She Will Persist

31

Axel

There was crashing and burning. Heat soaked the room, smoke clouded my lungs and stung my eyes as I ran. I could barely make out Harrison's form in front of me. I prayed that Adira was in front of him. I stumbled over the remains of a burning chair and kept running.

Then there was an ear-splitting crack and I turned to watch one of the massive beans of the warehouse, already charred and smoldering, come crashing down right above my head.

And then everything went black.

-

"Axel!"

Someone was yelling.

"Axel!" Came the voice again.

Then my senses exploded.

The sound of crackling fire and crashing wood filled my ears again. I felt my hands and forearms on cement ground. Dull pain spiraled out of each bone. I blinked a little bit, but saw nothing but smoke and tints of bright orange flame licking through debris in various spots. I tried to shakily get to my feet and continue to run out the building, but got quickly dragged back down by something clamping down on my right foot.

And then I felt the pain.

I would have screamed if I didn't have smoke in my lungs. Red-hot intensity sliced through my foot and rushed up to my knee like lightning as my senses came back. I desperately tried to yank it out from where a bit of beam was crushing it to the floor, but it only made the pain worse. In my broken shoulder it felt like the bone was completely dislodged from its socket.

"Axel!"

I coughed and looked up with watering eyes. Harrison got down on his knees and immediately started to desperately pull and yank at my hands.

"I'm stuck," I croaked.

"Well get un-stuck, this place is coming down hard!" He yelled.

I managed to turn on my side to get a better look at the beam that was holding me down. "Can you move it?" I coughed some more.

Harrison scrambled to his feet and jumped over my back to inspect the burning beam. He reached out a hand to touch it but immediately retracted it. "Fuck, it's hot!" He tried again and this time burnt his hand.

"Then just go, I'll keep pulling myself out," I said, trying to yank my own foot out from under the beam.

"Fuck no, I'm not leaving you here!" He yelled, just before ducking as another beam came down and landed dangerously close to his head. As it hit the ground more dark smoke billowed out from it and right into our faces. We both burst into coughing fits.

Our struggles to pull me out got more and more hopeless as minutes passed and the beam still didn't budge in the slightest.

"We are not dying together Laurie, that's not how I want to be remembered!" Harrison yelled over the burning, collapsing to the ground after more futile clawing at the beam.

I didn't have the breath to respond, just started to dry heave with the smoke.

Finally Harrison shrugged off the dress vest he was wearing and wrapped it around his hands and neared the flaming beam again. "Harry wait," I croaked, "it's gonna catch."

My vision started to blur. The smoke was getting thick, the air getting thinner. And I was still trapped on my stomach, where the air was even more barren. The throbbing in my head picked up as the pain in my foot got worse. I felt everything grow heavy and my eyes start to roll back.