Burn

by Shey Stahl

  “Stop fucking around.” He shoves Owen and Corbin apart and calls them into his office.

  There goes our entertainment.

  And then the sirens. “Engine 25, Ladder 10 . . . Battalion 2 . . . 600 block Yessler Way . . .”

  Owen and Corbin are still fuming when they get on the trucks, but thankfully they manage to put their differences aside.

  “Why is the voice on the machine a woman’s?” Finn asks, referring to the operator who gives out the job specifics over the intercom. “Why can’t it be something cool like Darth Vader or something?”

  Owen lowers his voice to a deep rasp. “Engine 25, Ladder 10, MVA on Pine Street.” He pats Finn and hauls himself on the truck. “Because a woman’s voice is sexier.”

  We’re pulling out of the station and Owen nudges my ribs. “Do something for me.”

  It’s not a question. It’s a demand.

  “What?”

  “I’m assigned to cleaning the bathrooms for a week. You do it.”

  Is he fucking serious? “No way.”

  He pulls out his phone. “Fine. I’m putting that video of Mila giving you a lap dance on YouTube.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “I would. You stole my airbags. You owe me. And if you don’t do it, dude’s gonna be beatin’ their meat to the sight of Mila’s perfect ass.”

  I punch him in the stomach as hard as I can. He only laughs.

  “I bet Finn will even spank it.”

  Finn’s eyes widen as he stares at me. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Oh, he would,” Jay adds, entertained by this.

  There’s no way in hell I want anyone seeing that video. I watched it on Finn’s phone the other day and then deleted it and everything else off his phone for even having the video.

  What a bunch of fuckers.

  “Goddamn you,” I mumble under my breath.

  Owen smiles triumphantly. “Paybacks are a bitch, muthafucka!”

  When we get to the job, it’s a construction site where they’re building a skyscraper. A guy is dangling some two hundred feet in the air by his feet, which are tangled up in a rope.

  That’s a bad day.

  No idea what he was doing when it happened, hell, he probably didn’t know, either, but I go up there on the freight elevator and get him hooked onto me to bring him down.

  We’re locked together when I tell him with a laugh, “Whatever you do, big guy, don’t look down.”

  He looks down.

  Stupid shits always do.

  “Holy shit! I’m going to die!” He starts scrambling, locking his legs around mine and then knocking us into the side of the building.

  There goes my helmet.

  “Hey, I said don’t look down, asshole!” Using my feet against the wall, both planted firmly, I keep us from swinging back and forth. “Stop fucking moving before you kill us both.”

  Just then the rope slips about five feet. We go with it, but conveniently we’re at the spot where Owen and Finn are waiting to pull us into a fourth-floor window.

  I’m sure the guy shit his pants.

  Construction sites are dangerous. Dangerous to work at, and dangerous to save people at. I would be lying if I didn’t say I was sweating that one. Believe it or not, I’m actually afraid of heights. And blood. Oh, and those marshmallow peeps people eat at Easter. They scare the shit out of me.

  Only Owen knows I’m scared of heights, and usually, he takes the jobs like this, but he made me do it this time. Another stipulation of not posting the video. So I had no choice, and we couldn’t trust Finn tied to a rope.

  Look at him. He’s over near the truck playing with a staple gun.

  Not more than two minutes later, the goddamn thing goes off and shoots Finn in the forehead.

  “Got any suggestions?” Finn asks, looking scared but in shock.

  “Yeah.” I chuckle lightly, grabbing hold of his shoulders, and then turning him toward the ambulance. “See that EMT over there, dude. You need to sit down.”

  “What the hell happened to him?” Owen curiously watches them take the nail out of the side of his head. It turns out to be just a minor flesh wound, but still, you’re not careful and you shoot yourself with a staple gun.

  “He was playing with it, and it went off in his hand,” Corbin tells him as he hands me my helmet that had fallen earlier.

  Jay and I start laughing, but Owen doesn’t. I never thought Corbin would have a sense of humor. I never paid any attention to it because I was too busy hoping he’d shoot himself with a nail gun.

  As the lights of the city burst on and we make our way back to the station, surrounded by the very places I’ve called home my entire life, I think about Evan.

  With my body pressed against the seat in the back, it feels good to be back on the truck and getting calls after the two-week leave of absence they made me take. I wasn’t the only one thinking of him. All the guys in the house miss his hard, overconfident ass. They even put up a framed picture of him in the recliner he used to sit in inside the lounge, like it’d forever be his chair and he would always be there bullshitting with us.

  I suppose in some ways, it’s helping us all cope with the loss. I may have been his brother, but Evan held a special spot in this house, whether we got along or not. He left a piece of himself with all of us, in subtle ways.

  He taught Finn how to be reliable. Too bad he didn’t teach him some safety tips, but he did teach him to never give up, to stay focused and be prepared.

  I wasn’t sure what he taught Owen. I’m not sure you can teach him anything.

  And me, well, he taught me that inside a fire, always think, be fearless, but think.

  “You’ll never usually get to decide how you die, but you can decide how you live.” We’re all gathered around the table but turn and look at Owen dumbfounded, as he eats at bowl of cereal at four in the afternoon.

  “That’s way too sophisticated for you,” Finn says, looking to us all as he laughs. Then he grabs the side of his head in pain. Took four stitches to clean him up, but an hour later he’s back in the house.

  “Hey . . . I can be sophisticated.” Owen takes another bite of his cereal.

  “No. No, you can’t.” Finn smiles as he scratches at his eyebrow and squints in Owen’s direction. “You eat Coco Puffs for breakfast.”

  “So?”

  “You’re a child,” Corbin says.

  “It’s who I am.” Finn and I both look at each other as their words get heated . . . again. “I won’t apologize for that.”

  “And no one will ever take you seriously on the truck because of it.” Some would venture to wonder what made Corbin so goddamn cold-blooded. I’d have to say he lost his best friend. He has a right to act a little cold-blooded from time to time.

  Owen stands calmly, walks toward the sink and drops his bowl. The sound of his bowl hitting the counter causes us all to look up at him. “You may think I’m a child, Corbin . . . and that I don’t take shit seriously, but I think I have a right to. And fuck you. Until you’ve lived my life and seen everything I have, you don’t get to decide how I act or judge me.”

  Corbin says nothing.

  I wouldn’t doubt Owen would change things if he could. He lost his twin sister to cancer, and his parents haven’t been the same since. He deals with it by fucking women he doesn’t know and being childish.

  When death happens, life changes. Your way of thinking is considerably different. And when you’ve experienced death as much as I have, it changes your personality.

  “THAT MOTHERFUCKER HIT me!” Finn says, holding a rag to his mouth, cussing out Corbin over whatever it is the two were arguing about. “Do something!”

  Corbin certainly wasn’t making any friends since he became lieutenant.

  I glance up at him from my phone, smiling. He looks like hell, stitches in his head and now a fat lip. “What do you want me to do?”

  He shrugs and throws his arms up in the air. “Something!”

&
nbsp; “I’m not a cop. Call Kellan.”

  “But—”

  I hold up my hands when Finn starts to argue. “If he sets you on fire, then let me know. I know a guy who could probably put it out.”

  I’m slouched on the couch with my legs sticking out in front of me, texting Mila. That’s when Finn kicks me in the shin. “Don’t be a dick.”

  “I’m not being a dick.” Reaching down, I rub my shin. “I just don’t know what you want me to do. This is Corbin we’re talking about. I don’t know why you’re surprised he hit you. Look at what he did to Owen earlier.”

  “Tell him to get off his fucking high horse and stop acting like a goddamn warden around here.”

  “What do I look like, your mother? You tell him.” I set the magazine on the coffee table. “I’m going to bed.”

  “He likes you.”

  I give him a confused look. I can’t remember Corbin ever liking me. “Do you have me confused with Dr. Phil?”

  “No.” Finn’s frustration gets the better of him, and he punches the wall. First time I’ve ever seen the kid this worked up. “Just . . . why’s he gotta be a dick?”

  “All right.” Hauling myself from the couch, I then walk over to the kid and put my arm around him. “Let’s go fuck with Owen, and then we’ll think of something to do to Corbin. Sound better?”

  Playing practical jokes always turns Finn’s day around. Though I can tell he doesn’t want to, he nods.

  We sneak into the room when Corbin’s in the shower and put four cans of Coke we’d shaken up for a good ten minutes under the posts of the bed he slept in. Then we freeze Owen’s socks for the second time this month and put red Kool-Aid in his shoes. Last time we did that his feet were red for a week. Never gets old.

  “Feel better, little buddy?” We’re walking back into the lounge when the alarm goes off.

  “Actually,” Finn says as we both started downstairs, “I do.”

  The first tone from the speaker interrupts Finn.

  And then comes the second tone, then the third.

  We stand as the dispatch comes through. “Structural fire . . . Corner of Olive way and Pine at the Wellington Plaza.”

  Wellington Plaza?

  My heart drops, my stomach rolling.

  “Engine 25, Engine 34, Engine 1 . . .” Dispatch reads off the assignments. “Ladder 1, Ladder 10, Ladder 4, Aide 35, Medic 1, Medic 10, Battalion 2, Battalion 5, Air 9.”

  I’ve never felt fear like this. It’s instant, from my head to my toes, numbing and all-consuming.

  The guys look at me as we load onto the truck. “Is that her hotel . . .?” Their voices trail off as I start to shake, my head nodding vigorously as I sit on the truck.

  We pull out, anxious eyes watching me carefully, not knowing what to say. There’s nothing you can say in a moment like that. There’s nothing I want to hear anyone say.

  I’d just been texting her and she was fine. What could have happened?

  My breath trips when dispatch comes through. Third alarm called in. Fire contained to floors 3-7. Guests trapped on floors above.

  Cap looks at Owen. “Is that her hotel?”

  I didn’t think he knew about Mila, but apparently, he knows more.

  Owen doesn’t reply, just stares straight ahead.

  Cap turns around and reaches for the radio. “You’re off duty, Ryan.”

  “The fuck I am,” I mutter, ignoring him. There’s no goddamn way he’s keeping me out of that hotel with her inside of it.

  This is real. This is so fucking real, and I have to deal with it. There’s no way I’m not going in there to get her, regardless of what they tell me to do.

  I’m well aware of the dangers in a hotel fire. There’re so many places for the fire to hide and too many places it can spread and potentially grow. And then you ran into the fact that you never knew what was going to happen. Guys get lost in big buildings filled with smoke and people suffocate, choked out by the toxic gases in the air. Ninety percent of deaths in a high-rise fire are from smoke inhalation and even if the smoke doesn’t kill you right away, it can days later.

  “They’ve activated a third alarm already,” Cap notes. “Owen, you’re taking lead on this one.” He points to me. “Keep him out of that fuckin’ building. I mean it.”

  Owen side-eyes me. He won’t. He’ll let me go.

  For me, there’s too much time to think on the way there. My thoughts are all over the place. Every worst possible scenario playing out and then more.

  What if she’s already dead?

  With my mask already on, we come around Pine, and smoke is billowing through broken windows shattered from the heat on the fifth floor. Her floor.

  As soon as the truck pulls up in front of the hotel, lights of the emergency vehicles parked in the drive spill over the street like strobe lights. My focus is getting in there and finding her. My boots are on the asphalt before the truck’s stopped. Rounding the front of the apparatus, I get my first look at the lobby. The double doors have thick black smoke rolling out.

  My dad’s there, and he tries to catch me by my SBCA tank. Cap tries, too, and Corbin even blocks me, but not this time. I’m going in no matter what. They wouldn’t stop me like they did at the apartment fire.

  “Caleb!” I struggle against my dad once more. “Keep your head, son. Be smart.”

  Turning away from him, I crank my air tank on, shove two people off me and race inside the lobby doors.

  As with any firefighter, I’m there to access the situation and respond based on my training. How can you do that when your mind is stuck on one thing? How do I save her when I’m so clearly caught up with anger?

  This is why they didn’t want me going in. I’m not thinking about anything else or the danger I’m putting myself in.

  I can save her. I have to save her.

  Entering the hotel through the lobby, I see her father, holding an oxygen mask to his face.

  “Where’s Mila?” I ask him, my hands on his shoulders, practically falling at his feet, dipping my head to catch his glossy eyes.

  “I don’t know. Heather said she last saw her in her office and Nixon ran up there to find her when the alarms went off. I tried to get to her but it’s too hot. I can’t get to her!” he cries, sobbing now, supported by the arms of three people. “Caleb, I know we’ve had our differences but please, save my daughter! Please!”

  And then my thoughts go to one person. Nixon.

  “And oh, how easily that can be taken from you.”

  My stomach drops, my heart stills, and I can almost feel the blood draining from my face.

  Thinking back to that night in the bar, and then the hotel, I didn’t think Nixon had it in him. It never crossed my mind until now.

  And all this time, the warning had been there. He warned me. What’s worse, I pushed him toward it. I baited him with the one thing he had the power to destroy me with. Mila. That’s the worst feeling of all.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, afraid to imagine the possibilities. “Fuck,” I whisper, dropping my head. “Fuck.”

  Owen gives me that look, the one that says, I got your back no matter what. “Go find her.”

  I take off toward the south stairs on the other side of the lobby, the ones closest to her office.

  “Baby, I’m on my way to you,” I whisper under my mask.

  There’s no way we’re over. There’s no way it’s ending like this before it ever began. Someone in life is going to get their happy fucking ending, and it starts with this girl.

  Throwing the door open, smoke fills the stairwells. Hundreds of guests file down them, firefighters assisting. I climb the stairs, forty pounds of gear weighing me down as I take them two steps at a time.

  The thick smoke lets me know I don’t have long. If I was going to get to her, I need to move faster. I start taking the steps three at a time and finally reach the fifth floor.

  When I exit the stairwell, all I hear now is my own heavy breathing, that hollow sound the SC
BA makes with every breath I force in and out. Then it’s the beep of my PPA tracking me as I search through smoke thick enough to blind.

  As a matter of fact, I can’t see anything because the fucking hotel is like a goddamn maze of wandering hallways and rooms, a lot like that apartment complex we lost Evan in.

  Much like that morning, all that surrounds me is the roar of the nearby flames and blackness. Nothing’s more frightening than that sound, knowing what you’re walking into can kill you and you can’t even see it.

  Sweat pours down my neck and back under my turnout gear.

  Where I’m standing, the temperature is a mere 150 degrees. Maybe a little higher. Near the ceiling, it could be thousands.

  Through the smoke, I recognize the hallway to my right. It’s where her office is. Crawling, I make my way down the long wall. Owen and Finn crawl beside me, having followed me into the unknown like any brother firefighter would have done.

  When I get to her door, it’s locked, but I can feel the heat coming from it and the glow under the door. Taking my halligan, I jam it in the frame and pry the door open.

  The office is fully engulfed. That’s when I lose my head in the smoke and react as recklessly as I feel, consumed in my own flames as run inside, only to be held back by Owen.

  My girl is in there, and I let that thought take over.

  If Evan would have been here, he’d have said, “Someone else’s emergency. Don’t make it yours. Slow down.” It’s not someone else’s emergency this time. It’s mine. It’s this girl. My own chance at something in my life going right.

  I think there are times when you don’t know your own strength. Times when you surprise yourself. Right now I’m doing exactly that. Even though I’ve lost my head, I’m focused.

  Owen points to the camera in his hand. He’s got the TIC (thermal image camera) with him, searching through the blackness. We see nothing. The camera renders infrared radiation as visible light and allows us to see through smoke and displays for us where someone might be. Moving around the room, we search for her.

  On my hands and knees, I search for Mila all the while wondering what happens in life to good people because I’m sure I’m not one of them, if I ever was. Maybe never.