Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. Well, some of them are. But the important ones are all property of MTM and NBC Productions and used without permission. I'm not making any money out of this . . . . Blah, blah, blah. You know the drill.
Final Countdown
By Nicky
Chapter 10
Willie races down the
hallways of the Centre. All those years
of playing high school football finally paying off. He doesn't stop until he reaches the computer room where Broots,
Miss Parker and Lyle were all hunched around computers trying to complete the
system download.
"Drop
everything. We've got to get out of
here now," he yells to them.
"Where's Jarod,"
Miss Parker asks frantically. "You
didn't leave him, did you?"
"I had to,"
Willie confesses. "He wouldn't
come with me. He's hurt pretty bad and
there wouldn't have been enough time to bring him and come warn you guys."
"Not enough
time?" Lyle asks. "What do
you mean by there's not enough time?"
"The bomb's been
armed. We're in the final countdown as
we speak. Let's go. We don't have the time to be standing around
chatting like this." Willie runs
over to grab Miss Parker's hand and pulls her towards the door.
"Go get Jarod,
Willie," she orders, refusing to move from her spot.
"Not until you're
safely out of here. Don't make me do
this the hard way," he warns. When
it doesn't look like she's going to move, he takes another step closer and
scoops her up in his arms. A few
seconds later, they're out the door, on the way to the nearest exit.
"Put me down,"
she struggles against him the entire way.
He finally obliges her once they reach the outside gates of the complex.
"Make sure she stays
here," Willie tells Lyle.
"And call the cops."
"Where are you
going?" Miss Parker cries.
"He didn't want me to
die in there," Willie whispers.
"And I'm not about to let him do the same." He tentatively flashes the grin Jarod warned
him about and is surprised to see a small smile of recognition dance on the
edge of her lips.
"Just be
careful," she begs as he turns back towards the building.
He only gets halfway back
to the building before an eerie calm settles over, causing him to stop in his
tracks. It was a cold, silent sensation
that made all the hairs on his body stand on end. Time seemed to stand still.
And that one half of a second seemed to last for a full minute. It was literally the calm before the
storm. That one split second in time
before the world was torn apart.
Before Willie could even
blink, the view before him burst into flaming reds, yellows and oranges. Bricks that previously comprised the
building that used to be standing in front of him were propelled like tiny rockets. The earth shook beneath him and all he could
hear was a thundering rumble that still echoed in his ears long after the
explosion.
"No!" a scream
comes from behind him. It was Miss
Parker. And she was twisting in Lyle's arms, trying to get free. Broots had to assist the man in keeping her
restrained, being careful not to injure her or her unborn child.
Willie quickly gets to his
feet, determination pumping madly through his veins. He had to get in there.
He had to find Jarod. The bomb
appears to have only affected the west wing of the building. The entire east
side of the building was still standing.
That's where Willie went in, hoping to be able to make his way to the
conference room where he left Jarod.
The only sound was the crackling of the fire making it's way through the
portion of the building still standing.
In the distance he could hear the faint wailing of a siren, but he
didn't have that long to wait on the fire or policemen. The smoke was thick and
burned his throat and eyes. He knew
that Jarod couldn't withstand much more of it.
He takes one last deep
breath of partially fresh air and covers his mouth and nose with a cloth. The thick cloud of smoke clung to
everything, so it was hard to tell where he was. Pretty soon, his view was entirely obscured and he was going by
instinct alone. By his estimation, he
was about 20 feet away a stairway at the end of the hall. Then the conference room would be just up
those stairs and across the hall.
He drops to his knees to
crawl under the smoke the rest of the way.
He could feel his lungs tightening from the exertion of processing the
polluted air. The air near the floor
was a little better, but still completely smoke filled. He knew that his body couldn't take much
more. With one last burst of
determination, he crawls furiously the last few feet to the door of the
stairwell. Or at least, where the door
used to be. The missing door was one
less obstacle to surmount. He said a
quick prayer of thanks for small favors.
He had given up on trying
to see through the smoke and closed his eyes.
His breathing was becoming more and more strained. But his goal was in reach. Just up the stairs and across the hallway to
get to Jarod. He feels for the first
stair and quickly begins his ascent, continuing that way for a few more steps. In reaching for the fifth step, his hand
lands in a warm puddle. Quickly his
eyes fly open to see what the hot sticky substance was, hoping it was not what
he was thinking. The thick, red liquid
clinging to his hands confirmed what he suspected. It was blood. The body
next to the puddle confirmed who's blood it was. A mixture of relief and fear filled Willie's mind. He had found Jarod. But what kind of condition was he in? Willie finds his neck and presses two fingers
to check for a pulse. There was a weak
one, but strong enough to give Willie hope.
With strength he didn't realize he had left, Willie wraps his arms
around Jarod's chest and pulls the man the rest of the way down the stairs.
"Sir, can you tell me
what happened here?" a voice says to Lyle. He looks around and sees crews of rescue workers, firefighters, paramedics
and cops flocking the scene. The man
talking to him was the chief fireman.
But Lyle barely heard the man's words.
He barely noticed the noise of the sirens and rescue crews moving in to
do their jobs. He just noticed the
silence from his distraught sister.
"Sir," the
fireman speaks again, this time gently touching Lyle's shoulder to get his
attention. "I said, can you tell
me what happened here?"
"A bomb," Lyle
whispers. He focuses back on Miss
Parker, now very quiet and very still in his arms. A few minutes ago, it had taken both he and Broots to restrain
her. And now, she'd gone limp. It begins to worry him. "Please. Get someone to help my sister.
She's pregnant and her husband was in the building when it exploded. And now, she's not responding to me."
The fireman gives Miss
Parker a sympathetic glance before motioning for the paramedics. "Get this
woman to the hospital. She's pregnant
and possibly in shock," he orders before turning back to Lyle. "You said her husband was in the
building. Anyone else?"
"Yeah, another man
went in after him a few minutes ago," Lyle informs him. The man thanks Lyle and tells him he's free
to go. Lyle gets into the ambulance
along with Miss Parker when a voice booms over the fireman's walkie talkie.
"Chief," a young
fireman calls. "We found some
bodies. We're bringing them out
now."
"How many? What are their conditions?" the chief
winces, knowing the kind of heat and smoke from a fire of this sort. It was very unlikely that anyone would still
be alive.
"There's five,"
the young man says somberly. "And
I think they're dead."
The ambulance closes its
door and speeds away. Lyle can hardly
believe what he heard. All dead? Even Jarod and Willie? He looks down at his barely conscious
sister, wondering if she heard the fireman.
One tear makes its way down her cheek and he has his answer.
"It's alright,
Sis," he whispers in her ear, getting no response. No sob.
No gasp. Nothing. He barely even felt a breath. There was no reaching her. She was buried deep inside herself now. Her body shutting down in response to the
tragedy as the only way to protect her unborn child. There was nothing he could do now to help her. All he could do was hold her hand.