They covered the distance in four minutes—under the Westway's iron ribs, past shuttered takeaways and puddles that held upside‑down moons. The tower rose out of the estate like a grey chess piece, twenty‑four storeys of panels and windows, the forecourt fenced and oddly bright with rubberised green around a bare tree and a green‑lipped entrance.
From the pavement they could already see flame learning the outside skin—thin tongues skittering along seams where no flame should travel. It looked wrong, like someone had painted petrol up the walls.
A scatter of residents stood by the railings and on the path: dressing gowns, hi‑vis from night shifts, a woman in a headscarf, a young man in a football kit. Voices overlapped—English, Arabic ("Ya Allah"), Amharic, Polish, Portuguese—fear making everything higher and quicker. No sirens yet. Just the hum of the A40 and the small, greedy sound of something eating air.
Frank didn't stop. "Inside," he said, and Bruce matched his shoulder.
The lobby was bare and municipal: postboxes, a noticeboard, a Fire Action placard with the usual calm lies, a lift taped off—OUT OF SERVICE in sun‑faded letters. No extinguisher box. No red handles. Just the single door to the stair and that door already propped on a fire bucket because someone had panicked.
Frank kicked the wedge away. "Keep this shut unless someone's moving people," he told a man coming down with a toddler on his hip. "Stay low. Go."
They took the stairs two at a time, passing a trickle of residents pushing down: a coughing couple, a woman with a baby against her chest, a teenager carrying a dog that shook and tried to be brave. Frank's voice stayed level, a metronome in the heat: "Down you go. Close your door behind you. Keep that stair door closed." Bruce repeated it, big hand on shoulders, guiding, never rushing the old or the scared.
On the fourth‑floor landing the air changed. Heat licked the paint. Smoke crept along the ceiling like a slow dark tide. A black‑cab driver with tired eyes—Ethiopian by his lilting English—was hammering on doors with his knuckles and his keys.
"Which flat?" Frank called.
"Sixteen," the man panted. "The fridge—boom—it exploded. I cut the power, but it's too late. The fire's out of control."
Frank raised a calming hand. "It's okay. I'm Ex‑US special Forces, and well this big guy is my friend. We know what we're doing. Lend me the keys."
For a heartbeat the man stared—then yanked up his keyring. "Take them if you must. But it's bad, brother. Already bad."
Frank took the keys. "We've got this flat for now. You get everyone else off this floor. Down the stair. Close doors behind you."
The man hesitated, then nodded and moved, banging farther along the corridor: "Wake up! Fire! Go now!"
Frank and Bruce stacked at 16. Frank brushed the handle with the back of his hand. Warm. He dropped low. "We crack it—we don't feed it," he murmured.
Bruce crouched, huge frame folded small. "Y‑Yeah."
Frank turned the key, eased the latch an inch. Smoke breathed out—dark, oily, electrical—and a smoke alarm shrieked above it. He braced the door on his thigh, counted three beats, opened another inch, then slid inside on his knees.
Kitchen ahead, left. The fridge stood open‑mouthed by the window, plastic gums blackening; fire popped in a tangle of cord and curtain. Heat shoved at them; visibility went to ghosts.
"Bathroom," Frank said. "Water, towels."
Bruce vanished into the flat's dim and came back with a bucket and a heap of soaked towels, their faces already draped. Frank toed a laundry basket away from the flame, ripped down a tea towel, shoved it wet along the threshold to choke the draw, then ran the tap full and slid a mixing bowl underneath.
They worked without speaking. Bruce heaved water where plastic glowed and cloth smouldered—around the edges, not at the heart—knocking the fire down in bites. Frank stripped anything that would carry flame—paper towels, post, an apron—and jammed it wet into the sink. He clapped a pan lid over the hottest bite, starving it; Bruce dumped; steam screamed.
A minute. Then another. The alarm still shrieked. The room breathed hard.
The orange shrank to a fist, then a thumb, then a smoking shine. Frank stood very still, listening for the wrong kind of roar. Nothing. He exhaled once and killed the tap.
"Good, that's it," he said. "We're done in here."
Bruce nodded, chest pumping. For a second there was only the tinny chirp of the alarm and the wet tick of cooling plastic.
Then a new light moved over the ceiling—flicker, flicker—and a sound like fabric tearing fast.
Frank stepped to the window and peered through the blackened glass.
Outside, flame was already running up the building, thin and eager, finding edges—laddering along the panels like a fuse. It licked past the frame with a hungry pop and a sweet, chemical breath, like melted fuel. Heat pressed the glass like a hand.
Bruce saw Frank's face change. "W‑What do we do now Frank? How do we reach that fire when it's outside?"
"Shit, that's not normal cladding. There are aluminium panel's there, but underneath it there must be some sort of a polyethylene core that is acting like a solid gasoline. And that's causing the building to catch fire even on the outside and the warm night air isn't helping either," Frank said, eyes on the climbing orange. "It's like some kind of plastic sandwich out there." He sniffed, grim. "I would say, maybe thirty minutes before this side of the building is a torch. And worse yet, there is only one stairwell, and twenty‑plus floors to evacuate now."
But as Frank was making his assessments, Bruce was already at the door and he shouldered it open. "Then we move. Kick doors open if we have to. We will wake everyone up, and we will make sure everyone has a fighting chance to get out of this building."
"That stair's going to choke," Frank said. "It's suicide to try for all of them. There simply isn't enough time, and besides the firefighters are going to be here any minute now, just let them handle it."
Bruce shook his head once, hard. "No, Frank. N‑No one gets left behind." And with that said Bruce was already heading towards the stairs and up towards the next level.
Frank swore under his breath, watching the flame's speed on the frame, doing the maths he hated. Then he snapped back and followed.
"Goddammit, Bruce," he said, breaking into a run. "You're going to be the death of me." And then he followed because long ago he had sworn to never leave the big guy alone no matter what.
Together they moved like a metronome—up two at a time; at each landing: six doors. Bang‑bang‑bang, shout, move. Six doors per landing was the rhythm the tower imposed; respect the rhythm and you could make minutes count.
"Move now. Fire's climbing the outer wall from four. Down the stairs. Close your door behind you—it slows the smoke."
When a chain rattled and a doubtful eye appeared, Frank's voice went calm and clipped. "Ex‑US special Forces. There's a fire, get out now. Trust me, take your shoes, keys, and shut the door behind you when you leave, go now. Take nothing you don't need. This building is about to go." It wasn't a boast; it was a key that opened panic‑locked minds. Doors cracked wider. Feet started toward the stair.
Bruce used a different pressure. Hulking in black, soaked towel turbaned tight, wraparound shades shielding his streaming eyes, he supplied momentum. If someone froze, he stepped inside and dropped into the movie‑metal cadence the kids knew. "Showtime—move if you want to live." Or: "Do it—do it now." If the latch stayed blind and the hallway stayed quiet, his shoulder took the frame. He hated what that did—the splinters, the smoke it bled into the stair—but the clock didn't care. He hauled people to their thresholds whether they liked it or not, pulled broken doors back into place as best he could, and moved. (Force only if you hear a human. Keep the stair alive. Keep moving.)
Six doors. Flight of stairs. Six doors. Flight of stairs.
By the approximate time of 01:30, the lobbies had the color of old coins and the taste of burnt plastic—the outside fire had turned the air to slow poison. The stair was still just this side of survivable. If they were going to reach the crown before the stair went truly bad, it had to be now.
Frank wet towels wherever a tap still ran and pressed them into shaking hands. "Low. Hand on the rail. Count landings. If you see crews, follow orders. Go." They didn't escort. They didn't explain. Wake, warn, make them move.
On sixteen, a chain held and a voice said, "They told us to stay put."
"Not tonight," Frank said, the way he'd say wind shift before a breach. "Fire's outside and climbing. Your flat won't stay safe. Shoes, keys, door shut. Go now." Eyes widened in shock; the chain slid back.
Seventeen, smoke lapped the ceiling like a low tide. Eighteen, heat breathed through the stair door. Frank checked the math against the clock he'd started at the chicken‑shop window: if they'd entered near ten past and kept under ninety seconds a landing unless they had to smash—top in roughly thirty. The stair might hold until the half, maybe a little past. They were on the wire.
Nineteen hit like a load‑bearing idea—one below the crown, a place to gather the stragglers from above, then drop as a single pulse. Frank made the call fast.
"Plan change. We lift the top floors down to nineteen, seal a door, breathe ninety seconds, then we drop as a group. I'll take front. You sweep and shove." He nodded at the landing door. "Find a flat on the lee side, interior room, quick count, doors shut, towels at the gap. Ninety seconds, no more."
Bruce nodded, eyes red behind wet cotton. "Roger."
They climbed into twenty‑two and twenty‑three like divers into a hot, blind sea. Bruce worked the rear, big and implacable, rapping frames with the heel of his hand: bang‑bang‑bang. "Wake up. On your feet. Down now." When someone opened, he went full Arnold, deadpan through the towel. "Get out. Get to the stair." Ridiculous—and it worked. Fear cracked; people moved. When a question started, he cut it short: "Answers downstairs. Move."
Frank kept the front tight—short, imperative, humane. A father sagging under a sleeping boy; Frank slung the boy to his own chest, gave the man a towel. "Grab your girl. Low and go." A woman on sticks; a neighbor anchoring her elbow. When words failed, Bruce shouldered a reluctant door and then set the latch back home with a gentleness that didn't fit his hands.
By half past, nineteen had a pulse—two dozen souls in a lee‑side lounge, interior door shut, rolled towels kissing the threshold. Faces grey with soot, eyes streaming. Frank's voice stayed even, a metronome beating back panic. "Two breaths. Water if you've got it. In ninety seconds we move—low line, hand to shoulder if you need to. I'm on point." He looked to Bruce. "You ride the tail. Count me twenty‑four heads."
Bruce touched fingers as he counted—one, two, three—tightened the towel at his neck, gave a thumbs‑up.
"Time," Frank said. He cracked the lounge door, tested the draw, then pushed the line into the stair where heat breathed like a mouth.
Nineteen to eighteen, the group moved like a living rope. Frank rapped the baluster with his knuckles to give them cadence—tap‑tap‑tap—low and steady. "Low and go. Good. Keep moving." Coughs barked, then settled.
Behind, Bruce was gravity. "Keep going. Don't stop. You've got it." When fear stalled feet, he nudged with a hand like a shovel blade and the rope flowed again. He glanced up the well, where darkness pressed like a lid.
Then the stair went black. Smoke turned from fog to felt. A child coughed—a high, seal‑bark sound—and another voice, smaller, folded down from above, faint behind a door: a hiccupped sob, then another. Two voices. Little. Wrong‑place little.
"Frank," Bruce said, a burr under his towel.
"I've got the line," Frank called back, already hooking the lead pair by their shoulders to keep momentum. "We drop, meet crews, come back." Somewhere below, a radio barked—orders in a firefighter's cadence. The cavalry was in the stair now. If they moved, if they didn't break, this group lived.
Bruce stood in the smoke with the cluster's last two at his hands. He could feel Frank's plan like a taut rope around his chest: get these people into the stream, hand them over, turn, go again. The right plan. The sane one.
The little sob came again from above, behind a door they must have hammered already—unless the occupants had been silent, asleep, hiding, terrified.
His breath rasped the towel. Unknowns were danger—but leaving a voice in the black felt worse. Like the moment in a movie you yelled at the screen and then loved the idiot for afterward.
He leaned to the last pair. "Follow him," he said, pointing into the rope's back. "Don't stop. Hand to shoulder. You're nearly there."
"Where are you going?" one coughed.
"Up." He tried for cool and found steel. "I'll be back."
"Bruce!" Frank's voice cut back through the smoke, thinner now with distance and urgency. "Stay on the tail. We do not split."
Bruce answered with the only lie he ever used on Frank. "Right behind you."
He watched the rope heave, watched the last pair vanish into dark that wasn't quite complete. Then he slid past the new last shoulders, set his left palm flat to the cool inner wall—the concrete that never saw sun—and started up.