J. Konrath - Rusty Nail

I coughed, and spit, and crawled through the doorway. My left hand screamed at me, and I squinted at it but couldn’t make out the burns from the soot. I made a fist. It hurt, but was still functional.

Still on my knees, I took a quick look around and figured out I was in the living room. The ceiling was obscured by a thick cloud of gray smoke, and the walls looked like reverse waterfalls; flames flowing upward rather than water coming down. And the noise – a sort of low roaring sound, mixed in with the crackle of a billion dry leaves. Loud enough to mask my coughing. The sound of raging fire.

Twenty feet away, I saw the lower half of a doorway. I scrambled toward it on all fours, ignoring the pain in my burned hand, getting within fifteen feet… ten feet…

Two legs cut through the smoke and appeared in the doorway, obscured from the knees up. They wore loose jeans and construction boots, unlaced.

“Police!” I croaked, fumbling for my holster.

I heard the shot at the same moment I felt it, an explosive BOOM passing the right side of my head. I cleared leather and drew a bead, firing three shots at the center mass of the shooter just as the legs darted back.

My head rang with a deep resonation that shut out the sounds of the flames. I rolled right, on my stomach, keeping my gun on the doorway. I waited fifteen seconds. Thirty seconds.

My feet got hot, and I chanced a quick look and saw the fire creeping up behind me. I was about to be engulfed.

I crawled forward, using my legs and my burned hand, my.38 still trained ahead of me. The smoke had filled the room, hovering so low, it was in my face. I fired once more through the doorway, and then got on my feet and ran through it in a crouch.

A quick glance around showed me my mistake.

I’d run right into hell.

ALEX FROWNS AT the miscalculation. The front door, the escape route, is an inferno, a giant wall of flame that is impossible to get through. The other two windows facing the street are also blazing.

There is no way out.

Alex thinks for a moment, then dashes through the haze and up the stairs. Visibility is poor, and it’s hard to breathe, but Alex remembers that the master bedroom has a window facing the street. A window that opens onto the roof.

A gunshot, from downstairs. Jack is still alive. Doubtful she will be for long, though.

Eyes burning and teary, Alex squeezes them closed and feels along the wall, eventually arriving at the bedroom. The latch opens easily, and Alex pulls up the window with enough force to crack the frame.

The cool Chicago air is like honey. Alex sucks down a breath, wiping away soot from stinging eyes. Walking onto the roof is ridiculously easy, and Alex follows the gutter around to the rear of the house.

Sirens pierce the night, closing in from all directions. Alex gets down on all fours and scoots to the edge of the roof. The drop is about twenty feet, onto grass, but the gutter looks sturdy.

Gripping the aluminum, Alex swings over the side and hangs for a moment before falling to the ground.

Ankles tight together, knees bent, Alex hits the earth hard but unharmed. Alex ponders for a moment – the suitcase is still in the house, but there’s nothing in it that can’t be replaced.

Jack is also still in the house.

Not the way Alex had intended for Jack to die, but a fitting way to end the lieutenant’s life. Choking, burning, and panicked. What more could a gal ask for?

Digging keys from a front pocket, Alex enters the garage, opens the garage door, and hops into the rental car. The sirens are deafening now. Alex starts the car and guns the engine.

A quick left down the alley proves to be a mistake; there’s an enormous fire engine blocking the exit. Alex checks the rearview and sees another truck, also crammed onto the narrow alley.

Leaving on foot isn’t an option. There are things in the trunk. Incriminating things.

Alex jams the accelerator to the floor and the tires screech. Between the fire engine and the building is a small gap. It doesn’t look wide enough to get a car through, but Alex has to try.

Twenty.

Thirty.

At forty miles an hour the car reaches the gap and Alex grips the steering wheel in iron hands. There’s some yelling – firefighters pointing at the car – and a clunking noise as both the driver’s-side and passenger’s-side mirrors tear from the chassis, but Alex makes it through the hole, clips a fireman and sends him spinning into his truck, and then speeds down Hamilton, grinning like the devil himself.

LIKE ALL CURIOUS teenagers, I’d tried cigarettes. I decided early on that a nicotine buzz wasn’t worth holding hot smoke in my lungs.

That popped into my head as I crawled across the smoldering carpet, my head pressed to the floor in an attempt to suck the last bit of oxygen floating at the bottom of the living room.

The ringing in my head was subsiding, the fire sound coming back. I squinted through the thick smoke, which felt like sandpaper on my eyes, and wondered where I was crawling to. Disorientation had dug its claws in, and I might have been crawling around in circles. I tried to go where there weren’t flames, but there were more flames than not, and they danced and jumped around, igniting more things.

The heat had officially become unbearable. One time many years ago, in an effort to bake away my clammy white pallor, I’d visited Oak Street beach in July and had forsaken the sunscreen in order to minimize my tan time. I’d fallen asleep, and wound up with a nice case of sun poisoning, my skin so red, it had blistered.

This hurt worse. Though I wasn’t actually on fire, it was so hot, I felt like I was on fire. The sweat poured out of me in rivulets, but evaporated almost as soon as my pores squeezed it out.

My knuckles hit something ahead of me. A scorched wall. I followed it, blind and hacking, and it fell away into an opening.

Stairs.

Going up is never a smart idea in an emergency situation, but I couldn’t stay where I was. I climbed the stairs on my hands and knees, my.38 still gripped in my fist. Soon it would be too hot to hold. I wondered how stable the rounds were – on top of everything, I didn’t need my bullets exploding in my gun.

The higher I climbed, the smokier it got, which made sense because smoke rises. When I reached the top of the stairs, I couldn’t see and I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt like two ashy lumps of charcoal, and I was light-headed and in surround-sound pain. I’d begun to cry between coughing fits.

The fire was right behind me.

Not knowing which way to go, I continued on my present course and felt tile under my hands. A bathroom. I got on my knees, felt up the wall, and hit the switch, hoping to turn on the fan to suck away some of the smoke.

No electricity.

Frantic and blind, I closed the door behind me and swung my hands wildly around, bumping the sink. I turned on the water, cupping some in my hands, splashing it onto my face to clear my eyes.

It helped a little, and I could make out the window opposite the sink. A ventilation window. Too small to crawl through, but I sure could use some ventilation right about now.

I fumbled with the latch, tugged it open, and took big, greedy gulps of cool night air.

Above the din of the flames, I heard sirens.

“Help!” I tried to yell. But it only came out as a croak.

I holstered my gun and felt around for a towel. Holding it tight, I stuck my arm out the window and wagged the towel frantically, like I was signaling to surrender. The window faced one of the narrow spaces between buildings, and all I could see was the side of the duplex next to me.

Then the heat suddenly kicked up, and I noted with displeasure that the bathroom door I closed moments ago was ablaze.