4. Blaze

4:43pm

"D-do you s-s-smell that?" Scott asked Adam.

"Smoke?" he asked. Scott nodded. Adam hit the '10' button and the doors opened. He stepped out and walked over to the stairwell, Scott following. They climbed down the stairs until they reached the loby and saw it. The fire.

"Get out of the hotel!" a fireman yelled, shoving them out of the door just as the first explosion went off.

*

The hotel shook and the power went off. Iris dropped her book.

"What the?" she asked. Grace stood up and ran over to the stairwell, looking down. She walked down to the third floor when she saw the flames and the smoke. Coughing, she turned and ran back up.

"Hotel's on fire," she said inbetween coughs.

"Oh my God. We've got to get everyone," Iris said, running to Adam and Scott's room. Glynis knocked on Luke, Freidman and Clay's door, and Grace went into her room to get Joan and Madison.

"The hotel is on fire!" Grace exclamed. Madison and Joan jumped up.

"Are you serious?" Joan asked.

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Grace countered.

"We've got to get out of here!" Madison said. The girls ran out of the room and into the hall, where everyone else was waiting.

"The guys weren't in their room," Iris said.

"Let's hope they're already out then," Grace said.

"How far was the fire when you saw it?" Iris asked.

"Third floor. But the smoke was up to the seventh," Grace told her.

"We should split up, we might have a better chance of making it out," Clay suggested.

"But what if we don't all get out?" Madison countered. Silence.

"Madison has a point. Maybe we should stick together," Joan said.

"Whatever we're going to do, we should do it fast," Iris said, pointing to the smoke coming out of the stairwell. Another explosion rocked the hotel, sending them flying.

*

"They still haven't come down.." Adam said. A firefighter turned to him.

"There are still people in the building?"

"At least eight," Adam told him.

"The fire's consumed the first five floors. We've got to get them out. Airlifting will be the safest way. What floor were they on?"

"Fourteen. Jane's still in there. I'm going back," Adam said, heading for the burning building.

"You can't go back up there!" the fireman yelled.

"I've go to," Adam told him, running into the building.

"Stupid kid," the fireman said, following him.

*

5:00pm

"What the-" Joan asked, sitting up rubbing her head. She looked around where she had landed. An elevator. The doors were closed and Iris was pacing back and forth.

"Joan, you're awake," she said.

"Yeah. Why are the doors closed?" Joan asked, standing up.

"I'm trying to get us down to the loby. I know it's a strech, but when we got blown into the elevator the doors slammed and it started going down," Iris said. The elevator rocked.

"And now we're stuck.." Joan said.

*

Grace slammed into the wall. Slowly she stood up, coughing like mad, and looked around. She was on a stairwell filled with smoke. She heard another person's coughing and looked around, smoke burning her eyes. She walked across the landing and looked a the number on the wall. '9'. The blow had sent her down 6 flights of stairs.

"Grace?" Luke asked, walking down a few stairs to get to the landing.

"Luke, the fire's spreading fast. We've got to go back up and find everyone else. The roof might be the safest way out." They climbed up to the tenth floor, smoke filling their lungs.

"We need another stairway. This one's filling up too fast," Luke said, walking into the hallway.

"There's one blocked off by a door a little way down," Grace told him, following him into the hall, which was mostly cleared of smoke. They continued walking down the hall, Luke five feet ahead of her. Grace looked up for a moment to cough again when noticed something going on on the celing right above Luke.

"Luke!" she yelled. He stopped and turned around. Grace ran over to him and gave him a hard push, sending him flying just as a mixture of whatever celings are made out of and the two by four holding the area up came crashing down on Grace, who had been standing in the exact spot Luke had been in...