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Three minutes later, Kelly and Stoker closed in their ambush on the lanky teen who was saundering around the crash zone in stolen fireman's gear. He looked almost comical with his bloody white Adidas shoes sticking out of the tan pants. "Got ya!" Stoker said, using the severed fire hose as a lasso. Chet brandished both fire hooks like medieval lances and he framed the startled young man with them keeping him from running into one of the live powerlines twitching on the ground. "Stupid kid. Start stripping, right now! And be fast about it." "Ok, ok, What's the big deal? I was just having a little fun ya know? My friends couldn't get anywhere near here because they didn't have the right threads.." the teen sputtered, giving up and hastily peeling off the contraband. "Where'd you get it?" Kelly demanded. "I don't know.. Somewhere back there. Near the nose cone. Nobody was watching it. These things were just lying on the ground...." That disturbed both of 51's firefighters into muteness, briefly. Mike Stoker freed the boy from his restraints. "Now listen carefully, your life may depend on it." "Sir?" Kelly threw down one of the hooks until it connected with a hidden power line and livid gold and blue sparks crackled and roared to life around it until the energy kicked the metal end of it away. The teen flinched and paled considerably. "See that? This whole place is littered with live electrical lines and fuel puddles just waiting for some dumb kid to come along and fry himself to death just for stepping in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kapesh?" Stoker snarled. The kid rapidly grew terrified. "Uh, huh..uh h-..uh." he nodded quickly. "I can see that...." he squeaked. "Now get out of here.. Follow along on top of that dead fire hose to the uneffected streets pronto. And don't come back..... And I do mean ON TOP. You just may make it out of here alive..." Mike said softly. The kid fled. "Oo, man... Stoker,.." Chet laughed once the cowed teenager had gone considerable distance away from them. "Remind me to never be reborn as one of your kids, ok? You make the wrath of G*d Moses felt seem t--" But Stoker was no longer listening. He had lifted the jacket from the ground and was wiping the soot over the letters on the back of it, away, with a wet passenger sweater. Simultaneously, the rising sun's light touched the curving mass of a severed chunk of the airplane and glinted off twisted metal of red and silver chrome, something not found on any aircraft. Kelly gaped. "Ohmyg*d.." Stoker's HT flew to his mouth and he thumbed the talk button over the steady radio traffic buzzing from the speaker. "Break! Break! Break! HT 51 to Battalion 14. Unit down. I repeat. Unit down. We've just found a fire engine under the nose cone. ID is Station 10!" --------------------------------- |
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*************************************************** From : Cory Anda <andacory@hotmail.com> Sent : Friday, March 12, 2004 1:29 AM Subject : High Rescue Megan stirred from where she lay across Johnny Gage's chest. His hand had gripped the base of her throat, feeling for the big pulse point that she knew she had there. "Mr. Gage? Are you all right?" she asked lifting her bandaged head and eyes from the fast rise and fall of his breathing. A grunt of pain from a dry throat greeted her ears. "Mr. Gage? Did you hear me?" Finally, she got a croak in response. "*cough* I... was just....about to ask you the same thing, Megan." said his voice, muffled by the black rubber surgical oxygen mask Megan had strapped onto his face. "Are we still safe in here? I ..kinda l-lost track of time." he moaned, sliding the flowing mask off his mouth to his chin so that she could better understand him. "Sure are. I've been crawling to the door every five minutes to check it for hot spots or smoke coming from the bottom of the door." Johnny opened his eyes blearily and blinked away lingering grogginess that still fogged him from his exposure to the chemical smoke from the patient room Megan and he had escaped from. Experimentally, he took in a deep breath. Immediately, bubbling liquid made him choke in reflex but the spasms that had plagued him before the atropine injection didn't rematerialize. "Good job with giving me that shot Megan. I- I think I've turned the corner." Gage saw Megan's hands blindly grope around on his stomach until they located both of his caked palms in a tiny and sweaty grip. "I was so worried Mr. Gage. I- I thought your lungs were going to stop getting enough air for you. It was scary hearing those noises. They were all whistles and squeaks and you got really sweaty and cold, too, for a long time. I tried to cover you up but I couldn't find a blanket." Johnny glanced with irony at the shelves of surgical sheeting that were folded on the linen racks just above Megan's eye wrapped head's height. "That's ok. I... feel better now. You've nursed me through just fine here." and he leaned over to cough and spit some thick mucous out of his mouth. "How'd ya.. how'd ya keep track of when to recheck the door again for fire and smoke with your eyes wrapped up like they are?" he asked, shifting slowly to hands and knees, testing his body's strength and condition to see if he could manage standing. Right then, Gage's watch went off and he startled as its shrill, trebled diving alarm pierced the stillness of the store room. Megan's bandaged face split into a toothy smile. "I recognized your watch, Mr. Gage. My dad's got one just like it and I knew which button to hit to set the timer for a five minute low air interval warning." "Oh yeah? Those are mighty big words for a nine year old." Gage scoffed, teasing her. He threw partially focusing eyes downwards to make sure that Megan had indeed pulled out the syringe needle from his hip before he turned off the alarm buzzing on the watch. "Don't know if I believe you." he said with a grin, not being able to help himself. He wanted to make her think of something else other than him to bolster her own confidence, mentally and physically. "Oh yeah? Well I can tell you that I checked that door five times since you decided to nap on me. And yes, I've been told I've got a mighty big brain for school learning, especially when I write and talk about all of daddy's diving trips to the Bahamas." Megan said with indignation. "You better believe me cause it's what happened. You were out for all that time." Gage reached out with come here hands. "Hey..I'm just kidding. I forgot you can't see the smile on my face. Really,.. I'd have you on my engine crew watching over my rear in a house fire any day of the week, Megan. You really saved my bacon a half hour ago and I'm not going to forget it anytime soon. Come here. A grateful guy wants to dish out a hug or two in thanks, all right?" Megan rushed into Johnny's arms as he stood up on shaky legs. "There..." he said. "I'm all right and so are you, hon. No need for tears. Now. Let's get the heck out of here like we both wanna do." he complained. He set her briefly on the stack of boxes as he turned off the oxygen tank they had both used and he checked both their vitals signs to reassure paramedic curiosity about himself and his young charge's status. She was stable and her eye dressings were no longer wet with new oozing plasma under the older dried blood stains covering her eyes. His own B/P was in the hundred range palpated but all the cuts on his bare chest and shoulders and the areas above his jeans and on his face had clotted up well. |
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As an afterthought, Gage grabbed a new D5W bag to replace Megan's limp one along with another atropine syringe package for himself in case his toxic gas pulmonary edema flared into crisis again. "Ready to go, princess?" he asked her when he was through fussing. "And how. People out there are probably wondering where we are." ::I'm counting on it.:: Johnny thought to himself as he hefted Megan's light weight onto his good hip. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from a wall compartment on his way out of the surgical supply room after deciding he'd keep the route ahead hazard free with it as a backup. "What's that for?" Megan asked when she recognized the familiar ching of metal nozzle on metal cylinder. Gage said. "Ever heard of an insurance policy? Well, this is a non paper kind. Hang on to me tight. We're headed out." Johnny felt Megan clench his hair painfully as he moved down the fitfully lit hallway and back into a faint bank of bitter sweet smelling smoke. "You're forgetting the Santa Anas are in full swing. They'll wrap any fire higher than a skyscraper if the wind's strong enough. There may be hot spots around where we're going." An orange glow at the end of the corridor showed Johnny the location of the glass elevator. The doors separating its shaft from the maintenance corridor had been ripped away and the nightmare vision of the burning plane and surrounding neighborhood gaped through like a surrealistic hellish painting that made a lump knot deep in his throat. Gage didn't let the relaxed but mute Megan know that his eyes and heart were already crying. ::All of them, dead?:: he thought in thinly veiled despair and shock. He could tell by the color of the smoke columns that more than metal and wood burned in the magnesium fires that marked a sickening outline where the plane had embedded its length into the parking lot concrete and across the yards of at least six homes that he could see in the distance from his vantage point from the fourth floor of Rampart. The scene was hugely bloated with chaotic ruin that hungrily swallowed all signs of the rescue work that was ongoing, for there wasn't even the slightest sound of radio barks nor the faintest flash of red lights from fire engines carrying up to where Gage and Megan slumped in the passageway. A hot wind whipped a vile stench up the shattered shell of the glass tube that once housed the glass viewing elevator panes. Rungs of metal where the broken sheets of tempered glass were once hung, were completely intact. "Those are still climbable!" Johnny said, looking down, tracing the route his eyes picked out through the darkness and firelight flickers. "We can rappel down." "But we're so high up.." Megan wailed. Gage shouted, seeing hospital figures below running triage in the hastily converted outdoor cafeteria just below him. "Hey! Up here!" But no one looked up towards the upper floors at all and the roar of fire and water covered the sound. |
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Then Johnny spotted a familiar shape sniffing and searching through the rubble and papers littering the grass. "Boot! Hiya boy!.. Up here! We need help!" But the shaggy, weary dog didn't hear him. Desperate, Johnny said, "Megan, gimme more of your coloring pens. Quick." The girl unzipped her fanny pack and gave him the last of them. The green ones. "Here." she sobbed in sudden fear, understanding the tactic at once. One by one, Johnny launched pens into the air, trying to hit the ground near Boot. Several bounced off the torn, tipped over umbrellas out of the dog's sensory range. But the very last green pen finally clattered right underneath Boot's front paws. The stressed dog startled at the impact but immediately afterwards, his nose started working earnestly until he located the thrown missile as it rolled under a canted over cafeteria tree pot. Boot whined when he recognized Johnny's scent mixed with blood on the pen. "Atta boy! It's us.. Good boy.." Gage grinned. "Get a good whiff. Yeah, that's me and yeah, I'm in trouble." Johnny could just barely see Boot begin a tracking circle around the bustling gurneys and moaning patients crowding the triage area in a concerted search for his whereabouts. His pacing was headed away from the ravaged side of the hospital. "No, no.. we're up here, Boot!" and he waved sharply, leaning over the edge of the windy precipice inside of the elevator shaft. "Come on.. Use that mug of yours. And those ears...!" He brought a bloody hand up to his lips and he whistled fiercely. Boot's head jerked at the sound that only he could hear over the crash site's din and his head lifted, trying to pinpoint the source of echo of the familiar call that he knew. Gage whistled again and he saw Boot's black nose twitch in a rush of wind that swept down the side of Rampart's shattered face from where Megan and he huddled against the fire and sun glowing building. Then the two of them connected eyes. Johnny saw but didn't hear Boot begin to bark and fuss in earnest in sudden frantic activity. "Atta boy. Go get help! Yeah, we're up here boy. Gonna need a way down. Go, boy. Go! Get some help. Yeah, I got a victim with me and I know how much you can't stand not being able to reach one." With a last emotionally torn howl, Boot arrowed off to the west, shooting around doctors' legs and oblivious civilian casualties in search of some true fire people from an engine crew who would do more than just kick him away in irritation. |
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"Go.. Boot.. get Cap or.. anybody.. That's the way.." he gasped, sinking down to crouch on the edge of the cold concrete above the elevator track, cradling a mentally shocked Megan against his shoulder. He laid the child on the floor onto her left side and covered her with a stack of plastic bags from an abandoned mop cart to help keep her warm in the smoke breezy hallway. Deftly, he hung her IV on a door jam above her. "Megan, stay put. I gotta rig a line of some kind for us to use." Gage crawled over to the far wall and yanked open the emergency fire hose panel and peeled its long but empty canvas'ed length away from its hanging hooks. Absently, his trembling hands began to fashion a safety harness using the fire hose; a tandem one big enough to hold both Megan and himself. "If they're not here in ten minutes, we're getting down ourselves. Can't wait long for treatment. Neither one of us. That O2 we shared off the tank was just a stop gag measure. This new smoke's gonna effect us being still caught up this high if we don't get underneath the worst of it real soon." When Johnny was through with his constructing, he tied the male end of the hose to the big red water nozzle wheel coming from the stout red painted pipe inside the panel cabinet. He quickly secured a firm hauling hitch. Then, he gently awoke Megan, murmuring reassurances. "Set to go? It's ok. I won't let you fall. I do these kinds of things all the time in all kinds of places and I've never dropped anyone from a high place without a reason." Megan scoffed, making a face. "What's a good reason?" "Uh,... When we had to use a life net." he said through pursed lips. His answer didn't alarm her in the slightest. "Why don't you get one of those now, Mr. Gage?" Johnny's hesitation was a long one. But truth won out. "Because no one knows yet that we're even up here. Except Boot." "Boot who?" Megan coughed weakily. "Our station's dog. He's a sort of mascot who's our pet,.. er.. well, ..he's actually a stray who shows up on occasion right when we need him." "Like now?" Gage felt his young charge begin to shiver as he tied the final hose loop around both himself and her. He eyed the hazardous way down the side of the building inside the shattered, dangerous glass elevator shaft. The car itself was at the bottom, unused, parked and forgotten in a safety measure. "I sure hope so. I gave him strong enough hints about where we were thanks to your bunch of coloring pens. I tossed them down practically on Boot's head." "I'm gonna miss them." Megan sighed, suddenly sleepy. "Especially my green ones. And my brother and my d--" her voice trailed off. Johnny was alarmed, quickly. "Hey,..Megan? Can you hear me? " he asked her, leaning close and feeling the waning strength of the pulse at her carotid. "Now don't go out on me here. I need you to--" he broke off when he felt the girl go limp despite of his shouting and pain rubs. A closer check proved the child still breathed but it was shallow and fast because of the increasingly acrid air swirling around them. Gage half considered retreating back to the surgical store room but changed his mind, thinking suddenly of Boot. ::He's gonna need something to go point onto when he gets back with some half convinced doubting firefighter. It's gonna be a needle in a haystack for him to find someone I know who'll believe him that there's trouble involving me, so I gotta make it as easy for him as possible to prove... by staying visible..:: he thought. Johnny snagged Megan's IV free from the door hook and turned its port wide open, tucking the bag and tubing inside of her fanny pack which still hung above the level of her loosely dangling arm. He tested her consciousness level and found it at an even lower glasgow rating of three. "Oh, no you don't." Gage fished the oral airway he had saved in his back pocket that Megan had needed earlier and reinserted it over her tongue carefully. "You're gonna keep moving air." he sighed. |
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A minute later, he was breathing hard with the effort of easing himself and Megan over the side of the window ledge and into the shattered frame of the elevator shaft. He scrambled his way down into the clearer air at the third story, and then a bit farther down to the fullest extent and reach of his jury rigged hose and there, they hung unseen by the overtaxed hospital workers milling about underneath their feet. "Boot ... I sure hope you got the message. There's no turning back for us." and he eyed the fourth floor where he had just left as another thick bank of smoke and fuel fumes obscured the doorway they had exited. "I don't think I can get back up there if my life depended on it." To Johnny's dismay, a huge choking smoke cloud swirled down Rampart's flank to meet them and completely covered them up from view from any potential spotters on the ground. Gage felt himself getting fuzzy once again as the hot brightening dawn wind around them suddenly grew too poisoned to breathe. |
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*************************************** From: Katherine Bird <kathbird01@yahoo.co.uk> Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004 8:11 pm Subject: Mascot Mayhem.. Mike Stoker's radio sprang to life with animated voice. ##10-9 last transmission?!## came at least three lieutenants who were supporting shotgun as battalion relay backups. Static and warbles spat from both the 51 firefighters' HT's but nothing else that was legible got through as command voice after command voice walked on each other trying to be the first to deal with Chet and Stoker's emergency. The warbles became an unmistakable tangle. Mike clicked his talk button in a test but nothing happened at all when the wind suddenly changed, shifting the debris and plane parts piled up on top of the fire truck. "D*mn. We're in a blackout area?! Must be because the engine repeater's been damaged.." Stoker guessed. He quickly cased the ground for danger as he picked his way over fallout to reach the crushed Crown where he saw her. Chet pushed his helmet up in frustration on his head and he ripped off his air mask to shout to anyone from the luckless station who might be lying hurt and trapped in the immediate area. "Hey!.. All in ten's! Yell if you can hear me, man.. We see your engine!!" he gasped, accepting Mike's hand to haul him over a section of plane skin in between two small mag fires. Only the sound of fire and scorching wind hissed by their ears. The lack of human voices replying spurred Kelly and Stoker into an even more frantic search for 10's possible fallen. Kelly resealed his SCBA mask over his lips but it didn't conceal the anger on his face while the telecommunications on his HT's band fell apart when just about every firefighter at the crash site crowded onto the channel, demanding more information about the Unit Down call. |
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Finally, L.A. broke through with a tones squelch, silencing the clamouring talkers crowding the line. ##All units, radio silence... All units, radio silence.. Battalion 12, go ahead. Your channel and HT 51's has been put on a signal boosted protected band.. Go..## Numbly, Kelly clutched the fireman's turnout he still had in his hands and he mumbled.. "This is Bob's.." he said, his gloves twitching shakily over the grime and blood on the jacket. Soot smeared Bellingham's name. "That stupid kid got it away from him somehow...." he whispered in shock. "Oh Stoker, I'm afraid this is gonna be the thing that freaks out the walking rule book.. Brice is gonna sh-" "Quiet, Chet. I'm on.." Mike Stoker's voice held no hint of the fear that was sweeping across his face. His baritone stayed firm and controlled as he spoke rapidly. "Battalion 12. Engine Ten is clearly impact crush damaged. We are located at the nose cone end of the airliner. There was a looter with one of ten's turnouts and that's how we found the pumper. Also sir, as yet, there's no sign of the jacket's ...uh,...owner or the other firefighters.." ##Scene safety?## came the deep stonorous voice of the assistant chief who was Battalion 14's right hand. "Minor mag fires, live lines down 18 meters south. There's a lot of fuel fumes over here blowing downwind of the tail section. Air bottles are going to be critical for those moving in." Kelly added. ##Understood. I'm putting your situation on priority. Inform me the second you find anybody. I have Squad 51 and Station 8 responding..## "10-4.." Mike replied, flinging aside the cumbersome HT onto a multilated Samsonite luggage case. He fire hooked tangles of framework away from Engine Ten's back grill, the only part they could see. Kelly shouted.. "Hold it! Hold it Hold it!! Power line!" he warned. Stoker froze, while Kelly threw Bellingham's jacket over the sparking electrical cable Mike had uncovered. "O.K., it can't writhe free now. Go ahead!" Stoker got to the engine and climbed into the first hole he saw, shouting as he went as loud as he could. "Hey! Can anybody hear me?! It's 51's!!" Kelly quickly joined him in the dark space Stoker had jammed himself into. Finally, he reached the cab's back window and he rubbed it clean with a sleeve, crushing his nose against the spidered glass so that he could peer inside.. "She's empty!!" he said joyfully. "They either got out or they weren't here when the plane hit..." he sighed through his sweaty mask.. "My G*d. Battalion 14 must be out of his mind about this, Stoker. No one put two and two together that the jet crashed where he told 10's to station keep!" "Who could have?" Mike grunted as he pushed himself back out the way he had come carefully retracing their route off the roof of the devastated Crown. "There's over twenty County and City units here... It's nobody's fault. Just really sh*tty bad luck.." "I know.. I know.. " Kelly said, accepting Mike's soggy glove for balance as he, too, got down off the engine to resume their victim search. "But my head hurts anyway. And there's a poker jammed through my chest that's nothing physical, about all this." "Me, too...*gasp* Just keep looking.." Mike said. "They gotta be around here somewhere.." "Who says? They're probably scouting the houses like we were doing earlier." Kelly said, finding something to ease his barely contained fear for their fellow station mates. "But how do you explain Bellingham being out of his turnout?" Stoker frowned grimly. "He might be one who's still around here somewhere.." |
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Chet and Stoker finally stumbled to the front of the buried engine, their eyes confirming that no firefighters lay as casualties near the big truck. "Man,.. I wish we could have rung it out of that kid's neck about where he found the jacket.. Bob would never take it off if he was healthy.." "It could have caught fire..." Stoker theorized. "You know how insidious magnesium burns are. Or he could've used it to cover a live victim to stave off shock but then forgot about it when the stokes recovery teams moved in." "Always nice and positive, Stoker. That's what I like so much, about you. But my instincts are screaming, man. Don't you feel yours? Something's wrong. And it's about one of us..." Kelly insisted, pale and small in his fire gear, as they began once more, their hazard scene search pattern's hunt for anything human in the debris piles. "I just can't shake it either." Mike Stoker didn't say anything. He froze a minute later when he spotted something embedded in the twisted heart of the violated Crown pumper. Chet followed line of sight down Mike's arm.. "I don't believe it.." "Yeah? Well, call it in and don't touch it. The feddies will nail our *sses if we disturb anything near it." Stoker grunted. "F*ck, why do we find this and not Bellingham??" Chet was impressed with Mike's usually hidden trucker mouth as he lifted the HT to his faceplate. "L.A. and Battalion 12. No sign yet but we have located the flight recorder. Looks like Engine Ten's hood was the bullseye." ##Copy that.## Battalion 12 answered. ##Check in at minute intervals.## A sterner, foreign voice took over the line. "HT 51. Touch nothing while you're in there. Our people are intercepting you now for its recovery.." Kelly's eyebrows climbed into his hairline. "You were speaking of the Feds?" Chet said sarcastically. "My, aren't they speedy.." he growled. "I hope they all step on a power l--" "Chet, they're our tax dollars, hard at work.." Stoker teased, trying to lighten the increasing knot of dread that he was experiencing as Chet's non-ignorable bad feeling took root in his stomach. "It behooves us to let them... officiate.." he articulated for lack of a better word. "Why don't they concentrate on developing better airport transportation vehicle protocols or something else that's useful, huh? Hindsight investigation does precious little to help the folks we're seeing smeared all over the county. I'm almost half tempted to hook that power line we just found onto the red box just to fry it so the truth about this crash's human/plane maintenance shortcomings will never hit the media! You heard how those compensators were straining when she flew over our heads. The victims' relatives deserve better than a sterile statement of apology six months from now from the FAA, you know.." Unconsciously, his eyes fell on a very familiar place inside of Engine Ten. |
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Mike Stoker took Kelly's trembling arm and led him away from the cab seat that was the twin of the one Kelly usually took when on a call on Engine 51. He noticed that it had been shredded by myriads of metal shards the length of his arm, some of which were still impaling the leather sickeningly. ::That could have been us, in E 51..:: he realized. ::Someone's watching out for somebody today, that's for sure.:: he thpught and he crossed himself, as Roy would've done. "Come on,.. we'll try and go back to where we intercepted that teenager. Won't be hard to find his footsteps in all this soot and blood to trace a trail back to where the jacket might have come from. If Bob's still in trouble, chances are better that he'll be closer to there than here.. agreed?" Kelly nodded tightly, fighting his emotions as he let Mike lead the way. "Glad at least one of us is thinking clearly.." "Let's go.." Mike said gently. As they passed back by the engine, Stoker paused only long enough to spray paint her side with the bright symbol for no bodies found for the other workers, who were bound to come there anyway they could, just to ease their own minds about her current status and situation. The two of them all but ran back to the depressing open area where they had found the looter. It took them four minutes to find Bob Bellingham's length stretched out in a puddle of fuel face down, eight meters from where they had corralled the teen with the severed hose. Chet and Mike carefully rolled him over onto his back and Chet dug into Bob's shirt for a carotid. "Still got one." he grinned. "Looks like his air mask kept him from drowning in the stuff." Bob groaned when Mike placed his gloves under his head to keep his spine still and straight. "Well, that explains a few things. He's got a goose egg the size of a grapefruit back here." "That lousy fink!" Chet exploded, turning his masked face towards the neighborhood where the rebel teen had long since departed. "What kind of kid would mug a firefighter just to get some gear to put on to go body gawk?" "A thrill seeker from a broken home?" Stoker ventured. |
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