“Good,” Hansen said. “You’ve got probably sixty seconds to get out of there before you’re screwed, Butler.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Cap,” I teased, making a beeline for the front door. It was harder to see my path returning as the fire had burned through most of the floor and slashed up and down the walls, devouring everything in its dark path. I saw the open door then, could barely make out the sliver of sunlight that cut through the smoke near the open doorway. But there it was. Freedom.
I was less than ten steps out when it happened.
I heard it first. I heard it before anything else happened. I heard it before I could think, breathe, or even react.
It was a roar. If anyone tells you that a fire cannot roar, you can call bullshit on them. Because yes, flames roar, and now this one was screaming like a lion right on top of its prey, confident, cocky, relentless.
It had me, and it knew it had me.
The next sound was the splintering wood again. Oh, how loud it was. As the flames above my head and back licked my body, I fell, hard, onto the concrete floor. My helmet bounced off the concrete with such force that it cracked, and as the sound of the shrieking flames became a dull roar in my ears, the second floor collapsed, and wood, debris, metal, and more flames fell from the sky and hit me … struck me.
I screamed as a burning beam slammed my lower leg, crushing it beneath hundreds of pounds of smoldering wood. It was a pain so real, so intense that for a moment, I wished the damn thing would have just done me the favor of killing me.
I was now pinned against the floor, captive on my stomach as the flames and debris closed around me. Another few seconds and the other floors would collapse, bringing the entire building down. It had held out longer than it should have at this point, but clearly, it was done playing chicken with the idiot who had stayed.
Grabbing for my radio, hoping it hadn’t been damaged, I spoke into it. “I’m trapped. Less than ten feet from the door.”
Silence. A silence I knew all too well.
“I’m coming in to get you,” Hansen said, and I closed my eyes, feeling sick.
“Don’t.” Pain filled my chest, my arms, and my torso. But nothing was worse than the pain in my leg. Even the adrenaline coursing through my body didn’t help ease that pain. “Don’t come in here, Tate. It’s going to go.”
He didn’t answer. And I knew why. He was already headed in.
“Fuck.”
Flames licked at my boots as they jumped from one wooden beam to another, desks caught fire and burst into flames, and paperwork shriveled on the ground. I rested my head against the floor and covered my head with my arm, protecting myself the best I could.
“Call out!” Hansen shouted. “Butler, where are you?”
I tried to yell, but the weakness in my body overtook me suddenly, and I choked into a coughing fit. I gagged, spitting black saliva, and made a valiant effort to raise my arm. The crack in my helmet had expanded, and tarlike smoke seeped into my face, nose, mouth, and lungs.
“I’m here,” Hansen shouted, dropping to his knees on the floor beside me. The burning beam still pinned me to the concrete, and Hansen left my side briefly to put all his weight against the shaft, grounding his feet into the black floor to steady himself. For a second that went on for too long, I was sure that the beam wouldn’t budge and that I would die right here, pinned by a burning log to the floor, seven feet away from an escape.
But it did budge. It took a moment, but it did, and as the beam rolled off my leg and to the floor, pain raced through my body once more. If I thought being crushed by the beam felt painful, it was nothing compared to the feeling now.
“Let’s go,” Hansen said, hauling me to my feet like I weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. “You don’t get to die today. You have to stand up at my wedding, remember?”
As we crossed the floor towards the door—both of us silently praying that if the end came, it would be quick—the building collapsed, showering down, and our last three steps had to be a jump, a jump out of the way and to the safety of outside.
We were bombarded as other firefighters grabbed our bodies and dragged us as far as possible from the building as it came down, thundering and howling again like burning buildings sometimes do. As the structure fell, Hansen rolled over on his side to scowl at me, yanking off my mask and his in the process.
“Who the hell do you think you are, trying to kill your newly engaged best friend?” he sat up, with Macie’s help, and shook his head. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
“Close call, gentlemen,” Chief Davis said, stepping in front of us from where we were still hovering on the ground. “I don’t know how I feel about it. Was there or was there not another victim on the main level, Korbin?”
“There was no one that I could see.” I coughed hard, and Hansen leaned over to hit me on the back. When I composed myself, I looked at Chief Davis. “I wouldn’t have ever forgiven myself,” I said. “I had to go back.”
Chief Davis said nothing for a long moment as he watched Macie and our other medic, Kass, load me up on a stretcher and secure my throbbing leg. It felt shattered. Not broken, but shattered, and I feared what kind of news I would receive on it.
“Take care of him,” Chief Davis finally said, patting my good, unbroken leg. He reached down for Hansen’s hand and helped him to his feet, looking between the two of us. “Quit being the heroes,” he said. “Or one day, you’ll be dead heroes.”
Macie gave me some painkillers on the way to the ER. They weren’t great, but they were undoubtedly better than nothing, so I wasn’t about to complain.
“Any dizziness or nausea?” she asked as Kass drove, lights on, to the hospital.
