Read Online Scavenger by David Morrell - Free Book Online

“What’s on the upper floor?”
    “A fire escape off a dressing room!” Perry charged toward the spiral steps. They vibrated as he scurried up. But he suddenly stopped, clinging to the trembling hand rail. When Balenger reached the stairs, he saw what made Perry gape. Smoke obscured the top.
    “We couldn’t breathe up there,” someone said. “We couldn’t see where we’re going.”
    The staircase went down through the floor.
    “What about the basement?” Balenger asked.
    “Three windows!”
    “Go!”
    As their footsteps clattered on the metal, Balenger stared down toward the gloom and hesitated. A basement , he thought. There’s always a basement . Sweat oozed from his forehead, only partly because of the accumulating heat. He saw a flashlight attached to a bracket beside a control panel. Grabbing it, he forced himself down the stairs.
    The air became cool. Off-balance from repeated turns, he reached a stone floor. Light struggled through a row of three narrow windows along the right wall. Close to the basement’s ceiling, the dusty panes showed the dirty brick wall of a narrow alley.
    The legs of a table screeched as Ortega dragged it toward a window. Balenger switched on the flashlight and aimed it along the length of the basement, revealing painted backdrops of a hill, trees, and sky stacked against a wall.
    “It won’t open!” Ortega tugged at the window. “It’s painted shut!”
    ”Break the glass!” Perry shouted.
    “The opening’s too small!” the older, heavyset actor moaned. “I won’t fit through!”
    Balenger kept scanning the flashlight, searching for another way out. He saw tables, chairs, and other stage furniture. Costumes hung on poles. Wigs perched on plastic heads. Everything was protected by clear plastic sheets. But not for long , Balenger thought.
    He heard glass breaking, Ortega smashing the window with a cane Perry handed him.
    “I’m telling you, I can’t fit through that narrow opening!” the heavy actor insisted.
    “I can’t, either!” the other actor said.
    The flashlight beam reached the wall under the stage. Stacked boxes partly obscured an old door.
    Balenger grabbed Perry. “Where does that door lead? Another building?”
    “No! A sub-basement!”
    “ Sub-basement? Why does this building need a—”
    “It doesn’t! Not now!” Perry trembled from the heat and roar of the approaching flames.
    “What do you mean ‘not now’? Don’t look at the fire! Just tell me about the sub-basement!”
    “It’s from an earlier building! Way back, there was a stream!”
    “What?”
    “A long time ago, Greenwich Village had a lot of streams.” Perry rushed on. “Drainage tunnels kept the buildings from sinking. The stream’s dry now, but in the old days, you could get water from it.”
    Balenger ran to the door, shoved the boxes away, and tugged a rusted handle.
    “No!” Ortega warned. “We’d suffocate down there!” Even with air streaming through the broken window, the detective bent over and coughed from the smoke.
    Wood scraped against stone as Balenger pulled harder on the door. Rusted hinges protested. He managed to open it enough to aim his flashlight through. He saw cobwebs across dust-covered stone walls and steps.
    “The flames’ll absorb all the oxygen down there!” Ortega yelled.
    Glancing behind him, Balenger saw Ortega finish smashing the glass from the window. The detective helped the older actress climb onto the table and lifted her toward the opening. She squirmed halfway through and got stuck.
    “Squeeze in your stomach!” Ortega shouted.
    “I’m cut!”
    Ortega pushed her hips, and abruptly, the actress moved, struggling the rest of the way through.
    As Ortega helped the other actress onto the table, the writhing wall of flames shifted closer.
    “I’ll never fit!” the older actor insisted.
    Nightmarish memories of the Paragon Hotel almost overwhelmed Balenger. He squeezed through the gap in the door. Aiming the flashlight, his