The Fire-Version II (rewritten)

The Fire
by Randy P.

It reminded Steve and his wife Sandra of the churches they had attended when younger. Fire and brimstone that burn forever with eternal heartless punishment. Sandra held Steve’s foot as he attempted to find a wall and then the door they entered. It was like flying in clouds, but without instruments. They were as dizzy as any merry-go-round could make a small child and felt like barfing, but the heat was so painfully overriding the dizziness wasn’t the real problem.

The week started out all wrong with a phone call from Special Agent Jackson from the Internal Revenue Services local office. He was demanding to see papers that were three years old and their company was a large paper generator. They rented a brick building in an industrial site to stack their boxes and although they were organized by year and date a fire started when a box of papers fell off their stack and landed on an open gas furnace that would no doubt be outlawed if it was inspected. Within second, the dried paper became a consuming inferno throwing off more smoke and heat than open flames.

Smoke burned their throats, mouths and cramped their lungs. Both coughed as the fifty-thousand square foot pile of boxes filled with papers they leased where several companies piled their old papers in a mish-mash of boxes, many covered with mold and rotting papers.

Flames licked on both sides when the paper would ignite from the trapped heat.

This building was a perfect place to store documents that were rarely used and probably wouldn't even be removed from their boxes unless Steve and Sandra were lucky enough to hit the jackpot on the IRS's slot-machine.

There were windows near the top of the two story room, but they were reinforced by wire that kept them from breaking until the room was full of smoke. During old smelting operations there were vents in the top of the two-story height wall that would be opened. Since most iron work was now off-shore the building was good for storage and no more. Today they were welded shut to keep out the weather.

So, here they were, somewhere down a row of boxes. But, which row, the smoke was building up and covering the boxes causing both to begin coughing almost to the point of gagging and puking on the boxes. At this point, they didn't care. The IRS was far down their list and survival had soon floated to the top priority.

Smoke bellowed higher when Steve ran within fifty feet of the fire that was already lapping the cement ceiling from a stack of boxes next to the heater up to the tall cement ceiling. Cement was used in the century old factory building to prevent the heat from long-gone smelting units from setting the building on fire.

This building was classified as an uninhabited storage class by the Fire Marshal and there were no poison chemicals stored so the ancient sprinkler system added in the last twenty years of factory operation was shut down.

Several companies shared the space and due to its size, nobody ever cleaned out papers when they were outdated. It was easier and cheaper to just let the piles stack and now this huge room was half full of boxes with papers dating over thirty years when they purchased the building.

Rats had shredded many papers making nests for the multiple generations. The building was becoming as nasty as the city dump and all this residue was being burned and getting airborne in the smoke.

Steve was picking his way through boxes of papers while his wife sat on another isle doing the same. When the fire started, neither really noticed until the building was full of smoke and the fire was turning into a into swirls of flame reaching to the ceiling. It started racing along the tops of the boxes, consuming the old paper very much like a forest fire in a strong wind.

Steve and his wife had as good of a marriage and loved each other. Their dream was to sell the company and soon retire on a beach front property and enjoy life.

Once the flames started racing down the paper isles, it took Steve almost five minutes to find Sandra. She was crawling on the dirty cement with a handkerchief over her The inferno consumed the old paper so fast that half of the contents were already burning, dumping thick, hot and brown smoke that rose to the ceiling, cooled and settled down blocking their view. They were both started to crawl on the floor trying to cover their faces with napkins that Sandra pulled from a purse she left behind.

A passerby called the fire department on his cell phone when he saw smoke leaking through the buildings roof.

Outside the fire department found that there was only door that was not welded-shut or didn’t have a bar and padlock. It was locked from the inside. Their battering rams were useless against the huge solid iron doors that were a century old.

This wasn’t the part of town you wanted to have a drug addict wander in without your knowledge. Besides locking the door, Steve always packed a small five shot Smith and Wesson, thirty-eight caliber Revolver under his suit-coat when he went to the warehouse.

They were coming close to passing out from heat and smoke.

The firemen were skeptical about enter, they had little chance of saving anybody from inside this earthly man-made hell.

Steve and Sharon continued to crawl and cough. Their instinct for survival was preventing them from giving up and Sharon kept her hand on Steve's pant leg to stay close and find her way.

Sharon’s make-up ran down her face not so much from the heat and sweat, but from the tears when she realized they were not going to make it.

Outside, the fire fighters decided to try one last chance of entering the building just in case. It was so unlikely that anybody could survive this hell, but the firemen found that the White Van parked by the metal door still had a warm engine and weren't going to give up until they were sure.

It was a new breaching device designed by the Army. It consisted of a flat piece of cardboard with a rip off paper with very sticky tape so it could be stuck flat against a wall. It was about three feet by two feet, enough room to make a hole in the building. Surrounding the edge of the cardboard that was marked with a big red “Danger Explosive” marking was a piece of C-4 composite plastic explosive charge shaped in a very small V shape about one-half inch across.

Two military-grade, blasting caps were placed in a couple of plastic holders at the bottom of the strip of C-4 on each strip. A strip of blasting wire was run down the side of the building where a couple of firemen trained in the use of this device hid behind a portable metal shield.

Steve and Sandra were coughing and they knew they could not make it to the door and if they could it was simply too hot to open it. Sandra remembered Steve locking the door with an inside pad-lock and she put the only key they had in her purse, which was left behind and already consumed. Steve was a little intimidated when she grabbed the key and stuck it in her purse. She saw his eyes and said, “I’m just keeping it because you might lose it out of your pocket. He didn’t argue. This would change their fate.

They were going to die. Sandra held Steve and hugged him, then reached inside his coat and removed the pistol from his belt loop. She looked into his wet eyes and said, do you want to flip for it? Steve took the gun from her hand softly and said, “I’ll do it.”

Steve broke down into tears when he told her he loved her and always did.

Outside the building one of the firemen yelled “Fire In The Hole” and squeezed the trigger that instantly detonated both blasting caps and the strip of shaped charge running around the cardboard taped to the wall. The fireman ran to the two-by-three foot hole neatly cut out by the explosive strip.
He didn’t’ expect to see anything, but the fire was pulling air in so fast that smoke didn’t exit the hole when it was cut.

The fireman removed his helmet so he could fit through the hole and stuck his head in. Less than five feet to the side sat a man starring at him with bright blue eyes. He was shaking all over and holding a gun in his mouth. Sandra’s head lay in his lap with a blackish-red hole in her temple and blood all over Steve’s suit.

Steve’s cry became a howl when he looked at the fireman staring through the hole.

The end