10-31-08 4 AM

Reggie’s mother was calling to him, telling him he needed to get up for school. Her voice sounded weak and distant for some reason and he wasn’t able to say the things he wanted to her. As he tried to breathe, his throat tightened and the air tasted foul and burned him. He was scared now as woke from his sleep and tried to understand what was happening around him.

It had gotten foggy or smoky and he was sure that the building above was on fire. Since the candle had gone out while he slept, he couldn’t see and wasn’t sure where his flashlight was, so he grabbed his cell phone for light. Turning it on, the first thing he did was to check out the time as he wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. The light from his cell phone said it was about 4:30 am, so he had slept about three and a half hours. It was also warmer, almost uncomfortable. He noticed his clothes were damp with sweat and smelled of smoke.

Reggie knew the smoke was eventually going to be a deathly problem, so he grabbed everything and tried to make his way through the access panel and back into his room. As he approached the access door, he felt it first to see if it was safe. His hand rested softly against the door, feeling the temperature to see if it was even safe to go through. He could definitely feel it was, but he didn’t think it was so hot that he couldn’t try it. Pulling his shirt over his mouth and nose, he pushed into his dorm room.

The room was smoldering and the air was filled with an oppressive heat that rode on barely visible air currents. With his bat in his hand in case he needed to bach a window or something to break out, he slowly made his way out of his suite and into the halls of the dorm room.

The stench of death that he expected to meet from all the earlier killings was now being cooked as the entire floor and the walls of the hallway were covered with flames, blocking any chance he had of leaving the building through one of the doors. With no other choices available to him, Reggie returned to his suite to try and think.

As he entered the suite he noticed the heat had gotten even higher and within seconds of entering, the fire sprinklers went off. It didn’t take him long to come back to the conclusion that he was going to have to try his luck in the access tunnels again.

The sprinklers seemed to working in vain and the fire was eating away at the walls, ceiling, and debris in his room. Reggie spotted another blanket that was mostly intact, laying on the floor. Knowing he really didn’t have much time, he grabbed the blanket and held it up to a sprinkler for as long as he dared, hoping to soak it and use it for protection against the heat, smoke, and fire.

Quickly rapping himself up, he returned to the access tunnels and did his best to close off the door to try and prevent the fire and smoke from coming in by stuffing shirts along the edges and he shut the door and returned to the darkness of the tunnels once again.
10-31-07 5am