Post by tc on Sept 30, 2008 17:25:24 GMT -7
Well, this was it. And it was a doozy. Bad enough that the black-and-whites there to help evacuate and section off the neighborhood pulled up to the scene and breathed a collective “holy shit.” Not a firefighter, though. Nobody wants to see a hero lose their nerve. Swearing wasn’t professional for a career firefighter....
Moments Before
In his head, TC was cursing enough to make a soldier blush. His shoulders screamed from the stress of having to hold his own weight, plus the weight of his equipment. His gloves were slipping on the already tenuous hold he had on the ledge. Knees won’t hold up to that drop, he thought looking down, and then promptly muttered, “Crap.” Where the hell was the F.A.S T. team? Where the hell was backup when he needed the most?
Where the hell was the ground?
He tried to adjust his grip. If he could get rid of his gloves, he could hold on a little tighter with his bare hands, but that was all sorts of Bad Idea. He wouldn’t be able to hold on with one hand alone while he stripped his gloves off. And he wasn’t quite ready to commit suicide.
Of course, he couldn’t hang here all day, either. He had to get back inside.
He had to find Charlie.
The flames had already begun to jump rooftops by the time the team arrived on the scene. It was spreading fast. Considering the flimsy construction of the apartment building, that wasn’t a huge surprise. Started with a “simple” kitchen fire. Ended with something much worse. The guy he had been chasing through an apartment building thought the fire would slow TC down.
The guy was wanted for murder of cop, using humans for transporting drugs, armed robbery and beating up another cop. TC had found him while out getting a coffee. He called for backup the moment he saw him and then the chase had begun.
The first problem came when the fire began to spread over the roof of the second building faster than they could get the first one under control. The mutual aid teams hadn’t arrived yet from the neighboring stations, so Anderson the Captain of the Fire Station and his crew were left trying to control it alone. Anderson split up the team; with half the company down below operating the pumps, he took the other half of the team through the blazing buildings to be sure all the apartments were clear. Most people had already evacuated their units on their own once the alarms had sounded, but there was always a chance someone hadn’t left and was either trapped, or just too d**n stupid and stubborn to leave.
“I’m gonna check out the bedroom,” Anderson had said from the living room of one of the units they’d had to break into. Jackson nodded. Thick smoke was beginning to pour through the ventilation systems of all the units and they still had the floor below them to case through, so wasting time wasn’t an option. He would be out of Jackson's sight for five whole seconds.
TC saw someone as he was getting ready to leave the building after he was asked to by a firefighter he ran into while running after the guy. Instead he saw someone he knew run into one of the apartments. TC couldn't believe who it was.. He disappeared around the corner, and before he even entered the bedroom, he smelled it:
Garlic.
Lots of it. Someone was cooking, and it wasn’t Mama Romano’s favorite marinara sauce.
Had to be phosphorus. Highly flammable. Well, no, not exactly. More like super hella über mega ultra flammable. He recognized it immediately, and the first thought he had was one of those unprofessional things he wasn’t supposed to say out loud. Ohhh, shit...
There was only one reason why it could be there, only one reason to have phosphorus in any kind of significant quantity in the middle of an apartment complex: a methamphetamine lab. Someone was definitely cooking, and a whole helluva lot of it.
TC knew what to do: a quick check in the master bedroom to be sure no one was behind, then head out to call backup. The structural fire just became a HAZMAT, and this sure as hell wasn’t a place he wanted to be in about five minutes.
He barely glanced in the door when he saw movement against the far wall, someone inside. And that someone was standing there, and...washing the wall? Scrubbing it. Madly. Completely oblivious to the crisis going on around them. It was called “punding”—obsessive, compulsive behavior with meaningless tasks. And this guy had it bad. Dipping into his own proceeds, Anderson thought. He saw it all the time on medic calls. He’d have preferred to never see it again. Meth was the new fad, the suburban drug of choice. Everyone and their mother was doing it, now. Literally.
Amidst glass jars and chemicals clustered on a baker’s rack was what looked like a chemistry set from a Dr. Seuss drawing balanced on a collapsible card table off to the side of the room. Mason jars full of bright red powder—red phosphorus, probably emptied from road flares—sat uncapped all over the small table, right next to a sad looking little hot plate hooked to a portable tank of camping propane. Boxes of sinus decongestant lay scattered like playing cards on the floor. Stained turkey basters, and filthy funnels mingled next to bottles of acetone, and antifreeze, turning the whole bedroom into a surrealist’s interpretation of Hell’s kitchen. TC began to sweat.
“Sir?” he yelled through his mask, trying to get the guy’s attention. “Sir!” Sometimes, TC really hated having to be polite when it came to people like this. He’d have loved to call the guy a hundred other names he could think of right off the top of his head, none of which were even remotely polite.
Scrubscrubscrub.
TC noticed the rag the guy was using was virtually in shreds. His fingers looked raw, and there was a single patch on the wall in front of him he’d been concentrating, the paint worn down to the bare drywall.
TC crossed the room in two large strides. He’d knock the not a very nice person out and carry him out on his shoulder if he had to, which is exactly what he intended to do. There wasn’t time for this shit. He placed his hand firmly on the guy’s shoulder and spun him around to get a look at his face…
God, it was a kid. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen. And brown eyes Anderson would have recognized anywhere. Dilated as all get out, sure, but there was no mistake. He knew those eyes. Knew that face—a little older, almost a man, now, but as familiar as his own. TC stopped and nearly fell over backward.
“Charlie?”
That was all TC had time to say. One second he was standing on the floor staring at his meth-addict friend, the next he was sailing through the air to burst through the bedroom window at the end of a huge fireball.
Usually the meth labs were reason for the fire. In this case, the fire found the lab.
Glass splintered out all around him. He was utterly surprised that he’d managed to grab a hold of anything as he’d gone flying through the window. Dumb luck. He hung there for a stunned moment, unable to believe his ass wasn’t as flat as a pancake on the ground below.
It also happened to be TC’s dumb luck that the balcony built off the front of the apartment was just out of reach. He could even see it where he hung on the side of the building. Well, that was just peachy. TC had about had his fill of irony for the day. Charlie was nowhere in sight. Anderson's heart clenched tight in his chest. It couldn’t have been him. Just someone who looked like him. Okay, a lot like him. He wanted to scramble up back in to the window to see, but there was nothing to grab hold of, nothing to climb up on as his feet dangled heavily below him.
Flames were beginning to lick out of the window above where he hung, their “angel fingers” making grabs for him. “Charlie?” he attempted to yell, but came out more like a pathetic, choking whimper. A flashover. TC hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t acted fast enough. He’d been too distracted. Distracted by Charlie. If he hadn’t been thrown out the window, he would’ve died in there with him.
Charlie was dead.
But Charlie had been dead. For a long, long time. Dead and buried. It didn’t make sense.
God, he was exhausted. He felt like he’d been hanging forever there on that window. His fingers ached. His shoulders throbbed. It’d be so easy to let go. Maybe he wouldn’t even feel the ground at the inevitable, abrupt end of it.
Little did TC know that the fire had been set to hide some evidence of passports, drugs and plans for a bombing of the court house. The guy he had been chasing knew nothing of the meth lab in the building.. The man had escaped in the crowd of scared people.
Moments Before
In his head, TC was cursing enough to make a soldier blush. His shoulders screamed from the stress of having to hold his own weight, plus the weight of his equipment. His gloves were slipping on the already tenuous hold he had on the ledge. Knees won’t hold up to that drop, he thought looking down, and then promptly muttered, “Crap.” Where the hell was the F.A.S T. team? Where the hell was backup when he needed the most?
Where the hell was the ground?
He tried to adjust his grip. If he could get rid of his gloves, he could hold on a little tighter with his bare hands, but that was all sorts of Bad Idea. He wouldn’t be able to hold on with one hand alone while he stripped his gloves off. And he wasn’t quite ready to commit suicide.
Of course, he couldn’t hang here all day, either. He had to get back inside.
He had to find Charlie.
The flames had already begun to jump rooftops by the time the team arrived on the scene. It was spreading fast. Considering the flimsy construction of the apartment building, that wasn’t a huge surprise. Started with a “simple” kitchen fire. Ended with something much worse. The guy he had been chasing through an apartment building thought the fire would slow TC down.
The guy was wanted for murder of cop, using humans for transporting drugs, armed robbery and beating up another cop. TC had found him while out getting a coffee. He called for backup the moment he saw him and then the chase had begun.
The first problem came when the fire began to spread over the roof of the second building faster than they could get the first one under control. The mutual aid teams hadn’t arrived yet from the neighboring stations, so Anderson the Captain of the Fire Station and his crew were left trying to control it alone. Anderson split up the team; with half the company down below operating the pumps, he took the other half of the team through the blazing buildings to be sure all the apartments were clear. Most people had already evacuated their units on their own once the alarms had sounded, but there was always a chance someone hadn’t left and was either trapped, or just too d**n stupid and stubborn to leave.
“I’m gonna check out the bedroom,” Anderson had said from the living room of one of the units they’d had to break into. Jackson nodded. Thick smoke was beginning to pour through the ventilation systems of all the units and they still had the floor below them to case through, so wasting time wasn’t an option. He would be out of Jackson's sight for five whole seconds.
TC saw someone as he was getting ready to leave the building after he was asked to by a firefighter he ran into while running after the guy. Instead he saw someone he knew run into one of the apartments. TC couldn't believe who it was.. He disappeared around the corner, and before he even entered the bedroom, he smelled it:
Garlic.
Lots of it. Someone was cooking, and it wasn’t Mama Romano’s favorite marinara sauce.
Had to be phosphorus. Highly flammable. Well, no, not exactly. More like super hella über mega ultra flammable. He recognized it immediately, and the first thought he had was one of those unprofessional things he wasn’t supposed to say out loud. Ohhh, shit...
There was only one reason why it could be there, only one reason to have phosphorus in any kind of significant quantity in the middle of an apartment complex: a methamphetamine lab. Someone was definitely cooking, and a whole helluva lot of it.
TC knew what to do: a quick check in the master bedroom to be sure no one was behind, then head out to call backup. The structural fire just became a HAZMAT, and this sure as hell wasn’t a place he wanted to be in about five minutes.
He barely glanced in the door when he saw movement against the far wall, someone inside. And that someone was standing there, and...washing the wall? Scrubbing it. Madly. Completely oblivious to the crisis going on around them. It was called “punding”—obsessive, compulsive behavior with meaningless tasks. And this guy had it bad. Dipping into his own proceeds, Anderson thought. He saw it all the time on medic calls. He’d have preferred to never see it again. Meth was the new fad, the suburban drug of choice. Everyone and their mother was doing it, now. Literally.
Amidst glass jars and chemicals clustered on a baker’s rack was what looked like a chemistry set from a Dr. Seuss drawing balanced on a collapsible card table off to the side of the room. Mason jars full of bright red powder—red phosphorus, probably emptied from road flares—sat uncapped all over the small table, right next to a sad looking little hot plate hooked to a portable tank of camping propane. Boxes of sinus decongestant lay scattered like playing cards on the floor. Stained turkey basters, and filthy funnels mingled next to bottles of acetone, and antifreeze, turning the whole bedroom into a surrealist’s interpretation of Hell’s kitchen. TC began to sweat.
“Sir?” he yelled through his mask, trying to get the guy’s attention. “Sir!” Sometimes, TC really hated having to be polite when it came to people like this. He’d have loved to call the guy a hundred other names he could think of right off the top of his head, none of which were even remotely polite.
Scrubscrubscrub.
TC noticed the rag the guy was using was virtually in shreds. His fingers looked raw, and there was a single patch on the wall in front of him he’d been concentrating, the paint worn down to the bare drywall.
TC crossed the room in two large strides. He’d knock the not a very nice person out and carry him out on his shoulder if he had to, which is exactly what he intended to do. There wasn’t time for this shit. He placed his hand firmly on the guy’s shoulder and spun him around to get a look at his face…
God, it was a kid. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen. And brown eyes Anderson would have recognized anywhere. Dilated as all get out, sure, but there was no mistake. He knew those eyes. Knew that face—a little older, almost a man, now, but as familiar as his own. TC stopped and nearly fell over backward.
“Charlie?”
That was all TC had time to say. One second he was standing on the floor staring at his meth-addict friend, the next he was sailing through the air to burst through the bedroom window at the end of a huge fireball.
Usually the meth labs were reason for the fire. In this case, the fire found the lab.
Glass splintered out all around him. He was utterly surprised that he’d managed to grab a hold of anything as he’d gone flying through the window. Dumb luck. He hung there for a stunned moment, unable to believe his ass wasn’t as flat as a pancake on the ground below.
It also happened to be TC’s dumb luck that the balcony built off the front of the apartment was just out of reach. He could even see it where he hung on the side of the building. Well, that was just peachy. TC had about had his fill of irony for the day. Charlie was nowhere in sight. Anderson's heart clenched tight in his chest. It couldn’t have been him. Just someone who looked like him. Okay, a lot like him. He wanted to scramble up back in to the window to see, but there was nothing to grab hold of, nothing to climb up on as his feet dangled heavily below him.
Flames were beginning to lick out of the window above where he hung, their “angel fingers” making grabs for him. “Charlie?” he attempted to yell, but came out more like a pathetic, choking whimper. A flashover. TC hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t acted fast enough. He’d been too distracted. Distracted by Charlie. If he hadn’t been thrown out the window, he would’ve died in there with him.
Charlie was dead.
But Charlie had been dead. For a long, long time. Dead and buried. It didn’t make sense.
God, he was exhausted. He felt like he’d been hanging forever there on that window. His fingers ached. His shoulders throbbed. It’d be so easy to let go. Maybe he wouldn’t even feel the ground at the inevitable, abrupt end of it.
Little did TC know that the fire had been set to hide some evidence of passports, drugs and plans for a bombing of the court house. The guy he had been chasing knew nothing of the meth lab in the building.. The man had escaped in the crowd of scared people.
