10-31-08 5 AM

Once inside the tunnel, Reggie retrieved his flashlight from his backpack before sliding his arms through it and setting it across his shoulders. He wanted to take the candle, but it was in a small glass bowl and the wax was hot and melted and wouldn’t travel well, so he regrettably needed to leave it behind. Speed was of the utmost in his mind because he knew that there would be no fire department response to this blaze. Eventually this building was going to come crashing down on itself. Throwing the wet blanket back over himself for protection, he began.

He stepped over the body of the creature and moved further down along the tunnel. Because of the pipes running overhead, he was forced to hunch down while he walked, making his ability to move less effective. Although his flashlight was bright and powerful for its size, the smoke was thick enough to make it very difficult to see. For the first few steps, he heard nothing except his own breath and the scrape of his shoes on the concrete, but as he moved further down the tunnel he could hear the building groaning in protest to the heat and flames that were eating at it.

Two hundred feet from his cozy little cot, the tunnel turned to the left and looked to run the entire length of the building. The smoke was even thicker here and the heat from above was enough that sweat was beginning to bead around his forehead. His comfort level was getting worse and worse with each hunched over step that he took.

Reggie began to hear noises all around him now. He wasn’t sure if it was the cracking and groaning of the building, or the slow deliberate footsteps of someone else hunting for him in the smoky recesses of his dorm. Every suspicious noise gave him reason to stop and listen, to wait and make sure that he wasn’t being hunted or followed, yet the increasing heat, thickening smoke, and audible grunts from the building’s foundation made those stops far more brief than he was comfortable with.

Eventually he made it to the end of this tunnel and found another access panel similar in nature to the one from his room that was sure to open into some other student’s closet. He studied it for an instant and placed his hands against it to check it for heat. It felt slightly warm, but less so than the access panel to his room. With his options very limited, he opened the access panel and was met with a wall of shirts, jackets, and pants. A thicker, oilier smoke clung to the air and he could feel the heat on the other side of the closet doors even through the clothing. Feeling trapped and trying to hold down his stress, he pushed the doors open a crack with his bat to look for a possible way out.

The couple of inches he opened the door seemed to let in enough heat to feel like he was in a furnace. The room beyond was lit in yellows and oranges and flames were everywhere. He pushed the door open further so he could get a better look and saw that there was no way for him to escape here. The ceiling above was covered with rolling flames that sent licks of fire out towards him and the closet now that the access panel was open. He could see a body slowly cooking in a corner of the room. It was missing limbs and what did remain of it was beginning to char and sizzle.

The room was soon to be a coffin for the unfortunate victim in the corner, and Reggie thought that if he didn’t get out soon, it might also be his final resting place. He backed into the closet and took one of the t-shirts that was hanging up and tied it around his mouth so that it would offer some filtering of the smoke and then he went back into the tunnels, his blanket covering him.

Once he closed the door, he continued along the same route he was previously going and had only moved a few feet when he thought he saw someone up ahead. The density of the smoke made it impossible for him to tell anything more than ten feet ahead of him, so he proceeded slowly. Water was now beginning to drip into the tunnel from the buildings sprinkler system above and it made the air more humid and more difficult to breathe. He continued ahead without incident for another five minutes, slowly moving against the side of the tunnel wall, when he felt the entire foundation rumble.

The building above him began to shake and he could hear crashing all around him. His instinct for survival pushed him on faster than he wanted to go, hoping to find some exit or last second opening that would protect him. He could now see flames along some parts of the tunnel’s ceiling and he knew he didn’t have much time left.

While the flames did serve as a harbinger of the inevitable crush that was coming, it also provided some additional light. In the end, it was that light that showed him an actual door that he would have missed otherwise due to the smoke and his blanket.

It was a heavy metal door with a large white sign on it, that said ‘Building Maintenance Only.” He moved in front of it and tried the doorknob, praying that it would be open. The knob didn’t budge. As he stood there testing the knob, the building groaned again and the sounds of more crashing came to him as the building began to collapse in on itself.

Frantically Reggie began throwing his body against the door, trying to bust it open. His shoulder still sore, he soon switched to kicking it, but that too was to of avail. Panting and sweating, he tried to dislodge the knob with the butt end of his baseball bat. The cramped quarters prevented him from getting the room to effectively bring the bat down with all the force he could muster and after another ten minutes of this he gave up.

He was surprised that the building was still standing as he stood there before the door, hunched over and panting hard. He started to feel like giving up and had sat down in front of the door in the growing puddles of water when the foundation started to crack and the ceiling began to open up along other parts of the tunnel. From the floor above debris, flames, and even more smoke came rushing into the new openings, bringing heat and certain death with it. Reggie was focused on this when a heavy metal squeak in front of him caught his attention.

The door in front of him was now slightly bent and ajar, having become twisted with the weight of the building pressing down on it. This gave Reggie new hope and he began to kick and push at the door with both of his feet from a sitting position. His legs began to cramp up on him, but the door was beginning to move slowly. The more force he used and the longer he used it, the wider the opening became. When he had almost two feet of space between the door and the frame, he got on his feet and slammed into the door.

Reggie had to slam himself into the door two more times, but the door finally opened another foot or less, offering him just enough space to make it past. As he grabbed his bat from the ground, it felt like the entire world began to shake in a deafening roar. The dorm room fell in on itself and the floors began to crash downward on top of each other. Within a few seconds the tunnel Reggie had slept in was completely gone.