Coyote Read Online Free PDF Page A

lock.
    I grabbed the axe handle, wresting it away from him. Utterly surprised, he let me take it.
    â€˜What are you doing?’ shrieked the man, ready to punch me. ‘I have to cut through the lock!’
    The panic-stricken horde around us shouted for him to take the axe back and cut open the door.
    â€˜No!’ I shouted back. ‘Listen to me!’
    He tried to wrestle the axe away from me.
    I elbowed him off. ‘Wait a minute!’ I gave him a threatening glare, bared teeth and all.
    He recoiled.
    I tried the fire door again. It was hot now. I slid my hand across its surface. Very hot.
    The sandy-haired man watched me, confused.
    I sniffed. That was definitely smoke. We had to get out of here but not this way.
    The crowd, now beside themselves with fear, demanded that the man knock me down and open the fire door.
    The sandy-haired man tried to take the axe back, so I grabbed his hand and stuck it on the metal door.
    He jerked his hand away, his eyes wide with terror. ‘No!’
    The incensed crowd pressed us both into the hot metal door, screaming for action.
    â€˜We can’t open that door!’ I yelled. ‘The floors below us must be on fire. If we open that door, it’ll sweep in here and incinerate us.’
    The crowd was so panicked they couldn’t take in what I was saying. I might as well have been speaking Swahili. If I didn’t act fast they’d take the axe from me and smash open that door. Then we’d all be finished.
    I started grabbing random hands and forcing them onto the hot door. Someone yelled ‘fire’ at the top of their lungs. That did it — everyone careened back and away from the door, their mouths open in shock.
    I searched for a diversion, a Plan B.
    â€˜We’ve got to find the external fire escape!’ I yelled. I looked for the nearest window and raced to it. I put the axe down to fling it open, only to stand transfixed at the sight opposite.
    The next building, only a few yards away from us, was on fire too. Flames spurted out of it and upwards like a Roman candle. I stopped breathing. It was the inferno we’d become in a few short minutes.
    I looked directly down. There was a grated metal landing beneath the window, with stairs leading to the ground. The fire escape looked all right, butafter all the booby traps we’d encountered could it be trusted?
    The drive for survival answered my question. It had to be.
    A window shattered in the building opposite. I protected my face with one hand and watched as sheets of flame exploded, grasping with fiery fingers towards our precious metal stairs.
    How long before those fiery fingers would actually reach it? How long before the inferno next door engulfed us?
    The manic horde had followed me to the window and now pressed me into it. The blaze engulfing the building opposite only inflamed their drive to get out of here at any cost.
    But the blaze had shaken mine.
    When I hesitated, the sandy-haired man pushed past me and slid out the open window. He pounded down the metal stairs. I pressed myself to one side as a river of bodies flooded past me to thud down the metal stairs after him.
    I looked around — there was no one left. I had one leg out the window, ready to follow, when there was a loud moan from the far corner.
    There was a body slumped face down on the floor. I rolled him over.
    It was Professor Wauhope. His eyes were open but he was delirious. His hands were a swelling, oozing mass of snakebites.
    Oh my God … Could I make it down the fire escape with him in time? I couldn’t leave him.
    I raced back to the open window and out onto the metal landing. Below me, most of the crowd had made it to the ground and were sprinting to safety — to the park in the centre of Portsmouth Square.
    Good, finally some luck. The fire stairs hadn’t been booby-trapped. It wouldn’t be easy, but I could get Wauhope down them.
    I purposely didn’t look at the