“I’m Derek.”
Gino nodded, his face pale.
Derek stopped the tractor near the building, below a second-floor balcony. An elderly couple called out to them for help, their eyes bloodshot. Despite the cool morning, it was scorching and smoky near the apartment building. The smoke was infused with the acrid smell of melted and burned plastic.
“Sit in the bucket, and I’ll raise you up,” Derek said, “but don’t stand until the bucket’s in place. Then help those people into the bucket and make them sit down, and then I’ll bring you down.”
Gino nodded again and hustled to the bucket, his head down.
The second-floor balconies were roughly fourteen feet off the ground. Each floor was ten feet, but the basement level rose four feet above grade. Derek raised the young man twelve feet in the air, almost level with the second-floor balcony. The old couple climbed over the railing one by one, and Gino helped them down the two-foot drop between the balcony and the tractor bucket. They all sat, and Derek lowered them to the ground. The couple thanked Gino profusely, then hurried toward the parking lot. Gino smiled wide and started to crawl from the bucket.
“Stay in there. There’s more.” Derek pointed to the next set of balconies. Each floor had twelve balconies, three on each side of the building. Approximately half of the second-floor balconies were occupied. Nearly all of the third floor and above balconies were occupied by terrified residents, and the sight of others being rescued only heightened their desperation. Every resident with a view of Derek shouted and begged for help. The snapping and crackling of the fire played in the background.
Derek ignored the chaos and focused on the task at hand. He repositioned the tractor to access the nearest balcony. The obese woman refused to climb over the railing, swearing she couldn’t do it. Gino climbed onto the balcony and tried to help the woman over the railing. They struggled, Gino finally reaching between her legs and hoisting her over, like a wrestler attempting a body slam.
Once she was over the railing but still standing on the balcony, Gino dropped into the bucket and told her to take a big step backward, and down, his hands outstretched to catch her. It was only a two-foot drop, but the woman fell on Gino, nearly knocking them both off the tractor bucket.
One fifth floor family tied their pajamas together and attempted to climb down in their underwear. The father went first, but one of the garments ripped. The crowd of onlookers gasped as the man fell four stories to his death. The family screamed and huddled together, nearly naked and exposed.
On the backside of the building, Derek saw Carlos and Ricky on fourth floor balconies with their families. They yelled for Derek, smiles on their faces because they knew their friend would save them. Derek told them to hang on, that they were getting a ladder, and had to rescue the lower floors first. Unfortunately, the balconies were offset, making it impossible for people on the upper balconies to hang and drop to a balcony below. The boys and all the upper floor residents were trapped with only one exit.
Derek and Gino finished the second-floor residents, and the bearded man returned with the orchard ladder.
“What now?” Gino asked, staring at the approaching fourteen-foot tall A-frame ladder. “That’s not any taller than the bucket.”
“Where do you want this?” the bearded man asked, huffing and puffing as he arrived on the scene, carrying the ladder on his shoulder.
“In the bucket,” Derek replied. “We’ll be able to reach the third floor now.”
The bearded man’s eyes went wide. “That’s crazy.”
“Trust me. It’ll work. You two just have to hold the ladder and let people climb down.”
The bearded man looked to Gino, who nodded and said, “It’ll work, Bear.”
Derek didn’t know if Bear was his real name or not, but it was fitting for the strapping bearded man. “You’re gonna have to stand up and hold the ladder upright. It’s too heavy and long to stand it upright in the air. I’ll raise you up nice and slow.”
Derek moved the tractor into position, under a third-floor balcony. Gino and Bear stepped into the loader bucket and positioned the ladder upright. Derek raised the bucket slow and steady. The crowd of residents watched Derek and the rescue crew from a safe distance. The building continued to snap, crackle, and pop as the inferno raged inside.
Gino and Bear leaned the ladder against a third-floor balcony. A father with a child holding on to his neck climbed down the unstable ladder. A teen girl was next, followed by her mother. The mother took one shaky step after another, but she made it. When she stepped into the bucket, the crowd cheered. With the bucket filled, Derek lowered the front-end loader. They stepped on solid ground and ran away from the building, the parents clutching the children.
Derek, Bear, and Gino repeated this process at several more balconies, the fire getting worse with each passing second. Some balcony floors caught fire, and a woman jumped, plunging four stories, her head crashing into the concrete sidewalk, blood splattering in a jagged starlike pattern. The crowd shrieked in horror.
The desperate screams intensified. People hung on to the wrought-iron railings, the flames eventually heating the iron, scorching their hands, forcing more people to plunge to their death. Derek tried to block out the screams and to focus on the residents he could help. He moved the tractor to another side of the building, hoping to rescue the last of the third-floor residents. All three third-floor balconies here were jam-packed.
Derek parked under the one with the burning floor and four people hanging on the railings. He coughed, his lungs and eyes burning from the smoke. Carlos and Ricky cried for help, but Derek ignored them, focusing on the more immediate concern before him. He raised the bucket as fast as he could without bucking Gino and Bear.
In the back of his mind, he knew he couldn’t reach the fourth floor, but he held out hope that the fire department would arrive soon.
A teen girl tentatively set her foot on the ladder, then climbed down. A teen boy followed. The mother struggled to hold on to the railing. She placed her feet on the edge of the balcony to hold herself up. She tried to reach for the ladder, but she was too far to the right.
Gino and Bear moved the ladder toward her, and she repositioned her hands on the railing. She touched a hot piece of wrought iron, her hands instinctually letting go. She plunged twenty-four feet to the ground, an old hedgerow breaking her fall. Two men from the crowd came to her aid. The husband climbed down the ladder, and Derek lowered them to the ground. The husband hurried to his wife, who was scratched and bleeding, but alive.
“The fire’s comin’!” Carlos shouted from the fourth floor.
“Help!” Ricky shouted.
But the other two third-floor balconies on this side of the apartment building were already on fire, the residents climbing over the railing. Like a triage nurse, Derek went to the next most pressing balcony. An old couple fell before they set up the ladder, the railing too hot to handle. Then everything combusted at once, the balconies no longer safe from the heat.
Residents jumped one by one, most falling to their deaths, some surviving with massive injuries, and some were engulfed in flames prior to jumping, becoming a human fireball. One person hit the side of the bucket, flipping their body sideways on the way down, nearly knocking Gino and Bear from their perch. The aroma of burning flesh mixed with the burning wood and plastic smells.
It was a gruesome concoction that smelled like burned pork from the muscle and fat, sulfur from the hair and nails, charcoal from the skin, and coppery-metal from the blood. Underneath the screams and shrieks of human suffering was a sizzling sound, like a plate of fajitas at Chili’s.
Derek backed the tractor away from the building, knowing it was over. Gino and Bear kneeled in the bucket. Gino leaned over and vomited on the asphalt. In the chaos, Derek didn’t see the boys jump from the fourth floor, thirty-four feet up, but he saw their bodies, twisted, eyes wide open, limbs at odd angles. Derek swallowed hard, and tears slipped down his c
heeks. Gino and Bear hung their heads as their neighbors dropped from the sky. Some of the residents on the ground sobbed for their neighbors; others watched in a fog, as if they couldn’t believe the carnage.
The fire department and two ambulances arrived a few minutes later, nearly ninety minutes since the original 9-1-1 call. EMTs tended to the injured. Firefighters sprayed the smoldering concrete shell, but there was nobody left to save.
Derek parked his tractor in the parking lot, a safe distance from the fire. He leaned on his steering wheel, his head down. Gino and Bear stood with their neighbors, watching the firefighters. A reporter approached Derek’s tractor with her cameraman close behind.
She said, “People are saying that you helped them off their balconies. Would you mind doing an interview?”
Derek lifted his head from the steering wheel and looked down at the woman. “I just drove the tractor.” Derek pointed to Gino and Bear. “Talk to those two guys. They’re the ones who got the people off their balconies.”
38
Jacob and No Leverage
The conference room table was occupied by the upper crust of Housing Trust. Jacob, the CEO, sat at the head of the table. Next to him was Ramesh Patel, his CFO. The head of PR was on the other side of him. Four members of the legal team and various VPs rounded out the attendees.
The news played on three drop-down screens, everyone in the Housing Trust conference room watching in silence. The headline at the bottom of the screen read Five Housing Trust Fires. The date and time read, Friday, 12-6-2050, 11:12 a.m. Stock tickers scrolled across the screen, HTI with a red down arrow indicating the fall in the stock price.
A male reporter stood in front of a burned husk of a concrete apartment building. The reporter said, “I’m standing in front of the Hillside Grove Apartments building in Luray, Virginia, where at least seventy-six people lost their lives this morning and over one hundred were injured. It is one of five Housing Trust–maintained buildings that caught fire this morning. According to the fire chief, lack of furnace maintenance and repair was the cause of these five fires. He stated that, ‘Furnace fires are very common during the first cold morning of the season.’”
Jacob turned off the news, the screens retracting into the ceiling. He surveyed his team. Some hung their heads; some looked shell-shocked; some looked apathetic. Jacob finally turned to his CFO. “Ramesh. You’re the most familiar with our predicament. Please explain how it is that our buildings are killing the occupants.”
Ramesh adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and said, “We’ve been underfunded and unprofitable for fifty years. We’ve stayed alive with government bailouts and by cutting costs to the bone. Building maintenance is one place where we’ve cut funding. The first few years of neglecting building maintenance yielded large savings, but, over time, this is not sustainable. The chickens have come home to roost. The influx of investment capital we received last week from the Bank of China will help keep us afloat for the next six to twelve months, but if we don’t receive another influx of investor capital or a government bailout, I would expect the lawsuits that we’re facing to eventually send us to bankruptcy.”
Jacob nodded to his CFO. “The Bank of China agreed to purchase a 25 percent equity stake at a 22 percent discount to the market. As of today, they’ve only purchased 10 percent. According to the contract, if the share price of Housing Trust falls by more than 20 percent during the accumulation period, they can void the contract. We are down nearly thirty percent at the open today. I don’t think they’ll complete their purchases without asking for a larger discount to the market price. Either way, a government bailout may ultimately be the only sustainable course for this company.”
* * *
Jacob sat at his desk, dreading the inevitable phone call from Zhang Jun, so much so that he flinched when his cell phone chimed. He swiped right with a new wave of concern. She rarely calls me at work. “Rebecca?”
“I’m sorry to bother you at work,” Rebecca said. “I just had a disturbing phone call from Derek.”
“From Derek?” Jacob asked.
“He wanted to talk to you. I told him that you were at work, but I could give you a message.”
“What’s the message?”
“I think it’s about the fires.”
Jacob tensed his jaw. “Who the hell does he think he is? I don’t have time for this.”
“Do you remember those two boys who were at Derek’s mother’s funeral?”
“Vaguely.”
“They both died in one of the fires. They lived in a Housing Trust building.”
“A lot of people died. I had nothing to do with it. What the hell does Derek want me to say? Does he want me to grovel and tell him how sorry I am? He’s the last person who I’d talk to about this.”
“What should I tell him?”
“I don’t care what you tell him.” Jacob’s cell phone buzzed with another call. It was the phone call he’d been dreading. “I have to go.” Jacob disconnected Rebecca and answered the incoming call. “Hello, Mr. Jun.”
“Did you know that your buildings are in such disrepair?” Zhang Jun asked, his voice dripping with condescension.
“With the influx of investment from the Bank of China, we’ll be able to improve our maintenance and property management. This tragedy is a one-off event.”
“This is no tragedy. It is a disaster. You have disgraced yourself with your poor management. If I am to throw good money after bad, as you say in America, I want a 50 percent discount to the current market price. Otherwise I will divest all shares.”
Jacob knew he had no leverage. “I will have the lawyers draft the paperwork.”
39
Summer Breaks the News
Summer stepped into her apartment. She hung her coat on the rack near the door. Her fiancé, Connor, lay on the couch, under a blanket, watching television—some apocalyptic movie.
“I ordered pizza,” Connor said, not looking from the television. “It’s in the kitchen.”
Summer sat on the couch, near his feet. She kicked off her sneakers, with a heavy sigh. “This any good?”
Connor paused the movie. “It’s not bad. It just started. I can restart it. By the way, did you hear about those apartment fires?”
Summer nodded. “Just awful. The news report said people in Luray were jumping from their balconies.”
“Housing Trust is so corrupt.”
“Can we change the subject? I really need to talk to you about something. It’s important.”
Connor sat up, the blanket still covering him. They kept their apartment cold in the winter to save on heating bills. “What is it?”
She took a deep breath and said, “I’m pregnant.”
His mouth hung open, his eyes unblinking.
After a moment, she said, “Say something.”
Connor blinked. “How did this happen? You’re on the pill.”
“I forgot to take a few. I didn’t think it would—”
“Jesus, Summer. How could you forget something as important as that?”
“I was tired. I work different shifts. It’s hard to get into a routine. It wasn’t on purpose.”
He blew out a breath. “This is really bad timing.”
“It’s never convenient to have a child.”
“What are you gonna do?”
Summer stood from the couch, her hand to her chest. “What am I gonna do? Am I in this all by myself?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I just meant, it’s your choice what to do. You’re the woman. You have to carry the child or not.”
Summer crossed her arms over her chest. “You want me to have an abortion, don’t you?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ll support you in whatever you decide. It’s just gonna be expensive. I thought we were gonna have an enhanced baby. Don’t you want what’s best for our child?”
Summer touched her stomach. “I want what’s best for this child.”
“Then you wanna have it?
”
“Absolutely.”
Connor stood from the couch, showing his palms in surrender. “Okay. Then that’s what I want too.”
“You don’t sound too enthused about it.” Her posture was still standoffish.
“I’m sorry. I’m shocked, that’s all. I need time to process.”
Summer nodded. “Okay.”
“How far along are you?”
“Nine weeks.”
A knock came at their door.
“Who’s that?” Summer asked, thinking that Connor had invited over Mark or Javier.
Connor shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Summer went to the door, checked the peephole, and saw her dad standing in the hallway. She opened the door with a frown and said, “What are you doing here?” Summer had just seen him two days ago.
Patrick grinned. “I can’t come see my daughter?” He stepped inside, and Summer shut the door behind him.
“You usually call first.” She was still slightly annoyed with Patrick for criticizing Connor, although she was more annoyed with herself for thinking Patrick might be right.
“My phone broke.”
“Hey, Patrick,” Connor said.
“Connor.” They shook hands.
“You want some pizza?” Summer asked, headed for the kitchen.
The men followed her.
“Unfortunately, I can’t stay,” Patrick said.
Summer grabbed a plate from the cupboard and flipped open the pizza box. “Why not?” She put two slices of pepperoni on her plate.
“I have a few errands to run.”
“At six o’ clock?” Summer put her pizza in the microwave and pressed Start.
“The Verizon store’s open until eight.” Patrick turned to Connor. “You mind if I talk to Summer alone for a minute?”
“Yeah, no problem.” Connor went back to the couch, leaving father and daughter in the kitchen.
“You’re acting weird,” Summer said, her head cocked.
Patrick waited a few seconds for Connor to be out of earshot. He spoke in a whisper. “I’m sorry for upsetting you on Wednesday. I just want you to be happy.”
2050: Psycho Island Page 15