The Man the City Swallowed

Another coworker folded in on himself, screaming into the radio static. Ethan had no time to wonder how he had known. He dragged Harold up and hauled him toward the exit. Smoke smelled like chemical accelerant mixed with scorched cables. Then he heard something below, a metallic knocking, weak but real, like a person pounding for help. "There's someone down there!" he shouted. "Get out first!" his coworker yelled back. Ethan threw his tool bag at the man and ran for the hatch. He did not have time to think. Maybe it was because his mother's hospital hallways had always been full of people running for somebody else. Maybe it was because he had spent too many years seeing places where nobody came.