Walking Disaster

“Travis! Travis! This way!” Adam stood in the doorway, waving me toward him.

I shook my head. “I’m going to get Pigeon!”

The path to the smaller room where Trenton and Abby escaped through was almost clear, so I sprinted across the room, hitting someone head-on. It was a girl, a freshman by the looks of her, her face covered with black streaks. She was terrified and scrambled to her feet.

“H-help me! I can’t . . . I don’t know the way out!” she said, coughing.

“Adam!” I yelled. I pushed her toward the direction of the exit. “Help her out of here!”

The girl raced for Adam, and he grabbed her hand before they disappeared through the exit before the smoke totally obscured it from view.

I pushed off the floor and ran toward Abby. Others were running around in the dark mazes too, crying and panting as they tried to find a way out.

“Abby!” I yelled into the darkness. I was terrified they had taken a wrong turn.

A small group of girls stood in the end of a hallway, crying. “Have you seen a guy and a girl go through here? Trenton’s about this tall, looks like me?” I said, holding a hand to my forehead.

They shook their heads.

My stomach sank. Abby and Trenton had gone the wrong way.

I pointed past the frightened group. “Follow that hall until you get to the end. There is a stairwell with a door at the top. Take it, and then turn left. There’s a window you can get out of.”

One of the girls nodded, wiped her eyes, and then barked at her friends to follow.

Instead of backtracking down the halls from where we came, I turned left, running through the blackness, hoping that I would get lucky and run into them somehow.

I could hear screaming from the main room as I pushed on, determined to make sure Abby and Trenton had found their way out. I wouldn’t leave until I knew for sure.

After running through several hallways, I felt panic weighing down my chest. The smell of smoke had caught up to me, and I knew that with the construction, the aged building, the furniture, and the sheets that covered them feeding the fire, the entire basement level would be swallowed by the flames in minutes.

“Abby!” I yelled again. “Trent!”

Nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Fire and Ice

THE SMOKE HAD BECOME INESCAPABLE. NO MATTER what room I found myself in, every breath was shallow and hot, burning my lungs.

I leaned down and grabbed my knees, panting. My sense of direction was weakened, both by the darkness, and the real possibility of not being able to find my girlfriend or brother before it was too late. I wasn’t even sure if I could find my own way out.

Between bouts of coughing, I heard a knocking sound coming from the adjacent room.

“Help me! Somebody help me!”

It was Abby. Renewed resolve came over me, and I scrambled toward her voice, feeling through the blackness. My hands touched a wall, and then I stopped when I felt a door. It was locked. “Pidge?” I yelled, yanking on the door.

Abby’s voice became more shrill, spurring me to take a step back and kick at the door until it flew open.

Abby stood on a desk just under a window, banging her hands against the glass so desperately, she didn’t even realize I’d broken into the room.

“Pigeon?” I said, coughing.

“Travis!” she cried, scrambling down from the desk and into my arms.

I cupped her cheeks. “Where’s Trent?”

“He followed them!” she bawled, tears streaming down her face. “I tried to get him to come with me, but he wouldn’t come!”

I looked down the hall. The fire was barreling toward us, feeding on the covered furniture that lined the walls.

Abby gasped at the sight, and then coughed. My eyebrows pulled in, wondering where in the hell he was. If he was at the end of that hallway, he couldn’t have made it. A sob welled up in my throat, but the look of terror in Abby’s eyes forced it away.

“I’m gonna get us outta here, Pidge.” I pressed my lips against hers in one quick, firm movement, and then climbed on top of her makeshift ladder.

I pushed at the window, the muscles of my arms quivering as I used all of my remaining strength against the glass.

“Get back, Abby! I’m gonna break the glass!”

Abby took one step away, her entire body shaking. My elbow bent as I reared back my fist, and I let out a grunt as I rammed it into the window. Glass shattered, and I reached out my hand.

“Come on!” I yelled.

The heat from the fire took over the room. Motivated by pure fear, I lifted Abby from the floor with one arm, and pushed her outside.

She waited on her knees as I climbed out, and then helped me to my feet. Sirens blared from the other side of the building, and red and blue lights from fire engines and police cruisers danced across the brick on the adjacent buildings.

I pulled Abby with me, sprinting to where a crowd of people stood in front of the building. We scanned the soot-covered faces for Trenton while I yelled his name. Each time I called out, my voice became more broken. He wasn’t there. I checked my phone, hoping he’d called. Seeing that he hadn’t, I slammed it shut.

Nearing hopelessness, I covered my mouth, unsure of what to do next. My brother had gotten lost in the burning building. He wasn’t outside, leading to only one conclusion.

“TRENT!” I screamed, stretching my neck as I searched the crowd.

Those that had escaped were hugging and whimpering behind the emergency vehicles, watching in horror as the pumper trucks shot water through the windows. Firefighters ran inside, pulling hoses behind them.

“He didn’t get out,” I whispered. “He didn’t get out, Pidge.” Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I fell to my knees.

Abby followed me to the ground, holding me in her arms.

“Trent’s smart, Trav. He got out. He had to have found a different way.”

I fell forward into Abby’s lap, gripping her shirt with both fists.

An hour passed. The cries and wailing from the survivors and spectators outside the building had softened to an eerie quiet. Firefighters brought out just two survivors, and then continuously came out empty-handed. Each time someone emerged from the building, I held my breath, part of me hoping it was Trenton, the other fearing that it was.

Half an hour later, the bodies they returned with were lifeless. Instead of performing CPR, they simply laid them next to the other victims and covered their bodies. The ground was lined with casualties, far outnumbering those of us that had escaped.

“Travis?”

Adam stood beside us. I got up, pulling Abby along with me.

“I’m glad to see you guys made it out,” Adam said, looking stunned and bewildered. “Where’s Trent?”

I didn’t answer.

Our eyes returned to the charred remains of Keaton Hall, the thick black smoke still billowing from the windows. Abby buried her face into my chest and gripped my shirt in her small fists.

It was a nightmarish scene, and all I could do was stare.

“I have to uh . . . I have to call my dad,” I said, furrowing my brow.

“Maybe you should wait, Travis. We don’t know anything, yet,” Abby said.

My lungs burned, just like my eyes. The numbers blurred together as tears overflowed and poured down my cheeks. “This ain’t f**king right. He shoulda never been there.”

“It was an accident, Travis. You couldn’t have known something like this was going to happen,” Abby said, touching my cheek.