The Wake Up Call
Chapter 1.24: Escape Route
After many fruitless attempts at forcing open the stairwell door Hetch turned his attention to the rusty fire escape stuck to the side of the building like a badly balanced tower of mousetraps. He couldn't tell if it would support the weight of both of them or even if the fire escape actually reached all the way down to the street below. It was their only chance he just hoped the street gangs would take the interior stairwell up to the roof rather than this unstable looking metal structure.
He ventured out onto the top ladder and cautiously began descending towards the next level. The rain made gripping the corroded rungs difficult, their surface pit-marked from decades of acid rain and pollution. Patches of green and copper decorated its entire length and width. It almost seemed to cry out in pain as he continued downwards.
The stewardess stepped out onto the 'living' structure and equally felt uneasy at trusting her life to this badly maintained escape route. The soft, low-cost materials used in its construction would have barely passed the original safety inspection when the building was new, and that was many, many decades ago before the ravages of time had taken their toll on it.
"How are you doing up there? You okay with your leg?"
"I'm okay." came a sharp, nervous reply.
A few more steps down the ladder and the middle support bolt muttered and sheared loose of the building taking a fist-sized chunk of concrete with it.
"You still there?"
"So long as I don't look down, I'm still here."
"You're doing just fine."
"Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier."
She paused as the structure cast another groan into the wet, evening air.
"Heights aren't my thing!
Hetch reached the next level, stood on the narrow metal cage-like platform and looked down.
"Trust me, there's nothing to this. You'll be down on the ground in no time."
"Are you sure this will take both our weights?"
Hetch looked up only to be greeted by a small shower of concrete dust and metal rust from the stewardess above him. He spat out the unpleasant powder, washed his dry lips with the rain before wiping his face and examining the teeth marks in his hand.
"It'll take it. I've been one a diet for the past few days. You know, lots of exercise running from people and not much on today's menu in the cafe."
She smiled an anxious smile and resumed her path downwards.
"While I'm trying to take your mind off the current situation why don't you tell me a little about yourself." He said, starting on the ladder on the next level down.
"What do you want to know?"
"Keep on climbing, you're doing just fine. How come you helped me on the shuttle?"
"Its my job to help passengers."
"Was that your only reason?"
"Yes. Did you expect another one?"
"Maybe I did."
Hetch's foot slipped from the ladder and he paused for breath.
"The case for example."
"Yes?"
"You could have taken it while I was asleep."
"But who was it who showed you were the lost property department was?"
"You.
"If I wanted the case, do you think I would return to the shuttle and help its owner find it again?"
"Guess not."
Hetch's brow grew wrinkled with a troubling thought. It felt like he was being manipulated again and he wasn't in the mood to play along so nicely this time. The bite on his hand combined with his side only intensified the questions in his mind.
"How much further?"
"Can't tell, there is too much smoke and not enough light down there. Be careful on the next set of ladders, they're a little slippery."
"Okay, thanks. It's a lot easier if you keep talking. Tell me a little about yourself Hetch."
"Like what?"
"How come you worked for Mewco?"
"Pure and simple. Credits."
"Doesn't it trouble you where those credits come from?"
"No. Everyone got to make a living, one way other another."
She paused on the platform, thought for a moment and then continued.
"Your arm."
His hand slipped on the ladder.
"You want to know how I lost it?"
She nodded, before realised that he probably could see her. "Yes."
"I was walking back from one of the Tek Emporiums late one night, well, early in the morning, took a wrong turn, ventured into the wrong dark alley and a swipe freak got it. He hacked it off before I knew what was happening. It was Mewco and Splice who found me bleeding to death and screaming my head off in the alley."
He crossed another platform and started down yet another ladder.
"That guy with the armbands at the McKaff's was he a..."
"Yeah. You can always tell them by the way they scope potential body parts on the people around them."
"Guess you've got a different take on Mewco than myself."
"No, he was a low-life scumbag, but I own him my life. It's one of the reasons I took up this 'little' job."
Below them the sounds of angry dogs barking and the faint rattling of a metal chain against a door can just about be heard. The low, muffled music from a dozen nightclubs begins to leak into the cool air. Crowd noise and siren come and go, blown around by the irregular up-draughts from overloaded, industrial machinery. Their exhaust vents stabbing out the backs of the suffocating tower blocks, pulsing out food-laced pollution like an overly feed dragon, dozing after a rather hefty meal.
"What's your plans for the future, when all this is over."
"Get blindingly drunk then sleep for a month."
"After that?"
"I never plan that far ahead."
Hetch heard a thud above him and looked up to see her holding on by her hands, frantically trying to regain a foothold on the buckled ladder. Her legs already badly bruised were subjected to a the rusty rungs of the fire escape.
"Stop struggling and hold on!" he shouted.
"Do you think I have got a choice?"
He raced up, sending another plume of debris down into the badly lit alleyway below. Grabbing her legs he guided them back onto the safety of the ladder before climbing up behind her and giving a few words of comfort. She was trembling a little after mistiming a rung and almost falling down onto the next platform.
"There, no problem. You're doing great."
"You don't have to treat me like a child."
"Sorry. Thought you were afraid of heights?"
"I've been through worst experiences."
They continued down five more levels before being confronted by a barricaded platform. Its ladder snapped away from the wall as if bent out by an angry god, eager to halt any creature in its path. The platform groaned and swayed from side to side slightly as they both stood on its buckled mesh surface. A thin, honeycomb structure of cheap, brightly coloured plastic blocked the hole in the platform down to where the next ladder should have been attached to it. But instead top of the ladder hung out into the inky, evening air like an up-ended railway track. It seemed that at any moment it would topple over and come crashing down onto the murky city street below.
The crowd noise was now steady in volume and the occasional conversation could be heard. The smell of fast food and toxic cleaning agents wafted up. The stencilled light beams from a dozen apartment windows danced across the platform as it drifted away from the building.
"Guess we'll have to go back."
"We must be close to the ground."
Hetch sucked the bite on his hand and spat out the cement dust in an attempt to keep the wound clean. He looked around at the surrounding apartment blocks with their warm steady glow of relative comfort and shook his hand.
"There must be another way down."
"I'm sorry about the hand."
"It doesn't matter."
The platform dropped a few inches as a support rail broke free of the rough, grey wall.
"Quick, give me a hand to move this plastic cover out the way."
"You're not seriously going down there?"
"Why not?"
"Well there is no ladder for a start!"
"This platform could collapse at any moment, we don't have time to argue."
"Then lets go back up to the roof."
Hetch slowly lowered himself through the hole and searched for the ladder with his feet.
"This is crazy."
He continued to feel for the top of the leaning ladder, extending his arms as far as they would go.
The stewardess jumped as someone in the crowd below them screamed and then laughed, no doubt some alcohol-fuelled antics were happening out of sight. She took a deep breath and looked down.
"Now climb over me onto the ladder."
"What?"
"Come on, do it! You've got to trust me."
"No, no. Absolutely not."
Another platform bolt began to move away from the wall. The flimsy hand railing came loose in her hand and she had to steady herself by grabbing a brick in the wall behind to keep her balance.
"I can't hang here forever."
"Look! This whole thing is falling to pieces!"
"Climb down me! The structure itself is sound, its only the support bolts which have failed... so far."
She lowered her legs through the hole and froze.
"Don't stop, climb over me and onto the ladder."
"I can't do this."
"You can. You survived Mewco's clubs, you can survive this."
At a snail's pace she slid her body through the hole and gripped Hetch's arms and shoulders as tightly as she possibly could. He gasped for breath, the effort of supporting both himself and the stewardess was taking more out of him than he wanted to admit. The pelting rain only increased the situation.
Across in the opposite apartment tower block a silhouette walked by a window and switched off the light. The distant roar of a high-speed transporter came and went, fading into the approaching night with a metallic cough. Nearby two voices negotiated a small drugs-for-credits exchange before being absorbed back into the sounds of a small, vice-ridden nightclub.
Eventually she reached the relative safety of the leaning ladder, which leant even more out into thin-air as her weight transferred from Hetch's tired human ladder onto its slippery metal bars.
"Ok, ok. I'm down. This wasn't a good idea."
"Make your way slowly down to the next level."
As she took her first step, another bolt from the platform above her sheared away from the condemned building. Hetch swung back and forth as he was catapulted downwards by the sudden drop of the wire mesh.
"Shit!"
The complaints from the fire escape were almost deafening. It warned of impending failure.
"Hetch!
The platform jerked down another few inches before he managed to grab the ladder with his hand. The savage growls from a pack of guard dogs greeted his unsteady descent. The sharp, rusted teeth on the top of the ladder were painful, but far less hazardous than a sudden fall to his death on the rough concrete floor somewhere below.
"I'm okay. Keep moving, there is no telling when the rest of this ladder's supports will go."
A split second later, as if fate itself was eager to toy with both their lives, the ladder began to fall in slow motion.
"HANG ON!" he screamed.
To be continued...