I didn’t hang around: I circled what was fast-becoming a funeral pyre, stooping to pick up one of Constance’s discarded elbow crutches, which I’d almost tripped over, and hobbled towards the double doors, ignoring the screeches of the trapped beast, who had had a taste of fire and its consequences earlier so understood the trouble it was in even if there was no fear involved. I avoided the spreading fires that were quickly joining forces to become one massive conflagration, the heat intense, the atmosphere poisoned with black, boiling smoke. I found Constance on her knees in the doorway, the burden of Michael too much for her; she was dragging him along the floor, her thin arms trembling with the effort. She looked at me in weepy surprise when I hauled her to her feet and handed her the metal crutch. I scooped Michael up and held him against my shoulder with one arm; the other arm I used to take Constance’s elbow and lead her through the doorway.
We stopped, aghast. Constance almost collapsed against me.
Fire had spread from the open door to the stairway across the whole area between us and the door to the main building, creating a raging wall of flame that completely cut off our escape. We realized that the whole top floor would soon be an inferno.
I searched around desperately, looking for a way out, aware that we had but a few minutes left before we were either choked to death by the smoke and lack of oxygen, or were burnt alive. The lift was close by to our left, its metal doors closed, flames belching out from the stairway door next to it. That was no good though – even if it were still operating it would only take us down to a worse hellfire below.
Constance brushed her cheek against my upper arm and I thought I heard her say my name. When I glanced down at her she looked so helpless, so defeated. I cursed my own uselessness, angry at myself for failing her, and I swore at the cruel irony of it all, that having finally found someone to love, someone who could truly love me in return and on equal terms, that joy, that fulfilment, was now to be snatched away, and in the grimmest way possible. The anger swelled inside me and I turned back to the dormitory behind us, still hoping to find a way out.
I had felt deep despair in my miserable little life on more than one occasion (several hundred occasions, I figured), but when I saw the beast emerging from the burning heap I’d tried to bury him under, I think I felt the deepest, blackest despair of all. It was as if God, Himself, were playing some wicked joke on me, setting me up for one fall after another. Cannons to the left, cannons to the right . . . Those stupid fucking lines ran through my head as if my own mind had decided to join in the mocking game.
The beast thing, a man-demon from another culture, hurled a cot from its path and staggered towards me.
‘Nick, we must get to the top!’ Constance was tugging at me again and shouting over the roar and crackle of the fire.
‘We can’t!’ I yelled back. ‘The stairway’s an inferno, we’d never make it!’
‘The lift! We can use the lift! The attic is used as a storeroom and they take heavy stuff up in the lift all the time!’
There was the light of hope in her eyes and it was a pity it wasn’t infectious. I knew we didn’t have time, even if the lift was still working. The beast would be on us before those metal doors even had a chance to open. And if the beast didn’t take us, then the all-consuming fire would. It was hopeless, but how could I tell her that?
Once again, I passed Michael over to her. ‘Get to the lift. Press the button and if it comes, don’t wait for me.’
‘No!’
‘There’s no choice. Just do as I say.’
I pushed her roughly towards the metal doors, but she steadied herself, looking at me beseechingly.
‘Do it!’ I screamed. ‘Think of Michael!’
I didn’t wait to see if she would do as I told her – there was no time. I turned back to the dormitory to face the approaching monster. Shit, I told myself. Shit, shit, shit.
And then, aloud, my own defiant war cry: ‘Fuckiiiit!’ At least I’d give Constance and Michael a chance.
I expected to die right then and there, but curiously, I no longer cared. Life itself was taking the piss and I’d had enough. I rushed to meet the foe.
But the whole building rocked when something exploded in the laboratory below – a gas pipe, chemicals, who knows? Maybe, just maybe, it was the hand of God, the combustible hand of God – and the floor between the creature and myself split open, a jet of fire blasting through. I was thrown backwards out of the room, a shower of debris and burning wood landing on and around me. I curled up into a tight ball, covering my face with my arms, deafened by the roar, my head reeling. When shrapnel no longer rained down on me, I risked looking back into the dormitory, but all I could see were great billows of smoke pouring out, the wooden frame of the doorway itself on fire. One side of the double doors lay burning a couple of feet away from me; where the other side had gone I had no idea.
I felt fierce heat at my back and realized I had landed dangerously close to the fire that had spread from the stairway. I rolled away, coming to one knee, but not quite ready to rise to my feet: my head was so dizzy I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my balance.
Constance was huddled by the lift doors, Michael, like an infant in swaddling, held in her arms. Her eyes seemed even larger against the black grime that covered her face and her lips, those dear, lovely lips, were moving as though she were trying to tell me something. I crawled over to her, the heat almost overwhelming me, the eerie silence all around making everything seem unreal. I wondered why they were huddled there, why Constance’s mouth was opening and closing, and why she was pointing at my head. And when I reached them, I wondered why she was attacking me, slapping my head with the flat of her hand. Sounds began to return, as though her slaps were beating my ears into obedience; I heard her excited voice, but it was still a long way off and I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. But when the numbness finally went and the pain set in, I realized my hair was on fire. I yelped, striking at my own head, but Constance was smarter: she unravelled some of the sheet covering Michael and pulled it tight over my head, pressing it down and smothering any flames that had survived our beating hands. Not just my scalp, but my face and hands felt singed, eyebrows just stubble, and there were brown patches on my shirt and trousers where flying embers had landed to be instantly dislodged by my own movement. Still confused, but my hearing swiftly returning to normal, I covered both Constance and Michael with my own body, shielding them from the overpowering heat that was now coming from all directions. I struggled to draw in breath, not quite sure why we were all huddled against this warm metal wall, when something clanked behind it and it split in two, opening up in the middle so that all three of us toppled through.
We lay there gasping on the floor, the air inside only slightly easier to breathe, smoke soon billowing in after us. My full senses came back in a rush and I hauled myself to my feet, a shaking hand reaching for the lift buttons. I was almost tempted to press the G button in the hope that the ground level fire had almost burned itself out, giving us a chance to get out of the building through the hallway: common sense prevailed though and my trembling finger stabbed at the top button.
It took at least two seconds, which felt like a lifetime, for anything to happen; then the door slowly, oh so slowly, began to come together.
Smoke continued to billow through the narrowing gap as I helped Constance, who still clutched Michael to her breast, to her feet. We pressed together against the back wall of the lift to escape the worst of the heat outside and Michael’s little limbless body convulsed as though he were having trouble breathing, a wheezing sound coming from the aperture that was his mouth. Constance and I glanced anxiously at each other, wondering if he could take much more. I looked back at the lift doors, willing them to close faster, the smoke beyond them glowing orange. I stiffened when I thought I saw something move amidst those swirling, coloured clouds. It was gone in an instant, but still I watched the ever-narrowing breach with a puzzled – and concer
ned – eye.
There were perhaps three inches of the gap left when the dark form smashed against the door, clawed fingers reaching round each side to pull them apart again. Constance screamed and I think I yelled – okay, maybe I screamed too – as an arm, burnt raw, the skin of it puckered and blistered, reached through, the clawed hand, with its open, weeping sores scrabbling at the smoky air between us. The gap had widened again and I saw a yellow eye – a demon’s eye – seeking me out. I pushed Constance aside, into a corner, and prayed – prayed yet again – that the lift doors were not the kind that sprung back when they met an obstacle. Fortunately, these were not of the sophisticated variety, and they continued in trying to close, the arm and the fingers of the other arm trying to push through, long fingernails, blackened by fire, almost scratching my face.
Ducking beneath its grasp, I picked up the metal crutch that had tumbled into the lift with us and brought it down hard on the intruding arm, smashing it against the wrist in an effort to break it, then against the fingers, the knuckles, again and again, my rage equalling that of the beast. I could hear Constance’s screams, but I felt, rather than heard, bones shatter beneath my blows, and I didn’t let up, I kept pounding that fucking demon’s hand, wrist, and arms until it began to draw back like a withering weed, returning to where it belonged, where it could do no more harm. And still I kept on, roaring my anger, my anger and my fear, beating at the thing as though it represented every pointing finger I had learned to loathe over the years, every jibe, everything that stood between me and a contented existence.
It was gone and the lift doors closed on the burnt-raw fingers of its other hand, and I beat at those too, smashing them to pulp, until they released their grip. But just before that gap closed completely, a great tongue of flame belched through sending us screaming to our knees. Worse than our own screams though, were the muffled screeches from beyond the closed doors and we knew that the creature had finally been taken by the fire. Yet even as the lift lurched and began to rise, we could still hear pounding on the doors below us.
Those sounds continued but became weaker, not just because of the distance between us, but because the blows were becoming more feeble, the beast dying, burnt alive. Soon we heard only the roar of the fire itself.
The lift juddered to a halt and the doors clumsily rumbled open. I helped Constance to her feet and we stumbled out into the smoke-filled room beyond, both of us retching as we breathed in the polluted air. The sweltering heat was not quite as bad as in the rooms below, but it was nevertheless oppressive enough to draw our strength – what strength we had left, that is. I felt Constance beginning to sag and I held her more tightly, one arm round her back, beneath her shoulder, the other still gripping her bloodied elbow-crutch. She continued to clasp the sheet-wrapped bundle that was Michael to her breast.
Orange light came from the burning open stairway next to the lift shaft and in its flickering glow I could make out the lift’s operating machinery above the shaft itself, this accommodated by a box-like structure built into the angled roof. An iron-runged maintenance ladder rising up the rough brick wall beside the closing lift door led to the machinery. Opposite the lift shaft was a huge water tank, pipes running from it into a nearby wall, and piled beside it were tins of paint, cartons and boxes, lengths of material that might have been old curtains or background drapes used for filming, discarded pieces of laboratory equipment, and large empty jars. Most of the smoke came from the stairway and it curled around hefty support beams over our heads, the worst of it mercifully gathering under the roof’s apex. A short distance away to our left was a blank brick wall which reached to the very top of the inverted V-shaped ceiling, obviously built to seal off the annexe roof space from the main building, and to our right was a broad doorway presumably leading to the storage area itself.
The floorboards beneath our feet were already smouldering and I knew it wouldn’t be long before the fire broke through. Loud cracks, like gunshots, came from the wooden boards as they contracted with the heat, and my vision kept blurring, my eye aggravated by the smoke. Now what? I asked myself. So far my only plan had been to keep ahead of the fire, but now we had come as far as we could. Well, maybe not. There was always the roof itself. If we could climb out onto it and the rescue services reached us in time . . . I knew it was the only chance we had.
‘Are there any windows in the storeroom?’ I had to raise my voice again over the din.
‘Just one!’ she shouted back. Despite the grime that blackened her face, I could see from her expression she was in pain, her frail body not meant for the kind of exertion it had been put through tonight. ‘It’s at the far end of the storeroom.’ She pointed a waving hand at the wide door on our right.
‘Can we get onto the roof from there?’
‘I – I don’t know. I’m not even sure if the window can be opened.’
‘It’s our only option, Constance.’
She nodded and once again I took Michael from her, handing her the metal crutch as I did so. I pulled back the part of the sheet that covered his face and winced at what I saw in the flickering light. His sightless eyes were closed and the strange aperture that was his mouth barely moved now. I put my ear close to it and thought I heard a very faint wheezing sound. It was hard to tell over the noise of the fire itself though, and if it hadn’t been for the slightest movement of his mouth, I might have thought that Michael was dead. I covered his face again, loosely, giving him enough space to breathe, but protecting him from the worst of the smoke and heat.
‘Hang on to me!’ I shouted at Constance. ‘Hang on to me and for God’s sake, don’t let go!’ For my sake too, Constance, especially for my sake.
She nodded again and her eyes told me she was placing all her trust in me. Together we headed for the storeroom.
The broad, sturdy door was the kind that ran on a rail and opened by pulling it sideways, and when I did so, heaving so hard it crashed against the rails’ stoppers, bouncing back a little, I almost wept genuine, not smoke-induced, tears of despair. The inferno inside the storeroom seemed absolute.
The explosion in the laboratory had sent flames shooting up into the dormitory, which had lapped at the ceiling there, quickly burning through to the room above, the storeroom. A fierce wave of heat hit us instantly, sending us reeling back, and we cowered behind the rough wall, choking on the smoke, our throats seared by the broiling air we had inhaled. I felt Constance’s arms go round me from behind, her weight dragging me down.
‘Oh, Nick . . .’ her lips seemed to say when I turned to her.
I pulled her close, Michael between us, and I wondered if this was where it was all to end. Having found each other, was this our destiny – to die together? I almost gave in to it, almost accepted our fate, but my old friend and ally, anger, prodded me in the ribs once more. It’s too bloody good to give up, I told myself. You’ve fought all your life, against hardship, against prejudice, against pain. You’ve been mocked, you’ve been taunted, you’ve been abused, and you’ve overcome it all. So are you really going to lie down and go out with a whimper? Are you going to let Constance down? Are you going to let Michael die too, just when you’ve won his freedom? What are you – a man, or just a . . . just a . . . freak?
‘What the fuck can I do?’ I screamed, the sound coming out like a raspy whisper, but vehemently enough for Constance to jerk away from me. Her teary eyes looked at me in bewilderment and at first, foolishly, I thought it was because she could not understand why I’d let her down; her hand touched my face though, a tender, fingertip caress, and I knew she would never think that of me. She had just been surprised at my outburst and had not been able to catch the words. Now her expression changed and she mouthed something that I couldn’t hear, but could understand. She was telling me she loved me again.
I laid Michael in her lap and spun away so that my face was against the wall at the edge of the door. More cautiously this time, I peeked into the storeroom.
I must have notic
ed it before when I had slid back the door, the intense burst of concentrated heat pushing me away before it had a chance to register. I shielded my face with my arm and forced myself to survey the burning room. I spotted it straight away, then wheeled back to face Constance.
I tried to force saliva into my throat so that I could speak clearly, but it was impossible. Everything was too dry; my tongue felt like a wad of sandpaper, the roof of my mouth like old parchment. I had to make do with a raspy croak.
‘There’s a chance,’ I said close to her ear. ‘There’s a line of boxes on the right-hand side. It’s two rows high and the top edge of them touches the slanted ceiling. Their fronts are burning, but the flames haven’t reached the back yet. Constance, I saw a gap behind them and I think it runs along the whole length of the room. We can make it to the end. I’m sure we can!’
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