As the flames burst to life, Marcus released his hold on the ladder and dropped back down to the second floor of the bunker. His leg slammed into the concrete as he landed. Pain shot up through his ankle, and he dropped to the ground.
Maggie grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him back from the ladder and the opening where the flames were licking at the air on the floor above. She helped him to his feet. The ankle protested when he put weight on it, but he had more important things to worry about.
Marcus willed the pain away and stepped back toward the ladder. He looked up to the next floor, trying to see if there was still a way out. Flames had begun to devour the plywood and the ladder leading to the surface still burned.
“Dammit!” he shouted.
They weren’t getting out that way. With limited oxygen, the fire might burn itself out. But by the time it did, two other things would have happened. First of all, they’d have no oxygen left to breathe. And second, the man who had lit the fire would have already used the shovel they’d left on the surface to re-cover the opening with at least a cubic yard’s worth of topsoil. A cubic foot of dirt typically weighed anywhere from ninety to one hundred and twenty pounds. So even if they could reach the cellar doors, there was no way they were going to be able to lift the 2,400 to 3,200 pounds of soil that would separate them from the surface.
Marcus shone his flashlight around the room. There were obviously no windows, nor were there any other entrances or exits. They were trapped.
Beaman was screaming hysterically. “I don’t want to burn!” The old man lunged for the ladder, but Marcus hauled him back. Beaman twisted and fought. Marcus released him, and he fell to the concrete.
“You won’t make it!”
“What are we going to do!”
Maggie bent down and grabbed hold of him. She tried to quiet him down. “We need to be calm and think. We’ll get out of this.”
Marcus admired her composure under the current pressure. He thought that maybe he should cut her a bit more slack if they lived through this. He also noted the confident look in her eyes. She had faith in him. Faith that he would figure something out. Faith that he would save them.
The only problem was that he was coming up empty. There was no way out.
He closed his eyes and pictured the structure in his mind. He analyzed it. Broke down its components. Looked for weaknesses. The cellar doors were blocked. The vents and pipes were sealed and were too small anyway.
Maybe they could blow the doors with something. Marcus thought of their handguns and the ammunition they used. Each .45 ACP round contained about seven grains of gunpowder. His gun had a ten-round clip, with one in the chamber. He had two extra magazines and imagined Maggie had the same. Her 9mm rounds would have less gunpowder, but there were also more of them, which would even out. Plus two backup weapons. He estimated they had close to one hundred rounds between them. That was about seven hundred grains of propellant.
Not nearly enough force to blow the door. Plus, how would they get it there through the fire? And they’d have already suffocated by the time they could open all the bullets and empty them of the propellant they contained.
He hadn’t seen anything else flammable on this floor or the one above.
Dammit, Marcus. Think. Adapt, improvise, and overcome.
But he was drawing a blank. There was simply no way out. They were going to die down there.