by D K Bohlman
Robert came out pretty much on time into the staff room, to get rid of his kitchen overalls and collect his things. His face beamed out a broad smile when he saw her. It made her glow.
‘I would have texted but I didn’t have your number, hope you didn’t mind the note.’
‘No, of course not, it was quite nice to get a real note.’
‘Well, shall we go? There are a few bars close to save time … mind if I have a quick cigarette first outside?’
Something about his smile overcame Hanna’s natural disapproval of smoking. She nodded her head vigorously.
‘Sure, of course. I only have an hour or so, my daughter has a babysitter who might be like Cinderella. You know, goes poof at midnight? It smells of gas in here anyway, I thought they were supposed to have fixed that?’
‘Yeah. Dunno. I smelled it today too, even with my sense of smell. A cook with a dumb nose eh? I’ll never make the grade.’
Robert held the door open for her and touched her shoulder gently as she passed through it. Hanna smiled inside again. A good start.
As they turned into the street, there was an almighty screech as the main fire alarms in the hotel started up. They looked at each other.
‘Let’s just wait here. If it’s real they might need us to help.’ He left the door ajar, to listen.
They stood a yard from the door, as Robert pulled out a packet of filters and slid one between his fingers, sparking it with a cheap plastic lighter. He sucked in fiercely, like he needed it, then exhaled as if he had all the time in the world.
A few more languid puffs, while he chatted to her through the sirens’ wail, then he dropped the tab to the floor and squidged it with his heel, kicking it aimlessly away. It skidded through the doorframe into the corridor to the kitchen.
‘OK, let’s go then. We’ve waited enough I reckon. And you don't have long …’
Hanna didn’t get a chance to respond. The cigarette butt travelled far enough into the corridor to seek out an invisible swirl of the gas, leaking from the cracked pipe under the kitchen flooring.
It wasn’t much of a leak … but it was enough.
Apocalypse
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Peter felt it first in his ears and a fraction later in his legs. A slug of compressed air thumped into his back with brutal force.
His head whacked into the window as the booming filled his senses, cracking his nose, spurting blood against the pane, smearing a thin red veneer down it as his legs felt like they’d given way. He fell vertically, surrounded by a curtain of shattered glass, through what had been the floor of his room, down through a cavernous space, edged with splintered floorboards, shreds of carpet and gushing water. He saw the pavement outside the hotel for a fraction of a second, before it slapped into him with the force of an articulated truck.
In an instant, all of his worries about his captives and the future of the hotel were gone. He expired with two last, rasping breaths as dozens of faces in the street were turning towards him, eyes and mouths wide, witnessing the disaster that was happening in real-time in front of them.
*
Two teenage girls fell backwards against a nearby shop front, banging against the glass, screaming together. It echoed down the street, triggering the panic response in others, who started yelling without understanding what was happening. Until they turned and looked at the facade of the Hotel Cristal. Most of the front of the hotel at the eastern end was missing, collecting itself into a storm of debris and dust on the road in front of the entrance … which wasn’t an entrance anymore. It was more like the cutaway view on the front of a doll house.
Except this one had dead dolls. Littered inside it, hanging from its open timbers, scattered in front of it.
People started running in all directions, randomly towards and away from the hotel, caught between fear and the animal compulsion to help their own species.
High above them, a series of connected dramas were just unfolding.
The void
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Rooms 31 and 33 were unrecognisable.
Most of their fabric had completely vanished. It was now lying in hundreds of pieces, three floors below on the pavement and road outside the hotel. There was a terrible wailing noise emanating from the pile of masonry piled around a waiting taxi, the driver trapped inside his flattened sardine can of a car, dying slowly, in horrible pain.
The first two or three minutes after the explosion were painted by the emotion of the humanity around the hotel. A great outburst of yelling and wailing, then quickly an eerie quiet, punctuated only by the cries of the dying, as people began to comprehend what had happened. After a little while, new sirens started to wail, as the emergency services wound their way through the Budapest traffic.
Bystanders gathered together, pointing at people injured, bits of the hotel that looked precarious. A girl dressed in her infant school uniform held her mother’s hand, asking her what was happening, with all the matter-of-factness of childhood.
Two teenage boys broke away from their self-absorbed world to run towards a man lying on the pavement screaming in front of them, pulling their earphones out, with no idea how to help. An elderly couple, wrapped up in thick layers against the cold, stood side-by-side, arms around each other’s waist, hoping there were no children injured.
High above them, some of the inhabitants of room 31 were pressing themselves against the inner wall of what remained of the room, standing on a tattered ledge of floorboards no more than six feet wide. The ones that gathered together trying to plug Peter Kovacs’ gas hole had been lucky, they’d been near the inside wall when the explosion struck. Aliz Gal, however, hadn’t been so fortunate. She'd sat down to watch while the other three tried to plug the hole. Her chair was near the window … a window that no longer existed. Its wooden frame lay twisted on the road, underneath Aliz’s equally distorted body, looking like some ghastly 3D wall hanging.
Calum felt a brisk breeze push against his jacket lapel, cooling his sweat. He found himself looking out at the void to his right, his body drawn by the space. The evening lights of the city sprawled out in front of him for miles, the sky covered with low clouds which took on a dull orange hue from the flames licking out from the hotel. He looked in front of himself, at Katalin. She was backed against the wall, staring out at the dark void in front of them, her legs shuffling frantically around in small edgy movements, going nowhere, but unable to keep still.
He shouted to her and caught her eye.
‘Stay still, Katalin! Lean with your side to the wall.’ He put his own hand to the wall to steady himself and saw it was sheathed in blood. He turned it over … there was no wound. The blood extended a way up his forearm. He turned his head slowly and peered behind him.
No Aliz. Sarah was laid on the ledge. One leg dangling freely into space. Her other leg was missing below the knee. In its place was a pool of blood. Probably the blood that was all over his arm. She was crying, little faint whimpers, her only movement her lips gently pursing open to let the sound out.
His eyes returned to the pool of blood. Sarah’s leg had been torn off about an inch below the knee, torn being the right description. Muscle and sinew were frilled around the splintered white bone in a dark red curtain. Blood was pulsing out into the glossy puddle, which was now spilling over the edge of the ledge. He knew she needed skilled treatment … and fast. He looked back to the void and turned his eyes down towards the street, snatching as much of a glance as his vertigo would allow before snapping his attention back to Sarah.
The sirens had been wailing for a few minutes now and there were emergency vehicles down there and the sound of equipment being moved, but he daren’t trust his balance to any more glances down. He turned to Katalin and nodded his head towards the ground.
‘They are coming. Stay still, they’ll get us out.’ She shook her head up and down in a weird staccato figure of eight, trembling with fear.
They’d
have to wait … and hope time didn’t run out for Sarah. By now, the spasms from her severed leg had started to register with her brain. As the pain burned, the shock her body was in prevented her from any visual reaction. Her face was pale, going grey fast.
*
When the fire engine platform finally levelled itself up to the third floor, Calum was beginning to think it was too late. Sarah’s face was ashen and the screaming had ceased. There was only a shallow motion across her chest now.
The fire crew looked at the scene and immediately moved her onto the platform, motioning for the other two to stay put. It did strike Calum that they really couldn’t do much else. Maybe some might jump out of panic … there were a few flames down and to the left, but it didn’t feel like they were in danger of being burnt alive. Then things changed.
A rushing sound welled up from beneath them, followed by another explosion. Not so big as the first one, but it threw a small fireball up the side of the building, scorching Calum’s eyebrows and the remains of his jacket. What was left of Room 31 was now punctuated by little islands of flame. He caught a blur of movement in his peripheral vision and turned … Katalin was stumbling towards him, wide-eyed and with her tee-shirt alight.
She fell at him and he anticipated just early enough to avoid being knocked off balance. He pulled her to him, beating at the flames on her back until they were gone. She was heaving with sobs and difficult to hold still.
‘Sssh … sssh, they’ll be back for us … in a moment.’
He knew that was about as long as they had.
Smoke
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Jenna stared at the ceiling for a moment, blinking rapidly, flicking dust from her eyes and regaining a sense of where the hell she was.
She remembered and jerked her head up, saw the door to room 33 with puffs of smoke and dust escaping around its edges.
She jumped up, then staggered back, her body aching. She must have been thrown by the explosion, it’d left her bruised and slow to move. She lurched forward and hammered on the door again. This time, it gave way at the lock, part of the door falling away as it swung open, weakened by the blast.
Smoke billowed out, causing her to step sideways and let some of it pass into the corridor. She peered around room 33’s doorframe and saw right across the room, through the broken jambs of the door to number 31, right out into fresh air and the lights of the buildings opposite the hotel. She sucked in a deep breath and steadied herself against a sudden giddy wobble.
She could see a thin, dark-haired girl, pressed to a wall, pushing herself away from the edge of the floor, which had fallen away to nothing. Calum was beyond her, his interest focused on a different woman. She looked like the pictures of Sarah McTeer they’d been given.
Her mind whirled with what to do next. That decision was taken from her by another explosion, which cut through part of room 33 and sent her back down to the floor again.
She recovered and got to her feet, but flames had taken hold of the carpet in front of her and pushed her back out through the door into the corridor. She turned and ran, finding the stairs and scampering down them as fast as her battered legs would let her.
Getting help for Calum was her only focus.
*
Robert had walked away from the hotel slightly before Hanna. As a consequence, her body took a lot of the force of the blast from the back door, but he still hit the ground hard and lost consciousness for a few moments. He came around with Hanna’s body draped across his own.
He struggled to turn onto his back, holding her left arm to stop her rolling off him and bumping the floor.
He looked at her face. It was clear of injury and she was breathing. A bit shallow, though. He pulled himself further sideways until he could lower her to the ground. He turned and put his hand under her head, cradling it like a baby’s.
‘Hanna, Hanna, are you OK … speak to me. Speak to me please.’
She didn’t reply. She didn’t open her eyes either. He laid her head back down and pulled his hand away. It was covered with blood from the back of her head.
Robert looked around him and saw people running everywhere. He suddenly tuned in to the sound of emergency sirens and got up clumsily, turned towards the end of the building and ran for help.
Crucifixion
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As Izabella ran down the stairs, her mind was warmed by the thought that if Jenna acted the hero too recklessly, then her task for the night might well be done for her. It almost made her smile her very last smile.
When she reached the ground floor, she was flung sideways by a thunderous gust of air and heat that hammered against her body, spinning her like a clockwork mouse across the lobby floor.
A few seconds later, she was up and lurching out of the hotel, as the fire and smoke began to encroach into the lobby’s open space.
Once through the front door, she went a yard or so further and looked up. No reason really, she wanted to see where the explosion had come from, or just some natural instinct to cover all threats. A couple of the front desk staff had scrambled to near where she stood, fleeing their posts. They moved even closer to her, some instinct around safety in numbers perhaps, and looked up with her.
One of the staff screamed. She only just had time. She didn’t get the chance to pull in another breath to replace the air expelled by her yell. A huge lump of masonry from the hotel facade hit her square on, driving her skull down through her body like a stone through a glass of raspberry milk.
The chunk of stonework was long. It spanned a few feet both sides of the woman. Crushed either side of her, like the thieves crucified next to Christ, were the head concierge and Izabella.
All around them people fell away in horror, driven by the spray of fragments and dust still falling around the block and the pools of blood already spreading from the pile of crushed corpses.
Their wails were backed by the vehicle sirens around them … a symphony of scorched souls.
Jenna sprinted out of the front entrance, past the crucified trio to the other side of the street, almost accosting a fireman to ask for help, before she realised that’s exactly what he was trying to do. She looked up.
High above the street, flames punctuated the night sky, lighting up the faces of a few people still in their rooms, trapped by fires. She could just make out Calum’s face, peering into the scene of two firemen gently easing a girl onto the hydraulic fire platform, taking a lot of care with their movements. The other woman was clinging to Calum, her face dead, still, no expression, shock frozen onto a skin canvas.
The firemen stood up and Calum waved at them as if to hurry them away. He stood there, the other woman draped around his shoulder and looked down. Jenna shouted and waved at him. He didn’t notice her.
The platform was down on the ground quickly and the girl ferried off to a waiting ambulance. The firemen were riding back up the building before the girl reached the ambulance doors.
Calum and the other woman were bracing their bodies, as close to the edge as they dared, wincing and wilting from the heat of the flames creeping behind them, cutting them off from the precarious route back to room 33.
They pretty much fell onto the rescue platform as the small gate on it swung open, Katalin’s hair smouldering with glowing pieces of ash.
One of the firemen swatted the embers out of her hair as they descended. Twenty feet from the ground, the leaking gas gave its final shout and blew out the first-floor windows ten feet below them. The platform lurched backwards then steadied itself, before rolling the other way and crashing into the front of the burning building.
Jenna’s eyes were owl-wide, not wanting to believe the catastrophe unravelling in front of her.
War zone
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Jenna ran towards the rescue platform as fast as her bruised body would let her, but a fireman motioned for her to move down the street to safety.
As she tu
rned to head left, she caught sight of a pair of trainers, on the end of legs trapped under a huge piece of masonry. She recognised them and hesitated a moment. The fireman waved wildly at her again to move on, so she turned and ran. Her brain was processing the image of the trainers … and it didn’t take long to place them. Izabella had been wearing the same bright pink trainers … or at least a very close match. She felt cold sweat tingle across her forehead. Now she did stop and peer back. She couldn’t see the spot, because of a stream of people running along behind her. She'd need to work her way around back up the street and have a look from the other side.
By the time she managed to do that, the hydraulic platform was empty and the area around Izabella’s body shut off by police. She ran back toward the safety cordon where the ambulances were lined up, but was stopped by a number of police officers who refused to let her through.
One of them was detective Nagy. She recognised him, but of course, she'd not made herself known to him in the hotel so she had no real leverage with him. She mentioned Calum’s name, but Nagy was having none of it.
‘Wait here. I’ll go and talk to him once he’s been seen by the ambulance crew. You can’t cross the tape until I say it's OK. It looks like he’s had a lucky escape.’
*
Robert had finally managed to grab the attention of a paramedic to follow him back to where Hanna was. The medic examined her.
‘She needs a stretcher. Don't move her while I’m gone. She has some neck and head injuries and bleeding. I can't tell how serious it is, we need to get her to hospital.’
Robert mouthed an ‘OK’ and slumped down to the ground by Hanna, taking her hand in his own and stroking it. He remembered she’d said she had a babysitter for her daughter. But he didn’t know where she lived or any home number. The hotel might have it but no one was going to be able to get that right now. Until she came around, there was little he could do. And somewhere in Budapest, a little girl would be waiting for her mummy to come home.