For an instant I lay stunned on the pavement, able only to stare at the flames licking the remains of Patriot’s Blood. The bomb’s concussion had deafened me, so even while glass continued to shatter and beams fell, the horrific scene appeared no more dimensional than a silent movie.
Then I remembered Sandra.
Was she dead? Or was she trapped inside, screaming for help to a woman who could no longer hear?
Mercifully numb, though I knew the pain would come, I scrambled to my feet and looked desperately along the pavement. My carry-all lay a couple of feet from me, but the cell phone peeking out of it had cracked down the middle. So much for calling 911. Still, someone nearby must have heard the blast and would send help. But probably not soon enough for Sandra. If she had any chance for survival at all, it would have to come from me.
I took a deep breath and ran back into the building.
The reception area was a shambles, with overturned file cabinets and desks partially covered by smoldering heaps of crumbling drywall. Thankfully, the worst of the fire was still confined to the back of the building, but it was only a matter of minutes, possibly seconds, before all of Patriot’s Blood’s paper-rich offices blossomed into a funeral pyre.
“Sandra!” I shouted, ignoring the fact that I couldn’t hear her even if she answered. If she still lived, I wanted to give her hope.
The heat was intense, bearable only because the blast had punctured the roof so that the flames at the back of the office vented upward. My immediate problem was the acrid black smoke rolling slowly toward me, lit at the edges by sulfurous yellow and orange. Remembering that more people die of smoke inhalation than burns, I ripped off my blouse and tied it, bandana-like, over the lower part of my face. A weak protection against the approaching smoke’s deadly chemicals, but better than none.
I screamed Sandra’s name again.
“Sandra! Where are you?”
As I staggered barefoot through the rubble, keeping my head as low as possible, my ankle slammed against something hard. Looking down, I saw Gloriana’s old Underwood typewriter. The blast had thrown it through the wall and into the reception area, where it now rested on its side against a metal filing cabinet. Nearby, a tongue of flame licked through the yard-wide hole the typewriter had left behind.
“Sandra! I can’t hear! You’ll have to move, show me where you are!”
Nothing.
The flames from the back marched silently toward the reception area, consuming stacked manuscripts and books. All of Gloriana Alden-Taylor’s ugly dreams. And me, eventually, if I didn’t get out of here.
But not without Sandra. Refusing to give in to my fear, I forced myself to look away from the flames’ steady progress.
“Sandra! Please! Show me where you are!” My throat was so raw with inhaled dust and smoke I wondered if I had made any noise at all. I continued calling her name, turning over large pieces of drywall that could hide a human body.
“Sandra! Move! Do something!”
Then, from underneath a toppled file cabinet, a movement. A small hand inching its way out, fingers fluttering.
Sandra was still alive, the cabinet that crushed her also protecting her.
I stumbled sore-footed across fallen beams to reach her, screaming that I was coming, that I would save her, to hold on. Ignoring the splintered beam that raked its teeth across my leg, I knelt down and grasped her hand. “Don’t worry, I’m getting you out of here.”
Could she breathe? The air around us was beginning to thicken, sucking away what little oxygen remained in the ruined room. I probably had only seconds before, blouse bandana or not, noxious fumes overcame me.
I let go of her hand, grabbed the corner of the file cabinet, and heaved. Nothing. The file cabinet was too heavy, probably loaded down with manuscripts.
“Sandra, try and help me! Push against the cabinet!”
A feeble twitch, then nothing. She was too weak. God only knew what injuries she had sustained.
I pulled at the cabinet again, but even with my years of weight-training at the gym, I didn’t have the strength to do more than shift it slightly. Was I injuring her further? Was she screaming?
Greenish-black smoke belched toward us, and right behind it, a wall of flame. Now the heat was almost unbearable. If I stayed here, I was as doomed as Sandra.
Who was I kidding? The whole situation was hopeless.
I turned away from her, hoping that the way remained clear to the door. It did. Hardening my heart, I started toward it.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sandra’s hand again. Reaching up, palm out. Begging for her life.
I turned back.
“I won’t leave you!” I screamed at her, struggling once more with the file cabinet.
After one more heave, the file cabinet shifted, but not enough to free her. I needed something to give me leverage.
And then I saw it.
Like Gloriana’s typewriter, the toilet plunger had been thrown through the reception room wall all the way from the bathroom. It lay on top of an overturned desk, rubber suction cup half burned away, but with the wooden handle miraculously intact.
In one fluid movement, I grabbed the plunger, shoved it under the edge of the filing cabinet and heaved. The cabinet shifted. I slipped the handle even further under the cabinet and heaved again.
The plunger snapped in two.
But not before I saw Sandra, lying on her stomach, one hand over her head, the other stretched toward me.
Still alive.
The smoke rolled closer, followed by the hungry flames. Desperate, adrenalin spiking, I looked around for another tool.
There. A two-by-four, fallen from the ceiling.
I took it in my hands and shoved it under the cabinet. Then, with one final heave, the cabinet slid away from Sandra. Her mouth opened in a scream I couldn’t hear. “There, there,” I said, leaning down, trying to lift her into my arms.
Sandra was too big. She was every bit as tall as I, but much heavier. A safe carry wasn’t possible, so I’d have to do the best I could.
Realizing I was probably aggravating her injuries, I slipped my arms under hers, wrapped them around her chest, then locked my fingers together. I could feel her uneven breaths. Was she still screaming? No matter. Gritting my teeth against the heat, I began to drag her limp form over the rubble-strewn floor. Behind us, the flames consumed the wall and started across the floor. The file cabinet I’d found Sandra under was already scorching.
“It’s okay,” I lied. “We’ll be fine.”
Once, her shoe—miraculously still on—snagged on a splintered piece of wood, and I had to stop to free her once again. In my haste to rip her shoe away, I tore her skin and she began to bleed from yet another wound.
But pain was better than death. I should know.
“Hold on. We’re almost there,” I grunted, wishing that I could hear her, if only to know that she was still alive.
The smoke was blinding me now, an almost solid mass churning around us, as if purposely keeping us from escape. The blouse I’d wrapped so hopefully around my face no longer kept out the fumes, and I could feel them enter my nostrils, my throat.
Would I be able to make it to the blown-out door before the smoke won and I lost consciousness?
Better not think about that. Think about the jasmine-scented night air, and beneath it, the cool pavement. All I wanted was to reach the street, lie down, and sleep. Then again, why wait? I closed my eyes against the smoke, thinking that all I had to do was drop my burden, buckle my knees, and go to sleep right here. Why continue this ridiculous struggle?
Then Sandra’s hands grasped mine. I opened my watering eyes, squinted through the seductive tendrils of black smoke, and saw her lips move.
I think she was saying “My babies, my babies.…”
No, I couldn’t give up and die right now. Not with a clean conscience, I couldn’t.
Refusing to look at the flames, to breath in the acrid smoke, I hitched her up again and hauled her forward.
Toward the soft night.