BZRK: Apocalypse (BZRK 3)

They pushed out through a narrow door into a similarly narrow hallway, then followed red exit signs to what a push confirmed was a stairwell.

There was smoke in the stairwell.

“Not too bad, we can breathe,” Wilkes said. “At least up here.”

“No other way,” Plath said, and plunged unhesitatingly down the concrete stairs.

“Great, sevent

y floors,” Wilkes said. “Here’s where it would have been a good thing to work out.”

“It’s all downhill,” Plath said.

They ran and tumbled and occasionally tripped down the stairs, half a floor, a landing, a turn, down another flight. Over and over again.

The smoke grew thicker but not yet enough to choke them, just enough to make their throats raw and their eyes sting.

Plath was quicker, but she waited for Wilkes to catch up when she pulled too far ahead. Down and down. Then, on the fortieth floor, a woman banged back the door, took a wild-eyed look at them, and raced away as though they were trying to catch her.

Down and down and down, and by the twenty-first floor the smoke was wringing hacking coughs from their throats and watering their eyes.

A massive shock hit the building and knocked them both off their feet. Plath came up with a skinned knee and bruised forearms. Wilkes was worse off. She had twisted her ankle and could only hobble.

“You need to go on ahead,” Wilkes said. “Go, go, I’ll be fine.”

Plath took her arm. “I left Noah. I’m not leaving you. Come on. Run now, hurt later.”

They hobbled and slid and tripped, floor by floor, tears streaming down their faces. The last six floors were agony. Smoke was everywhere, searing their lungs. The heat of the fire turned the stairwell into an oven. At some point Plath simply stopped thinking, stopped even feeling anything but pain.

The last two floors were crowded with people—yelling, choking, pushing, panicking.

And all at once there was air.

Plath, still holding Wilkes by the hand, fell out onto the sidewalk and into light; rough hands grabbed her, pulled her away, a voice yelling, “Move, move, move, it’s coming down!”

They staggered on, not even sure what direction they were headed, stumbling into other refugees. A fire hose was spraying blessed cold water, and only then did Plath realize that some people were on fire, their clothing smoking, their hair crisped.

Glass was everywhere on the sidewalk and streets. Red lights flashed. Smoke billowed, but was caught by a breeze that cleared most of it at street level.

A block away they stopped, gasping, and sank down onto the concrete.

“Okay?” Plath asked.

“Alive,” Wilkes answered.

Plath smeared smoke from her eyes, blinked away tears and tried to look up at the Tulip.

Fire licked from windows. Smoke poured everywhere, the whole building a chimney now.

“We have to move farther.”

“Can’t,” Wilkes gasped.

“Like hell you can’t.” Plath stood, hauled Wilkes to her feet and, taking the girl’s weight on her shoulder, hobbled and ran with memories, too-sharp memories, of what happened when skyscrapers burned.

“Burn and fall, burn and fall,” Lear crooned as she watched flames and smoke wreathe the Tulip, dividing her attention between the real-world vista from her window and the TV coverage.

It was split-screened now on the news: half showed the remaining, yet-to-be rounded up loons from the Hollywood premiere; half showed the Tulip aflame. The crawl along the bottom was all about the Plague of Madness.