Page 47 of Venus
And for some reason, I feel an anxious knot in my stomach, like this is the type of fire that will burn before I even see the flames.
The building is screaming by the time we get there.
It’s a three-story warehouse with a brick shell, belching smoke out of every window and poisoning the air around it as easily as food coloring in water. We can feel the heat from the street. It’s suspected to have started as an electrical fire, and I’m not surprised. These older buildings sometimes can’t handle the new-age machinery and it overheats the breaker boxes. I’ve seen it a lot in this town, but usually the fires are handled with an extinguisher and a fast-acting worker.
This is probably the biggest structure fire I’ve ever seen in my time, and I have a feeling it will stick with me for a long time. But I love these fires, because they’re learning opportunities. When we get back to the station, we can go over what we can do better, and I live for that just as much as I do the flames. I want to be Fire Chief someday, and these are the kinds of experiences I need to earn that honor.
“Westwood!” Rodriguez shouts. “We’ve got two unaccounted for. Take Knight with you. Search and rescue. Get in, get out, structure’s compromised.”
Trevor and I give each other a nod and don our masks. Jackson stops us. “Hey, be careful. Third floor’s already partially collapsed.” He points toward one of the large, busted out windows on the second floor where you can just see the flooring of floor three falling into floor two. He motions to Trevor. “Let me go instead. Stay with the engine.”
“Yeah right,” Trevor says, passing his Halligan from one hand to the other. There’s no time to argue, so Trevor follows me in, leaving Jackson to operate as point on getting the fire under control and to keep it from spreading to other buildings in the District.
We enter the building on instinct. The heat hits us like a punch. We move fast, finding the first worker near a back wall, burned and barely conscious. We drag him out in less than a minute, hand him off to the medics, and don’t even stop for a breath before we’re back inside.
In the few seconds we were outside, things inside the building got much worse. Thicker smoke, hotter fire, flames shooting out in every direction like tendrils reaching for us.
Something in the air feels off. Wrong. Bad. Like the building doesn’t want us there anymore, but there is still one civilian unaccounted for, and I’d die before I leave someone behind.
We clear the entire first floor and find nothing, so the both of us carefully make our way up the concrete staircase to the second floor. It’s even hotter up here, and we both know we’re running out of time. We do our best to crawl through the building, practically blind, when over the roar of the fire, we hear a crash and a scream.
“Back corner!” Trevor yells, shining his head light in the direction. There’s a woman there, pinned under collapsed shelving. She’s screaming desperately for help. Trevor and I have no time to sigh in relief as we unpin her and I hold her up under her shoulders to help her out. Trevor watches my back as we make our way back downstairs and out the building.
“Take her!” I shout at Jacks, waiting there with a group of paramedics nearby. He takes her from my arms. I turn to make sure Trevor’s still behind me, but my heart stops.
He’s gone.
Crack.I hear the building start to come down, but I go back into the flames to look for my friend. I don’t think, I just run.
“Trevor!?”
Just at the staircase we came down, part of the building has collapsed. And there, half-buried under steel and blood soaking through his pant leg, is Trevor.
Chapter 26 | Vulcan
“Fuck,” I spit under my breath.
The building is coming apart and we are seriously running out of time. The fire is screaming through the walls like a wild animal, the smoke clawing at my mask like it’s ready to suffocate me. The fire surrounds me like it’s ready to feed on my flesh.
But I keep moving deeper into the flames, toward Trevor. I yell his name over the roar, and I feel my heart sink when I don’t hear him respond.
“Trevor!”
Another silent step. Then another. Then another.
And then—
“Carter!” I hear through a choked cough.
He’s fully pinned under a support beam, thick, splintered, and scorched by the heat. I’m not even sure he feels the pain in his leg where a stick of rebar has gone clean through, because his jacket is torn at the shoulder and the skin underneath is black and burnt to the bone.
“I can’t move,” he says frantically. Scared. No—terrified. “It’s crushing my leg. You have to go. Now—”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl, trying my best to lift the heavy beam. “You go, we go.”
“Fuck those sentiments, Carter. This is real life. You stay, we both die.”
“Then I’m dying with you,” I yell back. My gloves hit the floor as I reach for his discarded Halligan and go straight for the beam, rage in my jaw and panic bubbling high in my chest. It doesn’t move. I growl through my teeth. “Come on!” I scream as I try again, putting everything I have into it.
