We All Fall Down by Eric Walters

the water—the
liquid—was
pooling before cascading down below. There had to be three or four inches of water on the floor. My father trained the flashlight on the door—we were at the seventy-eighth floor. The door was bent, buckled at the bottom, but intact—more than on the floor above. There was smoke streaming out of the gaps at the top and the sides of the door and water pouring out from the bottom. There were more pieces of drywall knocked off the wall, partially blocking our way, and the whole wall—the concrete wall—was cracking and fractured. Chunks of it were littering the stairs. A pipe jutted out of the wall and water poured out of it. We stood there on the landing, suspended between the two floors, fire above us, fire below us. We couldn’t just stand there forever.
    “Turn sideways, facing away from the fire and toward the wall,” my father said.
    I followed his direction and example. Slowly we picked our way down the stairs. One step at a time … nine steps to a landing … two landings to a floor … seventy-eight floors to go. Heat was radiating up at us. With each step it seemed to get stronger. I tried to press my face right up to the concrete and brought my hand up to offer some protection. The air was thick with fumes and smoke and heat and sounds—the sound of water running down the stairs under my feet and the crackling, roaring noise of the fires raging above and below us. The heat, the sounds, the smells … this was what Hell had to be like.
    I could feel the heat against the side of my face and right through the back of my head, right through the clothes on my back. I kept sliding down the wall, step by step. I turned my face even farther away from the heat of the fire so I was actually looking back at where we’d come, back up the stairs. There couldn’t be that many more steps. I hit the landing and quickly spun around, made the turn and stumbled down the first few steps.
    My father was just a few steps farther down. He reached up and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    I nodded. “I’m fine … you?”
    “I feel like I’ve been baked and broiled, but I’m still not cooked. I think we’re past the worst of it now.”
    “Really?”
    “Really.” He aimed the beam down the stairs. “It looks almost clear … not much smoke at all.”
    I looked at the light. It
was
almost clear, just some traces of smoke, a faint trail, a few wisps at the very top by the roof of the stairwell. I wanted to believe what he was saying was true, but I couldn’t let myself believe it yet.
    My father’s hand slipped off my shoulder and he grabbed my hand. We started down the stairs. Almost instantly it became cooler. Hitting the next landing and making the turn it quickly got darker as well. The flashlight beam was our only light. There was no light from the fire. The darkness, which had scared me five floors up, was now welcoming and reassuring. I’d be happy to be guided by only the flashlight until we hit the lobby. The glow strips on the handrail and the edges of the steps flashed brightly.
    “Seventy-seven,” my father said and made the turn down.
    The door looked to be solidly in the frame, no buckling, no bending, no fractures. There was no light coming from underneath, no smoke seeping out. Tentatively I reached out my hand and touched the door. It was cold—stone cold. There was no fire behind that door … we were past the fire! The air was clean and clear. There was still the smell of smoke, the bitter odor, but it was nothing like what we’d faced one floor up.
    I felt a wave of relief wash over my entire body. I wanted to laugh out loud, but I didn’t. I knew that we’d made it, but what about the other people, the people who had been on those floors when the plane hit … what had happened to them? Of course I knew. Anybody who had been there was gone, dead, incinerated or smashed into a million pieces. Nobody could have survived the impact.