Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [319]
“Do you really think all this is necessary?” I asked for the dozenth time. If they’d just give me a regular fire helmet with the SCBA, I could handle it.
“If you go in with us, yes,” Corporal Tucker said. Her three inches of extra height didn’t help much. We both looked like we were wearing hand-me-downs.
“There’s the possibility of disease contamination if there are bodies floating in the basement,” Lieutenant Wren said.
“Will there really be that much water in the basement?”
They exchanged glances. “You’ve never been in a house after a fire, have you?” Tucker asked.
“No.”
“You’ll understand once we’re in,” she said.
“Sounds ominous.”
“It’s not meant to,” she said.
Tucker didn’t have much of a sense of humor, and Wren had too much. He’d been entirely too solicitous while we were wriggling into the suits. He’d made sure he taped me up and was even now wasting a brilliant smile on me. But it was nothing too overt. Nothing obvious enough for me to say, look I have a boyfriend. For all I knew, he was always like this and I’d look an ass for taking it personally.
“Put the mask on, and I’ll help you fit the hood over it,” Wren said.
I shook my head. “Just give me a regular helmet and I’ll use the SCBA.”
“If you fall in the water without the hood sealed, Anita, you might as well not have the suit at all.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I said.
Tucker said, “You had trouble walking from the Haz-Mat truck to here. You’ll get better with practice, but in deep water, even we’ll have trouble keeping our feet.”
I shook my head again. My heart was pounding so hard, I was having trouble breathing. I put the mask on my face. I took a breath, and that horrible sound began. It was like Darth Vader breathing except it was yours. In the water, in the dark, your breath was the only sound. It could become thunderously loud while you waited to die.
“Strap needs tightening,” Wren said. He started to adjust the strap as if I were five and being bundled off to play in the snow.
“I can do it.” My voice came over the open radio line in the mask.
He raised his gloved hands skyward, still smiling. He was a hard man to insult, because I’d been trying. He had this sort of cheerful goodwill that seemed to deflect everything. Never trust people who smile constantly. They’re either selling something or not very bright. Wren didn’t strike me as stupid.
Insult to injury, I couldn’t get the strap adjusted on the damned mask. I always hated trying to work with anything bulkier than surgical gloves. I pulled the mask off and my first breath of real air was too loud, too long. I was sweating, and it wasn’t just the heat.
I had the Browning and the Firestar lying on the side of the fire truck. There were enough pockets on the outside of the suit to hold half a dozen guns. I had a sawed-off shotgun from my vampire kit in a makeshift pack across my back. Yeah, it’s illegal, but Dolph had been with me once upon a time when we went after a revenant vampire. They were like PCP users: immune to pain, stronger even than a normal vamp. A force of hell with fangs. I showed him the shotgun before I got it out. He okayed it. We’d ended with two dead security guards and one rookie officer spread all over the hallway the last time. At least Dolph and his men had silver ammo now. He and Zerbrowski nearly getting killed because they didn’t have it was what pushed the paperwork through. I gave them a box of ammo for Christmas before they got official silver ammo. I never wanted to