It was somewhere in the lower forties that Anna first smelled smoke, and she could hear some of those on the floors below her coughing loudly. When she reached the next landing, the smoke became denser and quickly filled her lungs. She covered her eyes and began coughing uncontrollably. Anna recalled reading somewhere that 90 percent of deaths in a fire are caused by smoke inhalation. Her fears were only exacerbated when those ahead of her slowed to a crawl and finally came to a halt. The coughing had turned into an epidemic. Had they all become trapped, with no escape route up or down?
“Keep moving,” came the clear order from a fireman heading toward them. “It gets worse for a couple of floors but then you’ll be through it,” he assured those who were still hesitating. Anna stared into the face of the man who had given the order with such authority. She obeyed him, confident that the worst must surely be behind her. She kept her eyes covered and continued coughing for another three floors, but the fireman turned out to be right, because the smoke was already beginning to disperse. Anna decided to listen only to the professionals coming up the stairwell and to dismiss the opinions of any amateurs going down.
A sudden feeling of relief swept through those emerging from the smoke, and they immediately tried to speed up their descent. But sheer numbers prevented swift progress in the one-way traffic lane. Anna tried to remain calm as she slipped in behind a blind man, who was being led down the stairs by his guide dog. “Don’t be frightened by the smoke, Rosie,” said the man. The dog wagged its tail.
Down, down, down, the pace always dictated by the person in front. By the time Anna reached the deserted cafeteria on the thirty-ninth floor, the overloaded firemen had been joined by Port Authority officers and policemen from the Emergency Service Unit — the most popular of all New York’s cops because they dealt only in safety and rescue, no parking tickets, no arrests. Anna felt guilty about passing those who were willing to continue going up while she went in the opposite direction.
By the time Anna reached the twenty-fourth floor, several bedraggled stragglers were stopping to take a rest, a few even congregating to exchange anecdotes, while others were still refusing to leave their offices, unable to believe that a problem on the ninety-fourth floor could possibly affect them. Anna looked around, desperately hoping to see a familiar face, perhaps Rebecca or Tina, even Barry, but she could have been in a foreign land.
“We’ve got a level three up here, possibly level four,” a battalion commander was saying over his radio, “so I’m sweeping every floor.”
Anna watched the commander as he systematically cleared every office. It took him some time because each floor was the size of a football field.
On the twenty-first floor, one individual remained resolutely at his desk; he’d just settled a currency deal for a billion dollars and he was awaiting confirmation of the transaction.
“Out,” shouted the battalion commander, but the smartly dressed man ignored the order and continued tapping away on his keyboard. “I said out,” repeated the senior fire officer, as two of his younger officers lifted the man out of his chair and deposited him in the stairwell. The unfulfilled broker reluctantly joined the exodus.
When Anna reached the twentieth floor, she encountered a new problem. She had to wade through water that was now pouring in on them from the sprinklers and leaking pipes on every floor. She stepped tentatively over fragments of broken glass and flaming debris that littered the stairwell and were beginning to slow everyone down. She felt like a football fan trying to get out of a crowded stadium that had only one turnstile. When she finally reached the teens, her progress became dramatically faster. All the floors below her had been cleared, and fewer and fewer office staff were joining them on the stairs.
On the tenth floor, Anna stared through an open door into a deserted office. Computer screens were still flickering and chairs had been pushed aside as if their occupants had gone to the washroom and would be back at any moment. Plastic cups of cold coffee and half-drunk cans of Coke littered almost every surface. Papers were scattered everywhere, even on the floor, while silver-framed family photographs remained in place. Someone following closely behind Anna bumped into her, so she quickly moved on.
By the time Anna reached the seventh floor, it was no longer her fellow workers, but the water and flotsam that were holding her up. She was picking her way tentatively through the debris when she first heard the voice. To begin with, it was faint, and then it became a little louder. The sound of a megaphone was coming from somewhere below them, urging her on. “Keep moving, don’t look back, don’t use your cell phones — it slows up those behind you.”
Three more floors had to be negotiated before she found herself back in the lobby, paddling through inches of water, and on past the express shuttle elevator that had whisked her up to her office only a couple of hours before. Suddenly even more sprinklers jetted down from the ceiling above, but Anna was already drenched to the skin.
The orders bellowing from the megaphones were becoming louder and louder by the moment, and their demands even more strident. “Keep moving, get out of the building, get as far away as you possibly can.” Not that easy, Anna wanted to tell them. When she reached the turnstiles she’d passed through earlier that morning, she found them battered and twisted. They must have been brushed aside by wave after wave of firemen when they transported their heavy equipment into the building.
Anna felt disorientated and unsure what to do next. Should she wait for her colleagues to join her? She stood still, but only for a moment, before she heard another insistent command that she felt was being addressed directly at her. “Keep moving, lady, don’t use your cell phone, and don’t look back.”
“But where do we go?” someone shouted.
“Down the escalator, through the mall, and then get as far away from the building as possible.”
Anna joined the horde of tired savages as they stepped onto an overcrowded escalator. She allowed it to carry her down to the concourse before taking another escalator up to the open promenade, where she often joined Tina and Rebecca for an al fresco lunch while they enjoyed an open-air concert. No open air now, and certainly no calming sound of a violin — just another voice bellowing, “Don’t look back, don’t look back.” An order Anna disobeyed, which not only slowed her down, but also caused her to fall on her knees retching. She watched in disbelief as first one person then another, who must have been trapped above the ninetieth floor, jumped out of their office windows to a certain death rather than face the slow agony of burning. “Get back on your feet, lady, and keep movin’.”
Anna picked herself up and stumbled forward, suddenly aware that none of the officers in charge of the evacuation were making eye contact with those fleeing from the building or even attempting to answer any of their individual questions. She assumed this must be because it would only slow things down and impede the progress of those still trying to get out of the building.
When Anna passed Borders bookshop, she glanced in the window displaying the number-one bestseller, Valhalla Rising.
“Keep movin’, lady,” a voice repeated, even louder.
“Where to?” she asked desperately.
“Anywhere, hut just keep goin’.”
“In which direction?”
“I don’t care, as long as it’s as far away from the tower as possible.”
Anna spat out the last bits of vomit as she continued to move away from the building.
When she reached the entrance to the plaza, she came across fire trucks and ambulances that were tending to the walking wounded and those who just simply couldn’t manage another step. Anna didn’t waste their time. When she finally reached the road, she looked up to see a sign with an arrow covered in black grime. She could just make out the words CITY HALL. Anna began jogging for the first time. Her jog turned into a run and she started to overtake some of those who had departed earlier from the lower floors. And then she heard another unfamiliar noise behind her. It sounded like a clap of thunder that seemed to grow louder and louder by the second. She didn’t want to look back, but she did.