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Again. “Mommy.”
Someone mocked the voice in falsetto. “Mommy, I’m scared.”
It was Orc, actually finding the situation funny. Kids drew away from him.
“What?” he demanded.
Howard, never far away from Orc, sneered. “Don’t worry, School Bus Sam will save us all, won’t you, Sam?”
“Edilio. Go,” Sam said quietly. “Bring everything you can.”
“Man, you can’t go up in there,” Edilio said. “They’ll have air tanks and stuff at the fire station. Wait, I’ll bring it all.” He was already running, shepherding his crew of strong kids ahead of him.
“Hey, up there,” Sam yelled. “Kid. Can you get to the door or the window?”
He stared up, craning his neck. There were six windows on the front of the building upstairs, one in the alley. The far left window was where the fire was, but now smoke was drifting out of the second window, too. The fire was spreading.
“Mommy!” the voice cried. It was a clear voice, not choking from the smoke. Not yet.
“If you’re going in there, wrap this around your face.” Somehow Astrid had come up with a wet cloth, borrowed from someone and soaked.
“Did I say I was going in there?” Sam asked.
“Don’t get hurt,” Astrid said.
“Good advice,” Sam said dryly, and wrapped the wet fabric around his head, over his mouth and nose.
She grabbed his arm. “Look, Sam, it’s not fire that kills people, it’s smoke. If you get too much smoke, your lungs will swell up, they’ll fill with fluid.”
“How much is too much?” he asked, his voice muffled by the cloth.
Astrid smiled. “I don’t know everything, Sam.”
Sam wanted to take her hand. He was scared. He needed someone to lend him some courage. He wanted to take her hand. But this wasn’t the time. So he managed a shaky smile and said, “Here goes.”
“Go for it, Sam,” a voice yelled in encouragement. There was a ragged chorus of cheers from the crowd.
The entrance to the building was unlocked. Inside were mailboxes, a back door to the flower shop, a dark, narrow stairway heading up.
Sam almost made it to the top of the stairs before he ran into an opaque wall of swirling smoke. The wet cloth did nothing. One breath and he was on his knees, choking and gagging. Tears filled his stinging eyes.
He crouched low and found more air. “Kid, can you hear me?” he rasped. “Yell, I need to hear you.”
The “Mommy” was faint this time, from down the hall to the left, halfway to the other side of the building. Maybe the kid would jump out the window into someone’s arms, Sam told himself. It would be stupid to get himself killed if the kid could just jump.
The stink of the smoke was intolerable, awful, everywhere. It had a sourness to it, like smoke plus curdled milk.
Sam stayed on his knees and crawled down the hallway. It was strange. Eerie. The ratty hall runner below him seemed so normal: faded Oriental pattern, frayed edges, a few crumbs, and a dead roach. An overhead lightbulb was on, filtering pale light down through the ominous gray.
The smoke was swirling slowly lower, pressing down on him, forcing him lower and lower to find air.
There had to be six or seven apartments. No way to know which was the right one, the kid wasn’t yelling anymore. But the apartment on fire was probably the one just to his right. Smoke was shooting out from below that door, thick, fast, and furious as a mountain stream. He had seconds, not minutes.
He rolled onto his back. The smoke pouring from under the door was like a waterfall in reverse, falling upward in a cascade. He kicked at the door, but it was no good. The lock was higher up; all his kick did was rattle the door. To break it open he would have to stand up, straight into that killing smoke.
He was scared. And he was mad, too. Where were the people who were supposed to do this? Where were the adults? Why was this up to him? He was just a kid. And why hadn’t anyone else been crazy enough, stupid enough to rush into a burning building?
He was mad at all of them and, if Quinn was right and this was something God had done, then he was mad at God, too.
