Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Jerry: Part Four

The shop itself was an inferno, and Gideon guessed that the bombs had been thrown through the wide glass window that would have offered passersby a view of whatever the shop had once sold. The arsonists had either done it because it was easier than trying to reach an upstairs window, or they'd done it because that left the squatters with no way out.

Fire was licking along the wooden staircase, and the banisters were charred black and collapsing. The bottom steps were too far gone to support human weight.

Gideon leaped over them, landing with vampire grace in the middle of the stairs, and they creaked beneath him, so he jumped again before they could collapse, and landed on the upstairs floor.

"Jerry," he roared, straining his ears for any signs of life over the sounds of the blaze.

There – the faint sound of a voice, coming from further down the landing.

Gideon ran to the third door. The fire hadn't reached the frame yet, but it was raging through the floor below, so the door-handle would likely be red-hot to touch. Gideon kicked the door down.

Inside the room, Jerry and five other men were frantically trying to shred the blankets from their mattresses. Another man had smashed a window with a chair and was clearing away glass from the frame. "Hurry up," he cried, choking on the smoky air.

Jerry saw Gideon and dropped the blanket. "What are you doing here?" he cried. Sweat poured down his face and his eyes were red-rimmed.

"Saving you," Gideon replied.

"We tried to get down the stairs, but . . ."

There was a crash behind Gideon as the last of the staircase collapsed. Gideon looked at the floor beneath them. How long could it support their weight?

"We were trying to make ropes to climb out of the window, but it's not working. I think we're going to have to jump," Jerry said.

Gideon crossed to the window and looked out. Below them was a narrow strip of alleyway, a hard ribbon of concrete ground. Jumping from a second storey wouldn't necessarily kill the men, but they could get hurt, and then what? If the police didn't care if the gay squatters burned to death, then Gideon didn't trust a hospital not to turn them away.

"Get away from the middle of the floor," Gideon ordered and picked up the blanket that Jerry had dropped. He tore it down the middle and knotted the two pieces tightly together, before snatching a blanket from someone else's hands and shredding that too.

Jerry watched, open-mouthed.

"I don't know how much weight this will bear, so we have to move quickly," Gideon said.

Jerry looked around the room, his eyes panicky. "There's nothing to tie it to."

"I'll hold it," Gideon said.

"You can't –"

"We don't have time to argue," Gideon shouted.

Flames were crawling in through the open doorway, and the floor was hot beneath his feet. If it collapsed, he could survive the fall, but maybe not the raging fire.

Wrapping one end of the makeshift rope around his forearm, he tossed the other end out of the window. "Climb down," he told Jerry.

But Jerry shook his head. "Davey, get over here," he yelled.

Eighteen-year-old Davey, the youngest of the group, scrambled to the window. "I – I can't," he said, when he realised what Gideon wanted him to do.

"You have to," Jerry said, putting both hands on the boy's shoulders. "This is the only way."

"I won't let you fall," Gideon said