Fire2

Day 2 - Afternoon: Surprise GAR ~ Anon's Inferno


Previous Scene Humans have had a conflicted relationship with fire. It is their most productive tool and most dangerous weapon. While we used fire to cook, heat rooms and smelt metals, we also killed each other with it. Barbarian tribes razed farms and pillaged settlements. The Byzantines deployed it in liquid form against Turkish ships. Modern warfare has napalm and flamethrowers and thermite bombs. The history of fire is the history of ruin. It is an ingrained instinct to fear fire. Sure there’s always the odd maniac who likes to light things and watch the world burn, but when they finally meet their karmic ends they don’t go out laughing. They go out screaming. Screaming and burning.

My point is that I can be excused for feeling just a bit anxious right now.

[Background: Baptism of Fire ~ Burning Schoolhouse] [Music: Catastrophe]

My senses have gone. Smoke invades my system and burns my nostrils, defying the meager handkerchief I had tied around my mouth. My ears go numb to the world as the increasing air pressure tightens its vise around my head. My eyes see only the devastation falling around me as the timber schoolhouse collapses in the flames. If hell exists, man could not hope for a replica more exact than this.

My mind has descended into open revolt. It may just be carbon monoxide poisoning, but I can’t think coherently anymore. I’m not sure what I’m trying to do. I don’t consider myself especially strong, especially tough, or even especially brave. A few days ago I was still working a comfortable paper job where the greatest hazard I had to face was spilling coffee on myself, and I’m no less flammable now than then. Who did I think I was? What did I hope to achieve? It is madness. No one in their right mind would willingly enter a burning building unprotected for people they’ve hardly met. Or rather, no one in their right mind would willingly enter a burning building unprotected for people they’ve hardly met and expect to escape alive. The odds were stacked high against my survival. Enron was a better investment than me. Yet here I am.

A muffled sound coming from further inside the building derails my train of thought. Somewhere within the flames of hell, children were sobbing.

That’s right, I don’t have the time for useless misgivings. I push the mental baggage aside as I concentrate on forcing my way through the wreckage. Clinging to each other in the corner are three children, eyes clenched tight as if to shut out the nightmare around them. Their terror is as palpable as the heat. As I approach, they look to me with what hope they could still muster. Their pleading faces are reminders that even someone like me may do some good. Yes, I think I understand. Strengthening my resolve, I get to doing whatever I can.

Fortunately, we still weren’t far from the doorway. I am able to guide them back to the exit without much trouble. Just as well too. The temperature is rising to unbearable levels. Even simple breathing has become difficult. Every torturous gasp only draws in fire, searing my throat to my pallet and igniting my lungs. I can feel the flames on my skin, in my body, boiling my brain. My vision wavers in the feverish haze. I can’t see straight. I can’t think straight. Yet piercing the delirium is the nagging feeling that I have forgotten something. Someone.

Damn! Akyu!

Akyu wasn't there!

[Transition: Background: Burning Stairwell]

Upstairs. The only place left is upstairs.

The flames had yet to consume the stairwell. I ascend in a mad dash.

[Transition: Background: Burning Schoolhouse, upper floor]

At this highest point the smoke had gathered like a pack of hungry beasts around their trophy kill. Akyu is lying in the middle of the floor, unmoving. Her scrolls, which she had carried around as a mother would clutch children, lie scattered, burning solemnly around her as the flames start to join in on the scavenging.

Akyu! Damn it, Akyu, you can’t die on me now!

I check her for her life signs in a flurry of panic. Comatose, Akyu’s image of composure had entirely crumbled. Confronted with doom, destruction and death, her features had succumbed to her predicament. Even in her unnatural sleep her subconscious cries out in desperation against her fate. But I have made it in time. She’s still alive. I can still save her.

Draping her body over my shoulders, I make my way back down. By now the conflagration had reached a crescendo as the dry tinder of the schoolhouse feeds the concert of devastation. The building groans, a snapping sound, and suddenly I’ve run out of stairs. There is no time to contemplate. Still carrying Akyu, I jump.

[Background: None] [SFX: Crash]

Gah, that wasn’t such a good idea after all. I didn’t even know I could sprain one of those.

[Background: Fire and debris]

Even worse, the way to the door has been blocked by flaming debris. We’re trapped. There’s no way out. I’m going to die.

Damn it, [Protagonist]! Stop thinking, you bloody idiot!

The place was going to give in at any moment. The building was in its death throes, whimpering under its own weight, losing the battle with the inferno as the fire feasts on its supports. I have to do something, and I have to do it before I am devoured, crushed, or asphyxiated. There is still one window that is holding out against the flames, but it is futile resistance; there is no way I am I going to reach it and climb through without exposing myself to fatal doses of roasting. What I can do is toss Akyu out; she has been a surprisingly light burden, and I can at least throw her to safety. One of us must survive.

Throw her out There must be another way