Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [37]
McKittrick hollered over his shoulder as he ran back to his rig. “Don’t waste any water. All I’ve got right now is that five hundred gallons in the tank.”
The front door was half off its hinges, mute testimony to the rough passage of the earlier crew. Inside, Engine 27’s hose stream was being directed into a sheet of orange without any seeming effect, and Finney could see the boots of two firefighters on their stomachs in front of him. He could hear the crackle of burning wood. Even in the doorway he was forced to tip his helmet so that the brim shielded his face from the heat.
Behind, over the roar of Engine 27’s pump, he could hear Lieutenant Sadler yelling, “You stupid shit!” He assumed the comment was addressed to Monahan; those sorts of expletives usually were. Later, he learned Sadler had anchored a piece of four-inch supply line in the street while Monahan drove away and recklessly overshot the hydrant, disappearing into the fog.
Finney pulled his facepiece on, tightened the straps on the sides, opened the valve at his waist, and inhaled clean air; then he pulled his hood over the top of the facepiece, put his helmet back on, and knelt in the doorway waiting for his partner. A torrent of hot smoke surged out of the building into his face, but with this much cover, he barely felt the dirty heat.
Sadler reached the porch at the same time as the hose at their feet stiffened, the water knocking the kinks out with the sound of a cardboard box being kicked. Finney worked the bale on the Task Force tip to bleed air off the line. A few seconds later Sadler finished masking up and tapped him on the shoulder.
Finney crawled twelve feet inside before his helmet rapped against the green bottle on another man’s back. Even with every bit of skin covered by thick protective clothing, the heat had pinned Engine 27’s crew to the floor. Finney and Sadler were still on their hands and knees, but they would get lower as their clothing and equipment began to heat up. He heard the mellow, ripping sound of fire scratching at the structure.
Not realizing Finney had run up against the other crew, Sadler bumped him from behind, hard. Like any other high-danger activity, firefighting could get addictive, and doing it better and quicker than others was addictive, too. Sadler said, “Come on! Let’s fight some fire! Let’s go, man!”
It was always cooler behind. Finney knew of a man on Engine 6’s crew who’d been shoved into a burning basement from behind by an overeager officer. Sadler bumped Finney’s back again, harder. When Finney turned to complain, he reached out but felt only empty space and scarred hardwood flooring. For a split second he thought Sadler might have fallen into a hole in the floor or rolled down a stairwell.
Retracing his path along the hose line, he groped his way to the doorway. Inexplicably, Sadler was standing on the porch, McKittrick alongside him. Sadler spoke through his facepiece without turning his gaze from McKittrick. “Ian says there’s a victim upstairs.”
“This is the house I was in last shift. It’s vacant.”
“He saw a victim.”
Sadler, McKittrick, and Finney trotted through the tall, wet weeds in the yard, McKittrick stumbling on a coiled hose line. When they were almost to the road, McKittrick turned and pointed to a second-story window barely visible in the murk. Sadler gave a report on his portable radio. “Dispatch from Engine Twenty-six. We have a victim on the second floor. Repeat. Confirmed victim on the second floor. We’re going to initiate a rescue.”
Finney glimpsed coils of black smoke belching out the broken windows, a tongue of flame. Then something upright darted past a window on the second story, something that resembled a human form.
19. ABANDON YOUR PARTNER AND DO-SI-DO
As the fog and smoke closed down visibility once more, Finney stepped to the middle of the street looking for another unit, perhaps a truck company, but there were no other companies, only Engine 27 and their own dry supply hose trailing along the center of the street into