Search and Rescue by Alex London

Author:Alex London
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

I can’t go in through the wall.

For one, there are too many people and they’d see me trying. Two, the smoke and the heat are so intense, I’d never make it. I have to go farther in from the worst of the fire and see if I can find my dad’s office from the side. The building is still being evacuated, because of the fire and the threat of another airplane crashing into it. I figure people are either going to the huge central courtyard or out to the parking lots from whatever exits aren’t blocked by flame and smoke.

Since my dad’s office is right near the site of the crash, there’s no way he could’ve gone out through the whole building to the parking lot. And the only way he’d get to the central courtyard from there is by passing through A-E Drive. I’d have seen him; he’d have been near the young soldier, the one in shock, whose desk was near his.

He wasn’t there, so that means he’s still inside—at least I think so. And if he’s still inside, the best chance I have of finding him is through Corridor Five. I’m heading there now.

No one is coming out, and the one big group of firefighters in A-E Drive is focused on getting everyone clear of the building. I seize the opportunity and slip right inside the wide hall.

It’s hot and smoky, but not nearly as bad as it was in the command center I’d escaped. It’s only been, like, twenty minutes since the explosion, but the world has turned upside down in those twenty minutes. So has the building itself.

I don’t quite know what I’m looking at as I creep in below the smoke line. The walls—where there are still walls, anyway—are warped and bowed, almost like waves. Pieces of ceiling are collapsed and parts of the floor are sticking up. Columns and beams lie sideways or shattered in pieces and there are wires and pipes where there shouldn’t be. It doesn’t look like a hallway of offices anymore, but like something out of a sci-fi movie.

The smoke is thick on the top half of the hall. As I make my way forward, staying low to avoid the heat, my path is blocked by a solid wall of wreckage that I can’t get around. I could try to climb over it, except I can’t see the top through the smoke. I know I wouldn’t make it. I’d either suffocate on my way or get burned alive when I got there. I have to turn back and find my way around, which I quickly realize isn’t an option either. The wreckage is everywhere. There’s no logic to where the fire has spread and where it hasn’t.

I picture an airplane crashing into a building and imagine what that impact would do. The solid structure of the Pentagon would’ve torn it open like a can of tuna fish. And just like whenever I try to open a can of tuna fish, what’s inside would’ve splashed out all over the place.

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