Ground Zero(26)

Brandon remembered the wind lifting him off his hands and knees, dragging him toward the open edge of the skyscraper before Richard had caught him and pulled him inside. Had someone else been trying to cross a similar divide and been swept away on the wind? He shuddered just thinking about it.

“Hey, kid, you find anything?”

Richard’s voice was soft, but Brandon jumped. They had both been whispering, as though if they talked too loud the whole building would come down around them like an avalanche.

“No. I just thought I saw … I thought I saw somebody falling past the window,” Brandon said.

Richard recoiled. “God, I hope not. No, can’t be. Just your mind playing tricks on you.”

Brandon nodded. That had to be it.

Didn’t it?

A huge crack ran down the length of the floor in one hallway, almost fifty yards long. The hallway led right into the central part of the floor, the one with the bathrooms and elevators and stairwells. Smoke poured out from the elevator banks, and Brandon and Richard held their wet cloths tight against their noses and mouths. It helped, but Brandon’s eyes still stung from the heavy smoke.

On the north side of the building, the ceiling had completely collapsed. The plane must have hit somewhere on this side of the building on the floors up above.

“Come on,” Richard said. “Everybody’s got themselves up and out of here. We should do the same. Let’s check the next floor real fast, then get back to our people on 89.”

Brandon followed Richard down to the 90th floor. He was surprised to come out of the stairwell and see two people standing in the hall—a white man in paint-splattered coveralls and a Black woman in a business skirt and blouse. They stood near the elevators like they were waiting for one to arrive.

“Hey,” Richard said to them. “We’re from one floor down. We were checking to make sure you guys are all right up here.”

“We are,” the woman said. She gestured to the elevator. “But they’re not.”

Brandon turned to look. The elevator door was open and five people were inside—three men and two women. They were all dressed in business suits, and all clearly terrified. The elevator was full of swirling black smoke, and they ducked and cried out as sparks popped in the elevator’s ceiling.

Panic rose in Brandon as he remembered that awful feeling of being trapped in an elevator. Of it sliding. Dropping.

“You have to get out of there!” Brandon cried. He rushed toward the elevator doors, but the man outside in the hallway held him back.

“They can’t,” the painter told Brandon. “Look at that stuff falling in front of the door.”

An eerie, iridescent blue haze shimmered down like a curtain between the open doors and the elevator car, blocking the way in and out. The passengers in the elevator would have to go right through the haze to get out.

“What is that stuff?” Richard asked.

“Fire,” said one of the men in the elevator. “It’s like … a sheet of blue flame.”

Brandon was momentarily mesmerized by it. He’d never seen anything like it in his entire life. A steady stream of bright blue flame, like from a super-hot gas stove. What could cause that?

As they all watched, the blue haze dripped more heavily. Soon it would be a waterfall. A waterfall of pure flames.

“We don’t want to run through it,” said one of the women inside the elevator. “We’re afraid we’ll get burned.”

The elevator groaned and dropped an inch, and everyone in the car screamed. Goose bumps moved up Brandon’s arms to the top of his head, and he got the sickening feeling of falling all over again.

“You have to get out of there,” Brandon told them. “I was in an elevator when the plane hit. We just barely got out in time before the cable snapped and the elevator car fell down the shaft!”

One of the men in the elevator groaned, and another cursed.

“We called building security,” said the woman in the hallway. “They said to wait for the fire department.”

“Somebody’s looking for something to block the flames,” the painter said. “A cardboard box or something.”

“Cardboard is just going to catch on fire!” one of the men in the elevator yelled. He was clearly at his wits’ end. They all had to be. Another man was pacing frantically back and forth, the armpits of his shirt ringed with sweat. One woman cried with her eyes closed. The other was muttering something under her breath. Whether it was curses or regrets or prayers, Brandon didn’t know.

“What about a fire extinguisher?” Richard asked.

“To extinguish what?” one of the men in the elevator said. “The fire’s raining down through the elevator shaft. The source is somewhere upstairs!”

The 93rd floor, Brandon thought. He and Richard had seen it. And no fire extinguisher was going to put out those flames. Until the inferno upstairs was extinguished by the fire department, it was going to keep on burning—in both directions.

Something clunked in the elevator shaft up above, and the elevator dropped another two inches. The passengers grabbed onto the rails and cried out. One of the men started sobbing.

The woman who’d been muttering to herself stood taller, as though she’d come to some sort of decision. “I’m getting out,” she said. Her voice was shaky and her eyes were wide with panic. “I’m going through the blue stuff, whatever it is.” She nodded, talking herself into it. “It’s just flames, right? I mean, you can run your hands through a candle flame and be fine. I’ll just—I’ll just be fast.”