The Wright Way

Chapter 11 - The Wright Way

I emerge outside, hitting the partly open door like a train, smashing it into the wall. I keep on walking through the thinning smoke, until the cool night air reaches the exposed areas of skin under my mask. I walk past the people who yell and try to grab me, and I just keep walking until I spot a patch of grass—the lawn to the other side of the street—where I stop and lower the motionless body I'm carrying to the ground, and then I drop down next to it.

Above me, the night sky is dark and peaceful, so unlike the gleaming yellow menace under which I've been walking seconds ago. Occasional stars blink through ragged patches of smoke. I'm thankful to my mask for hiding my face because my cheeks are wet, because it was so close, so stupidly close.

I avoid looking down at the body next to me. I'm afraid that it's not him, or if it's him, that he's turned into a heap of burned flash, with sticky black skin and empty eye sockets looking blindly at the sky.

I operated on instincts while I was inside, and had no time to get properly scared, but now it all catches up with me, and I can't breathe.

"Easy, easy." Mike's hands squeeze my shoulders, massaging through the thick fabric of my protective gear. "You fucking idiot. I will knock you out when you get better. You fucking idiot. You just wait until Lagana hears about this. You just wait."

There're other voices around me, and, across the street, black outlines of figures move against the yellow and orange background. It's impossible to imagine that I have been inside this blaze just moments ago. I can't even distinguish the door anymore. There're people on the lawn, held back by a couple of police officers, most of them looking at me, not at the fire, and taking pictures with their phones. Always taking pictures. In Bethlehem, smartphones were forbidden.

A roaring noise makes me look at the building again. The second floor goes down, sending flames in all directions. People scream and scramble back, some dropping to the ground, their cries of surprise and curses merging with the voices of the firemen and the policemen trying to keep them away.

Some of the public cheer at the crushing building. I search for the source of the joyous cries and see a few bald young men next to one of the fire engines. They look familiar. One of them catches me looking and raises his chin defiantly, then elbows one of his friends, who turns and looks, too, until all four of them look at me, their exhilaration dying down, getting replaced by intense stares.

Then I realize they're not looking at me.

"Holy shit," says someone. The voice is quiet, but it reaches me despite the noise because it's so close. "Holy shit."

I turn and find Joshua sitting next to me. A female paramedic is trying to get him to lie down again—I haven't even noticed when she has appeared—but he's sitting stubbornly, gaping at the giant bonfire that has replaced the nightclub in which he worked and, apparently, lived.

His face and clothes are covered in soot and dirt. There's a bleeding area of grazed skin on his left cheek, possibly the result of me hitting something as I carried him outside. I can't see any noticeable burns on the exposed areas of his face or body.

He'll need to be hospitalized, anyway. I'm surprised he even came to without medical assistance, given the amount of smoke he must have inhaled. Still, he's alive, and I feel indescribable relief. A part of me has buried him already, has believed I had carried outside a corpse.

He turns to me.

"How did I get here?" he wheezes, then coughs. "I was...inside."

"Sir, please, you must lay down," says the paramedic, and gestures for someone to come and help. Then she touches my shoulder. "We'll have to check you too, sir."

"I was inside," says Joshua, his blank stare fixed on me. "I heard them, but they couldn't get to me. I tried to reach them, and I couldn't."

"Lie down," I say. "Do what she says."

"Did you?.." He coughs again, and then grabs at his chest and slowly begins to fall to his side. I get one last glimpse at his face, and then the two paramedics are all over him, hiding him from my view. I reach out to help but Mike's hands are on me again, holding me back.

"Easy now," he says. "Fucking hero. Enough for one day."

I try to lie down, which is impossible with the air tank still on me. My head is spinning. The fire is burning lower now, with numerous hoses pouring water over it, and the crowd is beginning to spread. My eyes find the fire engines, but the cheering skinheads are no longer there.