Mom and Dad had told us to stay in the hotel while they were gone—but this morning Dad had made sure we understood the warning sign’s instructions.
So, should BeeBee and I stay where we were, or leave the hotel and hike up the hill?
5
If everyone was supposed to leave the hotel and go to higher ground, wouldn’t an alarm go off? Maybe not inside an old hotel like this, but outside somewhere? There must be some sort of warning signal to let people know.
Back home, whenever a tornado approaches, sirens sound all over town. When we hear the tornado sirens, we all head for the nearest building and go down to the basement until the “all clear” signal sounds.
BeeBee laid a bath towel on the spilled milkshakes. “Yuck,” she said. “What a mess. When you call room service, ask for a maid too.”
I tried to remember what Gary had said in his report last year about a system that tracked tsunamis, but I couldn’t remember the details. Besides, his report had been on Hawaii. He hadn’t mentioned Oregon.
“Do you smell something funny?” BeeBee asked.
I sniffed. “Like what?”
“Burned toast.”
I sniffed again. She was right; something smelled scorched.
“Probably when the electricity went out, a transformer blew up or something,” I said. “Maybe that’s the bang we heard that sounded like a gunshot.”
I reached for the phone.
“I want a chocolate milkshake this time,” BeeBee said.
“I’m not calling room service. I’m calling the front desk to report the smell.” I also planned to ask about a warning signal for tsunamis, and if the clerk didn’t know, I would try to call Mom and Dad on the cell phone. Maybe the cell phone did work on the ship. I knew they wouldn’t mind having me call in an emergency like this to ask what we should do.
I held the receiver to my ear and pushed the button for the front desk. Nothing happened. I jiggled the button up and down. There was no response and no dial tone. The line was dead.
BeeBee pointed the remote at the television set and pushed the clicker several times.
“The power’s off,” I said. “There’s no TV and no telephone.”
“It had better get fixed before Money Talk,” she complained. “I want to watch my program.”
“Put your shoes on,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “We’re going to go outside and get farther away from the ocean.”
“Mom and Dad said we’re supposed to stay in the room.”
“They didn’t know we were going to have an earthquake.”
“The earthquake’s over. I don’t want to go outside. We didn’t eat yet, and I want to order another pizza and a chocolate milkshake.”
I wondered how she thought the cooks were supposed to bake pizza without electricity. My sister might be smart about money, but she wasn’t using her head now.
“Remember the sign we saw at the beach?” I said. “The one about tsunamis?”
“Yeesss,” she said, drawing out the word while she soaked in the meaning of my question.
“We’re going to do what the sign said.”
BeeBee looked at me as if she’d never seen me before. “Is a giant wave coming here?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Probably not. But in case a big wave does come, we need to get as far away from the ocean as we can.”
BeeBee slid her feet into her sneakers, grabbed Bill, and followed me to the door.
I unhooked the door chain, but when I tried to open the door, it didn’t budge.
“Is it locked?” BeeBee asked.
“No, it’s stuck. The earthquake must have shifted the building.”
BeeBee started to cry. “I want to go outside!” she wailed. I was too worried to point out that two minutes earlier she had insisted she wanted to stay in the room.
I turned the doorknob again, then put one foot on the wall to brace myself while I yanked with all my strength. The door jerked open about six inches—and a thick cloud of dark smoke billowed into the room.
I slammed the door shut again.
“That’s what I smelled,” BeeBee said. “There’s smoke in the hallway.”
Beep . . . beep . . . beep. I jumped as the shrill sound filled the room.
BeeBee covered her ears. “What’s that noise?”
Beep . . . beep . . . beep. Was that the tsunami warning? No, it was too close; a tsunami warning would come from outside the hotel; this was coming from overhead. I looked at the ceiling and saw the source of the racket: a round piece of plastic that was mounted over one of the beds.
“It’s a smoke alarm,” I said.
“Make it stop,” BeeBee said. “It hurts my ears.”
“We aren’t staying here,” I said. I ran to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and soaked two bath towels with water. I handed a dripping towel to BeeBee. “Hold this over your nose and mouth,” I said. “We’re going into the hall to find the stairs and go down.”
“I don’t want to,” BeeBee said. “I want to stay here. The hall is full of smoke.”
Beep . . . beep . . . beep. The clamor continued.
I hesitated. Maybe we were safer here in the room with the door closed. But something was burning enough to fill the hall with smoke. There was a fire somewhere in the hotel; the whole building could eventually go up in flames.
I didn’t want to be trapped in our room on the third floor. What if we had to jump out a window? Even if we only made it down one flight of stairs, we’d have a better chance of leaping to safety from a second-story window than from the third floor.
“Hold the towel over your face,” I said, “and hang on to me.”
She dropped Bill and buried her nose and mouth in the wet towel.
I tugged on the door again, pulling it open far enough for us to squeeze through. I held my own towel with my right hand and grabbed BeeBee with my left.
“Lets go,” I said.
With no lights and no windows, the hall was as dark as an underground cave. Thick smoke surrounded us. Even with the towel held to my face, my eyes smarted, and the smoke stung the inside of my nose when I inhaled. I coughed, and BeeBee’s cough echoed mine. Luckily, we knew where the stairway was and went in that direction.
I wondered if there were people in any of the other rooms. We had not seen anyone except the Hazeltons on the third floor, but that didn’t mean the rooms were empty. If we hadn’t opened our door, we wouldn’t have known there was a fire. What if other unsuspecting guests were in their rooms?
“Hang on to my shirt,” I said. I dropped her hand and pounded on the doors of the rooms we passed. “Fire!” I shouted. “Leave the building! Fire!” I coughed and put the towel back against my face, trying not to take a deep breath.
BeeBee stumbled along beside me, one hand clinging to my shirt. “Can’t we take the elevator down?” she asked.
“With the electricity out, the elevator won’t be working.” Even if it had been running, I wouldn’t take a chance on that old elevator.
We had to be nearly to the stairwell. I groped along the wall, feeling for the door.
My foot landed on something soft. I stumbled and fell against the wall. BeeBee couldn’t catch herself in time and went down.
Wondering what I had tripped over, I leaned down and extended one hand. My fingers landed on a face. I jerked away just as BeeBee screamed.
“There’s a body on the floor!” she cried as she scrambled to her feet. “It’s a dead person!” She flung her arms around me and buried her face in my chest.
I pushed her away, then dropped to my knees and gingerly put my fingers down again. I felt hair—short, sharp spikes of hair. I’d seen only one person in the hotel with that kind of hairdo. “It’s Daren Hazelton,” I said.
“Is he dead?”
I moved my fingers across Daren’s face and under his chin, feeling for a pulse. When I felt a steady throbbing, I blew my breath out in relief.
“He’s alive,” I told Be
eBee. “He must have been overcome by the smoke.”
I shook Daren’s shoulders. “Daren! Wake up!”
He groaned but didn’t move.
“Daren, it’s Kyle,” I said. “Wake up! You have to get out of here.”
“I found the door to the stairs,” BeeBee said. “We’re right next to it.”
“Hold it open while I move Daren into the stairwell.”
I heard a slight creaking as the door opened.
“It isn’t as smoky on the stairway,” BeeBee said.
I put my hands under Daren’s armpits and dragged him through the doorway onto the landing.
“Shut the door,” I said. “Quick! Before any more smoke comes through.”
BeeBee did. We still couldn’t see but at least it was easier to breathe.
“What are you going to do about Daren?” BeeBee asked.
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I should pull Daren down two flights of stairs. What if he had injured his neck or back when he fell to the floor? If I moved him the wrong way, he could be permanently paralyzed. But I couldn’t leave him behind in a burning building either, and besides, I’d already moved him.
“We’re going to take him with us.”
“He’s too big to carry.”
“I’ll pull him behind me, like a wagon.”
“We’ll get out a lot faster if we leave him here.”
“The whole building might go up in flames. We have to try to save him.”
“I don’t like Daren.”
“I don’t like him either, but we can’t leave him here unconscious.”
“If we were unconscious,” BeeBee said, “I bet Daren wouldn’t rescue us.”
I knew she was probably right about that. I also knew it would be wrong to save ourselves and leave Daren behind, no matter how much I disliked him.
“You go down first,” I said. “Hang on to the railing and keep the towel over your nose and mouth. I’ll be right behind you.”
“What about your towel? You can’t hold it over your nose and pull Daren at the same time.”
“I’ll have to do without the towel.”
“Bend down,” BeeBee said. “I’ll tie it around your face, like a bandit.” She managed to secure the towel behind my head, and it stayed in place when I leaned over to grab Daren’s shoulders. I put one hand under each of Daren’s armpits and lifted so that his head wouldn’t touch the steps. Walking backward, I started down, towing Daren after me.
It was like dragging a huge rag doll down the stairs. Daren’s feet made a soft thunk, thunk sound as they slid from step to step. His arms dangled at his sides, and I couldn’t believe how heavy he was. It took every bit of strength I had to keep going. If I’d had to pull him up the stairs, I would never have made it.
The stairs went down half a flight to a landing, where they doubled back and went down some more. Coughing, I paused on the landing to catch my breath. The landing was hard to navigate since we had to change directions.
“Hold Daren’s head for me,” I instructed BeeBee, “while I move his feet.”
BeeBee kept Daren from sliding headfirst down the stairs, while I lifted his feet and swung them around the landing so that we could proceed. It was slow going, and I wasn’t sure I should be taking this much time. What if I saved Daren but in doing so, cost BeeBee and me our lives?
Sweat dripped off my forehead; my shirt clung to my back. As we crossed the second-floor landing and started down another section of stairs, the smoke got thicker. Ahead of me, I heard BeeBee coughing and choking.
“Try not to inhale the smoke,” I said. “Keep the towel pressed against your noise and take shallow breaths.”
“Hey!” The sudden voice made me jump. “What’s going on? Where am I? Let go of me!” Daren pushed my hands away.
I couldn’t see him, but it sounded as if he rolled onto his side and then sat on one of the steps.
“We’re in the stairwell,” I said. “We’re taking you downstairs with us because the hotel’s on fire.”
“What are you trying to do, break every bone in my body?”
“You had passed out up on the third floor,” I said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“We found you lying on the floor next to the elevator.”
“I didn’t pass out.”
I saw no reason why he would contradict the truth, but I wasn’t going to stand there and argue with him while the hotel burned down around us. With both of us coughing in between words, breath was too precious to waste.
The acrid smell was stronger now. It smelled like hot plastic or rubber mixed with some other odor that I didn’t recognize. With my hands free again, I pressed the wet towel closer to my nose and mouth with my left hand and took hold of the handrail with my right.
“It stinks in here,” Daren said.
“It’s the smoke. I told you: There’s a fire in the hotel. We’re almost to the ground floor. Can you walk by yourself now?”
“Fire!” Daren said as if he had finally come to and understood for the first time what was happening. He scrambled to his feet, lunged past me, and shoved BeeBee aside as he went by her. She lost her footing and fell, landing on her knees two steps down.
“I have to get out of here!” Daren cried, panic making his voice squeak. “The hotel’s on fire!”
I helped BeeBee up. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“I told you we should have left him behind,” BeeBee said.
6
Now that I didn’t have to drag Daren behind me, BeeBee and I moved quickly down the remaining stairs. As we rounded the last landing, we saw a bright flash of light below us.
Daren had opened the door from the stairway to the lobby.
“Help!” he shouted. “Somebody help me!”
We hurried down the last few steps toward the door, but before we got there, the light disappeared; Daren had left the stairwell, letting the door close behind him.
My brain raced even faster than my feet. I knew the electricity was still off; if it had come back on, the lights in the stairway would be working. So the flash of light that we saw when Daren opened the door to the lobby could mean only one thing: The first floor of the hotel was on fire.
Could we run through it and get outside? Or should we go back up to the second floor, try to find an unlocked room, open a window, and yell for help?
What if all the rooms were locked? Even if we got to a window and called for help, who would hear us? As far as I knew, the desk clerk was the only staff person on the premises; everyone else, like the bellhop and the room service man, came over as needed from the new Frontier Lodge. Better to take our chances crossing the lobby now, before the fire got any worse.
We reached the bottom of the stairs. I put my hand on the doorknob but didn’t turn it.
“The main floor is on fire, isn’t it?” BeeBee said.
“I think so.”
In my mind, I pictured the hotel lobby. “As soon as I open this door,” I said, “run straight ahead. Just to the right of the front desk, there’s a door that goes outside. It’s closer to the stairway than the main entrance is. I went that way this morning when I came back to the room for my camera.”
I took a deep breath. “Ready?” I asked.
“Ready.”
I pulled the door open, felt a blast of hot air, and saw why Daren had called for help. The entire lobby was ablaze. The area where the front desk had been was an enormous bonfire with fingers of flame reaching toward the ceiling.
The carpet looked as if someone had set dozens of tiny fires in a random pattern across the floor. Sparks flew up, then drifted down again, like flocks of fireflies.
The plate glass window overlooking the Pacific Ocean had shattered, and the sea breeze blew in, fanning the flames.
“Run!” I yelled. I grabbed BeeBee’s hand and took off, lifting my feet as high as I could, trying to avoid the burning patches of carpet. I felt as if I were in a war zone, dodging land mines. I expected the floor
beneath us to ignite into solid flames at any second.
At least I could see. After the dark stairway, the fire in the lobby was so bright that I had to shut my eyes partway, but I saw the outside door that I remembered, and I led BeeBee toward it.
I grabbed the brass door handle, then jerked my hand back. The smell of blistered, charred skin joined the smell of smoke as the pain shot up my arm. I ripped the wet towel from my face and used it to open the door.
I pushed BeeBee through first, then stumbled after her.
I heard sirens now, rising and falling like a pack of howling wolves. Fire trucks must be on the way.
We ran away from the burning building. When we were far enough to feel safe, we stopped and looked around. I expected to see other hotel guests or employees who had escaped, but I saw no one. BeeBee and I might have been the only people in the world.
I wondered where Daren was. Had he made it out, or was he still trapped in the burning lobby? If he had headed for the main lobby doors rather than the small side door that we had used, he may not have reached it. I wished he had stayed with us instead of pushing ahead by himself. Well, I wasn’t going to go back to look for him when I didn’t know if he was inside.
My hand throbbed where I had burned it on the door handle. I pressed the wet towel against the burn.
BeeBee began to cry.
“We’re safe now,” I told her.
“I know,” she said, her voice trembling, “but I left Bill upstairs in the room.”
“Maybe he’ll be okay. Hear the sirens? The fire trucks should be here any second.”
“Do you think Daren got out?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“You saved his life,” BeeBee said, “and he didn’t even wait for us.”
“Shh. Are those sirens still getting louder?”
“Yes. No. They were coming closer, but now they’ve stopped.”
We heard people shouting.
“I see our room,” BeeBee said, pointing up. “Top floor, right over the lobby.”