concrete littered the sidewalks where people should have been.

  “Keep moving!” a firefighter shouted.

  “Risha, let’s go!” Max said. But she felt frozen to the ground.

  Ranger barked. He licked Risha’s hand, but she kept staring out the window. People streamed past them. Some people started crying and running. A man tripped and stumbled into Risha. Another man pushed past him. The march down the stairs had felt orderly and mostly calm, but now the lobby was full of panic and fear. Ranger had to get Risha and Max out of that building before they got trampled.

  Ranger barked again. He jumped up on Risha and knocked her off-balance so that she stumbled a little. Max caught her arm and turned her away from the window. “Risha, come on!” he said. “We have to go!”

  “This way!” a firefighter shouted, pointing to a stalled escalator.

  Risha swallowed hard and nodded. She kept a hand on Ranger as they went down the steps and through a concourse to a big mall underneath the towers. Risha’s mom had brought her here just a month ago to shop for school clothes at the Gap. Now store windows were smashed, and the floor was covered in dirty water from the sprinklers raining down on everyone.

  Risha looked around for her mother’s coworkers, but the lady in the blue shirt was nowhere to be found. She didn’t recognize anyone at all. She and Max were on their own.

  Up ahead, a woman held up a bright yellow umbrella as she walked through the mall in the smelly sprinkler rain. It almost made Risha laugh. She couldn’t imagine worrying about wet hair at this point. But then she realized everyone was following that yellow umbrella through the mess. Police officers were directing people the same way. Maybe the lady wasn’t trying to stay dry at all. Risha fixed her eyes on the yellow umbrella and kept walking.

  “This way!” A police officer pointed to a set of stalled escalators. “When you get outside, keep moving, and don’t look up!”

  Keep moving. Don’t look up. Keep moving …

  Risha and Max were halfway to the escalators when a rumble shook the shopping mall.

  Max stopped and grabbed Risha’s hand as it grew louder. “What is that?”

  Before Risha could answer, a great cloud of dust and wind burst into the concourse. In an instant, everything went black.

  The blast swept Risha off her feet, slammed her into the wall, and knocked all the air from her chest. When she tried to breathe, thick, bitter dust packed into her mouth. It filled her nose and scratched her eyes. She couldn’t hear out of one ear. In the other, she heard only the wind and screams.

  “Hold your breath!” someone shouted.

  Risha’s lungs burned. She pulled her mother’s scarf up over her mouth and tried to breathe through that. But it was too late to keep the sharp dust from burning her throat.

  Risha couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see anything. Not Max or the dog. Not even her own hands in front of her. She curled into a ball and squeezed her eyes closed. How long could a person go without breathing? She didn’t think she could last much longer.

  But then, the roar of the wind died down. Risha heard a muffled bark.

  She spit out a mouthful of thick dust. She coughed and choked out a single word. “Dog?”

  The blast of wind and dust had thrown Ranger into a corner. He’d crouched against the cracked wall of a clothing store. His paws stung. His mouth and nose were so coated with dust that it was hard to smell anything at all. But he’d heard Risha’s voice. He had to get the kids out of here. Ranger could feel it in his paws. This loud, dusty, trembling place wasn’t safe at all.

  He stood up and tried to shake off some of the dust. It clung to his fur like mud. It was too dark to see. Ranger sneezed twice. Soot flew out of his nose, but it was still impossible to smell anything except dust and chemicals and smoke. Where were Risha and Max?

  Ranger barked again. He stood still and listened.

  All around him, people were coughing, crying out, calling to one another. Glass shattered nearby. Footsteps crunched over it. And then — again — a quiet voice.

  “Dog? Are you here? Max? Where are you?”

  The voice had come from up ahead, where Ranger thought the escalators had been. He sneezed again and sniffed the air. It was still thick with dust. It was different from anything Ranger had ever sme
lled. This dust seemed to be made of everything — ashes and concrete, furniture and clothing and things too awful to think about. It burned his eyes and throat.

  But Ranger kept sniffing as he circled the area. Finally, there were people smells, too — live people, who smelled like smoke and sweat and fear. None of them were people Ranger knew until he turned a corner.

  There! In the dark, thick air he caught the scent of the Risha girl. Ranger barked.

  Her voice was closer now. “Dog? I’m here!”

  Ranger found her curled on the floor and nuzzled her face. Risha sat up, threw her arms around him, and pulled him close.

  Ranger was grateful for the love, but there was no time to snuggle. He had to get Risha out of the building. He pulled away and pawed at her until she stood up. She didn’t seem to be badly hurt.

  “Anybody over here?” a woman’s voice called out.

  “I am!” Risha answered. She waved her hand into the darkness until it landed on someone’s sleeve.

  “Come with me,” the woman said. She flicked on a flashlight and held Risha’s arm. “We need to get out to the street.”

  Risha pulled her arm away. All around her, people she couldn’t see were crying and coughing. Max was here somewhere. She couldn’t leave him. “I have to find my friend first. He was just with me. He has asthma.”

  “Oh, my dear girl …” The woman’s voice was sad and scared. “We need to leave that to the rescue workers. We have to evacuate — now.”

  Risha stepped away into the dark. “Max!” she called out. Her throat was scratched and sore, but she forced herself to be louder. “Max!”

  Ranger rushed to Risha’s side. He leaned against her so she would know he was there. He wanted to help Max, too. But his whole body was prickling. Even in the dark, wet dust, this place had a hot, unstable feeling to it. He wanted to get out. But not without Risha’s friend.

  “Oh, dog!” Risha sank to her knees and hugged his neck. “We have to find Max!”

  Find? Ranger barked.

  “You know that word? Find?”

  Ranger barked again. Find!

  Risha gasped. She’d seen television shows about search-and-rescue dogs who smelled a shirt or scarf or something and then ran off to find the person who’d left it behind. She didn’t know where this lost golden retriever had come from, but he had that first aid kit. Maybe he was one of those dogs. Maybe he could find Max so they could get out of this awful place.

  Please, Risha thought. The woman with the flashlight had gone, and it was too dark to see. But she took off her backpack and unzipped it. She felt around until she touched the smooth fabric of the tie Max had taken off in the stairwell. She found Ranger’s face with her hand and held the tie to his nose.

  “That’s Max’s tie,” she said. “He’s here somewhere. Can you find him?”

  Ranger sniffed at the tie. It smelled like smoke from the stairs, chocolate chip muffin crumbs and sweat and Risha’s friend. But there were so many scents pooling in this dark, dusty, closed-in place. Ranger had never smelled so many awful things at once. He’d never found someone in a place like this. He wasn’t sure if he could. But he knew he had to try.

  Ranger moved closer to Risha until he felt her hand on his collar. He couldn’t lose her, too. Slowly, he walked through the darkness, sniffing the air. He smelled smoke and hot metal and the awful everything-dust. He smelled people — so many people! But none of them were Max.

  Above them, the building groaned and rumbled. Ranger heard frightened voices, shuffling footsteps, and coughs. He sniffed the air again.

  There!

  It was faint, but he was certain he’d smelled it. The Max smell from the tie!

  Ranger followed the scent around a wet heap of fallen-down ceiling tiles. There was a cough, and a high-pitched wheeze.

  “Max!” Risha shouted. “Max? Is that you?”

  “Here …” His voice was barely a whisper, but it was enough. Risha dropped to her hands and knees in the soggy dust and crawled until she found him. His breath sounded ragged and choked.

  Risha took his hand. “You’re having an asthma attack,” she said. Somehow, she made her voice calm. Helping someone else was easier than thinking about herself. “Try to relax. You have to get up. We have to get out of here.” She helped Max to his feet and stood blinking into the dark.

  Now what?

  Risha didn’t know where to go, but they had to move, so she started shuffling forward. She wished she could hold on to the dog’s collar, but she couldn’t do that and support Max, too. The dog brushed against her leg every few steps, though. He wouldn’t leave them. Risha understood that somehow. She still didn’t know where he’d come from. He wasn’t their dog, but he’d decided that they were his, at least for today.

  “Does anyone know where to go?” Risha called into the dark.

  “Here!” called a woman’s voice. “Hold on …” In a few seconds, Risha felt a hand on her arm. “Put your hands on my shoulders and follow,” the woman said. “We’ve made a chain of people. There’s a police officer up front who knows the complex.”

  Risha put one hand on the woman’s shoulder ahead of her. She kept her other arm around Max.

  Little by little, they felt their way to another broken escalator. Risha clung to the railing as they climbed, step by dusty step. At the top, she found the woman’s shoulder again. She pulled Max to stand beside her. His breathing was shallow and fast.

  “You doing okay?” she asked.

  Max didn’t answer, but he squeezed her hand.

  “We’re on our way out,” Risha said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  With each step, she felt Max leaning harder against her. “You’re going to be all right,” she said. But she didn’t know if it was a promise she’d be able to keep.

  Ranger walked beside Max as they shuffled through the darkness. His nose was full of dust and smoke again, but finally there was another smell. Outdoor air!

  Ranger barked. It was coming from off to one side — not where the woman was leading Risha.

  Ranger stopped. Max paused beside him. Risha stopped, too, and the people who had joined the human chain behind her all bumped into one another.

  Ranger barked again. He pawed at Risha. Then he leaned his body against her, pushing her toward the outdoor-air smell.

  “Wait!” Risha called to the woman in front of her. “The dog …” She didn’t know what to say. This random dog that we just met wants us to go the other way? But that felt right. “He’s telling us there’s an exit over here!”

  Ranger barked again. “Good dog,” Risha said, and turned in the direction he was nudging her. “Let’s go!” She felt Ranger at her side with every step as they shuffled through the darkness. “This way!” She felt Max’s weight against her and the woman’s hand on her shoulder as they trudged through the dust.

  It wasn’t long before Risha saw a clouded, dim light. She wanted to run, but the closer they got to the light, the more debris blocked their way. They had to duck under a section of sagging ceiling tiles and wires.

  “Out this way!” a deep voice called. Up ahead, a dust-covered police officer stood by an open door that led outside. As Risha approached, his radio crackled to life.

  “Be advised,” a staticky voice said. “The remaining tower is leaning to the southwest at this time. It appears to be buckling in the southwest corner.”

  The remaining tower? Risha couldn’t stop to think about what that meant. She stepped up to the door. The police officer took her hand. His voice was urgent. “Head for the stairs and get down to the street as fast as you can.” Risha met his eyes. They were red and puffy and haunted. “Don’t look up. Just go.”

  She nodded and stepped outside. She wanted to run, but she knew Max wasn’t up to it, and she couldn’t lose him. Not now. All around them, people raced for the stairs that led from the raised plaza down to the street to safety. She tried to pull Max just a little faster, but he doubled over. He couldn’t
breathe.

  No! Not now, Risha thought. Not here with glass and burning paper and terrible things falling all around them.

  “Does anybody have an inhaler?” she shouted.

  “Here!” Someone threw something blue at her. Risha caught it. It was an inhaler like the one Max used. Risha looked for the person who had thrown it, but they were gone.

  “Max, here!” She held it to his mouth. Max’s eyes widened. He took it and managed two quick puffs. He held his breath and bent over again.

  Come on. Come on, Risha thought as people ran past them. But all she said to Max was, “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

  Ranger leaned against Max. He couldn’t help the boy breathe, but he could let him know he wasn’t alone. Ranger did that for Luke sometimes, too. When Luke was sick or sad or afraid, Ranger would stay extra close. It helped.

  But Ranger knew they couldn’t wait here much longer. No matter how tired and sick Max was, they had to move. He barked and pawed at Risha’s leg.

  She looked at Ranger. Then she took Max’s hand. “We have to go, Max. We can’t wait.” Max was still wheezing, but he let Risha lead him across the plaza toward the stairs that led down to the street.

  The stairs were crowded with people. Their faces were streaked with sweat and blood and the awful dust that wouldn’t go away. Some people were panicking, pushing their way forward. Ranger stayed close to Risha and Max and tried to keep people from bumping them.

  At the bottom of the stairs, they were swept up in a river of people flowing down the street. Risha scanned the crowd for her mother but couldn’t find her. So she just kept walking with the crowd. Rumors swirled through the air with the dust.

  “Rescue boats …”

  “Head for the river.”

  “Another airplane …”

  “Terrorists …”

  “If the second tower falls …”