The Law of Nines

39

ALEX KNELT BESIDE HIS MOTHER’S BODY, in shock that she was dead. As Jax turned his face away from the terrible sight, he looked up into her sad eyes, eyes that seemed to understand all he was feeling, to sympathize with the long, dark journey that had started when she first showed up in his life.

Seeing bright red blood matting the right side of her blond hair brought Alex abruptly to his senses.

He reached out, putting a finger to the side of her chin, turning her head a little so that he could take a look.

“I’m sure that it looks worse than it is,” she said. “It stunned me for a moment, that’s all.”

It wasn’t bleeding heavily, and her eyes weren’t dilated. She didn’t look disoriented or confused. He wasn’t an expert, but it looked to him that she wasn’t badly hurt. The ordeal of hanging in the shower was much more of a continuing worry.

Alex knew that he couldn’t sit there mourning his mother or they would die, too. His mother had just saved his life. He couldn’t let that sacrifice be for nothing.

He had to fight against the dulling effect of the drugs that he’d gotten from the syringe. It was only a portion of the dose that had been in the vial, but it was enough that he could feel it slowing his thinking. He had to force himself to focus, to move, to act.

The immediate problem returned with clarity. It was night. Patients were asleep. He had to alert all the people in the hospital or they would likely end up trapped in a burning building.

The man on the floor not far away lay on his side, both arms across his abdomen, holding the grievous wound closed.

“Please,” the man moaned, “help me.”

Alex ignored him, stood up, and snatched the fire extinguisher off the wall. As he did, Jax straddled the nurse who had blindsided her and tried to inject Alex with whatever was in the syringe. Before the woman came to, Jax sliced the artery on each side of her neck so she would quickly bleed to death.

Jax flipped the woman over and swiftly cut symbols in her forehead. When the woman vanished, Jax looked up at him.

“I guess that answers that. There seem to be a lot of people from my world working here.”

He wondered how deeply the tentacles from another world reached into his. There was no time to consider the problem, though. Fire extinguisher in hand, he headed for the blaze.

Alex yanked the pin out of the extinguisher as he rounded the corner and raced toward the shelves. He knew that if he was to have a chance to knock down the fire he would have to act quickly. He doubted that one extinguisher would be enough, but one was all he had at the moment.

He pointed the nozzle and squeezed the lever. Nothing happened. The extinguisher was dead. It was a sickening, helpless feeling to be facing leaping flames with a dead extinguisher.

When he looked up he came face-to-face with Dr. Hoffmann.

The doctor held his hands out, urging Alex to stop and listen. “Alex. . you don’t understand.”

Alex gritted his teeth and rammed the bottom of the extinguisher squarely into the man’s face. Grunting in shock, the doctor put his hands over his face as he staggered back. Blood in his eyes blinded him and ran out between his fingers. One arm waved blindly, trying to find something for support. He stumbled and fell backward into the pile of burning files.

An alcohol bottle in his pocket broke when he hit the side of the shelving. His pants, soaked with the alcohol, burst into flames. As he scrambled to his feet, fire ascended his white coat with a whoosh. The roaring orange flames engulfed his face. His screams went up an octave.

The orderly who had been working at pulling down the files heard the screams and came running from behind the next row of shelves, where he had been working to burn files. Alex swung the extinguisher. Even over the sound of the fire, he could hear the clear ring of steel on bone as the heavy extinguisher caved in the side of the orderly’s skull.

Jax seized his arm and pulled him back. “Alex! Hurry! We have to get the people out of here or they’ll all burn to death.”

“Wait. Maybe there’s a fire hose and I can put it out.”

Without waiting for her to answer, he ran around the outside of the shelves, making his way toward the back. The growing flames leaped and lapped at the ceiling. He found the hose on the wall near the stairway.

He yanked the hose off the wall and spun the wheel to turn on the water. No water came out. He spun the wheel until it came to the stop at the limit of its travel. No water. They had shut down the fire hoses along with the sprinklers.

Growling in anger, Alex ran back to find Jax kneeling beside his mother, closing her eyes. She looked up at him.

“I’m sorry, Alex. I wish we didn’t have to leave her.”

He nodded as he took her by the hand. “I know. Come on, we need to open the fire-escape doors and get people out of here or they’ll be trapped.”

Alex left the door leading to the men’s side closed for the moment in the hope that it would keep the fire from spreading. Together, they ran into the darkened corridor of the women’s wing.

“Wake the people in every room. Tell them there’s a fire and they have to get out. I’ll go unlock the fire-escape door. Send them down there.”

Jax nodded and turned in to the first room as he continued on. He screamed “Fire!” at the top of his lungs, hoping that it would wake at least some of the women. It did. By the time he got to the door he could see women in nightgowns emerging from their rooms to see what the shouting was about.

Alex worked frantically at the door, finally found the right key, and got the door unlocked. He threw it open and waved his arms, signaling to the women farther back up the hall.

“Come on! Fire! Everyone out!”

A few of the women started down the hall, but more simply stood staring. Jax came out of a room, pushing two women. She gathered up others along the way, shoving them, urging them to hurry.

Alex started going into rooms on the opposite side of the corridor from Jax, pulling women out of bed and herding them toward the fire escape. In short order they had most of the women moving out of the fire-escape door.

Alex took Jax by the arm. “Come on, we need to get the men’s wing opened.”

“I don’t think we have all the women out. Some ran from me and hid.”

Alex could see the flames leaping out toward the counter in the nurses’ station. “There are nine floors in this building. We don’t have time to do more than what we’ve done. We need to keep moving and get as many people out as we can. I’m hoping that as we go down to the other floors, where the people aren’t as mentally ill or as heavily sedated, we can get some of them to help us. But we’re running out of time.”

Alex unlocked the fire-escape door at the end of the corridor on the men’s side as Jax started rousing the male patients. All the while he screamed, “Fire!”

When the two of them had ushered the men out onto the fire escape, telling them to go down to the ground where they would be safe, Alex and Jax turned back in to the heart of the building. The fire, already racing through the ceiling, had jumped over the walls of the nurses’ station into the wards on both sides.

Gritty black smoke billowed along the ceiling. As they ran toward the center of the building, Alex could see bright yellow and orange tongues of flame licking out through the greasy black smoke. Paint on the walls bubbled and crackled and curled.

Alex couldn’t believe how fast the fire had gotten out of control, or how hot it was. Just since they got the men out the fire escape, the smoke rolling along the ceiling had lowered to half the height of the hall. He worried about being caught by the flames, but he knew that smoke was deadly, too. It could render a person unconscious.

Pulling Jax by the hand he headed for the nurses’ station. He could tell by how much effort he had to put into urging her along that she was well beyond exhausted. She stumbled several times. The drugs were making it difficult for him to hurry. He hoped Jax didn’t simply pass out. If that happened he didn’t know what he would do.

Beyond the front of the counter, on the other side of the nurses’ station, he could see the body of his mother. There was nothing he could do for her now. There were people still alive who would die if he didn’t leave her and try to get people to safety. He knew it was the logical thing to do, but he hated how cruel it felt.

“Help me,” the orderly lying near her pleaded. “Please. . don’t leave me.”

He was lying on his side, holding his guts in with both arms. He lay stiff and still, fearing to move.

This was the man who had killed his mother. He had no trouble killing a helpless woman. Now, fearing for his own life, he was reduced to begging for mercy. Alex only briefly met his beseeching gaze and then hurried on. He was in anything but a merciful mood.

They had to skirt the far side of the utility room to get past the flames to make it to the internal stairway in the back. Alex stopped Jax as he reconsidered the plan to go down to each floor alerting patients to the fire. Jax leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes as she caught her breath.

Alex realized that he had no way of knowing how many of the staff were involved in Dr. Hoffmann’s plot. For all he knew, everyone could be involved.

They could be rushing down into an ambush.

For all he knew, Hoffmann had alerted the staff before starting to set fire to the files. They might be torching the place on the floors below.

“Do you think that all the people working here could be from your world?” he asked Jax.

She opened her eyes, struggling to focus. “I don’t know, Alex. I suppose it’s possible. We know they’ve been coming here for a long time. It’s possible that over that time they’ve infiltrated the whole place. But why would they do such a thing?”

“Dr. Hoffmann was taking orders from Sedrick Vendis. Maybe they weren’t just trying to get information from my mother. Maybe they used this place to get information out of other people when they needed to. After all, they kept you and me here in an attempt to find out what we knew.”

“That’s possible,” she said, running her fingers back into her hair as she tried to think. “We know they’ve been working on things here in this world for a long time, but we don’t know the extent of their meddling. They would have had plenty of time to set up this hospital as a place for questioning people. From what I’ve seen it would certainly have given them the seclusion, anonymity, and cover they would have wanted.”

“So then there’s no telling how many of staff could be involved,” Alex said, thinking out loud. “For all we know, they could all be involved.”

Jax wiped a weary hard across her face. “I can’t answer that.”

“From what I can tell, it seems most of the people working up here on this floor were from your world. Others, like Hoffmann, were cooperating with them. This is a large facility. The top two floors are relatively small, but below that the hospital extends along the whole block. It has a lot of different mental-health services. It could be that they confined their activities to this floor and maybe the unit below. Being locked down as they are they could control everything easier. Dr. Hoffmann could have seen to that control.”

Jax gave him a look. “But we’d better not take that for granted.”

“I think you’re right.”

If there were other people involved, they could be looking for him and Jax. Going down to the next nurses’ station could get the two of them captured. But without an alarm to warn them, a lot of innocent people could die in the fire. He tried to think of what to do.

Struck with an idea, Alex went into the utility room and snatched a couple of the longer white coats off the rack. They looked like lab coats that went to mid-thigh. He handed one to Jax. “This might help fool them.”

They buttoned up the coats on the way to the stairs. It took Alex a frustratingly long time to find the right key out of the dozens on the fat key ring. He was finally able to unlock the stairway door. Once in the stairway, he shut the door tight, hoping it would slow the spread of the fire.

Jax followed close behind as they raced down the stairs to whatever waited.