The people gathered in their groups turned away from the fire and towards Sam, in his costume, and slowly directed their phones away from the blaze and on to him, on to the costume.
One of them had called 999 and was giving the address.
He flew up the stairs, rounding the last corner, shoulder into the wall, and on to the top floor. Smoke was coming out from under Zac’s door and he could hardly see. People were banging on the door. Sam pushed past them and they stared at him.
There were two little kids in pyjamas, a boy and a girl.
‘Get everyone out,’ he said to the father. ‘I’ve got this.’
‘Dad, is that the Phantasm?’ he heard the boy whisper.
‘Come on,’ their mother said, and she put her hand on Sam’s shoulder.
He looked down at the hand, a tattoo just showing under her sleeve, of a green lizard with a red stripe running up its back. And then she was gone.
He slammed the door with his fists.
‘Zac!’ he shouted. Discordance in his voice.
He pounded again but nothing happened. Taking a step back, he thrust his weight into the heavy door but it didn’t budge. The deadbolts. He used his legs to kick off the wall opposite, throwing everything he could into it, but the door didn’t give an inch.
His mind tripped, refusing to accept it. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t possible. This wasn’t possible.
The devil is a code that runs through us all.
He pounded on the door. ‘Zac! Don’t do this. Please.’
God, how long had they been in there? The panic leaked everywhere inside him. He barged the door, again and again, but nothing happened, and nothing would happen. His brain wasn’t working right. He thought he was going to collapse.
‘Sarah!’
His voice split. He kicked the door hard with the sole of his boot but it didn’t even shake. Every second lost was a nightmare. Oh God, he was too late. It was happening all over again. He put his back to the door, slid down to the ground and closed his eyes. His mind swirled with chaos, he was losing control as the passageway filled with more smoke.
There had to be something.
Then, through the darkness, he remembered something he’d been told once. Not by his father this time, but by his mother. He saw her, saw her sitting at the table in the back garden in the sun. She was smiling: You can do anything you want, Sam, anything at all.
Eyes open. He pulled on his mask.
More people were coming up the stairs but it wasn’t the fire crew, it was more neighbours in their pyjamas with their phones. He pushed past them, telling them to get out, and leapt up the steps to the fire exit. He shouldered through the door and across the little garden to the edge of the building, where he looked over the neck-high wall at the orange glow coming from the window.
There was a heavy wooden bench that he dragged over.
‘Help me,’ he called to the people who’d followed him up.
Two tall youths came to him, pushing the bench across the gravel and at right-angles to the wall. Sam took his length of rope from his pack and tied two knots, one to the leg and one to the armrest. He tried the rope. It held.
A weird sense drove him on; the chaos you feel when the edge of a cliff calls you closer. He thought: what if I’d never played that song on the jukebox? His mother’s favourite song, her final gift.
He hopped on to the bench again and looked over the wall, checking distances. It was a long way down to the people with their phones tilted up at the burning building. He wrapped the other end of the rope around his gloves, praying the length was right. This had to work. He could have done nothing for his family; it was just an accident. This was different.
He felt electric, invincible, so much more than a frightened man; like he really could do anything. The wind whipped and made the sky a madness. He took a deep breath and checked his grip, his fingers tapping the rope. He thought of Sarah. He stood on the far end of the bench.
‘Mate, you should wait for the firemen,’ he heard someone say.
‘Nah, go for it, mate, you legend,’ the other youth said.
The costume would protect him. He thought of Sarah again and briefly closed his eyes.
Images of his life flashed before him, just like they say they do, images as on a deck of cards being fanned, a new image on each card. His office desk with the bonsai tree, Sally sitting at a small table in his bedroom as he revised for exams, the swimming pool next door with the brilliant-blue sky, the climb up to his old Batcave, Sarah drinking Guinness reading her book, Sarah sleeping on her back with her face turned towards him, Sarah’s face when they’d been running to get out of the rain and the way her glasses were dappled with raindrops, his friends sitting in the fire glow of the pub, Mr Okamatsu sitting on his porch with his Japanese garden before him, his mum and dad at the kitchen table checking bills, sitting there talking, Steve and Sally lying on a blanket on the living-room floor just after they’d been born, Sarah eating salad, Sarah reading a book, watching TV, dancing, singing, smiling, and then, finally, his mum and dad at the edge of the magical pool on the side of the mountain, standing there in the sunbeam. All of this happened in a nanosecond.
When he opened his eyes he could see for miles. Far away on the horizon a thundercloud wall was moving in, deep grey and so charged you could almost see the electricity dance. A crack of blue lightning cut down through the sky and the wind whipped.
The future can be as good as the past.
All sound fell away, the audience of his life held their breath . . .
Be brave.
Sam ran for the wall, along the length of the bench, and launched himself over the edge, head first, horizontal, flying. He opened his eyes and saw the ground hundreds of feet below him, tiny matchstick men, people in stasis. Gravity reached out and brought him down, he braced for the rope jolt, and when it came he felt the muscles tear in his arms and across his chest, and pain flashed from his hand across his body, but he held on. His trajectory was torn from its vector and he was heading now back to the building, swinging in, feet first, towards the direct centre of the single-glazed shitty window of the high-rise. He hit it hard, turned his face away and closed his eyes as the window gave. His body kept going, sliding through the shattered glass, the pads and guards of his costume and mask taking the brunt.
And then, he was in.
Landing hard on his hip, he took in the room with a sense of despair as a tongue of flame flew out the smashed window above him.
The flat was thick with smoke, which followed the fire out the window. There was fire everywhere. The heat was crazy.
There were two bodies lying on the floor, Zac in the centre of the room, face down, and then Sarah, his Sarah, slumped against the wall near the radiator. Alone. There was a shudder in his heart. Her head lolled to one side, her glasses halfway down her nose. The shock of sadness amplified inside him. He was on his feet and over to her, by her side, sliding on his knees, resting her head on his shoulder. He tried to stir her but she was already gone.
‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.’
A craziness in his mind almost made him sit next to her so they could drift away together but his other half told him about the oxygen mask in his pack. He tried it on himself, taking two plentiful breaths.
He sat Sarah up and put the mask over her.
The heat was immense but there was a clear path to the door between the flames. He was across the room before he knew it, stopping at Zac and fishing the phone out of his pocket, then sliding the locks across, opening the door. The flames, galvanised by the new oxygen, whooshed across the open space.
‘Get him out,’ he called to the people outside the door, pointing at Zac.
There were now flames between him and Sarah but he ran through them, covering his face. There was the taste of blood in his mouth and when he put his hand to his face it came away red. He put her jaw into the palm of his hand.
‘Come back,’ he said.
But she couldn’t hear him. She was dead. Everyone was dead again.
He hugged her tight and he started to cry, no numbness, no protection, he started to cry. Great waves flowed out of him and he felt his body grow light, and then he stopped and breathed and watched the movement in the room, the flames dancing, something wonderful in the way they moved, the way the curtains being blown by the wind were like rainbows of thick magma.
Without effort he picked her up and powered through the wall of fire that he was sure he felt move aside as he passed, and he went out into the passageway just as the fire crew pushed past him, and he took her up to the little roof garden, where he laid her on the gravel.
‘You have to come back.’ He spoke low, almost inaudibly, his voice thick with tears. ‘Please,’ he said, into her ear. ‘Come back.’
The world was motion and force. CPR. He needed to do CPR. All the faces of the people stared at him with so much sorrow, he thought he would melt. And then he watched their faces change, and felt the stirring in his arms.
Look at Sarah, said a higher Sam.
And Sarah was looking back at him. His chest fell into his gut and he pulled her so tight he thought he might snap her.
She pulled the oxygen mask off her face. He felt her shake and there were tears in her eyes when she saw him. He helped her up and somebody wrapped a blanket around her. Then, just hard enough to make itself known, there was a little quake in his heart.
She was alive. At last he could see it now, the arrow of the future. Others still encircled them on the little rooftop garden and her warmth flowed right through him.
Every past was once a future.
He held her tight, as the world went crazy all around them.