Ash: Devil's Crucifix MC

by Carmen Faye

  I wonder if Matty still believed in superheros or magical rescues. I know I don’t. I know the realities of this. When I had looked out those windows moments ago, there wasn’t a soul out there -- just empty cars and cycles waiting in the parking lot. Everyone who is in this building is still in this building either sleeping soundlessly unknowing what is happening on the top floor or in their apartments next to me both trapped and afraid.

  And even if the calls to the police go through, we’re so far away from a station that it will be at least ten minutes before they can reach us -- more if the one truck in town is at another site. In the life of a fire, ten minutes can mean anything. They could probably get out the ones who are on the floors under us. Easy saves for the superheroes. But for the unfortunates like us who like to sleep as high up as possible, we take time. Time we don’t have.

  In the minute or two I’ve been sitting in this tub, the room has gone from hot to boiling. Even the water filling the tub seems dangerously close to boiling me like a lobster. I reach over and touch my hand to the metal doorknob. It’s not burning me yet, so I know my apartment hasn’t been broken into just yet. But the smoke…the smoke is a problem all in itself. That small dishtowel can’t be doing a great job of keeping everything in. I know that if I’m going to stand a chance, I need something bigger blocking that hole.

  I grab hold of every towel I can find in my bathroom along with a green fluffy robe my mother gave me last Christmas and take in a deep breath of fresh air. Crouching down, I open the bathroom door and run quickly through the blackened kitchen. Using my hands, I feel for the empty spaces where the smoke is pouring out of and inch by inch.

  As I near the top of the door, my mind begins to turn blank as images of Matty take over. Inside, my chest begins to burn and my throat closes. I beg myself to just keep going, to just move faster and I somehow will myself to move on. While my hands work, my lungs are begging me for air, pleading with me to get out. Everything grows a little bit slower, a little bit dimmer, a little bit fuzzier. I can’t keep going.

  My knees buckle first and I wobble against the wall as I try to reach for the kitchen cabinet to catch my fall. But I land hard on the laminate tile floors with my hands and elbows taking my weight. I roll to my side as I try to figure out how to make my body move again, but my mind rewinds to Captain Quinn yelling over me, “Come on, Dani! Get your ass moving! This is no time to quit.”

  I can feel his spit drip on the back of my neck and see his dirty boots standing inches from me. In the distance is the outline of Jamie, Nate, Aaron. There’s my mom looking at me disgusted that I used that expensive robe as a smoke stopper. And Eva is sitting at my dining room table looking as disinterested as ever. They’re all telling me I can’t stay here. I can’t give up. I have to get back to the bathroom before it’s too late, before those visions become the last things I see on this earth.

  Just like at my training, I inch myself along, the weight of my legs pulling behind me. Every few feet, I stop and try to cough out the smoke that has taken over my chest. My nails peel back as they try to drag my body forward and my hands grow numb and begin to tingle. I manage to make it to the wall where I lift myself up with the help of the couch. My hands pound on the glass as I try to think of something, anything I can do to get out without further attracting the flames to the apartment. All I want is just one tiny sip of fresh air, though…one moment of that clean wind blowing in….

  There’s a smash and my hands fly to my face. Shards of glass cut at my skin and I feel the pierce of a larger shard slicing my arm. I duck behind my couch with my arms above my head. This is how it ends, they say. First the windows burst open and then the building crumbles. This is it -- how I die.

  But I don’t feel falling. In fact, I feel myself being lifted off of the ground. There’s a man, a huge muscle of a man. He’s dressed in head to toe black with a large jacket covering his frame. Who could wear a jacket in this heat? I try to make out his face, but it’s covered by a plain black bandana with a white symbol folded at the center. Nothing about him is making sense to me.

  I’m in his arms. I can feel his skin on my nearly bare body. He holds me as if I’m a child. It’s so easy for him. I’m nothing. I’m just air, the clean air that fills my apartment. And it dawns on me. My lips try to move but he’s already half way back towards the door. “No...“ I squeak out tiredly. “You can’t go out there! Flames…Fire…The window…”

  He doesn’t answer back. He doesn’t even look down. I’m not sure if my words were actually words or just thoughts. The man does stand back a bit from the door and I watch as he puffs out his chest and sucks in. I’m lifted higher off of him as I feel us barreling forward. His leg flies out from under me and he spins just in time before landing straight into the door. The wood chips and pieces fly everywhere through the air until it collapses entirely on itself and falls slightly slanted into the apartment.

  With the door gone, we see the problem head on. The room is a mixture of red, oranges, yellow, and black. On our right, towards the stairwell are two patches of flames that are roaring up the wall and masking over the door to my neighbor’s apartment. I whisper in shock, “Mr. Johnson!” The man in his fifties has lived next to me for years. There’s no way he would survive flames like those taking over his home. On our left, smoke is pouring through an open door. Annie and her son Jake must have gotten out in time. At least I know they’re safe.

  We, on the other hand, are facing an impossible task. How do you walk through flames without getting burnt? Already I’m practically clawing at this man’s neck to get us to turn back, to make it to the window where there is some air to breathe. I just need to breathe…

  But the flames are actually nipping at the man’s legs. He steps back and forth as he tries to decide his next move. I watch him as he lowers his head and crouches us down low. “What are…what are you doing?” I ask, horrified.

  “I’m getting us out of here.” His voice is dark as the smoke and those black eyes flicker hope in the light of the flames. He blows a chunk of dark brown hair that has slide in front of his face before he takes one long look at me.

  I don’t know what to say. I’m totally at a loss. “I can’t breathe” is all I can find. And it’s true. That woozy, out of body feeling is back and I wonder how long it will be until my visions come to me. Will they be in the flames this time? Will they be begging me to keep going again?

  I tilt my head back and nuzzle my face into the man’s chest. I can still smell a bit of his deodorant and cologne on the fabric. I close my eyes and try to concentrate on that one thing as he begins to move quickly. He’s practically dancing through the flames, his toes touching one small gathering of flames before running through the next. I keep waiting for us to catch and burst into the fire, but his motions seem to wave them off.

  We get to the end of the hallway and he begins to yell something back at me. I can barely make it out. Everything sounds and seems so far away. “The stairs? Where are the stairs?”

  I make out just the last word. It’s enough for me to point towards the large, wood and metal fire door right next to the garbage chute.

  As soon as he flings the door open, a suck of air forces us in. The howl of the wind blowing us sends me toppling down with him as we land hard on the cement stairs. They’re burning up as if they, too, have caught fire. The stairwell, too, has filled with smoke that keeps moving upwards towards us. You can just make out the line as it floats downward to the ground.

  “Get on my back.” The man grabs my hand before I can say my reply. He yanks me up and over his shoulders so I straddle the back of his hips. He pulls the hood of his leather jacket up so it covers my face. “Hold on tight. We’re going down.”

  With every bit of strength I can muster, I wrap my arms around his neck and my thin legs around his waist as I feel him take each step on his hands and knees, lowering farther into the ground as we get to the second floor.

  The smoke is different on the lowe
r floor. Instead of jet black, it’s an ashy color of gray, the kind I see the most in my training. Wherever the fire came from, it didn’t start on the lower floors. We begin to pass the door to the floor, but I pull back on the man’s neck, forcing him to stop. Out of breath, I lean down and press my lips to his warm ears, “No alarm…got to help them…get them out…they don’t know…please…please…” It’s all a mess of words and fear that spills out of me into him.

  I half expect him to yell back at me that I’m nuts. But he doesn’t. He scoots us over towards the wall and tosses off his jacket and places it over me and my face. I press up against the cold cinder block wall as I let the darkness take over.

  Before I close my eyes, I hear him say to me, “Don’t you go anywhere, kid. I’m coming back for you.”

  I don’t know when I lost touch with reality. One minute my mind is racing as we dart through flames and avoid plumes of smoke. The next I am back to that safe space. It’s still dried and destroyed, but the heat is gone. The fire has moved on, at least from the treeline, and I suddenly feel something new. I’m safe. There’s wind. There’s air. There’s the smell of lilac and flowers. There’s smoke, too, but it’s distant, like a bad memory from a world away.

  I try to will myself awake. I have to get back to my stairwell. I have to find my way to my reality. The safe space isn’t where I should be. I can feel my body physically start to panic as dream Dani twists and turns looking for an exit. I scream out towards the empty fields, “Help me! Please! Someone! Help me!”

  And I hear his voice answer, “I’m coming back for you.” It repeats over and over again as other voices chime in like soft music in the background.

  “Dani?” a man calls towards me. “Dani? We need you to wake up now.”

  “She needs oxygen. Get that ambulance ready to go! She’s going to Oregon Rose!” Siren blare as my body rattles and shakes against the table.

  “Dani Stansville. Found in an apartment fire. Smoke inhalation and second-degree burns to her back, hands, and arms. Possible broken ribs. Female, 27. Ox stats at 70 and dropping. Heart rate at 81.” The voices strap me down. Cold little buttons are placed on my chest while a cold rush of oxygen flows steadily through my nose.

  “Get her an IV line! Call the burn ward!” I can feel a whole team of people suddenly surround me.

  “Who was she with? Who got her out?” A pen scrapes against a notepad.

  Someone inhales in response and replies matter-of-factly, “Unknown male. Fled the scene before he could be checked out. Surveillance team is working on it.”

  “Dani? It’s me. I know you probably can’t hear me, but I wanted to let you know I’m here. Your mother’s here, and I’ll be by your bedside all night long. You wake up when you’re ready.” Her skin presses against my skin as she takes my hand. A metal chair scrapes against the floor.

  I close my eyes tighter. I’m not ready yet.

  “They haven’t found him yet. It’s been two days now. But whoever it was is a real hero. She would have died.”

  I inhale the fresh air as I focus on the man with the dark eyes that managed to walk through fire for me.

  Chapter 3

  “Ash! Dude! Where is your brain today?” Remmy’s voice brings me back to the present as I stare down mindlessly at the burnt support beam.

  I kneel down, pretending not to care that he caught me off guard. But we both know this has been a problem for me over the last few days. I place my hand on the beam, my leather-gloved fingers tracing the black singes up the maple until I get to the end. Despite my name, I know nothing about fires. I hadn’t even been in one until the other day, and that was all coincidence. But now my entire life was revolving around flame tracks, burn marks, lighter fluid remains.

  Remmy was my lead on this. He was an arsonist, twice convicted, before joining up with my motorcycle club, Devil’s Crucifix, a few months back. When fires like this started popping up around our old businesses, he was the first to jump in, offering to explain everything subtle detail that I would have never known – like a cut wire here or a burnt diesel can there.

  This place, the last on our tour of three, had all of the telltale signs, according to Remmy. He knelt back down next to me as he pointed towards the metal hinges on the beam’s end. “You see those marks there?” I nod at him as I follow his path from the metal back to the wood. “Those are carpenter marks. They use them to put up these supports and this end would have been facing up, holding on to the attic.” Remmy stands up and gestures towards a gaping hole in the burnt out ceiling above us. Small gusts of wind blow through it, sending little shards of paper and ash down through the opening, and occasionally, we would hear the moans of the building as it struggles to hold itself up any longer. “Whoever did this didn’t do it from down below. They did it from the roof.”

  “That’s just like the building from last week. Is it just me or does this all seem to have a pattern now?”

  “No, you’re right. Most burners don’t go through the trouble of getting up on roofs or in attics. It’s a tough job. They’ve got to know how to run fast or find a way down before it collapses in on them. But when you start from the top, the fire spreads slower, but the damage is so much worse.”

  “Like a cancer. The head’s always the worst.”

  “Exactly. Take out the roof and the whole system goes. If you start in the basement, you can contain it easier. Start on a first floor and it alerts whoevers living there faster on what’s going on.” He pauses as he looks around the room. Something catches his eye, a burnt out photograph still pinned to an untouched bit of wall, as he turns to ask me, “Speaking of living here, who were the residents? Did you know them?”

  “No. Some family. Lost the husband, I hear.”

  “So why are we here? Why do you care about this? We’re not getting into the business of burning, are we?” His voice quickens as he asks like an addict hearing about a new drug at a pharmacy. Old habits die hard, especially when they are the ones that get your fire started.

  “That’s the thing,” I explain as I run my hand through my hair, “these buildings used to be owned by us. All of them were at one point. But we sold a ton of our old housing when we bought the warehouse on Oceanview.”

  “What were these houses used for?”

  “Club member dorms. We used to be old school -- everyone works together. Everyone lives together. But the club grew up and some of the ladies popped out babies. Nobody wanted to raise their kids in the same place you stored shipments of pure coke. And a kid or two got wind that the basements of some of these homes were where we took traitors in for their paybacks. We couldn’t exactly keep them out, especially at night when the parents were out.”

  I think back slightly to those times. The Devil’s Crucifix had only been around for a few years as a spinoff of the Hell Rangers. A few guys and I couldn’t take being under control of a headquarters thousands of miles away in Cali. We wanted our own autonomy to do what we wanted, the freedom to run our own business without paying dues. We fought hard to split. A good man or two got killed just trying to defect. But we managed to make it out and, for the most part, we grew bigger and stronger by huddling together in these homes.

  This one in particular was a big meeting place. We housed an old lady here we named Big Red. She took in any guy who wanted a little warmth at the end of a long ride. During the day, she did laundry and cooked warm meals. And at night, we used her in our initiation parties to get things started. She trained the other women, too -- made them into submissives like we want them. “No man is a man until he’s tried a Big Red,” we always say. She was even there for me when I got out of prison six months ago, but this time, it was back at my home in the warehouse.

  I’m the only club member who lives there. As the President, I need to be present at all times while the rest of my guys, Remmy included, are allowed to live wherever the hell they choose. Most pick apartments nearby, but we have a rule that only two members can live there at one time
. No one wants to be a sitting duck for an attack like this.

  It’s an attack. It has to be. No arsonist, or “burner” as Remmy calls them, is just randomly running around Sterling, Oregon accidentally hitting old Crucifix places. Like Remmy said, this guy knew his stuff. He planned this out and knows the inside outs of burning buildings to the ground. And more so, he didn’t give a shit about whoever was inside.

  Even if it was a hot blonde with a banging body…

  There it is again. I’m back to thinking about her. Dani. That’s what that firefighter had called her when he knelt over her burnt and bruised body.

  By the time I had gotten her out of that building, she was covered in black soot and fiery red bursts of red pockets along the places her arms were burnt. Her face was cut up, glass bits practically falling from her long golden hair like little diamonds. And her full, thick lips were cracked and white. Smoke inhalation and a total lack of oxygen will do that to you. But she was still as fine as when I spotted her in that window.

  Skip had called me moments before I scaled the walls to her building to rescue her. He told me he had figured something out -- something we had missed. None of us Crucifix members really watched the news except for when we were wanted or one of our guys were being sent away. But he had come across a news report for a few homes and apartment buildings that were burnt down and recognized this place.