Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [83]
She pushed past Steve, searching. Her face was set in grim lines that told him she was ready for anything, from minor burns to full cardiac arrest.
Steve wasn’t.
Clare knelt and lifted a soot-blackened silver sheet with sure hands. Steve stepped closer and smelled something worse than a burned-out forest, a sweetish stench of scorched meat.
Bile rose in the back of his throat. That shiny, blackened crust belonged to no race on earth. White, Black, Hispanic, or Native American, there was no clue left. Fire retardant clothing stuck to skin as though it had melted on. One sleeve still smoked.
A look at Clare’s face confirmed the man was dead.
The first time she’d seen a dead person, she’d been shocked at how truly gone life was in the instant that light faded from their eyes. They hadn’t let her see Frank, but she’d imagined. His hearty energy turned to one more piece of fuel.
Clare felt the letdown start inside her chest and radiate down her arms. It happened whenever she’d been pumping adrenaline for a long time and there was nothing more to be done.
Sometimes it happened watching someone’s house collapse on irreplaceable photos, a child’s doll, and the memories that would never be the same. Once a family Golden Retriever had been trapped in a laundry room. When intense heat had beaten her back, she’d thought she’d need support to simply hold herself upright. She’d gone on.
After Javier had dragged her away from Frank and into the street, after she’d cried with Pham Nguyen’s mother, she’d gone down onto the curb. With her head between her knees, she’d felt lower than the gutter beneath her boots.
Beside the dead soldier, Clare was fiercely grateful she was already on her knees, for she would have fallen. Delayed reaction set in, a deep trembling that replaced the wall of detachment she’d thrown up on approaching the downed man. She was aware of the others standing at a distance, waiting to see what she might do. “There is nothing,” she said, then realized she’d merely thought it.
Steve offered the radio he’d worn on his belt. Hers was in her blackened pack.
She stared at the box as though she didn’t know what it was. Gradually, her training reasserted and with a shaking hand, she clicked the mike. “Firefighter down,” she told the man who answered.
Thank God it was someone she didn’t know, for if she had to talk to Garrett she’d break down in front of Sergeant Travis and the soldiers. “We need emergency medical care and transport for . . . twenty-two. We’ve got one . . . body.”
She realized that she didn’t know who had died. It could be any of the soldiers, whether they had called their names before the screaming or not. “We’ll have to get back with an ID.”
“Christ, who . . .?”
“We’ve got Joe, Sheila, Mako, Rodriguez . . . ”
“Sound off!” Sergeant Travis clipped.
It began as before, proceeding briskly all the way to J.
Private Billy Jakes, who had answered the previous roll call with a sob, did not reply.
“Jakes!” Travis shouted. “You there?”
A low murmur began.
“Jeez, not Billy . . . “
“Sound off, I said.”
The rest of the roll continued more slowly, from Lomatewa through Sanchez to Young.
“Ah, hell . . . ”
“Billy.”
Clare had handed Billy her own shelter after his blew out, but fate had evidently decreed it his day to die. Several of the male soldiers dashed at tears with the backs of their hands, while the two women let themselves cry without wiping their faces.
Dry-eyed, Clare pushed to her feet. She moved among the survivors, checking for burns and other injuries. She watched for signs of shock and instructed a shivering Rodriguez to wrap himself in a shelter.
She stepped toward Sergeant Travis last. His quick emergence from the shelter and attitude of command led her to believe he was not in serious trouble, but she needed to be sure.
As