Текст книги "Tin City Tinder"

Автор книги: David Macinnis Gill

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Prologue

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

About the Author

TIN CITY TINDER

David Macinnis Gill

PROLOGUE

1

On Monday morning, May 4, 0600 hours, near the town of Tin City in the North Carolina Mountains, Stumpy Meeks was on the couch, sleeping off a meal of Bud, stale donuts, and month-old beef jerky when an explosion threw him ass-first to the floor of his trailer.

“Come in,” he said before he realized nobody had knocked.

His brain was working slower than usual. Eating for the first time in three days had that kind of effect on a man with diabetes. He scribbled a mental note—next time, only eat half the package of jerky.

Just as he crawled up to the couch and rested his head on the cushions, another blast ripped through the night. The shock wave buckled the walls and cracked the windows in the living room. Stumpy crawled screaming under the couch as glass collapsed out of the frames and sprinkled the orange shag carpet.

This time, he knew it wasn’t echoes in his head. Something really had exploded.

He was torn between hiding under the couch or going outside to take a look around. It really wasn’t a tough decision. Having more curiosity than sense, he waited a minute or two and then stumbled to the door.

He clicked on the porch light and squinted into the night.

The Blevins place had blown all to hell, and a line of burning debris littered the sandy ground leading up to his yard.

“Jesus Christ Jones on a crutch,” he whispered as he stepped onto the patio. “What the fuck is going on?”

The concrete felt clammy on his bare feet. The smell of gunpowder had burned the air, and though it was a cool and wet May night, he could’ve sworn it was the Fourth of July. He shuffled a step, then felt something warm and hard on the sole of his foot.

Stumpy picked the thing up and held it to the porch light to get a better look. It was a human finger severed below a gold wedding band. He screamed and dropped it, then scrambled back into his living room and slammed the door behind him.

Panting, he tossed his head side-to-side and squeezed both eyes tight. “It wasn’t no finger. Dear Lord, let it be my hallucinations again. Please, don’t let it be real.”

After a mumbled prayer, he peeked outside. There it lay, right where he had dropped it. It was a finger, all right. No mistake. It had to belong to somebody, and probably, they would want it back.

“Now, Stumpy,” he scolded himself, “if it was your finger, you’d want somebody to do right by you.”

After extracting a pair of hotdog tongs and a sandwich baggie out of the junk drawer, Stumpy headed down the rickety steps. He stood over the severed digit for a few seconds, clicking the tongs and thinking of the best way to go about extracting it.

“It’s no different than a hot dog on the grill. ” He popped the finger into the baggie and sealed the strip so that red and blue made purple.

Inside, he dropped the baggie in the freezer next to the ice cube tray and grabbed a cold beer for the trip back to the couch. He popped the tab, took a long swallow, and wondered who had busted out the glass in the front windows. Seemed like there was something else he needed to do, somebody he ought to call, but the phone was all the way down the hall in the bedroom, and whatever it was could surely wait until later.

Stumpy leaned back on the couch and was snoring before he could finish the beer.

MONDAY

1

Three hours after Stumpy Meeks fell back into a boozy stupor, I was training my eyes to see molecules. That’s what I told people when I was in hyper-attentive mode, bent over an experiment, eyes pinched tight and focused so intently that I seemed to be looking straight through an object of interest, which in this case was a preserved rat pinned to a dissection tray.

In reality, I wasn’t in the least interested in the critter. What got my attention was my Biology 102 lab assistant, a girl named Cedar Galloway. She sat next to me on a high stool, wearing a white lab coat over a yellow sundress that had ridden up her thighs. Cedar was captain of Allegheny Community College’s tennis team, and even though she was barely five-two, those long, lean legs seemed to go on forever.

The rest of her wasn’t so bad, either.

Cedar had hazel eyes, and a heart-shaped face complimented perfectly by a pixie cut. Even her perfume, which I could smell as she leaned close to reposition the pins holding the rat open, cut through the stinky preservative that filled the lab.

“What are you looking at so hard, Boone?” she asked.

Four years in the Navy had taught my brain that a direct question is given a direct answer, so even though I was now a civilian studying forensics on the GI Bill, I almost blurted out the truth.

“This.” I grabbed the beeper clipped to my belt. “This. I keep waiting for it to go off.”

It was only a partial lie. For almost a week, since I finished the volunteer firefighter training program, I had been waiting for The Call. The beeper went everywhere with me. Even when I had to hit the head.

“Wrong answer, Mr. Childress.” Cedar picked up a pair of scissors. “Time to clip those testicles.”

“Excuse me?”

“The rat’s testicles,” she said. “The instructions say to remove them? Dr. K was just demonstrating the technique to the rest of the class?”

“Right.” I took the scissors. “I’ll do the snipping.”

“Thank you. You’re an officer and a gentleman.”

“Petty Officer Second Class. I was enlisted, so I worked for a living.”

My blonde hair was still cropped short, and years of regular PT had me strong and fit for any duty. Including neutering a dead rodent.

“What’re you waiting for?” Cedar nudged me. “Those testicles aren’t going to snip themselves.”

“Did you know that the Bible says any man without his yarbles cannot enter the house of the Lord? I’m paraphrasing.”

“Mice don’t go to heaven.”

“Good thing this isn’t a church mouse, then. Think of all the time it would’ve wasted.”

“You mean like you are?”

“Shh!” I said. “I’m training myself to see testicles.”

“Thought that was molecules.”

I flipped down the magnifying visor. Cedar’s nose got huge. “In this case, same size.”

A minute later, I was in the middle of removing the rat’s left nut and formulating a plan for asking Cedar on a date when a string of preserved bowels sailed across the room.

The toluidine-stained string spun through the air like a gut bola, covering twenty feet of lab space, barely missing the heads of another lab group, and landed with a squish next to my dissecting tray.

They stayed there until my lab partner, Luigi Hasagawa, returned from hitting the head. Luigi was not his real name, of course. He was an exchange student from Osaka, Japan, and his parents named him Ryuu, after the Japanese god of thunder. The American tongue couldn’t wrap itself around two U's, so he nicknamed himself Luigi after his favorite video game. We had met at the beginning of the semester and now I was his shinyuu, another word with two U’s.

“Hey, Boone-san. Nice job on—Gero gero!” Luigi pointed at the intestines. “How did that get there?”

“Ask the person who threw them.” Testicle removal was delicate work, so I had no time for some dumb ass prank.

Cedar, though, wasn’t about to let the assault go unanswered. “Don’t be an jerk, Loach,” she said. “You’re not in high school anymore.”

She speared the mass with a stainless steel probe and fired it back at a redneck named Dewayne Loach.

The rat guts sailed high and splatted on the window behind him. They slid down slowly, leaving a trail of purplish ooze.

“You’re the lab assistant!” Dewayne yelled. “You can’t do that!”

“I just did.”

“I just did.” Luigi laughed and drew a picture of the dissection in his notes. His hair was so black, it was almost blue, and he had it cut into spikes so that his head looked like a sea urchin. His wardrobe was an eclectic mix of Japanese mode-kei fashion and cowboy couture.

The biology professor, Dr. Krzyzewski, tapped the graphic on the projection screen. “And you see here, the first step is to hold the sac gently but firmly with force—Mr. Loach! Why are intestines on the window. Again?”

“It wasn’t me.” Dewayne pointed at me. “Childress threw it!”

“The hell I did,” I said without looking up. “Luigi, forceps.”

Cedar slapped them in my palm. Then she stalked across the lab. Using an empty dissecting pan, she swept the guts off the window and dumped them into a biohazard bag.

She dropped the bag in Dewayne’s lap. “Don’t be such a wuss.”

“Thank you, Cedar,” the professor said.

“You’re very welcome, Dr. K.” She returned to my lab station. “Jeopardy category for the day: Things Without Balls.”

“Would that be,” I said, “Dewayne Loach and this rat?”

“Right you are!”

Bzzt! My pager sounded.

I clapped the forceps into her palm. “Hold this for a sec.” I unclipped the pager. “And don’t flinch. You’ll turn Ratatouille into a eunuch.”

“Wasn’t that the idea?”

“Yes!” I pumped a fist and hugged Cedar. “It’s a fire!”

“Boone Childress!” Dr. K pointed to the lab safety rules on the wall. “No cellphones in the lab.”

I held up the pager. “Allegheny Volunteer Fire Department, professor. I have to respond.”

“Go you, Longneck!” Luigi lifted a scalpel in salute. “Chikushou! There goes the gall bladder.”

“What about the lab?” Cedar asked. “You’re leaving me—I mean, your partner—hanging.”

“How about lunch?” I stripped off the latex gloves, then slung my backpack over a shoulder. “Or dinner?”

“Are you asking me out? When I’ve got rat guts in my hands?”

“It’s okay. You’re wearing gloves.”

“Childress,” Dr. K called as I exited. “If you leave before the experiment is finished, I’ll be forced to give you a zero on the lab. Department policy. It’s in the syllabus.”

I had been Honor Graduate in A-school, C-School, and Command School. I had pass all my Qualifying Exams in half the usual time, and I had made Petty Officer Second Class in just over eighteen months, so I knew all about rules and regs.

A man’s word was more important than rules.

“Yes ma’am. But I still have to go. I made an oath as a firefighter, and I always keep my promises.”

Dr. K puckered up her face.

Cedar caught up to me in the hall. A strap of her sundress slipped over her tanned shoulder.

“Don’t worry.” She stood on tiptoe and whispered in my ear. “You do the hero thing. I’ll take care of the professor.”

The mix of her husky voice and smell of her perfume set my head spinning.

All I could say was, “Thanks. I owe you one.”

“Sure do, and I’m not going to let you forget it.”

2

“Hey, Julia,” I said into the radio as I climbed into the seat of my pickup. “Where’s the fire?”

Julia Poteet, the only female Allegheny firefighter, was working dispatch. “Use the codes, rookie.”

The Allegheny Volunteer Fire Department still used the old radio codes for communication, called “ten-codes.” The feds were slowly getting rid of the codes because every county or district had its own confusing version of them. A 10-33 meant a fire call, but in other counties, it meant a road kill. The Allegheny department, though, was slow to change. Most of the firefighters were over fifty, and they saw no reason to learn a new system.

“I’m 10-76 to the 10-33,” I said, indicating that I was en route to the fire site. “What’s the location?”

“Tin City. It’s a wide place in the road near the county line. Know where it’s at?”

“That’s fifteen miles away.”

“Better put the metal down then, or you’ll be last on site. You don’t want that.”

“Why?”

“If you have to ask, you don’t want to know.”

I pulled the red light out of the glove box and stuck it on the roof. Backed out of the slot, slinging gravel into the air, and bounced onto Deems Landis Road.

A quick right at the next stop, and I hit Highway Twelve headed for Tin City. It was near the county line, which meant the fire would be burning hot when I arrived. It also meant that I was probably as close as any of the firefighters, and if I put the peddle to the floor, I could be the first on scene.

First responder on my first fire. Imagine the look on the captain’s face.

Though my truck was an automatic, I dropped gears to climb the steep grades. Allegheny County was in the Appalachian foothills. To the west were the Smokey Mountains. To the east was the Piedmont, a plateau that stretched all the way to Raleigh and beyond.

The highway wound up and around, and even in third gear, I passed truckers grinding up the grade. The side of the hills where the road cut scars in the sedimentary rock was decorated with fallen chunks of shale. As big as my arm, but not quite as hairy, they glistened in the sunlight.

I rolled down my window to get a breath of air, and the wind stank of diesel exhaust.

The old V-8 rattled like a pile of dry bones. My truck was a long bed ’72 Ford, painted white under the layers of dirt caked on the body. When I hit the steepest grade, the transmission started slipping, and I shifted to low.

The old girl could get me through just about anything. She just couldn’t do it very fast.

My mind drifted, and I found myself thinking not about the fire call, but about the last blaze I'd worked. A chemical fire had broken out on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a carrier in the Seventh Fleet. All sailors worked fire crews, but mine was the first crew in. We rescued one sailor, but another, an officer in his rate, had died. His body was so badly burned, they had to ID him with DNA.

Even though the Navy had offered me a hefty sign-up bonus to re-enlist, I decided then to get out of intelligence and start a career as a fire investigator. I hated fire, hated her like the bitch she was, hated her for taking the life of my best friend on the Teddy Roosevelt. I had to find something to do with that hate, instead of letting it eat me up.

The truck’s eight cylinders roared as I stepped on it. The speedometer climbed.

Sixty.

Seventy.

Eighty.

Eighty-five.

The pine trees that lined the highway shot by. A national forest passed into and out of my peripheral vision. The wind caught a plastic bag inside the cabin and whipped it out the window before I had the chance to catch it.

In the rearview, I watched the tattered bag rip into the truck’s jet wash and then float gently down onto the hood of an Allegheny County Sheriff’s cruiser as it passed me going the opposite way. The brake lights glowed, and the driver whipped a U-turn.

The roll lights switched on, and the siren sounded.

I tapped my brakes and waved the cruiser around.

“Come on, come on,” I said, “the road’s clear.”

The cop hit the strobe lights. The siren squawked.

I caught the cop's eyes in the rearview.

Me? I mouthed.

The deputy jabbed a finger at the shoulder of the road.

“Damn it,” I said and pulled off.

The foothills were an odd place, sort of a landmark of contrasts where several counties touched, each one with its own way of doing things. In Allegheny County, which was on the east side, people tended to be plain folks. They went to high school—most of the time finishing– then either worked on a farm, for minimum wage in town, or else drove down the other side of the mountain to Manchester or Winchester where they got jobs in the mills. They went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays like good Baptists and voted Democrat because Lincoln was a Republican, and they knew how to carry a grudge.

Unless your name was Boone Childress, and you expected public officials to earn respect.

The deputy slammed his door. He walked up to my truck, adjusting his gun belt. “License and registration.”

I opened my wallet. Handed them over.

The deputy clicked his ballpoint pen. “Where’s the fire?”

“Box 425 Route 9, Tin City, North Carolina.”

“Excuse me?”

“The fire, Route 9 in Tin City, sir. I’m a firefighter.”

“I know all the firemen in town. You ain’t one of them.”

 “I’m new, and I’m a firefighter. That’s why my license plate says firefighter and why there’s a flasher on the roof.” I patted the seat. “And why I have turnouts and a hooligan tool next to me.”

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Can I get a rain check on the ticket? This is my first fire, and I’d like to respond before the owners put it out with a garden hose.”

The deputy’s lip started to jump. He unclipped his Taser. “Get out of the vehicle.”

“A Taser? Come on!”

The deputy pulled the door opened. He signaled me out with an officious wave.

I slid to the rocky clay of the shoulder. My boots sank a half-inch in the soil, but I still towered over the deputy, being six-four with hands wide enough to palm a medicine ball.

The deputy waved the Taser. “You’ve got an attitude problem, boy.”

Judging by his dentition and light facial hair, the deputy was less than twenty-five, probably in his first couple of months on the job. It was obvious he cared more about me respecting the badge than doing what was right.

“Face the vehicle. Hands on the hood.”

“We’re on the same side,” I protested. “I was only speeding to respond to a call.”

“Don’t sass me!”

A second siren sounded, and a smile slowly formed on my face.

Down the highway, behind the deputy’s car, I saw the familiar sight of Sheriff Hoyt’s gold and white cruiser pulling off the pavement.

Paul Davis Hoyt was an ex-state trooper, a box of a man sporting a plush gray-brown flattop and jowls dappled with ancient acne scars. He hitched his britches over a hickory-hard gut and stuck out a wide, flat hand. The palm was so red, it looked like he had been picking blueberries. He wore a dark blue uniform and a thick, leather belt that creaked when he walked alongside the empty highway. He was also a vet, just like me.

As Hoyt reached the truck, I noted that I smelled of aftershave and starch and a touch of body odor.

“What in blue blazes is going on here?” The sheriff spat a stream of tobacco juice. “Deputy Mercer, why’re you frisking a Navy Medal recipient?”

The deputy jumped back like he had been zapped. “A what?”

“You heard me. This boy’s a war hero.”

Mercer bobbled the Taser, and it bounced from hand to hand.

I snatched it out of the air with my big mitts an handed it over. “You dropped this.”

The deputy snatched it back. “Sheriff Hoyt, I apprehended this hoodlum traveling at a high rate of speed. While writing his citation, he became agitated and aggressive.”

Hoyt pointed at the Taser. “Looks like you’re the one got agitated, Pete. Didn’t you see the cherry top on the boy’s car? He’s on a call.”

“Which I tried to explain to him,” I interjected.

“Thought it was fake.”

The sheriff raised his hand.”Tell you what, Pete, you head on back into town, and I’ll take care of the ticket on this one. Stop by the Red Fox Java and get yourself a slice of pie. My treat.”

The deputy rubbed his neck. “My shift ain’t over for another two hours.”

Hoyt took the ticket book from him. “I’ll take care of it.”

The deputy grimaced, but there was nothing he could do but return to his cruiser.

Hoyt and I silently watched as he hit the siren, made a sharp U-turn in the highway, and roared back toward Galax.

Hoyt whapped my arm with his ticket book. “That Pete, I tell you what. Two months on the job, and he’s written more tickets than the other deputies combined. Now, about that fire.”

“Yes sir,” I said, “that.” I’d given up being first responder. All I wanted was to respond at all.

Hoyt nodded for me to get in the truck. “Then let’s not keep the old boy waiting. You know the rules. No passing. No tailgating. And son?”

“Yeah?”

“I drive fast. Try to keep up.”

3

The dilapidated house sat atop a slight rise, next to a man-made pond. The pond had once been used for irrigation, back when the overgrown lot had been part of a family farm. Past the pond and up a rise, a half dozen tobacco barns and a derelict chicken house had been left to rot.

They were no longer rotting. They were on fire. All of them. The barns. The chicken coup. The farmhouse.

Eight plumes of smoke drifted into the cloudless sky.

The only structure not ablaze was a rusted out Airstream. The white and blue trailer had a tattered canopy, a picnic table, a TV antenna stretched thirty feet into air.

By the time I drove down the long dirt driveway to the fire, the roofline of the house was engulfed in flames. If the roof was gone, the rest of the house would be lost.

A stack of spent kindling.

The air smelled like fire, a mix of ash and burned fat that left me with a sweet taste in my mouth and a sick feeling in the gut.

I loved it.

The rest of the Allegheny VFD was already on the job. The six-person squad had set up hoses to the pumper engine. The engine drew water from an abandoned cow pond. Otto and Jimmy had trained hoses on the roof of the house, and Julia was manning the pumper.

The only woman in the crew, Julia was a fitness instructor and adrenaline junkie. She stood over five seven, had the shoulders of an Olympic swimmer, and could kick harder than a pissed off mule. The other firefighters knew that because she won every mud-wrestling match in the county.

Two other Allegheny firefighters had containment detail. They were busy smashing the windows on the left side so the hoses could reach inside.

“Lamar!” I parked beside the tanker. “Hey, Cap!”

Lamar was the captain. He was also my stepfather. He stood fifty feet from the tanker, talking to the captain of Galax VFD and Sheriff Hoyt, who had beaten me by a good three minutes.

“Julia! I’m here!” I pulled on my fire pants. Grabbed my jacket, gloves, and helmet. “What’s my duty spot?”

“Ask Cap!”

“He didn’t answer me!”

“You know the procedure!” Julia shouted over the mechanical clunk of the pumper. “Unless you need help getting dressed!”

“Very funny!”

I knew the procedure. But knowing it and doing it automatically were two separate things.

Lamar had preached the same sermon all during training: Firefighters had to know procedures so well, they could react without having to think. When a two-thousand-square-foot roof was collapsing on your head, there was no time to consult the manual.

“Lamar!” I ran over to Hoyt’s cruiser. “What’s my post?”

Lamar Rivenbark was my opposite. He stood barely five feet, eight inches tall, a solidly built man with cropped brown hair and hands as thick and coarse as cinder blocks. His hair was almost completely gray, like the stubble on his cheeks. A lifetime of farming had given him a deep tan and a slight gait, a gift from a runaway hay baler.

“Slow down now, no need to huff and puff,” Lamar said. “You don’t just rush into a fire.”

“Yes sir.” I took a deep breath. “Now, what’s my post?”

Lamar scratched his head. “Maybe you got a genius IQ, but you’re still thinking like a soldier, all nerves and guts. Like you could huff and puff and blow out the fire all by your lonesome.”

“Sailor, not soldier. I didn’t shot people in the Navy.” I surveyed the damage. Flames poured out of the windows, the doors, and through the roof near the chimney. The rafters had collapsed there, opening a gaping hole. “I can help. I’m ready.”

“Back up Julia on the pumper engine.” Lamar snapped his chinstrap. “You’ll be feeding out the lines.”

“I was hoping to work the attack.”

Lamar slapped me on the shoulder. The blow was hard enough to knock me back a step. “We’ve already rung four alarms on this job. The residence is empty. The other structures are all goners. Our job now is to wash down the fire, stomp out the sparks, and get back to the station with all our fingers and toes. Which is why, for now, you got the pumper. Get to work and don’t argue.”

I held my chin high, looked my stepfather straight in the eye, and said, “Yes, sir, Captain.”

A wise man once said that everybody has to pay his dues. I was no exception. My turn would come sooner or later.

Probably sooner.

4

An hour later, the fire was under control. Otto and Julia had soaked down the roof. They worked around the house to the kitchen. Lamar ordered me to back them up. I tied a clove hitch knot to secure a reel of unused hose I had been spooling, then went to help Julia with the blitz line.

The charged hose was as hard as concrete and just as heavy. I held it on my hip, supporting Julia as she opened the nozzle and a battering ram of water broke free. The line fought me as much as I fought it. It was like wrestling a Burmese python that had swallowed a water tank. My turnouts were immediately soaked with backwash, and the hose hammered my chest.

“Hold tight!” Julia ordered Otto, then turned her attention to the structure. “I’m taking the hooligan to it!”

With one deft swing, she knocked the back door off its frame.

“Swing battah!” Otto yelled. “That’s how you use a hooligan!”

Julia took a step inside.

Then she froze. “Down! Everybody, down!”

Fueled by fresh oxygen, the fire came alive, and flames erupted from the door frame. They seemed to be suspended in air. A ballet dancer in the midst of a grand jeté. Then—boom! A wave of heat swept over the porch with a roaring ovation of sound and furious heat.

Julia was thrown down on the porch. She threw an arm across her face to cover the face shield. Then she went limp.

“Jules!” Otto hit the fire with a jet from the hose. “Get her, rookie!”

I dived onto the porch. Rolled under the flames. Grabbed Julia under the arms for a carry. She was solid as an engine block, but the backdraft had tossed her like a rag doll.

“Julia!” I carried her to the grass. “Can you hear me?”

“Hell, Boone. I’m not deaf.” She popped her chin strap. “Just knocked the wind out of me. Lucky I landed on my ass.”

“Yeah,” Otto shouted. “It’s got more padding than a LazyBoy!”

“Look who’s talking! Give me a hand up.” Julia got to her feet, holding her back. She pulled her helmet off. Her face was encrusted with black ash.”Hold down the fort, boys. I’ve got to have a cigarette.”

She pulled a pack of Marlboros from her turnouts. A lot of firefighters smoked. Every time I had to define ironic, I thought of firefighters with charred faces lighting up a cancer stick.

But Julia’s smoking wasn’t ironic. It was stupid and tragic. Both of her parents had died of COPD. She had nursed them both in their final days, and it had not helped her kick the habit.

“Hey!” Otto yelled. “Did y’all year that?”

“Hear what?” Julia said.

Then I heard it, too.

A scream from inside the house.

“It’s a woman’s voice!” I shouted. “Somebody’s in there!”

Julia cupped a hand to her ear. “What?”

“Inside! There’s somebody inside the house! I just heard a screamI”

“The house is empty,” Julia dropped the cigarette and reached for her helmet. “Y’all are hearing things.”

“No, I heard it—yes! There it is again! From the back of the house!”

I jumped onto the porch. Peered into the smoke-filled corridor. The way was clear.

“Hold on!" Julia yelled. "Two in, two out!”

Before she could stop me, I bounded inside and dropped my face shield into place.

“Goddamn it, Boone!”

When I got out, Julia was going to kill me. But someone was in danger. No way could I stand around waiting.

The corridor was shrouded in thick smoke. It clung to the ceiling like a thunder head. I crunched over debris, stomping my heavy boots to make sure the footing was solid. I sloshed through standing water. The water could get so hot, it boiled around your boots and steamed your toes inside.

At the first doorway, I entered a small bedroom. The windows in the room were black with smoke. The glass was so dark, no light could reach inside. I clicked my head beam on and began turning in a tight circle. I scanned the area, noting the burned-out box mattress in the corner, an open closet, and a narrow door leading to another room.

The heat rose from the floor. It seeped through my boots. Time to move. The room was still hot, although there was no open fire. The scream had come from this direction, I was sure of it.

There!

I heard it again.

A sound like a baby crying.

Behind the narrow door.

I grabbed the brass knob without thinking. The metal was as hot as a charcoal briquette. The heat seared my insulated gloves.

“Shit all!” I yelled. “That was fucking hot!”

What a stupid move. It was Fire School 101 stuff: Don’t touch anything with your body. Use a tool.

My hooligan was on the truck because I'd run straight into a fire without it. I had violated a dozen policies and procedures by rushing in alone.

Nothing to do about that now.

Just get the victim and get out!

I gave the bathroom door a roundhouse kick. The wood exploded, and the lock fell to the floor. The door swung wide on melted hinges.

“You’re safe!” I yelled.

A blackened toilet sat to the left, and the tub was to the right. It was cast-iron with high sides.

I leaned over and peeked inside, dreading what I might find.

A baby. I expected to find a baby. What kind, I didn’t know, but I definitely didn’t expect to see a large, bristling mass.

“Hiss!”

Hiss?

The quivering black mass stuck out its legs.

Then its claws.

A cat!

A freaked out, pissed off, stand-still-so-I-can-rip-your-face-off cat.

In one twisted, screeching movement, it launched itself at my face. It latched on with its claws. Sinking them into the cowl that covered my neck.

“Get off me!”

Half blinded by the critter stretched across my shield, I stumbled backward and tripped. I landed ass-first on the floor. It was covered in steaming water that turned my pants into a sauna. My crotch heated up faster than a lit bottle rocket.

The cat dug its claws in more deeply. Still screaming, it ripped the fabric gloves with its teeth, tearing out chunks of cloth.

“Boone!” Julia called from the corridor. “What’s your location?”

“Here!” I felt the floor shake with Julia’s weight. “I’m being eaten by a house cat!”

I pulled the claws free from my neck. Then tried to stand. My foot caught on a fallen joist, and I slammed into the doorframe as Julia reached the bedroom.

The ceiling rained down red-hot cinders.

“Come on, rookie!” Julia grabbed my jacket. “What in the hell’s stuck to your face?”

“A cat!”

“That ain’t no cat, you moron!”

“What is it?”

Julia laughed.

As we turned toward the kitchen, the ceiling collapsed behind us. Tons of gypsum board, cotton insulation, and two-by-eight inch rafters landed on the floor. The subfloor collapsed, opening a hole to the basement.

It quickly filled with fresh tinder for the fire.