We All Fall Down (10 page)

Within a few steps it became obvious that the smell and the smoke were getting stronger and thicker. My father let the beam drift up to the ceiling of the stairwell. There, at the very top, was a thick stream of smoke.

“As long as it stays up there we’re fine,” my father said.

I looked down to the next landing—floor eighty-one—we were now one or two floors above where the plane had hit. Maybe it was dark, and there was more smoke, but it was still okay if we just—

“The floor is all wet,” my father said.

I stepped down onto the sopping-wet floor. “What is it? Where is it coming from?”

My father pushed open the door. There was a loud hissing sound. The sprinklers had all been activated and water was raining down from the ceiling! The scene below was a sopping, soaking mass of overturned filing cabinets, computers smashed on the floor—the floor … it was uneven … it was rippled, buckled. The floor looked as if it had been crunched, pushed up. There were ceiling tiles down and speakers, attached by wires, swaying gently back and forth. All the overhead lights were off—either smashed or turned off—but the scene was still visible by natural light. The few windows I could see in the distance were smashed. Along with the hissing of the sprinklers was the faint whistling of wind coming in through the broken glass.

My father let the door close and we started down again.

The water from the sprinklers was flowing down the stairs, making them slippery. Maybe it made our footing a little bit less sure, but if fire was our problem then surely water was something that could only help.

I bumped into my father and startled. Why had he stopped? I looked beyond him and saw the reason. The way was blocked. It looked as though the walls of the stairwell had collapsed, caved in. End of the line. It was time to go back up.

“Hold this,” my father said, handing me the flashlight. “Keep the beam right where it is.”

I watched as he placed his hands against the obstruction. He pushed and it seemed to give slightly.

“It’s drywall,” he said. “It’s collapsed off the walls.”

He drew back his foot and gave it a kick. The panel buckled and then, as he kicked it again, snapped in two! He knocked it out of the way. Another piece was right against it. He kicked and punched and then muscled it to the side. As it gave way a cloud of smoke billowed out from behind it. The smoke that had been trapped behind the obstruction was now flowing freely up the stairwell! My heart jumped into my throat!

“Make sure the tie covers your mouth!” my father yelled.

I fumbled with the bandana and pulled it into place. My father did the same with his. It felt cold and I was having trouble drawing in air through the material, but somehow, it was working. The air seemed cleaner and the horrible smell was less, but nothing was protecting my eyes—they burned and stung, and even the tears that came didn’t bring relief.

“Stay low,” my father said.

I dropped down to one knee and my pants became instantly soaked. “We have to go back,” I pleaded.

“Not yet,” my father said. “It’s still okay.” My father took the flashlight from me and aimed the light down to the landing below. There was some debris—pieces of the drywall my father had smashed—on the stairs, but the way was basically clear. We stepped around them and down to the eightieth-floor landing.

“Ouch!” my father yelled as he jumped backwards, almost bumping into me.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” I exclaimed.

“My hand,” he said, holding it up. “I burned it when I touched the door. It’s red hot! The whole floor is on fire. Look.” He pointed the flashlight down to the bottom of the door. There was smoke streaming out from underneath and there was a strange reddish light …

I suddenly realized that I was feeling really hot, it was extremely hot here … but why shouldn’t it be?

“Should we head back up now?”

“If we need to get back up we can … we might have to … but not now … not yet.”

We started down again. There were pieces of glass mixed in with parts of the broken drywall. The stairs were soaked and slick. There was a little river of water now flowing down the steps.

“It stinks here,” I said.

My father bent down and touched his finger against the liquid and then brought it up to his face. “This isn’t just water. It’s got the jet fuel mixed in.”

“We’re standing in gasoline?” I asked in shock.

“Mixed with water. Water doesn’t burn,” he said, answering my unasked fear.

He started moving again before I could even think to object. It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. Whether I wanted to give up didn’t matter. My father was determined to keep going until he couldn’t go any farther.

The smoke seemed to be getting stronger with each step that we took. The whole top of the stairwell was now filled with a virtual river of smoke, flowing, bumping, bubbling along. Thank goodness there was still a foot or two of clear, open air between my head and the smoke. I bent down slightly anyway and adjusted the bandana, which was slipping down off my nose.

“Not much farther,” my father said. He started to cough violently. The fumes—the stench—were
becoming even more overwhelming. “A floor or two, or maybe three, and we’re through it.”

He stopped at the landing and trained the light down at the seventy-ninth floor. It was already bright down there. The door was bent and buckled and the doorframe itself was knocked away from the wall. There was angry red light shining and flickering through the gaps, smoke pouring out and up. And there was a sound … the sound of a fire burning, raging.

“Stay as far away from the door as you can, and stay low,” my father said very quietly in my ear.

Why was he whispering? Did he think the fire would hear us and react? That made no sense, but still … somehow it didn’t seem like a bad idea. He started down and I stayed right on his heels, hugging the wall, holding the handrail, bending over so I was above the soaked and running floor but below the steaming, smoking ceiling.

The heat coming from behind the door was phenomenally hot. I could feel it scorching the side of my face. I put a hand up to block the heat and I turned my head away, quickly rounding the corner. Instantly the heat faded, shielded by the concrete wall, although the eerie red light still illuminated the whole area.

“Is that it?” I gasped. “Are we past it?”

My father shook his head. He pointed the flashlight up. There was more smoke coming up the stairs. There was still more fire below us.

I felt a wave of disappointment wash over me, and my knees felt tired and weak. I just wanted to sit down … sit down, curl up and cry. But this was the worst place in the world to stop. Here we were, on the stairwell,
between
the floors that were on fire. Disappointment was pushed aside by fear, and that fear gave me a surge of energy. It wasn’t ending here, I wouldn’t let it.

My father stopped again on the landing between the two floors. The whole floor was flooded with water. Somehow the floor had buckled up and the water—the
liquid—was
pooling before cascading down below. There had to be three or four inches of water on the floor. My father trained the flashlight on the door—we were at the seventy-eighth floor. The door was bent, buckled at the bottom, but intact—more than on the floor above. There was smoke streaming out of the gaps at the top and the sides of the door and water pouring out from the bottom. There were more pieces of drywall knocked off the wall, partially blocking our way, and the whole wall—the concrete wall—was cracking and fractured. Chunks of it were littering the stairs. A pipe jutted out of the wall and water poured out of it. We stood there on the landing, suspended between the two floors, fire above us, fire below us. We couldn’t just stand there forever.

“Turn sideways, facing away from the fire and toward the wall,” my father said.

I followed his direction and example. Slowly we picked our way down the stairs. One step at a time … nine steps to a landing … two landings to a floor … seventy-eight floors to go. Heat was radiating up at us. With each step it seemed to get stronger. I tried to press my face right up to the concrete and brought my hand up to offer some protection. The air was thick with fumes and smoke and heat and sounds—the sound of water running down the stairs under my feet and the crackling, roaring noise of the fires raging above and below us. The heat, the sounds, the smells … this was what Hell had to be like.

I could feel the heat against the side of my face and right through the back of my head, right through the clothes on my back. I kept sliding down the wall, step by step. I turned my face even farther away from the heat of the fire so I was actually looking back at where we’d come, back up the stairs. There couldn’t be that many more steps. I hit the landing and quickly spun around, made the turn and stumbled down the first few steps.

My father was just a few steps farther down. He reached up and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m fine … you?”

“I feel like I’ve been baked and broiled, but I’m still not cooked. I think we’re past the worst of it now.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He aimed the beam down the stairs. “It looks almost clear … not much smoke at all.”

I looked at the light. It
was
almost clear, just some traces of smoke, a faint trail, a few wisps at the very top by the roof of the stairwell. I wanted to believe what he was saying was true, but I couldn’t let myself believe it yet.

My father’s hand slipped off my shoulder and he grabbed my hand. We started down the stairs. Almost instantly it became cooler. Hitting the next landing and making the turn it quickly got darker as well. The flashlight beam was our only light. There was no light from the fire. The darkness, which had scared me five floors up, was now welcoming and reassuring. I’d be happy to be guided by only the flashlight until we hit the lobby. The glow strips on the handrail and the edges of the steps flashed brightly.

“Seventy-seven,” my father said and made the turn down.

The door looked to be solidly in the frame, no buckling, no bending, no fractures. There was no light coming from underneath, no smoke seeping out. Tentatively I reached out my hand and touched the door. It was cold—stone cold. There was no fire behind that door … we were past the fire! The air was clean and clear. There was still the smell of smoke, the bitter odor, but it was nothing like what we’d faced one floor up.

I felt a wave of relief wash over my entire body. I wanted to laugh out loud, but I didn’t. I knew that we’d made it, but what about the other people, the people who had been on those floors when the plane hit … what had happened to them? Of course I knew. Anybody who had been there was gone, dead, incinerated or smashed into a million pieces. Nobody could have survived the impact. Nobody.

I didn’t want to think about that yet.

I followed my father as he rounded the corner and we continued down the stairs. He was right to keep moving. We were past the fire floors but we were still a long way from being out of the building.

We hit seventy-six. No heat, no smoke, but the fumes were still strong. In the corner of the landing the emergency light was shining. We turned the corner and headed down again. Floor seventy-five was just below. There, on the landing, a single fluorescent bulb glowed out a welcome. I couldn’t help but smile. Again, there was no hint of fire. Down below at the next landing the lights were all on and working.

“I guess I don’t need this now,” my father said, and he turned off the flashlight. “Or this.” He pulled the bandana down around his neck. I followed suit and took a deep breath. The air felt good going into my lungs.

“The stairwell … it’s empty … nobody … not even the sounds of anybody from below,” I said. “Why?”

“I think that anybody who was on the floors below the impact zone got out right away, and anybody who was on those floors … well …”

He didn’t need to finish that thought.

Strange, we were just a few floors below where it all happened, and if it hadn’t been for the water still flowing down the stairs along with us there wouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary. Other than the smell and the water there was nothing that even hinted at what was happening just above our heads and all around us. It seemed just like the trip we’d made down from the Observation Deck that morning.

I looked at my watch. It was eighteen minutes after nine. Less than ninety minutes after we had been up there on the Observation Deck, staring down at the city on a beautiful, sunny September morning. Not a cloud in the sky. Less than thirty-five minutes since that first plane hit and that brilliant blue sky was stained by billowing black smoke. Less than twenty minutes since the second plane rocked this building, changing everything. We were no longer just watching the drama unfolding through the window and on the television screens; it had pushed right into our world, almost killing us. And now, here in the stairwell, we’d dodged that bullet, passed through the fire, and we were free, we were fine, we were alive!

My father stopped as we came to the next floor. There was a big number seventy-four on
the back of the door.

“I was thinking,” my father said, “about those people who climbed up instead of going down.”

In the rush of emotions and fears, and then the relief I’d felt when we’d gotten through it, I hadn’t thought about them at all. How many people had decided to move up the stairs instead of down? It had to be dozens and dozens … maybe hundreds.

“If they knew that this way was passable they could get down,” my father said. “If only they knew. If only somebody could tell them.”

“But anybody who knows has already gone down, like us, and there’s no way they’d go back up and …” I stopped myself. He couldn’t be considering what I was thinking he was thinking.

“I thought that maybe I should go back up,” my father said.

I gasped. “You can’t be serious!”

He shook his head. “I thought about it, but, no. Those floors that we passed were burning badly, and the fires were getting stronger, fast, judging by the way the smoke was getting thicker. Just because we got through then doesn’t mean people could get through again in thirty or forty minutes.”