by Earl Emerson
I pulled Kitty’s coat to indicate she should follow me, and we high-stepped through the junk toward the doorway, then made our way to the main entrance. There was no point in picking up the hose, which weighed over a hundred pounds with all the water in it and it was pinned to the floor by debris anyway; no point in risking our lives in a vacant building. We needed to get out as quickly as possible. We would fight this from outside.
In the main entranceway it was noticeably cooler, but when I turned to mention this to Kitty, she’d vanished. “Kitty!”
I started back down the corridor toward the room we’d just exited. “What the hell are you doing? Let’s get out of here.” More objects crashed through the ceiling, large pieces of building material, judging by the sound. It was sootier and smokier than ever. I could barely see her, and she was only five feet from me. “Kitty, what the hell are you doing?”
“Getting the hose.”
“Screw the hose. We need to move. Let the city pay for it.”
But she wasn’t going to let the city pay. She didn’t want to write a letter explaining why we’d abandoned the line. Nor did she want to appear panicky by having run out of a building without every piece of equipment she’d hauled in.
I could hear her moving inside the doorway as more junk fell from the rooms above us, and then as I moved toward her, something large and heavy fell behind me, brushing the composite compressed air cylinder on my back and pushing me forward. The floor shuddered, and I stumbled into the room. More crap fell. A slow avalanche. Several lighter pieces hit my helmet and shoulders.
“Kitty! Get the hell out of here. Are you nuts?”
“Yeah, I guess I am. What was that?”
“I don’t know. It sounded like an engine block.”
In the corner of the room flames were growing rapidly, but that wasn’t our concern now. The hose line was buried under a ton of junk. It was as if we were at the bottom of a garbage chute, stuff hitting my shoulders, bombarding Kitty, raining on us. We would be lucky to get out of here without one of us sustaining a broken neck.
As Kitty reached me and we turned to exit the room, I could feel the heat coming down on us. We got low, almost in a crawl, and headed for the door, but before we reached the doorway, another volley of debris dropped out of the ceiling, large chunks landing in front of us. The building shuddered, and it all stopped.
“You okay?” I asked Kitty.
“I don’t know. I think my shoulder’s hurt.”
“Can you move?”
“As soon as I get all this crap off myself. Geez, it’s getting hot.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be out in a minute.”
62. I DON’T THINK SO
BARRY RENFROW>
“How are we going to know he’s dead?”
“I’m listening to the goddamned fire radios right now. Don’t be worrying your butt off. This is going just fine. Every day a firefighter dies somewhere in the country. Today is Seattle’s turn.”
“How will we know things are going right? They won’t announce it over the air, will they? They won’t want the media to get it before the family.”
“You want a blow-by-blow? The asshole’s inside with his partner. I’ve got my charges set so when I push this button here, the first section of the ceiling caves in on him. Then the fire gets hotter. Then when the rescuers try to go inside, more of the roof caves in. That’s when the exterior crews decide he can rescue his own ass. Trust me on this. I know how firefighters die. They’ll make a valiant effort, but in the end no department wants to lose two or three crews at once.”
“Are they going to know this was murder?”
“Firefighters die in arsons all the time. Nobody’s ever going to guess someone would target an individual firefighter.”
“When was the last time you had any trouble doing this?”
“Never had any trouble. Every one of them’s gone off without a hitch. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
“This guy’s got nine lives.”
“Maybe so, but there’s only going to be one funeral.”
The two of us are across the hood of my Ford Excursion, leaning on our elbows, binoculars to our eyes. I’d gotten the second pair of Bushnell’s for Marci back when we were still together and had been bird-watching every weekend, driving to the swamps out in the lower Snoqualmie Valley to see the ospreys, to the rain forest in the Olympics for the warblers. Back then I looked forward to the weekends. Hard to believe I haven’t seen Marci in twelve years. Now this drugged-up clown from the Philadelphia Fire Department—retired—is scraping the zipper on his jacket across my paint job, and no matter how many times I remind him, I still hear the zitzing sound as the metal zipper makes tiny signatures in my Pueblo Gold finish. We are parked three blocks from the fire building, up the hill above a small strip mall. Oblivious to our presence, a rufous-sided towhee scratches furiously in the leaves in front of us.
Hackett has taken a saw out of his toolbox and cut down a couple of small branches so we can see the fire building. Just as predicted, Engine 28 is the first unit to reach the fire. Just as predicted, Brown and his partner march right through the front door. What a job. I’ve done some wild things in my life, but walking into a house fire was not ever one of them. I don’t know why they’re not scared shitless every time they do it.
“So what happens next?”
“Just like I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have let you come. Usually I’m on my own. Gives me better mobility.”
“Yeah, well, I was knocking out government ministers in South America when you were still sending applesauce through to your didies. What’s next?”
“Next we wait until they’re inside. I’ll watch how much line goes in. That’s my indicator. Then I dump the attic on them in stages. At the same time, the heat will build, and in five minutes they’ll be with the angels.”
“Are you sure they can’t get out some other way?”
“Not after I bring the ceiling down. I spent two nights loading junk up there.”
“Did you say ‘them’? Are there two of them?”
“That’s how Seattle operates. Everybody has a partner.”
“We don’t want two victims.”
“You want me to run down and stop it?”
“Fuck you.”
“You nail ’em both or you nail neither. You got a two-for-one deal here. I should charge extra.”
“At the Z Club he was by himself.”
“I read that. That was a special circumstance.” He pushes a button on the box in front of him. “Look at that. See all that smoke billowing out like there was an explosion?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means your boy is dead. Or as good as.”
I’m thinking this guy is a jackass, that I don’t trust him any farther than I can carry him, and that after this is over I’m going to take him somewhere and make sure he never talks about this. He’s got his suitcases in the back of my Excursion, so it won’t be as if there will be any traces lying around. A guy takes a flight to Seattle and doesn’t come home. Nobody’ll know how he disappeared. Afterward I’ll take the body down to the plating plant and slide him into the acid vats. Take care of everything, including that damned zipper.
I’ve been getting more and more depressed about everything. Depressed about being alone all the time. Depressed about being the mechanism that secures Trey Brown’s end. Depressed over the fact that I don’t want to kill him. I like Brown. He’s plucky. In fact, I like him a lot more than I like his brother.
The only part that cheers me up is that we’ll soon be driving toward the airport, that I’ll take a couple of detours, get lost, and stick a .357 in this jackass’s side and tell him good-bye. I know I’m not going to be thrilled about it later, but right now, standing beside this smug bastard, it cheers me up to know Brown and his partner aren’t the only ones headed for the angels.
63. EIGHTY/TWE
NTY ON A BAD DEATH
TREY>
When the building stops cascading onto our heads, I find myself in a sitting position with my back against the wall. I have a real bad feeling about this fire. In front of me I hear Kitty moving, and above us the crackling of the flames. The heat is becoming unbearable. It feels as if we’ve just put our heads into an oven.
Somehow I’ve gotten myself pinned under a massive pile of debris. I am thankful my face mask is intact and I am still breathing bottled air, otherwise it would be a lot worse. Something large and heavy is lying across my lap, from the feel of it, a beam. When I push against it, nothing happens.
“Kitty, are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m out from under all this crap now. Let’s go. Geez, it’s hot. Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”
“I’d like to, but I have a little problem.”
Kitty is making her way through the rubble toward where she believes the doorway is. I can feel her weight as it is added to the tonnage on my lap. “Jesus. Get off.”
“What?”
“Get off. I’m under you.” She steps back, and the load lightens. “There’s something on my legs. I can’t move it.”
Slowly she makes her way to my position, and I feel her gloved hands as she palms my face to ascertain where I am. She begins removing articles from the heap, tossing each item over her shoulder as she disentangles it. It is dark enough that we are both nearly blind, although I’ve got my helmet flashlight on and I’m reasonably sure hers is on, too. After she’s cleared some of the debris, I feel her on the pile again. She’s not that large a woman, but like all of us, she wears fifty pounds of gear. “What is this? A girder?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe if we both try to lift at the same time.” We grunt in unison, each working in our own way, but the beam refuses to budge.
“This is going to take at least four people,” I say.
“How the hell did you end up here?” Kitty asks, annoyed at my carelessness.
I want to yell, “Because I had to come back for you, you freaking nutcase,” but instead I say, “Listen. Get to the doorway before it’s compromised. We’re going to need another hand line. The heat’s building.”
“Sure. I can do that.”
As she climbs over the beam and moves along the wall searching for the doorway, I take off my left glove and fumble my portable radio out of my bunking coat’s chest pocket—I can feel the top part of it scorching my fingers when I push the tiny nipple on top, the emergency button. After what seems like an eternity, a female dispatcher says, “Engine Twenty-eight. We show your officer has activated his emergency button.”
“That’s affirmative. I’m trapped under rubble inside the building. My partner is trying to find the exit. We need a RIT in here now. It’s getting hot.”
“Okay, Engine Twenty-eight. We’ll relay that to the IC. Get you some people. Can you give us your location?”
“Just inside the front doorway in the first big room to the left. We’re maybe thirty feet inside the building.”
“Okay, Engine Twenty-eight. Thirty feet inside the main doorway in a room on the left.”
“Affirmative.”
It all sounds calm and organized over the airwaves, but that’s not how I’m feeling. I’ve never been in this kind of a pickle before. The Z Club was horrendous, but I had mobility and knew where the exit was until the very last. This is different. I’m pinned. I can’t move an inch. I’m at the mercy of other firefighters. I’m in the position Vernon Sweeting found himself in. All I can do is wait.
Kitty remains in the room with me, looking for the door while I begin removing bits of debris from around the beam that pins my legs, clearing the space as best I am able. The beam is buffered by a thick layer of debris on my legs, which is probably why I can’t feel the beam, just the weight. Outside I can hear Engine 28’s motor but not much else. In fact, nothing else. No fans. No chain saws. No men yelling. Nothing but Kitty’s footsteps in the dark. “You haven’t found the door?” I ask.
“It’s jammed.”
“Can you bust it down?”
I hear her thumping for a few moments. “It’s steel, for cripe’s sake. Why would anybody put a steel door inside a building?”
“Don’t worry. They’ll be here soon.” Kitty continues to search for an exit, and when that proves futile, tries to unearth our hose line so we’ll at least have the protection of a water stream, but that exploration is just as futile. God, how I hate this. It is like being nailed to the floor, my back and bottle jammed hard against the wall. In fact, that’s the only part of me that hurts, where the backpack is biting into my back. “Try to breach a wall,” I say.
“Jesus, you think I’m Supergirl? I’d need an axe.”
If he isn’t already, the IC will be organizing a rescue effort. We have a lot of friends out there, and they won’t let us down.
“Engine Twenty-eight?” the dispatcher says.
“Engine Twenty-eight, over.”
“Update on your situation?”
“We’re trapped in this room. I’m pinned. My partner can move but cannot get out of the room. The door’s jammed. It’s getting hotter, and we don’t have a hose line.”
“How much air do you have left, Engine Twenty-eight?”
“A thousand pounds.”
“Okay, Engine Twenty-eight.”
Then we begin to hear movement on the other side of the wall. Movement, hose streams, men yelling. The voices have the agitated character that marks a rapidly souring event. Taking a brick from the debris around me, I begin slowly banging on the wall at my back. At least they’ll know where I am. I can give them that.
These are rapidly becoming the longest minutes of my life. How long have I been trapped now? Three minutes? Five? Half a lifetime? All I can do is sit and conserve air. “Hey, Kitty,” I call out.
“Yo, boss.”
“Sit down. Make your air last.”
“Good idea. You think they’re going to find us in time?”
“Of course they are,” I lie.
Before she told me the door was jammed, I’d estimated our odds at eighty-twenty in favor of survival, but now I reversed the numbers. We are pretty much finished.
64. CANDY ASSES
JAMES RUMBLE>
We are standing in front of the building when Trey shows up in the front door looking his normal confident self, even though it looks like somebody dumped a garbage can over his head. I am on my way over to say something funny to him when he turns and walks back into the smoke. No particular reason that I can see.
There is a high overcast today, not warm enough for shorts—typical goddamn Seattle weather—but I am sweating just from walking around in this heavy gear. It don’t let you breathe, man. It’s like when they were making Goldfinger and the prop guys painted that naked lady with gold paint and she died because her skin couldn’t breathe. I think she died. Or maybe that was an urban legend. Anyway, we’re in these turnouts sweating like we’re going to die.
Allen, Bill, Patrick, and me are waiting for a definitive order. It would probably help if Trey and his partner would get out of there. The roof is roaring now, and we’re going to fight this from outside. As soon as they get out. We start pulling lines along the ground. Another crew is carrying a monitor to the opposite side of the building to set up in the parking area. Citizens are scrambling to move their cars, no doubt recalling the ruined vehicles outside the Z Club. Allen and I are hauling a hundred feet of two-and-a-half-inch line to the end of the building. The eaves are smoking pretty good the first time we look, but now there’s actual flame licking out. I’m thinking this thing is out of control.
As we move, there’s another loud crash inside the building, and I think to myself, shit, if Trey’s anywhere near that, he’s in trouble, but then I don’t think about it again for a few minutes. We’re getting water on the line when I hear on the radio that Engine 28 is trapped inside.
I find it hard to believe, because I j
ust saw Trey a few minutes ago. On the other hand, there was that loud crash inside. From where we’re positioned I can see along the front of the building, where they’ve got crews masking up to go in and get him, and it’s taking forever, dammit. Then they’re crawling in through the front door, crawling under the heat, dragging a hose line, another crew on top of them with a second hose line. They’re moving so damned slow.
They are inside less than a minute when they come tumbling back out, rolling along the ground like monkeys, a fireball chasing them. Somebody picks up a hose line in the yard and douses them, cools each one off. Their turnout coats let off steam when the water hits, so you know it was hot in there. They go over to the IC, a chief from the Seventh I’ve met but don’t know real well.
I can feel the bile in my throat. Trey Brown is my best friend, and if he’s trapped inside, we can’t stand around with our dicks in our hands. I head on over to the IC in time to hear the crews telling him it’s too damn hot inside. “Besides, the room is barricaded. We’d have to cut through the wall with chain saws.”
The chief gives them a long, slow look, and I can see everybody digesting the fact that they are about to declare a couple of comrades dead and gone. I’m seeing this, but I’m not believing it.
“You fuckers!” I scream. “Get your candy asses in there! What the hell is wrong with you chickenshit motherfuckers! Do it!”
They turn around sequentially, some of them looking at me, others looking back at the doorway, which has enough flame now that the crew with the hose line is backing away—still squirting but backing away. I can see the fire is using the doorway as a chimney, and that fifteen feet inside the entrance it’s not as bad. We all wait a few beats, the four masked firefighters, me, the IC, and my crew on Engine 30. I know you’re not supposed to go berserk at fires, but when your buddy is inside and people are writing him off like it’s a table exercise…that’s when I feel like I’m in the loony bin.
“You motherfuckers better cover me,” I say. “You damn well better cover me!”
Even though I’m moving now, my curses bounce off them like pebbles. They all just stand and gape.
