Melissa James - The Rebel King

The floor started buckling beneath Charlie’s feet.

Slowly, inch by inch, he spread his feet further apart, feeling it give way each time he moved. His feet began to burn through his boots. ‘We’re gonna make it out, sweetie.’ Hearing a voice, even his own, gave him comfort when everything was going down. ‘Our guys are the best.’ He coughed. Crouch low for air, idiot! But he couldn’t shift down; it would cave the whole place in.

He was about to choke. He couldn’t risk the floor going with the motion. He must breathe now, or risk both their lives when he fell. He watched the baby breathe in, took the mask, breathed in and shoved it back on her face before she inhaled again.

No talking now. His world consisted of watching her breaths: in, take the mask and breathe, back to her, and count the seconds. Glass smashed in the room next door. The fire was in the back walls, and the window had burst. The monster was about to hit.

A whoosh of clean air filled the room. The door burst into glowing sparks as the fire leaped in to meet the oxygen. A voice screamed, ‘Give her to me!’

Thank you, God! Charlie leaped for the bed where the window was. ‘Take her!’

The bed sagged sideways as the floor collapsed under his weight. He passed the child over as the heat at his back seared him. The hairs on his neck withered and his skin was melting—he could actually smell his flesh cooking.

‘Jump, mate!’

He could barely move; the heat, pain and lack of air had left him in a stupor. One hand gripped the window sash; the other made it. Good. I can do this. One knee up …

The bed lurched back into the maw where the floor had been moments before. His body jerked back, but his desperate fingers held on. ‘Help,’ he whispered as his hands lost strength and smoke filled his lungs, his nose and throat, his eyes…

Hands came out of the cloudy darkness, lifting him through the window into a safety harness to lower him to the ground. ‘We’ve got you.’ It was Leopard. ‘You saved her, Charlie. The little girl’s going to make it, and so are you.’

Charlie coughed and coughed; the fresh air hurt, because the hairs lining his airways were gone or damaged. ‘Toby?’

‘He’s okay, he saved the boy. We’ve done all we can. Let’s go!’

He knew by what the captain hadn’t said that someone was dead.

Oh, dear God…those poor kids had lost their mother.

As he was winched to safety, he felt the flashes and glare of media cameras turned on him. He heard the words ‘hero’ and ‘saving the lives of a family’, but he couldn’t answer questions or accept praise for doing his duty. He fell to his knees, coughed until he choked, then threw up: the body’s instinctive way of clearing foreign objects.

The paramedics had him on a stretcher within two minutes, and he was on his way to hospital. He slipped into unconsciousness, knowing the ‘what ifs would haunt him until he died. Maybe he’d done all he could, but a woman had died today; two kids had lost their mummy before they’d been able to have memories of her—and, in his book, that meant that all he’d done hadn’t been enough.

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