Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) (3 page)

T
he similarities were too striking to disregard.

What if there was a serial arsonist at work?

An hour later, the fire was almost under control. Otto and Julia had soaked down the roof and worked around to the back of the house to the kitchen. Lamar ordered Boone to back them up, as Julia was dealing with the line. Boone tied a clove hitch knot to secure a reel of unused hose, then went to help Julia.

He
pulled on the thick blitz line hose. The charged hose was as hard as concrete and equally as heavy. He held onto it, supporting Julia as he opened the chrome nozzle, and the battering ram of water broke free. The line fought Boone as much as he did fought it, and his facemask was immediately soaked with backwash from the nozzles.

"Sit tight!"
Julia ordered Boone, then turned her attention to the structure. "I'm taking the hooligan to it."

With one deft swing,
Julia knocked open the back door.

Fueled by fresh oxygen, the fire came alive, and flames danced out. They seemed to be suspended in air, a ballet dancer in the midst of a grand jeté, and then hit the ground with a roaring ovation of sound and heat.

Julia fell back onto the porch, her arm thrown across her face to cover the shield. Otto hit the fire with a jet from the house, and Boone ran around to help Julia to her feet. She was as solid as an engine block, but a backdraft could throw her around like a rag doll.

"I’m fine."
Julia said as she yanked away from Boone. "Lucky I landed on my ass."

"Yeah, it's got the best padding," Otto shouted
.

"Look who's talking,"
Julia said and walked off the porch holding her back. She pulled the helmet from her smoke-encrusted face and took a deep breath of air. "Hold down the fort, boys. I’ve got to have a cigarette."

She wandered several yards away and
pulled a pack of Marlboros out of a pocket. A lot of firefighters smoked. Every time Boone had to define ironic, he thought of firefighters with charred face lighting up a cancer stick. But Julia’s smoking wasn’t ironic. It was stupid and tragic.

Then
Boone heard it—a scream from inside the house.

"
Julia!" he shouted. "Somebody's in there!"

Julia
cupped a hand to her ear. "What?"

"Inside! There's somebody inside the house! I just heard a scream."

"The house is empty," Julia called back. She dropped the cigarette and reached for her helmet.

"I heard it—yes! There it is again. From the back of the house."

Boone peered into the smoke-filled corridor. Julia had cut the flames down, and the way was clear.

"Hold on
, rookie! Don't you do it!"

Before
Julia could stop him, Boone bounded inside. He dropped his face shield into place.

The corridor from the back door was shrouded in thick smoke. It clung to the ceiling like a smoky curtain. Below that, the smoke was lighter, thinner, a roiling cloud that Boone ducked under as he crunched over the debris on the floor, stomping his heavy boots to make sure the footing was solid.
He sloshed through standing water. Sometimes, it could get so hot, it boiled around your boots and steamed your toes inside.

He turned right at the first doorway and entered a small bedroom. The windows in the room were heavily smoked. They were so dark, n
o light could reach inside. He clicked his head beam on and began turning in a tight circle. He scanned the area, noting the burned-out box mattress in the corner, an open closet, and a narrow door leading to another room.

The heat rose from the floor. It seeped through his boots. He had to move. The room was s
till hot, although there was no obvious fire. He listened hard, seeking the cry again. It had come from this direction, he was sure of it. Despite what Lamar thought, the house was not empty.

There! He heard it again
.

It sounded like a baby crying.

Behind the narrow door.

He reached for the brass knob without thinking. The metal was as ho
t as a charcoal briquette. When he touched it, the heat burned straight into his insulated gloves.

"
Fuck!" he yelled through the visor. "That's hot!"

What a stupid move. It was Fire School 101 stuff. Don’t touch anything with
your body. Use a tool. But the hooligan was on the truck because he had run straight into a fire without it.

Nothing to
do about that now, he thought.

Raising his size fifteen boot, he gave the door a
roundhouse kick. The door blew off out its frame, swung wide on melted hinges, and collapsed onto the floor.

"You're safe!" Boone yelled as he entered the bathroom
.

A blackened toilet sat to the left, and the tub was to the
right. It was cast-iron with high sides. He heard the cry again and leaned over the edge of the tub to take a look.

He expected to find a baby. What kind
of baby, he didn’t know, but he definitely didn’t expect to see a large, black mass bristling at him.

"Hiss!"

Hiss?

The quivering black mass stuck out
its legs.

Then its claws
.

I
n one twisted, screeching moment, it launched itself from the tub into his face. It latched on with its claws, sinking them into the cowl that covered his neck.

“Got off me
!”

Half blinded by the
critter’s belly stretched across his face shield, Boone stumbled back into the bedroom and fell ass-first onto the floor. The cinders on the floor heated up his tailbone as he pulled at the animal, trying to break its grasp.

The cat
dug its claws in more deeply and still screaming, ripped the fabric of Boone’s gloves with its teeth.

“SOS!” Boone called. Stupid
ass cat, it was going to get them both killed!

Boone climbed to one knee, the heat of the cinders seeping through his
fire pants. He turned his head, trying to get a fix on his position.

“Boone!”
Julia called from the corridor. “What’s your location?”

“Here!” Boone yelled back, as he felt the floor shake with
Julia’s weight.

He climbed to his feet again and managed to pull the claws free from his
neck. His foot caught on a chunk of debris, and he slammed his shoulder into the doorframe as Julia reached the room.

Above them, the ceiling rained down
red-hot cinders.

“Come on,
rookie!” Julia yelled and grabbed Boone by the jacket. “What in the hell is stuck to your face?”

“A cat!”

“That ain’t no cat, you idiot!”

Not a cat? What else could it be? There was no time for an answer
.

As they turn
ed toward the back of the house, the ceiling collapsed behind them. Tons of gypsum board, cotton insulation, and two-by-eight inch rafters landed on the floor. The boards collapsed, opening a hole in the corridor. But it quickly filled with fresh tender for the fire.

Flames roared, and
Julia pulled hard on Boone to keep him from following the debris into the hole.

“Move!”
Julia grabbed Boone around the waist and half-lifted, half-dragged him out the backdoor.

Otto turned the hose on them. The spray
knocked the heat off their suits and the animal off Boone’s head. It dropped to the ground, whipped a long bare tail, and hissed.
You want a piece of me
? it seemed to say. Then when no one took up its offer, it sprinted for a patch of crepe myrtles.

“Looks like you rescued yourself a certified Carolina possum,”
Julia said, pointing at the animal and laughing. “Charcoal colored, to boot.”

“A possum?” Boone removed his helmet. The air hit the place on his neck where the possum had scratched him, and he winced from the sting
.

Otto called over his shoulder. “You about got yourself killed over a possum?”

“Thought it was a house cat,” Boone said.

“And why
,” Lamar said from behind them, “would you risk your life to rescue a goddamn cat?”

“Because it was alive
!” Boone said. “Because we don’t leave anything living to die in fire!”

In his mind’s eye, he pictured the fire that had killed his friend.
But he knew Lamar, who was born and raised a farm boy, had a hierarchical view of an animal’s value in the world. Human life was sacred and worth risking yourself to save. Animals, well, they were good to have around, and you never willingly hurt one. But when it came down to it, no animal was worth the life of a person.

“I heard screaming,” Boone said. “It sounded like a baby.”

Lamar took Boone’s helmet out of his hands. “Did I not tell you this house was abandoned? Did you not hear me right?”

“You told me and I heard you
,” Boone said, “but I also heard screams, and how could I determine that it was only a possum? Besides, if this house is abandoned, how did it and the other two buildings catch fire simultaneously?”

Lamar looked at the scorched possum, still f
rozen in fear but hissing a warning. He turned back at the fire, which radiated waves of heat. “That’s for the fire investigators to figure out. Like I told you a hundred times, we don’t ask how the fire started, just how fast we can put it out.”

“Like I told you,” Boone sa
id, “I’ll never stop asking how.”

“Stick to your guns,”
Julia said and patted him on the ass.

Lamar
cleared his throat and handed Boone the helmet. “Take the first aid kit out of my truck and clean up that scratch. Get back to work ASAP. There’s hose to clean up, and you got to get back to the school.”

“Yes, Cap,” he said and headed for Lamar’s truck at the front of the house.
He gave the possum a wide berth as it crouched in the shadows and continued to hiss.

“Hey,
rookie,” Otto called.

Boone turned to answer as Otto opened the hose nozzle on him. A charged stream blasted his helmet off and knocked him
down. Water sprayed up his nose and into his mouth. He choked and spat to get it out.

Julia
laughed. “Welcome to the brotherhood, possum.”

A few minutes later, Boone had a tube of antibacterial ointment in one hand and a bandage strip in the other. He bent down by the side mirror of Lamar’s truck, trying to place the bandage, though he was distracted by the reflection of Julia stripping down to her civvies. His brain told his hands to go left, but they followed the mirror image instead.

A
man with a round potbelly in a white wife beater T-shirt walked up to the truck. “You need a hand with that?”

“H
ey, Stumpy,” Boone said. “Yeah, I can’t get my hands to go in the right direction.”

“I
got that problem myself,” Stumpy said, taking the bandage from Boone, “but it usually ain’t from looking into a mirror. This might sting some.”

“Tsss!”
Boone sucked air through his teeth. Yeah, it stung. More than a little. “What brings you out here?”

“You
best watch for infection,” Stump said after he stuck the bandage on the wound and gave it a good slap. “Possums carry diseases, you know. This one feller I know got the gangrene from it and had to get his thumb amputated.”

Stump
was well known in Frisco, a good ol’ boy who could fix anything he wanted, if you could get him to want to. He dropped out of high school to work the family fields, but then his daddy died and the government bought out the tobacco allotments. Folks said he gambled away most of the money and then drank up what was left.

“I was staying in that old Airstream trailer on the back of the property. I was the one who called in the fire.”

“You
don’t say?” Boone said.

“Don’t
you go looking at me like that. Ain’t me who started it, I promise you that. I was sound asleep when the boom went off. Practically knocked me off the couch. Well, it did knock me off, if the truth be known, but I already greased the skids with a few cold ones.”

“Boom?
You heard an explosion? Did you tell Lamar and Sheriff Hoyt?”

Stump
scoffed. “Like Hoyt’s going to listen to me.”

“But—“

“He’d just laugh it off and say it was the Jagr bombs going off in my head. Jackass. He knows I quit drinking those ages ago."

"When
was that?"

"Last
month."

"A
whole month ago?"

"Yeah.
It's harder than it sounds. Listen here, I found a finger. "