The Four-Night Run by William Lashner Read Free Book Online Page B

flame close to his face, breathe in the fire, fill his nose and throat with the rich dark pleasure of the smoke, redolent of the burning leaves of autumn, the crackling hearths of winter, the sparks of a campfire spiraling into the summer night. He inhaled deeply, the warm tug of the nicotine suffusing into his blood, the heat of the red glow upon his fingers, filling his lungs and turning his dream into a gorgeous chiaroscuro of smolder and smoke.
    He woke with a cough.
    The smoke of his dream was surrounding him, thick, warm.
    He sat up and coughed again.
    “What the . . .”
    There was only smoke. The lit digital displays on his stove, his cable box, his stereo, all were lost in the haze.
    He stood and coughed, dashed to his window, pushed up the bottom sash. Fresh air washed upon him. He punched out the screen and looked down. The glow of flame within his office on the bottom floor danced upon the darkened street. He yelled for help, but nothing outside moved except the dance of the firelight.
    He took a deep breath and rushed halfway down the spiral stairs. The heat hit his face like a fist. A carpet of flame covered the floor of his office. Fire danced wildly up the stairway. He stepped down farther into the roar as a tongue of flame shot high enough to lick his boot. He wrapped the coat around himself in preparation for a race through the fire to the safety of the street and took a deep breath. It felt like raw flame had leaped into his throat and seared his lungs. The pain buckled his legs. As he gripped the handrail, a cinder burned into his palm. He threw up his hand and collapsed down the circular stairwell, twisting until he lay in a curve, facing the steps. Fire danced about him as if he were the guest of honor on a funeral pyre. He took another breath. The pain was beyond pain. He fell into a fit of coughing as the heat overwhelmed him.
    Slowly, desperately, hand over enfeebled hand, he dragged himself back up the stairway and into his apartment.
    On his knees he crawled to the window, grabbed the sill, pulled himself up, stuck out his head. He gulped at the air. He knew the air he breathed to be cool, delicious, sweet, but still each inhalation burned as if he were again breathing in the hot smoke of the fire. He had to get out, somehow. He thought of jumping; it was only the second floor, but still. There was a drainpipe leading from the roof just a few feet from the window. That could be his ticket. He turned to take a look back into the apartment. What did he need? What must he save? What in his life was absolutely essential? A suit? His flat-screen? The diploma he was awarded by his law school? No, nothing. Nothing worth saving. He leaned back through the window and lunged for the pipe.
    It groaned audibly when he grabbed hold of it. His burned right hand slammed into a brace, and the metal sliced his skin, but even so he whipped his other arm around to grab the drainpipe with both hands. It wasn’t as steady as he had hoped, nothing more than folded sheet metal, but he saw no choice except to hold on tight and swing his body out of the window, away from the fire.
    He steadied his grip, took a painful breath, swung.
    His legs hung loose. He scrabbled at the brick wall with his boots, trying to find purchase, as if to climb up instead of down. Suddenly he stopped moving altogether, as if suspended in time as well as midair. With a groan and the sound of snapping braces, the pipe broke from the building, falling away even as it collapsed in on itself.
    And Scrbacek fell with it, shouting, shouting.
    The bending and collapsing of the metal slowed his fall just enough so that when he hit the asphalt unevenly, his left leg jammed but did not shatter. He lay on the ground, stunned. Slowly he raised his torso so he could stare head-on at the wall of fire inside the plate-glass win dow of his office. With much effort he stood, took a step forward and then another, and stopped before the flames, watching his