IMAN FELL TO her knees in front of the toilet, unsure exactly how she’d gotten there.
That guy just shot at me. He had a gun and he shot at me.
She recalled hurling the frying pan, her rage obscuring the memory like streaks of grease across the lens of her mind. The throw had landed true, a shot she never could have made without adrenaline twanging her muscles. The man had turned to her and fired, and now she was kneeling on the cold bathroom tile, her stomach a slipknot pulled ruthlessly tight. Her belly hitched, and everything she’d eaten poured out of her mouth in a bilious stream. Stomach acid stung her throat, left her lips feeling stringy and chapped. She wiped her face with her forearm, aware the guy with the gun could be bearing down on her that very instant but too wracked by belly cramps to do much about it. When the worst of them passed and she still wasn’t shot, she pulled herself to her feet and staggered into the hall.
The two men were gone. Silence rang in their absence, broken by a low liquid moaning from behind the futon. Officer Myers lay in a stagnant pool of her own blood. The right half of her uniform was soaked from chest to knee, the saturated fabric drying to a dull, velvety maroon. She stirred like a woman in the throes of a bad dream, head flopping from side to side, legs kicking restlessly. Iman shoved the futon aside and crouched down next to her, shaking her shoulder harder than intended in an effort to bring her back to her senses.
“Officer Myers. Officer Myers! Brian and Professor Motes are gone! Did those men take them? Hey?”
“Nngh.” Myers tried to shrug free of Iman’s grip. Iman shook harder.
“You have to get up. We need to go to the hospital.”
“C . . . call . . . backup,” Myers breathed. Her voice came out weak and tinny, as if played through blown speakers. A coppery stink wafted from her lips.
Iman fumbled through the wreckage of her apartment for her cell phone. She found it beneath the overturned coffee table and dialled 9-1-1. The operator came on after a single ring.
“Hi, a couple guys just broke into my apartment! They shot one of my friends and I think took the others with them!” She rattled off her address and hung up before the operator could ask more questions.
Myers pulled herself upright, grunting with the effort. Her skin grew waxy and pale, her eyes bloodshot and glossy. Iman eased her back down, tucking a pillow under her head.
“Stay still. The paramedics will be here soon. You shouldn’t move until they get here or you might do more damage.”
“Smell . . . smoke . . . ” Myers said, and coughed. A mist of spittle hit Iman’s chin. She wiped it away as discreetly as possible, sniffing the air. It did smell like smoke. Standing up, she saw eddies of it flowing along her ceiling from the cracks in her front door. She threw the door open, admitting a torrent of billowing grey soot. It lapped at her face, stinging her eyes and filling her nostrils. She ducked down beneath the curtain of ash and crawled to the third floor bannister.
A fire raged in the building’s front landing, consuming the stairs and singeing the walls a charcoal black. Empty canisters of paint thinner littered the floor, and a plastic jerry can of gasoline sat on the stoop. She glimpsed the building’s fire extinguisher and laughed. It was a puny thing. Even if she reached it, she doubted it could put all this out.
A bulbous, off-white object smashed through the lobby window. It came to rest in the nest of flames, its rounded edges peeling in the heat. What the hell? Squinting through the smoke, Iman spotted the steel valve sprouting from its narrow end, surrounded by the metal frills of a protective collar.
“Ah, fuck,” she groaned, and threw her arm over her face moments before the propane tank exploded.
Heat raked her like the talons of some hellish bird of prey. She fell backwards, grabbing a bannister to keep from tumbling into the fire’s crackling gullet. Flames twined up the stairs, time lapse tendrils of some nightmare vine. Iman scurried back into her apartment and kicked the door shut. She yanked fistfuls of hair and tried to think. The building was brick, but its fixtures were mostly wood and old as hell. They’d go up like so much kindling. The front door was impassable, the back door non-existent. The apartment was the definition of jury-rigged. It abided by no fire codes, had no contingencies for evacuation. She could theoretically climb down from the balcony—the guy with the gun had made it up that way easily enough—but not with Myers on her back.
Unless . . .
Running into her bedroom, Iman tore her sheets off the bed and ransacked her linen closet, grabbing every spare blanket and beach towel. She wound them into crude strands and knotted them together, corner to corner, until she had a rope thirty or so feet long. At each knot, she grabbed a hank of fabric to either side and pulled as hard as she could. They all held, though she exerted much less tensile strain with her arms than she would with her full body weight—not to mention Myers’.
The air in the living room had grown hazy with smoke. It covered the ceiling in crenulated waves, sheets and strata morphing with the caprices of the wind blowing in from the balcony. She considered trying to manhandle the mattress over the edge to give herself something soft to land on, but there wasn’t enough time. Even at the threshold of the balcony, she could hear the dull roar of the flames in the hall, feel their heat snorting through the cracks in the door. The doorknob glowed a dull molten red.
She locked her forearms under Myers’ armpits and dragged her upright. The cop’s feet slipped and flopped against the floor, clumsy as an infant’s. Her heart pounded a frenetic, irregular beat. Step by dragging step, they managed a herky-jerky shuffle to the balcony, the autumn wind a balm on Iman’s blistered forehead.
Iman looped the sheet-rope around Myer’s chest and triple-knotted it. She pulled the rope tight until Myers grunted from the pressure and helped the officer climb over the railing.
“This is . . . fucking nuts . . . ” Myers heaved.
“Better than burning alive. Just hold still, okay? I’ll lower you down.”
Myers eased herself over the precipice, slowly giving the sheets her full weight. Iman bit her lower lip and held the rope taut, leaning backwards to leverage her meager weight against Myers’. Her feet slid over the wooden deck before catching on a baluster. She dropped to her knees, using the guardrail as a crude pulley, and fed the rope through her hands inch by endless inch. The passing fabric scraped her palms raw. She bit down on the pain until her lower lip bled. Cramps gnarled her shoulders, set her thigh muscles aflame.
Eventually Myers touched ground and the rope went slack. Iman’s arms sang with sudden relief. She allowed herself a moment’s breath before tying the sheet-rope to a baluster. Her body cried out for rest, but she could afford none. Behind her the apartment door burst inward, spewing splinters of flaming wood. Tentacles of flame probed through the opening, ensnaring her kitchen table and slinking across her carpet. She slipped over the balustrade and abseiled down the wall, shimmying where her feet failed to touch the brick. As she set down beside Myers, her legs gave out, and Iman collapsed beside the officer. She lay there as the approaching sirens swelled in volume, their lights casting red-blue palls on the tree overhead. A thin, throaty laugh escaped her as the paramedics arrived. It seemed about all she had left to lose.