300 Minutes of Danger

by Jack Heath

  The bomber was gone.

  00:00

  INFERNO

  30:00 The smell was faint, but it woke Liliana up. It lingered in the night air like the last traces of a bad dream.

  Art supplies, she thought. That’s what it smells like. Paint and charcoal.

  29:30 She peeled the covers off her sweaty legs and sat up. The air-conditioning didn’t stand a chance against the summer heat. Even the floor was warm beneath her toes.

  She had dreamed she was in a misty forest filled with stunted trees. She had seen a fox walking on its hind legs, staggering from side to side as though poisoned. She hid behind a twisted shrub, but the fox pulled the leaves back with its withered claws and fixed a bronze eye on her.

  ‘Run, Liliana,’ it said.

  28:40 Liliana rubbed her eyes. If she went back to sleep she would slip straight back into the nightmare. Time for a cup of chamomile tea—and to see if she could get rid of whatever was making that smell.

  She got up, stretched her arms towards the old glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the ceiling and then padded along the carpet to the kitchen. She was especially quiet as she passed Mum and Dad’s door, although she wasn’t sure they were home yet. They had gone to the police station—apparently something had been stolen from one of their safety deposit boxes. They had left so quickly that the lamp was still on the living room floor where Dad had knocked it over while he was vacuuming.

  26:30Once upon a time she would have jumped into bed with them, no matter what time of night, to feel safe after a bad dream. Sometimes she had even pretended she’d had a nightmare just so they would let her sleep between them. She kind of missed those days. Her friends at school were always fighting over who could act the most grown up, but to Liliana, getting older seemed like a pain in the neck.

  The kitchen was as ultra-modern as the rest of the apartment. A touchscreen controlled the oven. The fridge was connected to the internet and automatically kept the shopping list up to date. Liliana didn’t turn on the light. The city skyline, shining bright against the moonless sky, was enough to illuminate the kettle and the contents of the pantry.

  25:50A ringing sound shattered the silence. It wasn’t all that loud—the sound-proofing was very good, at least on the upper floors—but it made Liliana jump.

  It was probably the idiots down on the seventh floor accidentally setting off the fire alarm again. They often burned things in their microwave in the middle of the night. Liliana had heard that they struggled to tell the difference between seconds and minutes on the control panel.

  25:00She hoped they wouldn’t have to evacuate the building while they waited for the fire department to switch off the alarm. Again. Perhaps she should be making her tea in a thermos rather than a mug.

  She filled the kettle with water and switched it on. The blue light which usually flared up remained dark. A power outage? Seriously?

  24:30Liliana groaned, leaning back against the bench. She had school tomorrow. She needed to sleep. She couldn’t afford to spend all night standing outside—tealess—waiting for someone to switch off the alarm.

  She turned her bleary eyes to the window—

  And frowned.

  The glass seemed to be fogged up. The lights of the city were diffused outwards, blurry through the grey glaze. It was as though someone had smeared egg whites on the window—this had happened once at the fish and chip shop where Liliana worked on the weekends.

  But the apartment was nine storeys above the ground. How could anyone throw an egg up here?

  It wasn’t until she got right up against the glass that she realised what was really going on. The fog wasn’t on the glass at all—it was in the air outside.

  The smell which woke her hadn’t been charcoal. It was smoke.

  She looked down and gasped. The street below was lit up by a flickering orange glow. In the windows of the shops opposite she could see the reflection of her apartment building.

  It was on fire. The whole bottom level was consumed by a hungry blaze.

  Liliana felt dizzy. She stumbled away from the window.

  23:20‘Mum!’ she screamed. ‘Dad!’

  No answer from her parents’ bedroom.

  She ran, stumbling through the dark, her sleepiness washed away by terror. She crashed into her parents’ door, fumbled with the handle and burst in.

  ‘MumDadwakeupquick!’ she blurted. ‘The building’s on fire!’

  22:30There was no reply—because the bed was empty. Mum and Dad must not be home from the police station yet. They were safe. But Liliana was alone.

  She ran back to her room, ripped her phone off the charger and dialled emergency services. Before she hit call she realised that her phone was in flight mode—she always did that before she went to bed. She went into settings, turned flight mode off and swiped back to the call screen. Then she remembered that her phone would probably call emergency services even when it was in flight mode.

  Panic made people do dumb things, she knew. She had already wasted several seconds.

  22:00Before she had time to dial again, a message flashed up. She had eleven missed calls, all from her mother.

  Somehow this scared her more than the smoke. Even more than the warmth coming up through her feet. Her heart was pounding.

  She called her mother back.

  21:50The phone rang for about a second and a half before her Mum picked up.

  ‘Liliana!’ Mum screeched, so loud the phone crackled.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Where are you?’

  21:30‘I’m—’ Her heart broke. Her parents were probably desperately hoping that she was anywhere but here. ‘I’m at home.’

  Her mother—usually the calmest person in the world, especially when she was angry—screamed. Her voice cracked, and she took a breath and screamed again. It sounded like she was being burned alive.

  ‘Mum, where are you? Mum?’ Liliana had to repeat the question three times before her mother responded.

  ‘They won’t let us in,’ she sobbed. ‘We’re right outside, honey, but we can’t get through!’

  20:00Liliana could hear Dad arguing with someone in the background. She opened the curtains and peered down, as if seeing her parents would make her safe. But two fire trucks and three ambulances had arrived. The red and blue lights were all she could see through the roiling smoke. It looked like a rock concert down there.

  ‘What do I do?’ Liliana asked. ‘Mum! What do I do?’

  Mum didn’t respond in words. She sounded as though she were being strangled.

  19:30The blaze below looked apocalyptic. Liliana wouldn’t be able to get out that way, not until the firefighters subdued the flames. By the time that happened, she might already be dead from smoke inhalation. She had learnt in school that almost no-one died from the flames themselves. It was usually the smoke which killed people.

  She wondered if it hurt, or if it just felt like going to sleep.

  18:35Liliana left the call connected—she was afraid that if she hung up, she might not be able to get through to her mother a second time. She walked from one end of the apartment to the other like a caged wolf. If she couldn’t get out of the building, what could she do?

  17:20Maybe she could seal up the apartment so no smoke got in. She ran into the bathroom and grabbed the biggest towel she could find. She soaked it in the sink—at least the water was still running—and then rolled it into a tube. She carried it, dripping, all the way to the front door and jammed it underneath.

  Would that stop the smoke from coming in around the edges? Maybe not, but it would help. She wet another towel in the bathroom, rolled it up, shut herself in her bedroom and stuffed the towel under the door.

  Now there were two barriers between her and the deadly smoke. Liliana had to hope that would be enough. She paced back and forth in front of the bed. How long before the firefighters had everything under control?

  15:30She was just starting to wonder if she should have shut herself in the
bathroom instead when there was a snap. She swivelled around to face the window. A jagged crack had appeared in the glass, splitting the pane in two. As she watched, another crack branched out from the first.

  Horrified, she scampered away from the window. It must be the heat from the fire below.

  Soon the glass would shatter, leaving her bastion to fill with smoke.

  15:00She grabbed her supplies and fled from the bedroom. The bathroom would be no good either—there was a small frosted-glass window in there. Her parents had fallen in love with the apartment because every room had a window, all facing north. It seemed ridiculous that this very feature might kill her.

  She would have to leave the apartment. But she couldn’t go down to the ground floor.

  So she’d have to make a break for the roof.

  14:40No ceiling above her head to hold down the smoke. Nothing flammable around her. Assuming the building itself didn’t collapse—and it wouldn’t, would it?—she would be safe until help came.

  The phone was still on. ‘Mum,’ Liliana said. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Sweetie! What’s going on?’

  ‘I have to get out of the apartment before the smoke is too thick. I’m going to try to get to the roof.’

  14:20‘No, stay where you are! The firefighters will come and get you after they’ve put out the fire.’

  ‘I can’t wait that long. Soon I won’t be able to breathe. Just let them know I’ll be waiting on the roof.’

  ‘Liliana—’

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘You and Dad. Tell him, OK?’

  She hung up before the tears reached her eyes.

  A flannel hung from a rail in the bathroom. She grabbed it and soaked it in the sink. Then she ran to the front door.

  13:00Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad out there. The fire was still several storeys below her, she was pretty sure. Just in case, she mapped out the route in her head. Through the door, turn right, run all the way to the end, turn left and she would be at the entrance to the stairs. After that it should be an easy climb to the roof.

  She took a deep breath and clamped the flannel over her mouth and nose to keep out the smoke. Then she pulled the door open.

  12:30A billowing fog of acrid soot hit her immediately. As she stepped into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind her, a thousand flecks of icy water stung her cheeks and hair. The sprinklers were on. With the roaring of the fire from somewhere below, it was like being outside in a thunderstorm.

  She couldn’t see anything through the smoke. The heat baked her eyeballs so she shut them. The clanging of the fire alarm made it hard to think.

  Right, then all the way to the end of the hall, then left, she told herself. She staggered out the door and then crashed straight into the wall. She had turned too late. She stumbled back, disoriented.

  She didn’t have much time. If she breathed in, she was dead. Liliana steeled herself and ran through the black fog, keeping one hand on the wall so she didn’t get lost. The wet carpet was spongy beneath her bare feet.

  12:00Soon she was at the end of the corridor. She turned left and fumbled her way across the wall until she found the door to the fire stairs. It didn’t have a handle—just a crash bar. She pushed it open.

  11:30She noticed that the metal was hot but registered it too late. The door swung open and a whirlwind of fire roared in front of her. The flames were in the stairwell somehow, as though someone had spilled petrol on the stairs or filled the well with flammable gas.

  As the door opened, the oxygen rushed from the corridor into the stairwell, feeding the fire. The hungry flames billowed up as a deadly wind rushed up behind Liliana, trying to push her towards them. She fought the current, pushing back so hard she overbalanced and fell onto the carpet, already dry and charred beneath her. The heat scraped her skin. Sparks filled the air like fireflies.

  11:20She couldn’t do this. There was no way up or down. She had to go back to the apartment.

  Liliana had dropped the flannel in her panic. She grasped randomly at the floor until she found it again and clamped it over her face. Then she clambered to her feet and ran away from the stairwell, the fire chasing her.

  11:00The smoke was like squid ink. When she collided with the apartment door, it seemed to take her a thousand years to find the handle.

  She tried to turn it. Locked.

  No! She rattled the handle desperately. There was no air left in her lungs. She was sure she’d left the door unlocked.

  So this must be the wrong door. She staggered further up the corridor, dizzy and blind, until she found another one. This time the handle turned.

  10:30She burst into her apartment, slammed the door shut and ripped the flannel off her face. She took a deep, desperate breath, and promptly threw up on the floor. It was partly the fear, partly the smoke she had inhaled.

  Her expedition had been costly. The apartment had more smoke in the air than before, and now the fire had spread to the corridor outside. Even if the sprinklers managed to suppress it, she still had to deal with the glass.

  09:35After rubbing her aching eyes she saw that the living room window had a giant spiderweb of cracks. One small piece had fallen out or melted away. The wind roared outside.

  She fell to her knees on the tiles. I can’t stay here or I’ll die. I can’t leave or I’ll die. It’s hopeless.

  Liliana stared through the splintered glass at the city, the buildings and water towers and telephone lines silhouetted against the fire-lit sky—

  08:45 Telephone lines.

  She had an idea.

  Maybe it was the carbon dioxide getting to her brain, but it seemed like she could survive this. If she was brave, and just a little crazy.

  Her parents’ new vacuum was still on the floor where Dad had left it after the phone call about the safe deposit box. It was a tremendous backpack-style model, designed to clean office buildings, not small apartments. It was ludicrously over-powered, and not just when it came to sucking up dust. When Dad pushed the retract cable button, the power cord zoomed back into the device so fast that it knocked over a lamp. Mum had tried to convince him to return it to the store.

  07:50Liliana carried the vacuum cleaner back into the kitchen. She would need something to weigh down the other end of the power cable. She tied one end to the handle of the electric kettle. That would have to do.

  Back in the living room, she picked up the fallen lamp and slammed the steel base into the window. The cracked glass shook but didn’t shatter. She swung the lamp again. Since the window had been tough enough to withstand the first blow perhaps it wouldn’t break under the heat either. Perhaps she could stay here. But by the time this occurred to her, the stool was already in motion, and when the impact came it smashed the glass to pieces.

  07:00The momentum of the stool nearly pulled Liliana out the window. She let go just in time and teetered on the edge as she watched the stool plummet ten, twelve, fifteen metres, surrounded by a halo of shards. It hit the distant asphalt with a hideous crack, legs flying off in all directions.

  If the fall did that to a metal bar stool, what would it do to Liliana?

  06:30There was no time to dwell on that. Smoke was leaking in from around the door and wafting through the empty window frame. She had to go right now.

  According to the stamp on the side of the vacuum, the power cable was fifteen metres long. The telephone line across the street looked ten or twelve metres away. Close enough, she hoped.

  06:05She swung the power cord like a lasso. The kettle was still tied to the end—it swept around and around, gaining speed with every swing. Liliana took aim at the telephone line and let go.

  The kettle whipped out into the void but fell short of the line. It swung down into the flames below the window instead. When Liliana pulled it back up, the rubber base was slightly melted and the metal lid glowed like a stovetop coil.

  This is insane, she thought. I can’t do this.

  04:55But she knew she didn’t have
a choice. This wasn’t a nightmare she could hide from in her parents’ bed. This was real life. Do or die.

  She swung the kettle again. This time it sailed over the distant telephone line, wrapping the power cord around it.

  Liliana tugged the cord with her sweaty hands. She thought it would take her weight.

  04:30Smoke was pouring in from all directions. Under the door, through the window, from the other rooms. Liliana had planned to tie the vacuum cleaner to the doorhandle and climb across the power cord to safety. But now there was no time. If she didn’t get out of here right now, she would asphyxiate.

  She pulled the vacuum cleaner onto her back, tightened the shoulder straps and buckled them together over her chest. She stood on the edge, teetering over the sheer drop into the roaring flames—

  03:35Then she pushed the retract cable button.

  She had worried that the mechanism wouldn’t be strong enough, but it sucked her out the window immediately. The heat hit her like a wall. She squeezed her eyes shut as she plummeted through the cloud of smog, her stomach churning. Just when she thought she must be about to slam into the ground, the cord went taut and she swung outwards, hurtling across the road to the buildings on the other side. She whipped past the telegraph pole and found herself flying upwards like a kid on a tyre swing.

  03:10She slowed down and down until she was hanging in the air, motionless, six or seven metres above the ground. Then she was falling again. She clung desperately to the power cable as the ground rushed up to meet her—

  But the cable went taut again, swinging her back towards the blazing building—

  And just in time, a chunk broke off the vacuum cleaner. The power cable flicked away and Liliana was free. Her bare feet skidded across the road hard enough to draw blood and she tumbled over forwards, scraping her palms and knees. Then all was still. She lay facedown on the warm asphalt, listening to the pop and crackle of the flames.

  02:40It had worked. She was out.

  Gloved hands grabbed her and hauled her up. She found herself slung over the shoulder of a burly firefighter as he carried her and the vacuum back towards the cordon.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I can walk.’