Rose looked right, then left. Both hallways were identical cinderblock corridors, filling with smoke. She didn’t know which way to go. Her eyes stung. Her lungs burned. She coughed and coughed. She tried to remember the plant layout from the tour. The offices had been in the hallway connecting the pretzel to the potato chip production. She had to find that junction.
She sensed it was to the right. She ran down the hall that way, burst through the double doors, and found herself in another hallway. The window onto the factory floor showed a horrific conflagration that burned cardboard boxes, wooden pallets, cellophane shrink-wrapping, and anything else in its path. Then she realized. If it was boxes, it had to be the warehouse. She flashed on what the tour guide had said:
See all these boxes? They go for blocks and blocks!
Rose remembered that the warehouse was between the chips and pretzel production. She was on the right track. She ran down the hall. Smoke filtered the air but it smelled of something else, too. Pretzels.
Go, go, go.
She flew through another set of double doors, her lungs burning and tears spilling from her eyes. The smell of burned pretzels got stronger and stronger, and each window showed a factory on fire. The hallways twisted left, then right. She pounded through another set of doors, and she was finally there, at the hallway of offices. QUALITY ASSURANCE read the first sign, and she bolted to the next office. DIRECTOR OF SECURITY.
“Eileen!” Rose tried the door. It was locked. She looked through the window beside the door. The anteroom was filling with smoke, slipping underneath the door. No one was inside. The door beyond it was closed. If Eileen was here, she was behind that door. Rose had to get inside.
She looked around for something, anything. On the floor down the hall was a large metal trashcan. She bolted to it, picked it up, and struggled back down the hall with it, trailing garbage. She reached the office and slammed the trashcan at the window.
Bam! The trashcan shattered the window but didn’t break it all the way. Bam! Rose slammed it again, heaving it as hard as she could, straining with exertion. She couldn’t breathe for the smoke. Her eyes teared uncontrollably.
Bam! Bam! She hit it twice more, widening the hole, breathing hard. She couldn’t lift the trashcan another minute. She let it fall, and it dropped loudly to the floor.
She broke off pieces of the jagged plastic with her hand, then reached through and twisted the lock on the knob. It turned. She yanked her hand out of the jagged hole, opened the door, and ran inside.
“Eileen!” she screamed. Smoke made it almost impossible to breathe in the small room. She prayed she’d gotten to Eileen in time and that the security guys hadn’t taken her away. She went to the door, and it was unlocked.
She twisted the knob and burst through the door.