Page 131 of Never Forget
All of them. In one breath.
I was thirty feet from the building. The heat that came out of those windows when they blew was like standing next to an open oven door and having somebody shove your face at it. I staggered back a step. Sean staggered with me. The nozzle went sideways and water arced up and away from where it was supposed to go.
A fireball rolled through the showroom.
I watched it move.
From the B side to the A side, one slow breath, like a tide coming in. It moved through sofas, mattresses and displays. Everything it touched went up. The light inside the building went from smoke-dark to orange-white. I felt the heat on myface through my hood. I took another step back before I'd told my feet to move.
The building groaned.
I'd never heard a building make that sound before. A long, low, structural moan. The sound of a roof deciding.
Then the roof came down.
The radio exploded.
Maydays. Five of them. Eight of them. I lost count. Voices on top of voices. Men calling for help from inside a building that had just folded in on them. I heard a voice I knew but couldn't place. Then the channel crossed and I heard another voice before it turned to static.
The PASS alarms started.
The high thin chirping that goes off when a firefighter stops moving for thirty seconds. You hear one and your head snaps toward it. You hear two and your body starts moving without asking you. You hear five and your mind stops being able to count them.
I moved toward the building.
Someone grabbed the back of my coat and hauled me backward.
"Reeves.Reeves."
Tyler. His voice was breaking.
"The structure's gone. You can't."
"There are men in there."
"I know."
"There are men?—"
"I know, Sam."
He didn't let go of my coat.
I didn't fight him.
The voices on the radio changed.
They weren't maydays anymore. The men inside had figured out what the men outside were figuring out. Nobody was coming. Nobody could.
They started saying goodbye.
I can't write down what I heard. I heard fragments. Broken transmissions. Wives. Kids. One man saying a name over and over. Another man telling someone he was sorry. Another man sayingI love youinto a radio that was crackling out and then coming back and then crackling out again, and on the third time it didn't come back.
The PASS alarms kept chirping.
One by one, they stopped.
I don't remember the next part right.
