The Rebuilding Year

by Kaje Harper

  “Mark!” he yelled. “You there? Make some noise.”

  All the way across the room to the right, he saw a door open and the boy’s smaller form appeared. Mark stood in the doorway and looked at him, his shape wavering in the heated air. “Ryan!”

  “Fuck. Close that door! Now!”

  “But you…”

  “Now!”

  When the door had shut, Ryan pulled out his phone and turned the sound back on. “Listen up, Mark,” Ryan said, as calmly as he could, leaning back out to look at the hallway. The ceiling out there was hard to see through fast-growing smoke. Could come down at any time. Shit. He crawled back into the lab. “What’s going on in that room? Any fire?”

  “Not yet.” Mark’s voice was raspy. “Smoke.”

  The smart thing would still be for Ryan to get out fast, while he might still reach the stairs, and tell Mark to wait for the pros. But the way the fire was creeping along the ceiling, it would be into that next room pretty soon, maybe before they arrived. The kid would probably panic. Maybe try to jump. Or stay and burn. Shit, shit, shit.

  The sprinklers should have been going off, but there was no water. As Ryan surveyed the scene, he wondered in the back of his mind why the drop in pressure hadn’t triggered the fire alarms earlier. Well, at least no water meant no steam burns.

  Just real ones.

  He rose to a crouch. The air was better down here than he’d have expected. Maybe because there was so little plastic or fabric in the ceramic and tile lab, and most of what was burning was above him. So far. Which still meant fucking awful air. He coughed, choking. Go now or go home. Or get dead.

  You don’t have to do this. His leg screamed with remembered pain. The odd whispering rush of hungry flames clawed its way from his ears into his brain, echoes of hell. You should run now, get out. Tell the boy to wait by the window for rescue and get yourself out. Or make him try to come to you. He crouched, frozen. There was a soft thump from the hallway behind him.

  “Ryan? What do I do?” Mark’s panicky voice asked. “It’s getting smokier here.”

  “I’m coming in there,” Ryan said over the pounding of his pulse. “Stand back. I’ll be coming through the door fast. Get your jacket off and hold it ready. If any of me is smoking when I get there, beat on me with the jacket to put it out. Got that?”

  “Don’t, Ry,” Mark begged. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I know what I’m doing. Trust me. Get ready.” He stuck the phone in his pocket, and sucked in air.

  The first step was like going off a cliff. Then he was moving fast past the flames, head down to protect his face. Brightness flickered in the periphery of his left view. Ceiling. Fuck! He felt something hot land on his left hand and shook it off. A patter of blows across his shoulders, like being patted by small hands. He smelled scorching fabric. The air was so hot, it was like a solid force against his skin. A shower of sparks erupted off to one side and he dodged, cursing silently. Despite holding his breath, the heat seared him. Then he was past the bad bit. He hit the door to Mark, shoved the handle down, swung around it as it opened, and slammed it shut again on the flames behind him.

  Mark ran to him. Ryan thought he was trying to hug him, and realized belatedly that Mark was trying to get at his back. The boy slapped at his shoulders with thick fabric. “Let me get this off.” Ryan slid his arms out of his jacket sleeves, and yanked it off. Half the back was scorched, spots black and crumbled. Thank God for thick parkas. He felt no pain, but it had to have been close. Then Mark hugged him fiercely.

  “God, Ryan, I was so scared.”

  Ryan gave him a quick squeeze and stepped back. “We’re not out yet.” He took a quick look around. No obvious other exit. He pulled out his phone to call John… Oops, need to call yourself.

  John answered instantly. “Ryan?”

  “I’m with Mark. We’re in the lab, sixth floor.” He looked out the window. “Overlooking the library. Where’s the fucking ladder truck?”

  “Not here yet,” John’s voice was hoarse. “On its way. Apparently there was a major fire half the fucking way across town.”

  “We’re not going to get out the door,” Ryan said. “And we won’t be able to wait here much longer.” He had an idea. “Can you head around underneath us, look at the fifth-floor windows, tell me how the room below us looks? You’ll spot us by the broken window. Don’t stand right underneath it, and get clear if something looks like it’s gonna come down.”

  “Can do.” From the sound of his breath, John was running.

  “What broken window?” Mark asked.

  Ryan considered the choices, and the fire. Breaking a window would cause air currents, which would feed the fire and could suck flame toward them. But he didn’t see much choice. “This one,” he said.

  It was tougher than it looked. It took three full-strength blows with the handle of his cane before the glass shattered. He looked out and down. A police car, flashing lights, people staring up, and there, a running figure that was John. “Stay back till I finish with the glass,” he said on the phone. He swiped the cane over the sill until all the jagged shards had cleared.

  “I see you,” John said.

  “Fifth floor below me. What do you think?”

  “Looks okay directly under you. At least from out here,” John said. “Around front though, the fourth and fifth both look bad.”

  A loud sound from the lab behind the closed door decided Ryan. “We’re going to have to move,” he told John. “If the fucking ladder gets here, send them our way. But we can’t wait. The lab is going fast. I’m going to try to rope down one floor.”

  “You have a rope?” John said.

  “Not exactly.”

  Ryan put the phone away. He did a quick survey of the space. No exposed wires, no computer cables, just benches and glassware and a refrigerator. The fridge would have a cord, but not long enough to help. Shit. He went to the rack of lab coats hanging on the wall. They were sturdy cotton canvas, and the longer style. He yanked them down, and began knotting them together. Pain and tightness in his hands suggested he’d managed to scorch himself a little, but his fingers still worked. Don’t look, don’t think.

  “Can I help?” Mark asked.

  “No offense, kid, but I trust my own knots.” There were six coats. With knots he was willing to trust, it made about eighteen feet of rope. He took it over to the window. Mark clung tight to his side, glancing back at the door. Then Mark suddenly flinched and gasped, a sound that was almost a squeak. Ryan looked back and saw a finger of brightness through the crack above the door. Too fucking close. “Time to blow this joint,” Ryan said. There was an old-fashioned radiator beneath the window. Ryan knotted the improvised rope to it, and tossed it out.

  “That won’t reach the ground,” Mark said anxiously.

  “Nope. We’re going down one floor and back in. Then we’ll find some stairs.”

  “You think?”

  “Confidence, kid.” Ryan turned to him. “There’s going to be two hard parts to this. First, you have to wait here while I go down and break out the next window so we can get back inside. You can’t climb out until I tell you. Even if the fire is getting close, you have to wait.”

  “Okay.” Mark’s voice shook.

  “I don’t think this rope will support us both together. Stay right by the window. Breathe the outside air. Then when I call, you’ll have to get out and down the rope by yourself. I’ll show you how.” He demonstrated where to hold, and how to get out the window. “The first bit over the sill is the hardest. Can you do that?”

  Mark’s eyes were huge in his face. “I suck at rope climbing in PE.”

  “Yeah. But this is down, not up.” Suddenly there was an explosion from the lab behind them. Ryan whirled the boy in his arms against the wall, putting his own back to the fire. But whatever flammable substance had just caught, it was far enough away. The door held.

  He let Mark go. The boy was shaking but he nodded, glancing over his sho
ulder. “Okay. I can do it.”

  “Promise? I don’t want to have to climb back up and get you.”

  “I can.”

  Ryan gave him a swift hug. “Good man. Wait until I call you.” He swung to a seat on the window ledge and took the cane in his mouth, lips stretched wide around it. Like around John. Stupid brain. Hands on the makeshift rope. If it didn’t hold, odds were they’d both die. God, if You exist, don’t do that to John. Ryan swung himself out.

  Going down a rope mainly took arm strength. Ryan had put in the sweat and pain to get all the arm muscles he could. The makeshift rope held. One floor down, dangling over forty feet of nothing, he peered in the window. Dark. In a fire, dark is good. He took a life-or-death grip on the rope with one hand, and reached for the cane in his mouth with the other. Rope in one hand, feet braced on the wall, raise and swing.

  It was a measure of his desperation that the first blow worked. Glass shattered inward. He dropped the cane, cursed as it fell out of sight, and grabbed for the rope with his second hand. Don’t fall, don’t fucking fall. The muscles in his arms screamed at the jolt of his body weight, but held. He got a foot onto the windowsill and the relief was amazing. With his bad leg, he kicked at the shards of glass still holding in the frame. They gave reluctantly. Finally he was able to swing himself into the room.

  One glance showed it was better than the furnace upstairs. Ryan leaned out and looked up. Mark was looking down. “It’s time, kid,” Ryan called up cheerfully. “Piece of cake. I’ll be reaching out around the rope. Come down slowly and I’ll guide you in. Use your feet on the rope as well as your hands, just like I showed you.”

  For a long moment he thought the boy had frozen up. Then Mark’s legs appeared over the sill. He slid out, chest on the sill, feet first, feeling for the rope with his sneakers. It swung, as Ryan tried to guide it from below. Mark kicked it, slipped and then found a grip. Slowly he moved one hand from the windowsill to the rope. Then the other.

  “I don’t know if I can hold on,” he hissed. “Shit. Ow.”

  “You can do it,” Ryan told him. “Just like in fucking gym class but this time you’re gonna show them all how it’s done. Just four feet or so to go, and I’ll have your legs. Come on, nice and easy.”

  Mark inched downward in lurching fractions. Ryan held the rope, held his breath. The boy’s feet were above him, and closer, and then he put a hand on one thin ankle. “Keep coming,” he said. “Almost there.” Two ankles, and now he’d catch any fall. He guided the boy’s feet inward, and then Mark’s grip was sliding. But he was in Ryan’s hands and the slide brought him inside the sill and against Ryan’s body.

  “Oh Jesus.” Mark was shaking. “Oh Jesus. I never want to do that again.”

  “Well, not without a real rope,” Ryan said lightly, an arm around him. “And yeah, maybe a net. So, Spiderman, ready to find a way out?”

  “No kidding.”

  “Let me go first.” Ryan led the way through this new space. Off to the right, the ceiling was beginning to scorch. To the left, he spotted a door. It was locked, but the catch was in the door handle. He unlocked it, and laid a hand flat on the surface. Cool. He pulled it open quickly. “Come on.”

  They burst out into the hallway. Ahead and to the right, smoke hazed the air. The left looked marginally better. “This way.” Fifty feet down the hall, he found a staircase. This door was cool too. He pulled it open. Stuffy, smoky, but not too bad.

  “Looks okay,” he said. “Move, kid, go fast and steady. And stay low. I’m right behind you.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Just go.” They were on the stairs. Down was always harder on his knee than up. The last thing Ryan needed was to fall. “Mark, I need you to go down as quickly as is safe. Get out, find the firefighters, tell them exactly where I am then find your dad. Can you do that?” Ryan gimped down slowly, knuckles white on the rail. Mark was keeping pace with him.

  “I want to stay with you.”

  Smoke drifted up the stairs, getting thicker. “Mark, the best thing you can do is send the guys with the gear up here after me. Okay?”

  “Fuck! Okay. Just don’t stop until you’re out. Promise.”

  “Are you nuts? I hate fire.” Ryan’s breath was coming hard. “I’m hurrying, in my own way. Stay low and get gone.”

  Mark clattered ahead, feet swift on the stairs. Ryan sighed. Just himself now, and the leg, and the smoke, and four more fucking flights. Each step got harder. He must have wrenched his back or scorched it or something, because he could feel the pull up his arm and across his shoulders. He started coughing and couldn’t stop. He had to pause for a moment, doubled over. Then he kept going. The firefighters met him on the last step.

  One of them reached for him, but he shook them off. “I’m fine. I’m out now. Be careful up there, guys. You’ve got alcohol, oxygen tanks, gas lines, some bacterial biohazard, and no water.”

  “Fucking lovely,” the lead man muttered through his mask. “Anyone else in here?”

  “Don’t know.” For a bare instant Ryan remembered what it was like to be one of these guys, the adrenaline and the sense of purpose. But his throat was raw and his chest was tight, and all he wanted now was to get outside and find John.

  He coughed, chest aching as he went past them, and out into the cold, clean, blessedly thin, breathable air. It turned out to be a side door, with a fine drift of snow dusted over the narrow steps. All around, the snow-covered grass was bright under the emergency lights. Just two steps down, two more steps and he’d be clear. Then he felt it happen. Shit, not now! But as his knee went out, he was caught in a familiar hold. Ryan looked up at John, and grinned manically. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ryan looked filthy, covered in soot, reeking of burned hair and smoke. John had never held anything so wonderful.

  He pulled Ry in close and just shut his eyes for an instant. He would never forget seeing Ryan hanging by one arm over that five-story drop. And the moment when the cane fell from his hand. John saw the downward motion, and for one heart-stopping moment thought it was Ryan falling. And there was nothing he could do from below, even as he reached up to catch. Then the cane just missed his arm, and Ryan pulled himself up to the window.

  In his arms, Ryan coughed, a wet, harsh sound. John guided him back, keeping an arm around his shoulders. “Come on. You need the paramedics.”

  “I’m fine,” Ryan said, still coughing.

  “Sure you are. But Mark’s over there and he’ll want to see you.” John hurried his boyfriend toward the ambulance, parked under a streetlight. Ryan leaned on him heavily. His knee was obviously not good. John shifted his grip to give more support.

  A paramedic hopped out of the back of the truck as they approached and strode toward them. “Where are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.

  “He probably inhaled a bunch of smoke,” John started.

  “No, you. The blood.”

  “Oh.” John looked down at himself. “It’s not mine. It’s from the boy who was shot.”

  “How is Patrick?” Ryan rasped.

  “Still alive when the ambulance pulled out,” John told him.

  “What about that guy?” the paramedic interrupted, pointing at Ryan’s foot.

  John looked down. In the snow around Ryan’s boot, red droplets were spreading.

  “Shit! Ry?”

  “I don’t feel anything,” he said. But he didn’t protest as the paramedic took hold of him from the other side, and they helped him over to the back doors.

  Mark was inside, sitting with an oxygen mask on his face. He yanked it off to say, “Ryan! Are you okay?”

  The second paramedic firmly reseated the mask over Mark’s nose and mouth, as Ryan was lifted up and onto the gurney. Ryan muttered, “Ouch. Damn it,” and rolled on his side. John stood in the doorway as the two men bent over Ryan, attaching leads to his chest, a clip to his finger, who-the-hell-knew what kind of lines and monit
ors. Ryan managed to say, “Don’t worry, Mark. I’m good,” before he got his own oxygen mask.

  John peered over one man’s shoulder as the paramedic slit Ryan’s jeans up the leg. From boot-top to just below the knee a deep bleeding gash marked Ryan’s calf. The paramedic quickly moved to apply a pressure wrap. “That’s going to need stitches,” the other one said.

  “How bad is it?” John asked anxiously.

  “Not too. They might want to top him up a pint, but it should heal. We need to get both these guys in for chest films though.”

  “I want to come along,” John said urgently.

  “Sorry, no room,” the man told him. “You’ll have to follow us.”

  Ryan tugged off his mask to say, “John, get a cab. Don’t drive.”

  John frowned. “What?”

  Ryan coughed hard, and managed to say, “Look at your hands”, before being masked again. John looked down. Well, hell. His hands were shaking. Guess I haven’t run out of adrenaline yet. Or maybe it was just the cold. He shuddered, realizing for the first time that he was standing on the snow in his blood-soaked T-shirt. One paramedic caught the motion and tossed him a blanket.

  “Wrap yourself up and get somewhere warm right now,” he directed, “unless you want to end up in the bed next to them.”

  In bed next to Ryan sounded really good right now, but he couldn’t afford to get sick. John stepped back, tugging the blanket around himself. The ambulance doors closed and it away pulled off the grass and out onto the road. For a moment John’s mind went blank. They were both safe. He could stop praying and screaming in his head now. He should do… something else. Phone. Cab.

  A hard grip on his arm turned him. “John Barrett. I should’ve known you’d be in the middle of this.”