Why had he been so certain Well, chalk it up to his awareness of Jackson’s family history. He knew that there’d been Miller men battling blazes in and around Atlanta ever since Jackson’s great-great-granddaddy had volunteered for the force back in 1870. The notion that there were flames capable of transcending the laws of science and taking on a seemingly sentient existence of their own was something Jackson had absorbed at his father’s knee.
“Fire’s always the enemy in our line of work,” he’d observed after listening to Fridge’s tale of the Sunday-school illustration and its lingering impact “But I hear what you’re saying, man With some calls, it feels...personal. Like you’re going up against a living, breathing, thinking thing that’s aiming to get you any way it can. And with those kind of fires, it’s not enough to knock ‘em down and put ’em out. You need to kill ’em.”
The warehouse blaze that Ralph Booker Randall faced on the fourth Sunday of the eighth month of his fourteenth year as an Atlanta firefighter didn’t feel personal to him. At least...not at first.
There could have been a lot of explanations for his lack of attune ment to the situation. Probably the most accurate was that he’d arrived on the scene with a small but significant piece of his mind still caught up with the conversation he and Jackson had been having when the wake-the-dead sound of an alarm had sent them running for their truck.
They’d been discussing the women in their lives. In Jackson’s case, a beautiful and brainy Yankee psychiatrist named Phoebe Donovan. In his, a firefighter named Keezia Carew who was as independent as she was exotically attractive.
Different ladies in a great many ways, to be sure. But soul sisters when it came to their capacity for confusing the men who loved them.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Fridge had declared at one point, gazing up at the star-spangled sky as though seeking guidance. Things had been remarkably quiet in the nearly fifteen hours since they’d come on duty. While many of the other members of the station’s A shift were sacked out in their bunks, he and Jackson had elected to sit outside and shoot the breeze for a bit. “If the good Lord had meant for men to understand women, He would have put the explanation in writing.”
His friend and colleague had chuckled briefly then observed, “You seem to understand Keezia pretty well.”
“Oh, I understand her just fine when she’s on the job, actin’ like a firefighter,” Fridge had acknowledged with a touch of pride. “But the rest of the time?” He’d grimaced, his memory fast-forwarding through a dozen particularly perplexing incidents. What does Keezia really want from me? he’d demanded of himself for the umpteenth time. Does she even know? “Give me a break. I feel like I’m stumblin’ around in a minefield at midnight.”
Stumblin’ around in a minefield at midnight...
Strange how that ominous turn of phrase popped back into Fridge’s head about fifteen seconds before the first drum of industrial solvent that wasn’t supposed to be on the scene blew up, killing a probationary firefighter named Dwight Daniels.
He and Jackson were inside the burning warehouse searching for the twenty-two-year-old “probie” when the blast occurred. They’d just come down from ventilating the structure’s roof when Daniels had been reported missing. They weren’t the only ones who volunteered to attempt to find him; just the quickest to step forward.
They basically went in blind. The warehouse was filled with smoke. Thick. Dark. Dirty. Fridge knew he’d stink of it for days, no matter how many times he showered.
He tried not to think about what might happen if something went wrong with his self-contained breathing apparatus and he was forced to inhale the rotten stuff. He also prayed that Damels hadn’t succumbed to panic and hyperventilated through an entire bottle of air as probies were wont to do in dicey situations. He’d seen rookies finish bottles that were supposed to last twenty minutes or more in less than half that time. The “huff ‘n’ puff” syndrome, some veterans called it.
Fridge moved forward cautiously, gripping the steel cable he’d hooked to the outside of the building before he’d started in. Jackson—who was a couple feet to his left—was similarly equipped. As long as they kept hold of their flexible metal guidelines, they’d be able to go out the way they’d come in.
Or so the manual maintained. If the way they’d come in had gone up in flames, they’d have to try an alternate route
The heat in the warehouse was increasing. Fridge was sweating profusely beneath his heavy turnout gear. His hands were slick inside his gloves. His short-cropped hair and mustache felt sodden. Running his tongue over his lips, he tasted salt.
He suddenly flashed back on something he’d been told early in his training: The intensity of a fire doubles with every seventeen-degree rise in—
Ka-boom!
The explosion seemed to come from the back of the warehouse. The unexpectedness of it more than its percussive force knocked Fridge to his knees. Fortunately, the drop wasn’t very far. Since heat and smoke rise, the importance of keeping close to the floor was something that had been drummed into him at the academy from day one.
Stay low, you go, went the blunt counsel. Stay high, you die.
“Fridge!” It was Jackson’s voice. It sounded muffled, but close to normal.
“Okay, man!” Fridge responded, getting to his feet He did a quick mental inventory of his condition and deemed himself to be shaken but intact. “You?”
“Okay. But I lost hold of my—”
Ka-boom!
This second blast jarred the fillings in Fridge’s molars and knocked him flat. His helmet came off. A metallic-tasting liquid flooded his tongue. It was blood. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that he’d bitten a chunk out of the inside of his right cheek.
He levered himself up on all fours, scrabbling to locate his headgear. He could feel the outer rims of his ears starting to blister. The back of his neck would begin to barbecue any second. He couldn’t see anything. Not a single... solitary... thing.
He hollered Jackson’s name.
No answer.
And then the building seemed to groan.
Somethin’s comin’ down, Fridge thought grimly. He shouted Jackson’s name again. He knew that being trapped in a collapse was his friend’s personal nightmare. His daddy had died that way. Captain Nathan Miller had been working the nozzle on a water-charged one-and-a-half-inch hose inside a burning frame building when the structure had kicked out and come crashing down. He’d never had a chance.
Fridge found his helmet. He clapped it on and started crawling in what he fervently hoped was Jackson’s direction.
A moment later, the something he’d feared was coming down actually did. Whatever it was, it struck Fridge across the back and slammed him to the concrete floor of the warehouse like a pile driver. He opened his mouth to cry out but the pain was so great he couldn’t muster the lung power to force the sound up his throat.
He tried to move. Shafts of agony spiraled down his legs, slicing along his nerves like knives. His stomach roiled He was afraid he was going to vomit. Swallowing convulsively, he once again tried to move. Whatever was on top of him shifted. He thought he heard something snap. Pain stabbed viciously at the small of his back.
A moment later, Fridge saw red. At first he assumed it was blood—his own blood—on the inside of his face mask. Then he realized that what he was seeing was the glow of encroaching flames.
He was caught. God in Heaven have mercy, he was caught and he was going to roast like a pig on a spit.
“Fridge?”
It was Jackson. The shout came across a great distance. Or maybe it just seemed far away because Helen