The Law Of Three: A Rowan Gant Investigation (18 page)

“That’s Shakespeare, ain’t it?” Ben
asked.

“Macbeth
,”
Deckert offered. “Act four, scene one.”

Ben looked over at him and raised an
eyebrow.

“Gimme a break, Mona’s a high school English
teacher.” Deckert shrugged as he referred to his wife. “I’ve seen
the play a few hundred times.”

Ben turned back to me. “So is this some
kinda
Twilight Zone
thing,
Row?”

“Yeah,” I said as I nodded. “You could say
that.”

“Okay.” He gave me a questioning gaze to
match his tone. “What’s it mean?”

“How many times do I have to tell you…” I
began.

“Hold on,” Deckert interrupted and motioned
for us both to be quiet. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Ben asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It sounded like
it was coming from upstairs.”

Ben shook his head. “I didn’t hear
anything.”

We stood in relative silence, gazing up at
the drop ceiling over our heads and listening intently. Detective
Deckert still held his hand up, frozen in place as we waited.

“Listen.” His eyes grew wide as the noise
filtered down to us. “There it is again.”

To me, it sounded akin to a screaming hiss,
coupled with a dull roar, and occasionally punctuated by a popping
sizzle. It was muffled by the walls and ceiling above us, but it
was definitely growing louder by the second. There was something
frighteningly familiar about the sound, and I was searching my
memories as fast as I could, trying to place a cause with the
effect.

Before I managed to make the connection, my
friend spoke up. “Hear something hell, I can smell it.”

He wasn’t the only one. The acrid bite of
burning wood and synthetic materials now mixed with the earlier
odors in the basement and wafted through on a thin layer of
smokiness.

“Seems a bit strong to be someone’s
fireplace,” I observed.

Suddenly, the piercing wail of a smoke
detector lanced its way through the basement from the direction of
the stairs.

“Holy Jesus, Mary Mother of God,” Deckert
muttered.

Ben skipped past any semblance of muttering
and went directly to exclamations. “Sonofabitch!”

He was already moving when he bellowed the
expletive, hooking around me and heading for the stairs. Deckert
and I followed close on his heels.

This particular staircase was positioned such
that it formed a steep angle diagonally against the far wall. Due
to the structural design of the foundation, in order to keep that
angle from being far too oblique, it reached a small landing near
the bottom, then made a ninety-degree turn, and continued down for
another short flight of steps. The stairwell, in and of itself, had
been a part of the remodeling project and was now enclosed by thin
sheets of paneling applied directly to the wooden studs.

Ben was several steps ahead of us and hit the
bottom stair at full speed, launching himself past the other two
and onto the landing. By the time we reached the opening, we could
hear him bounding upward and coughing violently.

Deckert urged me ahead, and I stumbled for a
moment, raking my shin against the edge of the stair. I groped for
a handrail and found none, so I pushed off and started upward
again, ignoring the pain in my lower leg. As I hit the landing with
the older detective puffing hard behind me, I made the turn and was
immediately enveloped in a thick haze of smoke.

The detector in the stairwell was still
screaming at full volume, echoing from the paneled walls and
drilling an intense pain deep in my ears.

The cloud of smoke was increasing at an
alarming rate, and it easily began to overtake the narrow space as
it billowed in from beneath the door. I came to a sudden halt as my
eyes began to water and burn. Partially blinded, I held my arms
outstretched, trying to feel my way up the staircase, and lurched
forward.

My heart was racing, and I involuntarily
sucked in a deep breath of the polluted atmosphere then immediately
hacked it outward, sputtering and choking as I fell once again on
the stairs. I could hear Ben up ahead of me barking out his shallow
breaths and then the heavy sound of a body against solid wood as he
threw his weight against the door. The thud was followed by my
friend’s choking voice. “Owwww! Shit! Jeezus! Goddammit!”

I pulled the neck of my shirt up over my nose
and mouth and dragged myself upward. Deckert was immediately to my
rear, and he grabbed my arm in an attempt to help me up, but he was
already breathing so hard when we hit the landing that the sudden
rush of smoke was taking a far quicker toll on him.

The din of the fire was echoing from the
walls, and dangerous sounding creaks and groans were now beginning
to insinuate themselves into the fray.

I squinted hard in the darkness of the
thickening atmosphere and saw a pinpoint of reddish-orange appear
above me. It started to grow, and I realized that I was standing
directly beneath it. I threw myself backwards, barreling into
Deckert, and propelling us both into the wall at the bottom of the
landing. The slab of paneling that angled up over the stairs
suddenly erupted as flames ate through, fed by the noxious gases
the treated laminate was expelling. The smoke detector began to
warble sickly as the blaze lapped at it with an arcing fan of
orange. A moment later, there was a loud snap followed by a crash
as the sheet of paneling broke apart and fell across the
stairs.

Bright orange light illuminated the cloud of
smoke in the stairwell as the roar of the conflagration announced
its arrival. I thought I could see the silhouette of my friend
moving at the top of the stairs. I started upward amid the rush of
heat and began kicking the flaming pieces of pressboard off to the
sides in order to make a path.

I was still working at the task when he
started down through the maelstrom. My ears were met by the
cacophony of a repetitive thump, and before I could look up, I
collided with my friend.

“Down!” he croaked, grabbing me by the
shoulder and twisting me around. “Back down!”

I pushed forward, taking hold of Deckert’s
arm as I went and pulling him back down the stairwell with me. The
three of us stumbled back into the basement hacking and gulping at
the less tainted air. I looked back and could see the smoke now
curling along the ceiling at the mouth of the stairs, stretching
grey tendrils to undulate languidly along the acoustic tiles. The
paneled wall along the stairs was starting to bow and discolor, and
in the amount of time it took me to suck in another breath, yellow
flame began to pry open the seams.

“It’s fuckin’ blocked or somethin!” Ben
sputtered the words and then coughed hard before continuing his
frenzied explanation. “I couldn’t budge it. Besides that, it’s
hotter than hell.”

“There’s got to be another exit,” I
appealed.

“In the back,” Deckert wheezed. He had lost
his hat in the rush, and his hair was sticking out in disarray. He
seemed to be having even more trouble breathing than Ben or me, and
he was fingering his tie in an attempt to loosen it.

“Carl, are you okay?” I reached over and
worked the knot loose for him as I stared into his face.

He managed to spit out a response. “Yeah,
yeah, I’m okay.”

He was lying. His face was pale, and I could
see that his left hand was clenched into a fist.

“Come on,” Ben urged, hooking a hand under
one of Deckert’s arms as I took hold of the other. “We gotta get
outta here before…”

The fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling
buzzed loudly and immediately doused, throwing us into almost
complete darkness. The smoke was now rolling into the room behind
us, and it was no longer content with hanging in wispy cloudlike
formations around the ceiling. It had taken on a life of its own,
and it was intent on filling the room to capacity with its airborne
virulence.

A wave of heat was pushing through the room,
chasing away the earlier frosty atmosphere that had plagued me. We
started forward across the darkened basement, aiming for the dim
light of the doorway some forty feet away. We had taken three steps
when from behind us there came a noise unlike any I’d ever
heard.

The initial sound hammered into my ears and
drove directly into my skull, jarring every bone in my body. It was
followed immediately by a dull roar that swelled in pitch to a
persistent ring, all underscored by my ears feeling as if they were
full of water.

I remember being lifted off my feet and
flying forward through the air, only to be deposited onto the
plywood sub-floor a pair of yards from my original position. My
face did a quick double bounce from the hard surface, and my arm
twisted as it folded beneath me, driving a harpoon of pain into my
already tortured shoulder.

I groaned and rolled to the side then began
pushing myself upward. An out-of-control spill of orange flame
rolled down the stairs and waved its angry arms upward, instantly
igniting the rectangular foam ceiling tiles. Black smoke from the
burning polymers joined its dingy grey sibling to push deeper into
the room, at the same time adding a layer of toxic fumes to the
haze.

“Ben?! Carl?!” I could hear myself inside my
head, but to my ears, the words were a muffled tangle of
syllables.

My friend was already dragging himself
upward, but Carl was motionless between us. I struggled to my feet
and stumbled for a moment. I touched my face, and it felt sticky.
My nose and cheek were aching, and my shoulder felt like it had
just gotten in the way of a freight train.

I don’t know that Ben could hear me any more
than I could hear him. His lips were moving, and I thought I could
pick out something resembling his voice. In any event, we both took
hold of Deckert and pulled him to his feet. We half dragged him
toward the doorway as he began to come to then he started moving
with us as we rushed for the opening.

I cast a glance over my shoulder and saw that
the wall along the stairwell had already begun to collapse,
bringing the melting tiles and grid work of the drop ceiling with
it. The flames were arcing in violent bursts, swinging monkeylike
from panel to panel as they consumed anything they touched. When I
returned my gaze forward, I realized that it had crowned over us in
the open space above the tiles and was now burning through in our
path.

Directly in front of me, a molten dollop of
foam ceiling tile dripped to the floor, pulling a stream of flame
with it. I shifted hard to the right, slamming once again into Carl
and pushing him into Ben. We careened around the synthetic lava
flow and slammed against the wall then ricocheted back onto a
zigzagging course and covered the last few feet to the doorway.

The ringing in my ears had subsided to a low
whistle, and I could now hear the roar of the holocaust around us.
Ben shoved Deckert through the opening then clamped his hand on my
shoulder and pushed me in. The plywood sub-floor had ended at the
threshold and dropped a few inches to the original concrete, so I
tripped as I went through. Ben followed and faltered as well.

The smoke was now hanging in the entire
basement from the waist up, and we were hunched over in search of
cooler, cleaner air. The only source of light in the room, other
than that of the flames behind us, was a small, glass block window
above us at ground level.

We began scanning the room with frantic
urgency, battling the thickening smoke for visibility. The caustic
fumes were beginning to overtake us, and each breath was coming at
an even higher cost.

“Where’s the door?!” I heard Ben almost
scream the question. “Where the fuck’s the door?!”

Angry flames had all but caught up to us,
casting sharp fingers of orange past the doorframe. The fire had
become a hungry cat, and the three of us were mice cowering in a
hole. I searched for a door to close on the opening and found only
bare hinges where it had been removed. I jumped and backpedaled to
the center of the room as the claws of the monster made a desperate
grab for me, singeing my hair in the process. For a moment, the arc
of the blaze retreated as if it had been sucked back into the realm
of hell from which it had originated. Unfortunately, as with any
storm, it was merely a false calm. The pause lasted no more than a
breath before a second explosion rattled through from the opposite
end of the house, forcing a blast of flame, heat, and burning
debris in upon us.

We danced about, avoiding the flying detritus
as best we could. All the while, we were struggling for each and
every breath as a fresh supply of smoke billowed into the room.
Carl hit the floor with a heavy thud, and I rushed over. He was
kneeling, and I came down even with him. Although my eyes were
burning and blurred, I could still see that he was looking worse by
the moment.

“How are you doing, Carl?” I felt myself
yelling just to be heard through the thickness in my own ears.

“Goddamn… Chest… Fricking… Killing… Me…” He
wheezed in a breath between each word.

I wasn’t qualified to make a diagnosis by any
means, but I’d seen this before, and the only thing that entered my
mind was heart attack. I didn’t say it aloud, but I could tell by
the look in his eyes that he was thinking the same thing.

“Do you have a handkerchief?” I raised my
voice once again.

He nodded and began trying to reach into his
pocket. I took over and rummaged through his coat until I found the
large cotton square. I gave it a quick fold then pressed it over
his nose and mouth.

“Breathe through this,” I instructed him.
“And try to relax. We’re going to get out of here.”