fire

In the middle of the night a huge explosion pitched me out of my cot onto the floor. I crawled to the window, and saw a fireball boiling away into the black sky, and as its glare faded it appeared that every house on the opposite slope had been blown apart: boards and bricks were still arcing through the air. Presently it was dark again; the only sound came from dim echoes off the mountains in the distance and the soft patter of debris landing across the way. Then flames sprang up in the wreckage, and in an instant the whole hillside was ablaze.

It was an attack; what else could it be? I grabbed my kit hanging beside the door and leaped down the stairs, intending to scramble up the street behind me and so away. But turning the corner, I was nearly trampled by a pack of people running the other direction, toward the fire, and then the smoke was among us, and I lost my bearings. They shouted to each other, but not like a mob in panic: I realized this was a rescue team, and, in their ragged formation, they drove me along with them.

More yelling now came from either side, and up ahead we could hear screams and the long wail of sudden certain grief. A glow appeared in the smoke and we turned that way, soon feeling its heat, which increased shockingly with every step, until we reached a wall, where my companions began to space themselves along its length. An implement on a pole was put into my hands, and someone directed me with gestures to dig and beat the fire at the wall's base and try to break it up. Then he disappeared into the smoke.

I could see nothing but flames sheeting up the blank wall before me; I swatted at it with my stick, which turned out to be a kind of shovel, but this only fanned a smoldering mass at my feet, so I stabbed into that with the blade and managed to scatter whatever was burning there. But then the blade stuck under the wall, and I lost my hold on the haft and staggered backwards, my forgotten kit-bag swinging around and hitting me in the face.

This sat me down hard on the ground, and suddenly I was dead calm. My next step would determine my fate: I knew I should run back the way I'd come, but I could feel on my shoulders that the fire had gotten behind me, and in any case I was no longer sure what direction 'back' actually was.

The pole was still waggling in front of me, and without thought I seized it again, leaned my weight down on it, and felt the wall give slightly. I then wrenched the stick from side to side, and soon it came out, bringing with it a lump of the wall, so I attacked the little opening, striking at it again and again with the point of the spade, each time loosening enough plaster that I could see the old bricks it had covered. I widened the space at the base of the wall, scraping the ground away underneath, and finally, in a rage, struck the wall itself over and over with the back of the blade.

Several hard blows were enough to knock most of the remaining stucco away. I then went after the lowest bricks with the shovel's point. One or two of them fell into the hole and I pulled them away, pounding and stabbing again and again just above the opening, which was now almost large enough for a child to crawl through.

Suddenly I saw a hand reaching under the wall from the other side, grabbing at the bricks and trying to pull them loose. I now struck at the wall above that even harder, and a crack gradually zig-zagged up the mortar between the bricks. And then the hand below pulled one of the bricks free, and the wall simply fell out around me.

I was face to face with a young man, who still held the loose brick in one hand. We crouched there, frozen, until he gently reached out with his free hand and touched my face. I stood up abruptly, and he did the same; then we looked at the blood on his fingers, and I realized my nose was bleeding. I seized his hand to pull him out of the building, but he jerked it away, whirling back into the darkness behind him. I was about to bolt in the other direction when he returned with a bundle in his arms. I looked along what was left of the wall on either side, unsure which way to go; he pushed past me, jerking his head for me to follow, then ran off into the murk. I started after him, but someone clapped my shoulder from behind, pulling me away from the opening and further along the wall, where we joined in fighting another blaze, then another, then another.

The light came up, the smoke began to thin, and by midmorning the fire was all but extinguished. By then the company of rescuers were congregating at the last place flames could be detected, laughing and pushing each other playfully as they recounted their several adventures. No attack had taken place, it seemed; the explosion was just some horrible accident.

I sensed the moment coming when my companions would remember the stranger among them and turn to find out more about me, so I took my first chance to slip off and return to my room, if it was still there...