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I raced up the stairs and pounded my shoulder into the door, trying to break it down, but it stood firm. Flames licked through the walls and once they’d broken through, crept along the untreated wooden staircase with alarming speed. I hurled myself at the door again, kicking it this time, and yelped as pain shot through my heel.
A massive cracking sound told me to run to safety, and I’d barely leapt off the third step when half the staircase collapsed, sending burning embers flying in every direction, one sparking a blaze on the workbench.
It was terrifying how quickly the fire raged, although at least the concrete floor was safe. For now.
We were either going to burn, die from smoke inhalation, or run out of oxygen. I looked around in vain for anything I could use to put out the fire.
“Is there water here?” I asked, but Cora shook her head.
“Not that I’ve seen. Just a lot of junk.”
The heavy door opened again, and I ignored it, unable to see properly through the smoke and no longer caring about Nathan.
“Emma!” Xavier’s voice called, and my heart leaped. Maybe we weren’t going to die, after all.
“We’re trapped,” I shouted, the last word descending into a coughing fit as two other silhouettes appeared in the doorway as the rest of the staircase collapsed, and the flames raced closer to the door.
“Wait there,” Jackson said. “I saw a ladder.”
“Is it flammable?” I asked weakly, but he was already gone. The heat from the fire was intense, and I didn’t have a choice. Either I would climb up the burning ladder and risk it falling apart halfway to the top, or I’d die down here.
Thankfully, the ladder Jackson had seen was made from aluminium. He extended it to its full height and lowered it down in front of us.
“You first,” I said to Cora.
She grabbed the rungs and hauled herself up, and for the first time, I noticed the bloody gash on her thigh. I couldn’t do anything about it now, so I forced myself to keep breathing and follow her. She climbed slowly, every step on her injured leg making her whimper, but eventually, she made it to the doorway that was quickly becoming engulfed by flames. The guys gripped her under the shoulders and dragged her up, with Xavier patting out the flame that ignited on her shirt, while the other two did the same for me.
My lungs felt like they were full of sludge, but I forced myself to keep moving. I blinked, my eyes stinging from the smoke, my brain struggling to take in the floor-to-ceiling piles of clutter everywhere around us. I wasn’t thinking clearly, but my survival instincts were good enough to know that if all this trash caught on fire, we were fucked.
Cora stumbled on a boxed chess game and fell forward, and Xavier scooped her up and carried her all the way to the front door.
Jackson tried the handle.
“It’s not locked,” he said, the relief strong in his voice as he threw it open and we all raced outside. We ran as fast as we could through the overgrown garden, and didn’t pause even when we reached the street.
When we were safely on the other side of the road, I allowed myself to stop running and slumped on the cool grass, inhaling as much clean air as my damaged lungs would let me.
There was no sign of Nathan.
Smoke seeped out of the building while Xavier called the fire brigade and a few moments later, billowed out as orange flames leaped into the night sky. I had been right — all the rubbish in the house gave the fire plenty of fuel.
I fell on the grass, barely taking in the sirens, the arrival of the fire engines and police cars. Every last drop of energy I’d had was gone, and all I could do was float in and out of consciousness as I heard snippets of the conversations around me, with only seven words from Xavier penetrating the fog in my brain.
“Stay with us, Emma. I love you.”
A fireman lay me on my side and asked questions about my injuries until paramedics arrived and took over, placing me on a stretcher and loading me into an ambulance, where they strapped an oxygen mask to my face.
“It’s okay,” a woman kept saying. “Just keep breathing.”
“I know,” I tried to say, but the mask made it hard to speak.
I’d saved Cora and Nathan was gone.
Finally, it was over.
I was safe.
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