Page 106 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘Fuck,’ Jet agreed, standing up, the chair spinning a full circle without her. ‘I should email these files to myself. The payroll, tax returns. You go back to the files, see if you can find –’

Jet choked on air as it erupted with sound.

A sharp wailing noise, screeching ear to ear, and between them too, inside, Jet’s skull vibrating with it.

She clapped one hand over one ear, Billy covering both of his.

‘What the fuck?’ Jet screamed over the two-tone high-pitched whine. ‘I disabled the security alarm! You saw it, it saiddisarmed!’

Billy stared across at her, his phone and its silver light pressed against his face, making his watery eyes glow in the dark.

They shifted, something new in them, shock giving way to something worse.

‘I don’t think that’s the security alarm!’ Billy screamed back. ‘Jet, do you smell smoke?!’

22

Jet didn’t need to smell it; she could see it now, dancing in the beam of her flashlight. Smoke creeping out of the carpet beneath their feet and up, gathering into a dark cloud against the ceiling, skulking over them.

‘The building’s on fire!’ Billy screamed. ‘We need to leave!’

Jet’s feet wouldn’t move, rooted there, the floor growing warm through the soles of her shoes, warmer, into hot. They needed to leave, yes, she knew that, but for some reason she couldn’t make herself move, her brain left behind, back twenty seconds ago when it was still quiet, her heart seized in her chest, so fast, like it wasn’t even beating at all, erased by the blare of that alarm.

The building was on fire? How was the fucking building on fire? Her mind stuck on that part first.

‘Jet!’ Billy screamed over the alarm, in her face now. He grabbed her working arm, pulled her back into life. ‘Run!’

She finally moved, brain back in her body, moving with her, fear taking over.

‘Wait!’ Jet snatched her arm from Billy, doubled back toward Luke’s desk. ‘We need these!’

She grabbed the pile of papers Billy had found, scrunching them around the flashlight, holding it all in one hand.

‘Jet, let’s go!’

‘Right behind you!’

She ran to catch up.

‘No, you go first, I’ve got you!’

Billy caught her, pushed her ahead, his hand pressed to her back, the smoke thickening the darkness around them.

They moved together, past Angie Rice’s desk.

Darting around another.

Steps faster than the repeating pattern of the alarm, racing it to the door.

Billy crashed into it first, grabbed the handle, hauled it open.

A wall of heat slammed into them, clawing at Jet’s eyes, too hot, too bright.

‘Oh my god,’ she said – not that she could hear herself, over the alarm or the growl of the flames.

It was all gone. Nothing but fire, licking up the walls, hungry, crackling, an angry laugh as it destroyed everything, screamed for more. Everywhere. Reaching up toward them, claiming half the staircase. The metal steps screeched as they buckled and bent in the heat.

Not a corridor anymore, just a tunnel of flame, building, growing stronger as it bent around toward the warehouse. The deepest reds and the blackest smoke spilling out in a firestorm, faster, hungrier. Not a warehouse anymore, it was hell broken open, raging right beneath the office.