Dead Watch

by Steve Liszka

  ‘Leave it,’ Mac said, holding his spare hand up, the other was busy wiping a trickle of blood from his upper lip. ‘We’re good here, aren’t we, Jim?’

  ‘You should have told us what you were going to do,’ Jimmy said. ‘We deserved that much.’

  Mac used the car’s door handle to pull himself up to his feet. ‘You wouldn’t have helped me if I did. Your job is to save lives, not take them. And if there was any other way, I would have used it, but since our falling out, that bastard Freddie has locked himself away in that little fortress of his like a goddamn hermit… If it makes you feel any better, the guy was a real piece of shit, even by my standards. No one is going to miss him.’

  ‘I don’t care if he was Adolf fucking Hitler. You shouldn’t have involved us in any of this shit.’

  Mac wiped the dust from his arse. ‘It’s over now, you’ll be glad to hear. Our partnership has officially been dissolved. You boys won’t be hearing from me again.’

  ‘Too fucking right, it is,’ Jimmy said. ‘If I ever see you again, I swear to god, I’ll kill you. Understand?’

  Mac inspected the blood on his fingertips. ‘To show my gratitude, I’d like to offer you boys something for your contributions to my business affairs, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t accept it, right?’

  ‘There’s only one thing I’d accept from you,’ Jimmy said, ‘and that’s the promise that you stay the fuck away from us.’

  ‘Receiving you loud and clear,’ Mac said, walking around the vehicle. Before getting in, he turned to face Jimmy again. ‘Have a good life, fellas. I’m going to miss you.’

  Part III

  In the Dark

  The classroom was hot and airless; conditions that could send even the most willing pupil to sleep. If it weren’t for what he was being primed to do, Jimmy would have let himself nod off half an hour earlier.

  The scrawny young man with bad skin who stood in front of the class, gestured at the whiteboard. Sketched onto it was a simple plan of the BA chamber.

  ‘What we want to see,’ said Plug, ‘is the usual things: good door procedures, good comms between the team and good branch control. We don’t want to see you steaming the place up and losing your visibility. Lastly, don’t forget your personal search. We’ve failed people up here because their BA shuffle wasn’t up to scratch. It sounds a lot, but it’s just your bread and butter stuff. You chaps are more than up to it.’

  Jimmy wondered how the fuck he would know what the bread and butter stuff was. The boy had only been in the job for a handful of years, and from what he’d heard from the guys at Hove, his own BA skills left a lot to be desired. By all accounts, he was the type of person you had to calm down before they went into a job, because they got into a panic and started flapping. But here he was, in his new role as BA instructor at the Service’s training centre, telling the class stories of the many jobs he’d been to.

  Most of the other people on the course were retained firefighters who’d only done a few years themselves, and had eaten up his tales of daring-do, but Jimmy knew otherwise. He’d been tempted on a number of occasions to butt in and embarrass the boy, but all he wanted to do was get the course over with, pass his BA for another two years, and get back to station.

  ‘One last thing, guys,’ Plug said – there were no women on this particular course. ‘Just remember that we’re not in there to try and trip you up. We want you to pass this course; just treat it like any other job. Do what you do in the real world, and it will be fine. Easy for me to say, but enjoy it.’

  Yeah, Jimmy thought, it is easy for you to say, because despite his attempt at reassurance, none of them would enjoy it. If you asked any firefighter their honest opinion of the two-day BA refresher course, they would all tell you the same thing; they fucking hated it. Most of them would rather go into a raging house fire with flames pumping out of every window than go up to the training centre and be assessed on their abilities. It wasn’t that they weren’t up to it, quite the opposite, in fact. Most firefighters prided themselves on their abilities in BA. What they hated was knowing that while they were fumbling around in the dark, searching for casualties and the source of the fire, an assessor, also clad in BA, was following them around, using a thermal imaging camera to critique their every move. They may not have been able to see him, but he most definitely could see them.

  It had been two weeks since their final encounter with Mac. For the rest of the Watch, life had returned back to normal almost immediately. The police had visited the station the following night and questioned them after one of the victim’s neighbours had reported seeing a fire engine arriving there on blue lights, but Wesley had told them it was just a routine call that had turned out to be a false alarm. Jimmy knew Al had wiped the CCTV before they’d left the scene of the massacre, but they still needed the police to accept their version of events. The relief when the officer bought into it could be seen in all of them. This, added to the knowledge that Mac was permanently off their back, meant the mood around the canteen table had lightened considerably, and apart from the impending investigation into Harrison’s outburst, all was good in the world for Red Watch.

  All except for Jimmy. None of the others had gone into the house that night. None of the others had watched four men be struck down in cold blood. None of them had had to wrestle with a man in a fight for their own lives, then seen that same man’s brains blown across the floor. Jimmy had, though. Jimmy had witnessed it all, and while the others might have been fine, he was about as far away from it as he could imagine. The only other time he could remember feeling this way was after the death of his friend Baashi, nearly thirty years earlier. He hadn’t seen any action in the forces, but he’d spoken to plenty of his friends who had. He also knew many firefighters who’d dealt with some truly horrendous incidents that had affected them deeply, and the symptoms he’d been displaying in the privacy of his own home were very similar to what they had gone through. He was suffering from post-traumatic stress.

  In front of anyone else, he was fine, but anytime his wife and kids weren’t around, he’d find himself bursting into tears for no apparent reason. He could have been doing the dishes or watching football on TV when suddenly, this pang of grief crept up on him from nowhere and hit him like a punch in the guts. The next thing he knew, he’d be sobbing like a baby, trying to work out why he couldn’t shake this thing off and why the deaths of four people who meant nothing to him was tearing him up like it was. He’d been drinking hard, too, when Jen went to bed, hammering the whisky like it was going out of fashion. It hadn’t helped. It just made him get to sleep easier, but the problem was, when he was sleeping, he dreamt about what happened, and his powers of recall became even more vivid. The last thing he had needed at that time was a goddamn BA refresher.

  Jimmy and his partner sat in front of the BA chamber watching as one of the instructors untangled the hose reel that a team had just brought out. They hadn’t managed to locate the casualty, and on exiting the building had quickly ripped their masks off as they bent over, trying to catch their breath. Judging from the way their fire-kit was steaming off, Jimmy guessed they had done exactly what they were told not to, and put way too much water on the fire, making conditions inside even worse for themselves. He thought it was doubtful either of them would pass the course.

  The BA chamber was made up of metal shipping containers that had been welded and bolted together to create a building that vaguely resembled something they may encounter in real life. It was three containers wide by three high and subdivided internally into a number of rooms and stairways. Each room had a number of doorways which could be opened or locked, meaning the route the wearers took could be changed easily. Trying to remember the layout from the last time you did your course was a waste of time, as it would certainly have changed since then. And even if you did know your way around, it didn’t mean you wouldn’t get disorientated and lost in the dark.

  Technically, you shouldn’t be able to lose your way
out of the building. If you went in following the right-hand wall, you just turned around and came out with your left hand on the wall. Easy, right? Or if that wasn’t working, you just followed the hose reel back out. What could go wrong? Plenty, actually. Following the hose often became a real ball-breaker, especially if there was a pile of it on the floor that you had to negotiate. More often than not, you’d start working your way through it and realise you’d gone the wrong way, and it had led you back to the branch you were holding, rather than to the exit. As for the other method, that was fine, if you were still thinking straight, but usually, by this stage, the BA wearers would be tired and suffering from heat stress.

  Heat stress was something few firefighters admitted to getting, but in reality, most had experienced. When your body gets too hot, it starts to work hard to try and cool itself down and keep your core temperature at a safe level. Things like critical thinking and decision making become secondary for your brain, which is more interested in keeping you alive, and so simple tasks suddenly become difficult. You got tunnel-vision, concentrating on only one thing and not thinking of the bigger picture. Doing something as seemingly straightforward as reversing your searching technique becomes a complex and demanding task that is often too much for the fatigued BA wearer. This was the real reason firefighters didn’t want to work until they were sixty, which they all would now be, since the government had changed the rules of the game. Jimmy was a fit guy, yet he, like most others, already found the course to be a real ball breaker. The thought of dragging himself through the BA chamber fifteen years in the future sent a cold chill down his spine.

  These were the things that were running through Jimmy’s head as he waited for his turn. His partner, a guy called Dean Waters, known to his mates as Shallow, was, with the exception of Jimmy, one of the few old hands on the course. He was a whole-time firefighter in Hastings, and while Jimmy hardly knew the guy, he’d heard enough about him from the brigade grapevine to know the man was a first-class prick. In the last day and a half, Jimmy had barely said a dozen words to him.

  The instructor finished laying out the hose and gave Jimmy and Shallow the thumbs up, letting them know they were good to go. Silently, the two of them went to work, putting on their masks, gloves and helmets. As they did their buddy checks on each other, Plug came out of the chamber and addressed them, making sure they understood their brief. Jimmy, as number one, checked the hose, letting off a couple of quick pulses as he adjusted the cone of water. He handed his tally to the Entry Control Officer, checked his air pressure and went to the chamber door with his partner in tow. Knowing the procedure, Dean knelt against the door with his hand on the handle and waited for the sign. Kneeling next to him, Jimmy nodded.

  ‘Crack!’ he shouted.

  As the door of the chamber opened, he aimed the branch at the ceiling and let off a quick pulse, then watched to see how it reacted with the smoke. ‘Open.’

  The door opened, and the two of them disappeared into the darkness.

  By the time they got to the third floor, they were already feeling it. Dean had done most of the hard work in dragging the hose up the stairs, and he’d done a pretty good job of it too; they hadn’t got snagged up once. Jimmy had helped him where he could, but his job was to lead the search and keep hold of the branch, spraying occasional gas-cooling pulses into the air. After going through door procedures again and entering the large room on the third floor, a strange thing happened to Jimmy. As he got his hand on the wall and began his search, suddenly, it wasn’t a dummy he was searching for anymore as he swept out with his foot. All he could think of now was the man he had watched being shot in the head.

  ‘You okay there, Jim?’ he heard Dean shout. He had gotten away from his partner and should have waited until they were in contact before continuing the search, but Jimmy’s mind was now filled with thoughts of the dead man. As he searched in the darkness, he felt himself panicking. He no longer wanted to find the casualty; he had no interest in seeing the man’s destroyed features again. Jimmy reached the corner of the room, turned and walked ten steps, then found the other corner and turned again.

  ‘Where are you, Jim?’ he heard Dean say. ‘You need to wait up for me.’

  Jimmy did as he was told and stayed in place until he felt Dean’s fingertips make contact with his.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jimmy said. ‘I thought I found a casualty.’

  ‘Okay, just slow down a bit. I can’t see a thing in here.’

  If he detected Jimmy was off his game, Shallow was dealing with it diplomatically.

  They continued searching the room, but Jimmy’s thoughts were preoccupied by the faces of the men whose lives had been ended that night. He felt something on his face and went to wipe it off but his finger bumped off his BA mask. What he thought was a piece of dirt was a tear trickling down his cheek. When they turned at the next corner, Dean spoke again.

  ‘Hang on, Jim. I think we’ve just done a full search of the room. We should have found a door by now.’

  Jimmy knew he was right; the point being reinforced when he felt the open doorway from where they had entered the room. From the plan on the whiteboard, he knew there were two rooms on the third floor, and somewhere, he struggled to recall its exact location, was a door that linked the two. Unlike in a real property where the walls were made of brick and plaster and the doors of wood, here in the chamber, everything was made of metal, and so it was quite possible to run your hand across a door, and, unless you found the handle, you’d be none the wiser.

  ‘We’re going to have to go around again,’ Jimmy said, becoming aware of the heat. Not only was there a casualty in the other room, but there was also a fire raging in one of the cribs that demanded to be extinguished. The door to the adjoining room may have been closed, but the metal walls were radiating heat from the fire directly onto them.

  The second search of the room proved just as fruitless. Maybe if Jimmy was actively searching for the door handle, he would have located it, but all his mind could focus on was the dead men he now saw in every direction that he turned. When they had completed another full lap and got back to the open door, Plug, who had been silently watching it all through his Thermal Imaging Camera placed his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.

  ‘Okay, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen enough now. You can make your way out.’

  Usually, Jimmy would have protested and demanded that he stay in until he’d located the casualty, but on this occasion, he seized on Plug’s words. Exiting the room, all he was interested in doing was getting out of the darkness and the ghosts that haunted it.

  Revelations

  ‘Fuck, man. I was sure that was going to be the one,’ Dylan said to the rest of their watch as they sipped their teas and coffees. ‘I thought I was going to rescue a baby and get my picture in the paper.’

  They had just returned from a persons reported in a block of flats where they were greeted by the fire alarm going off and a screaming woman who told them her friend and her little boy were trapped inside. Dylan’s heart had been in his mouth as he and Jo went under air, but he had managed to stay composed, not panicking when the woman yelled at him to get inside and save the baby.

  It turned out the woman and her child had gone out over an hour earlier, leaving an egg boiling on the stove. When the water had evaporated in the saucepan, the egg had started to burn, setting off the alarms and stinking up the BA crew’s fire-kit.

  As they left the building to get the fan to clear the smoke out of the flat, a photographer for the Argus, the local newspaper, turned up. He had been on his way to work when he spotted the fire engine and thought he’d stumbled on a scoop. Regretfully, Dylan had to inform him there was nothing worth reporting.

  ‘Careful what you wish for,’ Bodhi advised him. ‘It’s all well and good if you make a rescue, but kids don’t last too long when their lungs are full of smoke.’

  Dylan reddened up at his own comments.

  Seeing this, Bodhi changed the subject. �
�We still going to that school, Wes, or has that job screwed up our timings?’

  ‘Unfortunately, we are. The teachers have asked if we can talk to the kids about the Great Fire of London.’

  Lenny shook his head. ‘What the fuck do we know about the Great Fire of London? We’re firefighters, not fucking history teachers.’

  ‘Piece of piss,’ Jo said. ‘Sixteen-sixty-six, Pudding Lane. Samuel Pepys burying his cheese in his garden.’ She looked across to Dylan. ‘See, college boy, I know my shit too.’

  The conversation was interrupted when, through the window, they saw a red fire service vehicle driving into the yard at way too fast a speed. They were unable to make out the identity of the driver.

  ‘What the fuck does that bell end think he’s up to?’ Lenny said to no one in particular.

  ‘It must be Nobby,’ Jo answered. ‘Only he drives that badly.’

  Seconds later, their question was answered when Jimmy burst in the room. ‘Right,’ he said, his face was red, the way it normally looked when he was about to lose his rag. ‘It’s time we had a little chat.’

  Lenny looked at his watch, ‘Fucking hell, Jim, they haven’t kicked you off the course already, have they? It’s not even twelve o’clock.’

  ‘Yeah, they have,’ Jimmy said, his voice joyless.

  Lenny had meant it had a joke. Jimmy was a solid BA wearer, and no one had thought for a second that he would be coming back with anything other than a pass. To Plug’s credit, he had taken him away from his partner before informing him of the inevitable. Shallow had wanted to say something, but he’d seen in Jimmy’s eyes that the best thing for his health was to keep his mouth shut. He had been meant to stay and wear BA again in the afternoon so Shallow could be assessed as a number one, but Jimmy had booked sick then and there, telling them he had twisted his knee and was unable to continue the course.